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.

It's understandable that you feel like that can'tthink. But it's wrong, and it proliferates because everyone (bar a few brave people) is too scared to say what they really feel. They are being very effectively bullied and silenced. Sticking up for women in what is essentially a zero-sum game (with zero compromise from the trans lobby) does not make you a bigot.

Yes, forget about the website address, if that article had been on www.newstateman.com it would have got a better reception among forumites, no doubt...

"zero-sum game" more useless nonsense from a silly branch of applied maths, keep that stuff for the textbooks not real life

YANBU it's a ridiculous decision!

If there was no biological basis that males are stronger and faster then females before puberty then why do we have seperate girls and boys races? It's nonsensical you can't argue with biology.

Dp and I were what you would call Trans Allies (and still are in a lot of ways) but the Trans Agenda is undermining women's rights in a scarily short amount of time.

I'm also absolutely chilled that people myself included are so scared to speak out.

Hopefully many of you in already but here's the link for the FB group again just to keep people aware it's there and they don't have to trawl through the thread for it

https://m.facebook.com/groups/ATWIWS

Interesting cantthink, as, identifying similarly politically, I have no difficulty with that at all. I don't feel I'm being pulled or jumping rightwards in order to do so.

In this instance, very simply because sport is not predicated upon gender. So looking at it in those terms is a category error.

I thought the way Caster Semenya was treated was awful but I accepted that there was a physically demarcated line, outside which an athlete is not and cannot compete as a woman. That leaves me feeling very sorry for intersex athletes who are, biologically, neither men nor women but, that's the way biology goes sometimes.

Rather, I feel that in being expected to welcome trans-women into every female space, without regard to the impact on the women already there, women are being asked to behave in an extremely hand-maidenly manner, adopting a self-sacrificing, people-pleasing, placating, soothing and accommodating persona, which I would identify politically as being part of an extreme right wing, 'traditional family values' ideology.

I hear what you are saying, venus. And I think that I am slowly buidling up my courage

It's just so difficult when even women doing gender studies jump down your throat to defend all trans*women at the slightest hint of what they perceive as transphobia. Having read a bit more now, I realise that they, even though seemingly knowledgable about gender issues, actually might not be aware of the complexities and nuances. Or maybe they get caught up in deconstructivist gender theories without actually understanding them (?)

That's great, cantthink. I agree they are likely to be wedded to those particular intellectual theories and can't deal with anything which challenges that or doesn't fit their narrow academic understanding of gender. I think you do have a more nuanced view.

Yanbu

I really can't find the words to express how angry I am that Caster Semenya and intersex female athletes have been subjected to dreadful invasive (pretty damn humiliating) tests because they weren't considered suitably female enough to compete in the women's Olympics - with some pretty severe surgery done to some of the intersex individuals - and now someone with a penis, and fully masculine bone structure, muscle density, heart strength and lung capacity will be allowed to compete as a woman after 12 months of testosterone levels at the lower end of the men's spectrum.

The sheer hypocrisy is breathtaking. Oh and you can change back every 4 years, no worries.

"deconstructivist gender theories"
"transphobia"
A complete load of rubbish all that is anyway..

You can do whatever operations you like but under the surface, the biological DNA does not change, gender is determined at birth

Can'think There is nothing intrinsically virtuous in being a left-liberal. As for finding yourself in agreement with the (heinous) right. Well, a stopped clock is correct once a day.

If people like yourself stand back because you can't take the thought of having what you perceive as a right-wing stance on an issue, the trans activists will be laughing all the way to the starting line.

Personally I say who cares about being labelled a TERF? Who cares about being labelled right-wing? It's just an opinion.

Trans woman can take all the hormones they want, stick bits on their bodies, lop other bits off or have a mix and match set, that's fine. Good for them. Call themselves trans women. I will support their right to identify personally however they want. But they are not, and never will be, women.

So, they feel like women they say? Rubbish. How do they know how women feel? I'm a woman but I don't know how other women feel, despite having gone through puberty, childbirth, the menopause, etc.

Now they want women to budge over and hand over sport to them as well. What next? Have wombs transplanted, IVF to carry babies and give birth via…..?

How can we let a subset of a subset get away with this? Maybe they think that if you tell a lie big enough, often enough it will be accepted as right and fair. And that's what's happening. It would be laughable if it were not so potentially damaging to women.

Enough.

very true grimbletart

Basically on this issue you have the choice of being on the same side as the Daily Mail comments or the Iranian mullahs, so take your pick!

Saying its a "right wing" belief isnt really true anyway. There are many conservative-type-value people who like the reinforced gender-roles that transgenderism encourages, viewing 'fixing' someone to the 'correct gender' as preferable to homosexuality.

Are there any women's sports bodies that we can campaign to vocally oppose this? It needs someone who already has a voice to lead the backlash.

Agree with Beyond. This is in no way progressive, and opposing it on the grounds of women's rights is not bigoted or right wing.

Am out and proud on my FB page now. I don't give a fuck anymore.

Anyone wants to hate me, bring it on!

In short, dona - yes, you will share your ward with anyone who identifies as a woman, according to NHS guidelines.

www.rotherham-lgbt.co.uk/resources/trasngender_booklet_low%20res.pdf

Also, the Handmaid's Tale.

Most people will find this post ridiculous, scaremongering, tinfoil stuff. Please do skip to next. Seeing implications down the line is one of my particular skills so, for anyone still reading:-

Transwomen are women. They are women with bigger, stronger bodies. Having been socialised pretty much as males, they're (as a class) more confident, forthright and decisive than women who were assigned female at birth. They understand engineering and cricket. They're better at being sexy and even at giving blow jobs. As women go, transwomen are pretty much what men would've designed if they could have designed women.

This leaves us with two biologically different kinds of women. One kind is a patriarchal dream; the other's a bit wussy & feeble in most respects, but is the only kind that can have babies. Welcome to the breeding class.

I'm not saying this is specifically going to happen (although I'm not saying it won't.) But it is a set of circumstances that may very easily lead to female humans being relegated to our historical place in society - which was as the "breeding class", little other use for women having been acknowledged. Through nearly all of history, women were literally deemed faulty men whose existence could only be explained by reproduction.

And, while transwomen are women, this can be effected without even making a dent in patriarchy's perception of itself as good on equality. You simply get a new hierarchy, which goes:

1. Men.
2. Women.
3. Breeders.

And possibly

1. Breeders who don't breed.

Not if they're digital

Mary You're right of course. I was think of day = daytime, as opposed to night time.

No apology necessary. A little light relief is called for, particularly after reading Garlic's future take...

I don't think it's tinfoil hat stuff at all, Garlic. There is a naive belief among some genderists that gender discrimination will simply evaporate. But there will still be a class of people who have babies and plenty of mechanisms by which they can be treated badly. And since an unintended (hmmmm) consequence of pro-trans legislation is the destruction of sex-based protections in law, it can all get worse more easily.