To think that this is the end of women's athletics?

[fidel1ne]

And women's international sport generally?

Transgender competitors will be allowed to compete as the gender of their choosing pre-operatively and after just one year of hormone treatment.

Like Puntastic, I have the group page opened in another tab. I'm nervous of joining it, as I'm sure that there will be a backlash if the group name shows up on my newsfeed. Specifically multiple posts on my FB accusing me of being transphobic and a TERF. I have seen it happen to other friends. I really want to speak out on this issue, but feel like I'm being silenced

Which group? The FB group?

I'm looking but I can't find what punt said.

I don't know anything about this but as there have been drug tests etc for years surely a woman with unusually high testosterone levels would have been flagged as drug taking.

Even if the person doesn't have high levels of testosterone, if a person has spent a large part of their life as male, then certain physicality will always remain male, placing the person at an unfair advantage when it comes to most sports.

Males have large hands, thicker wrists and therefore are bound to have more strength and better grips in their hands than females
(someone mentioned Caitlyn Jenner being a keen golfer)

They have different shaped pelvises, which affects running.

There is bound to be more.

You can take all the female hormones in the world, but some thing things cannot be changed.

I have pretty much dedicated my life to ensuring that my daughters get full access to all the sport they want. One of my daughters is the best nationally at her sport. This is why this is very much a parenting issue for me.

I wonder what Mn calls the majority of posters?

What about all the people who are registered but no longer post?

Or is it the majority of active posters.

Because it sounds like a get out clause to me if it includes posters who no longer post

This is why this is very much a parenting issue for me.

I can't believe anyone thinks it's not a parenting issue

Sorry. Not read the thread. Has anyone posted this picture yet?

don't really see how that's more reasonable than someone saying they don't want lesbians in the changing room because lesbians fancy women, are usually more butch than hetero women and therefore are likely to make a successful attack on hetero women

The main difference as I see it is that lesbians are not men,(hold the front page) even if you choose to describe them as "butch" (not the case tbh, most of the lesbians I have met are, broadly speaking, no more "butch" than straight women overall). A lesbian (therefore a woman) does not have a penis (this is the usual instrument used in a rape).
Being a lesbian does not make a woman as strong as a man, or socialised as a man.
Being assaulted is not about physical attractiveness. Men do not really go around raping women because they fancy them (although that excuse is often trotted out by victim blamers and rape apologists) so being in a room with a lesbian is of no increased threat to a woman.
In addition, lesbians (who are women), require access to women's loos because (as women) they cannot use a urinal without a she wee and will make use of the sanpro disposal systems available in women's loos.

The larger issue, imo, is that accepting trans men as women erodes womanhood, redefining it to a male determined standard or set of rules.
The only way to stop this is by legislation. A man is not a woman. He can wear tights and dresses and heels and should absolutely not be bullied for doing so.
But no, he cannot demand that we call him a woman or treat him as a woman.
He is not a woman. The clue is in his DNA.
We have to stop pandering to this nonsense.

because this is the road to utter madness.
If a man is allowed to redefine the term woman to fit his own mental health issues then gay women, women who wear trousers or no make-up, women who don't get a hard-on putting their own knickers on will no longer be women.
unless some idiot "medical professional" can be paid to sign the appropriate paperwork.
So we had best all buy a shewee in order to use the Gents. There are already not enough women's public loo cubicles for those of us with a foof ffs

I have pretty much dedicated my life to ensuring that my daughters get full access to all the sport they want. One of my daughters is the best nationally at her sport

Ha! Not in 12 months she's won't be . My son now feels like a woman and he's going to kick your daughters ass in 12 months time . He doesn't feel like woman for the rest of his life BTW, just in his sport . And after Rio we will change his drug regime and he feel like a man again .

There you are briss, years of your life and her life destroyed , her lifetime ambition gone . Because of unfair competition from a born male

< can someone remind me why this isn't a parenting issue>

I can see why this is such a thorny issue to get into in the press. It really does demarcate the lines in the trans debate.

In my view (and I think many others) there's no room for the performance of gender in sport. Sport is divided along biological sex lines, not gender lines, because it is biological sex - which is unchangeable - which causes the differences in performance between those with XY and XX chromosomes. It is this last point which so many trans activists seem to find very very difficult to accept, and the sporting arena is one area where this basic biological difference is starkly and blatantly apparent. A blurring of the lines in sport, and therefore a public acceptance that one can move from one biological sex to another, therefore, is a major victory for trans people - and, as we are debating, at the same time a major blow to born women who want to compete in sport amongst other born women because it is fair competition.

Gender, and the performance of gender, is of no real relevance to sporting performance. Indeed, I think one reason many women enjoy sport is because it is an arena which is refreshingly free of the normal trappings of gender performance.

I have empathy with people with trans identity; I appreciate it must be a very difficult path to tread. But I think that there are a lot of things, if you are a trans woman, that you need to accept aren't going to happen in your life due to biological irreducibility. You are never going to have a period. You are never going to carry a child. You are never going to give birth. And in my opinion you should never win a gold medal in a women's Olympic event.

*They just need to say 'i am a woman' and lower their testosterone a bit for a year

They can change back 4 years later and compete as men again if they want to.*

It's the changing back clause that pushed me freom anger and frustration into actual exploding-head. Unbelievable and unjustifiable.

Mumsnet won't campaign on this. They like virtue signalling campaigns that position them as Good People With Good Views. And to be Good People With Good Views means (like Maria Millar) denying that there is this conflict between the needs of two groups claiming oppression.

I thought Millar's statement in the Independent was very revealing actually. She was basically saying that feminists ought to be the first to support the rights of other oppressed groups because it's good for everyone including women to support people's liberation from oppression. This is the Everyday Feminism position. It's premised on the unspoken belief that women's rights are sorted, and therefore feminists should morph into general purpose social justice warriors and campaign for other minorities. After all, there's nothing left to campaign for when it comes to women

It's the changing back clause that pushed me freom anger and frustration into actual exploding-head

Me too.

Allowing irrevocable (at least for competing policy purposes) transitions would be a alightly different matter.

I joined the fb group - none of my friends appear to have found out, I've had no posts or comments offline or anything.

Join us!

Ha, yes to virtue signalling!!

I wonder how many women were on the IOC committee that made this decision. Does anyone have the numbers? How many women's organizations were asked about this before the IOC made this decision? Any? I'd love to know which ones, because if they recommended this nonsense, I'd like to make sure I don't donate to them any more.

Pun - I too would like to join. Can you signpost me please?

kappa

www.facebook.com/groups/ATWIWS/

Could you point me in the direction of the FB group please?

Doh! Cross post!

"This is the Everyday Feminism position. It's premised on the unspoken belief that women's rights are sorted, and therefore feminists should morph into general purpose social justice warriors and campaign for other minorities."

yy to this.

Some might say almost ironically, EverydayFeminism are silent on this, so far.

Ah, well, posted on the poll thread, thought I'd follow the 'discuss elsewhere' direction. Did read half this thread the other day, hence knowing what the issue is.

It's clearly madness because gender is not sex and sport is segregated by sex. The end.

By all means have, display, live according to whatever gender identity you like. Be a person, in whatever way you wish, so long as in doing so you do not harm other people. Generally, let's be excellent to each other. (This does involve considering the basis and consequences of our wishes and actions, sometimes consulting the people affected, who may have needs, rights or a perspectives we hadn't thought about, obviously). Lovely.

My mind jumped straight back to reading my mother's old copy of The Female Eunuch 25 years ago - the underlying issues are not new - wherein men are men and women are anything other, lacking full agency, done to. It seemed very old fashioned then. Germaine argues that women are actually, postively, definitively, actively women. (Well duh, I thought). She has of course lived that belief in arenas more nuanced than sport.

Also, the Handmaid's Tale. What really lives with me from that story, is the ease with which men; normal, nice men, allowed women to be oppressed. Gradually colluding with their oppression, initially just by turning a blind eye, or noticing and saying things were indeed a bit off but not making it their priority to do anything to address that.

'First they came for the athletes but I was not an athlete, so I did nothing...' It's easy not to when you think your rights are unassailable, that you live at the centre of a strong and generally fair democracy, that you are the very subject, your well-being the purpose of that democracy. It's easy to think things will get sorted out, because if there is an injustice, the people affected will fight it and justice and common sense will prevail.

Something quite long could follow that, so I won't.

Then, there was Pistorious. Paving the way for athletes with a difference to challenge official boundaries. Really interesting how in his case, everything was about proving equivalent physical ability. Having to prove that his difference did not confer any advantage, at all.

Let's start from the same premise. Fair, surely? You want to compete in a certain class. You prove, exhaustively, against all reasonable challenge and scepticism, that your difference confers no advantage upon you, over the other competitors in that class.

There was no doubt that Pistorious wanted to compete as if he was able bodied. Did he miss a trick? Should he simply have said 'I believe that I am able bodied (contrary to appearances, I know), I feel able bodied, I identify as able bodied, I wish to live as an able bodied person'?

Well that wouldn't have been on at all, without proving equivalence first, because he could have been the very best at his sport; won records, prizes, pushed out people who were actually (without his possibly unfair advantage) the best. No.

But pushing out the best women is just displacing mediocrity, isn't it. Who cares if one lot of second class competitors are better than another? They're still second class, other, never going to be the best .