Brave reporter undergoes inhumane sex test for sports. Brace yourselves.

Good point @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime re disappointment at not being able to compete. I think someone upthread mentioned a competitive skier who had a DSD and had been incorrectly raised as a girl. He competed as a woman in skiing events. At some point his genes were tested and it was found that he was a male with a DSD. If I remember correctly, he offered to give back the prizes and medals he had won up to that point because he accepted that he was male and felt bad about cheating women out of prizes.

Caster Semenya is exactly an example of complexity, and that it’s not as easy to put people in one of two boxes as we’d like to think. I think she’s an intersex woman, and I think it’s sad a world class athlete can’t compete.

And it all got complicated with accusations that the standards were being exploited:

https://marathonhandbook.com/did-a-runner-exploit-bostons-non-binary-qualifying-standards/

Quote from that article: "What this case reveals, instead, is the difficulty of balancing inclusivity with competitive fairness"

Remember when the Boston marathon introduced a non-binary category, then after the first race got complaints that men had an unfair advantage and were winning all the prizes, so they should split it into female non-binary and male non-binary? And the people horrified that non-non-binary men were entering the non-binary group because it had a lower qualification bar.

Remember when the Boston marathon introduced a non-binary category, then after the first race got complaints that men had an unfair advantage and were winning all the prizes, so they should split it into female non-binary and male non-binary? And the people horrified that non-non-binary men were entering the non-binary group because it had a lower qualification bar.

I'm pretty sure the female #bekinders would vanish from the open category like smoke on the breeze back to the female category where they'd have a shot at winning.

All whilst moaning how MEAN it all was.

I am just constantly reminded that to some people ‘good faith’ discussion is being able to say something and not be challenged on it even if it is not correct or if there are inconsistencies

To them Good faith does not mean engaging and providing an evidenced view point that is supported with links. So often we see people make claims about ‘good faith’ arguments where they also mean that they can insult and make unfounded accusations about posters individually or as a group because they feel that have a morally superior view point and can attack the people who are merely disagreeing and disagreeing by providing detailed analysis.

It’s certainly true that attempting to bolster your position by saying Mumsnet is an echo chamber is not arguing in good faith.

I think the closest we've come to inclusive and fair sport is dividing into Open and Female divisions. Anyone who is female can compete in the Female category, or if they prefer, the Open.

The Open division will be stacked full of all the females who prioritise inclusive sport, all the special gender feelings people, all the enbies, all the people with DSD that excluded them from the Female division and lastly but of course not leastly all the bog standard blokes who will win 100% of medals.

I am just constantly reminded that to some people ‘good faith’ discussion is being able to say something and not be challenged on it even if it is not correct or if there are inconsistencies

To them Good faith does not mean engaging and providing an evidenced view point that is supported with links. So often we see people make claims about ‘good faith’ arguments where they also mean that they can insult and make unfounded accusations about posters individually or as a group because they feel that have a morally superior view point and can attack the people who are merely disagreeing and disagreeing by providing detailed analysis.

I promise you that not everyone who disagrees with you had just misunderstood something.

Just to share with you all - one night on a mumsnet gender criticial thread made me feel anxious, less patient (sorry to some of you on that!) and just like… meaner and smaller.

I’m glad some of you seem to think you’ve found a kind of righteous anger after years of being told to be nice or kind, but I wish you’d directed it somewhere else instead of a tiny group of people who really aren’t affecting your lives or making you less safe (I know you think they are; they’re just not). You’re like people who’ve fallen for the small boats thing - an imagined bogeyman to fear and obsess over.

I’m going to ban myself commenting on a similar mumsnet thread again, as I don’t think it’s a space where people are able to engage in good faith anymore. It’s too obsessive.

I hope you all have ways to take care of yourselves - I think you’re doing each other a world of damage passing around and building up so much fear.

Could the answer be, to have an "open" category which anyone can compete in, and a "female" category restricted to those who are unequivocally female?
Simpe but effective, right?

@Deadlifter
You said many pages ago that you don't have the answers - this is not surprising. You want there to be a solution that pleases everyone but there just isn't one.
On this forum anyone can argue and debate for either side, people have for many years, and nothing like a perfect solution has emerged. Neither has any particularly persuasive argument been made as to why women's sports shouldn't be protected.

There are other online spaces where the opposite view dominates, but these tend to occur where that viewpoint is protected by censorship and banning of alternatives.

You still think ‘on here’ is the only place people have been discussing this for years. Lots of people have spent equal time and energy learning about this issue, and still disagree with you. Lots of people have life experience you might not have - we work alongside respectful trans woman who we can see every day are not taking anything from us at all. People with a wider lens can also see things you’re not seeing - eg. How your views interact with the rise of the far right etc.

I wish I’d been politer - I’ve said that. But you have lost it at a single person disagreeing with you; I don’t think you should kid yourself that you’d have fared better with hordes of people disagreeing with you.

I genuinely hope you manage to extricate yourself from this one day and look back like ‘woah, that was a weird time

Women can never do the right thing. It's impossible.

We are damned if we do and we are damned if we don't.

Once you realise this, you stop giving a shit what some dumb activist says and just get the fuck on with it without needing the validation and approval. The 'Be kind' shit becomes worthless. If you feel strongly enough about the subject matter you just default to proving the point and not caring if the dickheads don't like it.

It's kinda liberating to cross the point of worrying whether you are going to be called names for demonstrating a perfectly reasonable and moderate position that's recognised by law as being so.

I don't need other people's approval to know what's fair and to understand biology.

That's what many sports are doing. Although I recall that when swimming? offered this there were no entries - despite all the years of whining and wailing.

The only conclusion I can draw is that the attraction is both cheating, along with the thrill of demolishing women's sport?

Could the answer be, to have an "open" category which anyone can compete in, and a "female" category restricted to those who are unequivocally female?
Simpe but effective, right?

Thank you. Definitely not a domestic goddess or a cake maker! I was drawn to this thread specifically rather than any of the other gender critical threads because I have a genuine interest in women’s sports (as I say, I compete in a strength sport where performance expectations across male and female, weight and ages classes are of course very different). I want my sport and all sport to be fair for women, but I also don’t want to exclude trans or intersex people (and there ARE quite a few trans people in lifting communities)…. And that’s because I love my sport! I think everyone should get to do it!

I honestly don’t know what the answer is, but I don’t think it’s as straightforward as ‘there’s male and female, that’s it, no variance or discussion to be had’.