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.

Are you in the UK purple? The reason I ask is that there are countries which may be more prepared to manipulate their sporting bodies, and their individual sportsmen and sportswomen in pursuit of medals. I think there will be some countries that will lobby quite hard for 'inclusiveness' because it will give them a significant edge. Iran, for example, where the women's football team is majority trans.

The history of 'gender' (actually sex) verification in Olympic sports is very interesting, unpleasant it may be but it came into existence for a reason, and there's a reason why once prominent athletes disappeared from competition when it did.

I think that legislation in individual countries may make it illegal to enquire into a person's actual sex. If only legal sex matters, it is illegal to enquire into whether actual sex is different from legal sex, and there is no sex verification, but only testing of testosterone levels, then it's not clear to me how the judgment of 'unfair advantage' ever comes up - because the competitor is considered a woman in every respect from the start.

Can't imagine the penised women being keener on doing it than the penised men are.

Oh, but what with their lady brains and their nurturing hormones, shurely they will

According to stats far more transwomen are attracted to men than to women.

According to the very enlightening Trans FAQ another mumsnetter posted, "early" transsexuals are almost universally attracted to their own pre-op sex. Late MtF transitioners, it says, are autogynephilic meaning they are attracted to the sex they want to become.

Until recently the vast majority of transitioners have been the former type. It's very likely we all know some people who were born the other sex, but we don't know because they were "born in the wrong body" and have transitioned as completely as possible.

Now there are so many - and so vocal - late transitioners, your statistic will probably change. The essay goes some way to explain why they're so mortally offended by having the 'unfemininity' pointed out.

The athlete in this article is now know as "Janae", and under the new rules will able to compete against women. It hardly seems fair.

www.bodybuilding.com/fun/powerlifter-to-bodybuilder-thats-a-kroc.html

purple, unfortunately olympic guidelines can and do influence the policies of national bodies. Take the example of Dwain Chambers (which I'm sure you know, but I'll summarise for this unfamiliar with his case). As a drugs cheat he was banned by the BOC from representing his country in the olympics. He took the case to the court of arbitration for sport and CAS ruled that ban by the national body was unfair. Thus forcing the hand of the national team selectors. Are you really suggesting the same couldn't happen in the case of transwomen? That we should just have faith that lower tier selectors / rule setters have enough power to negate the impact of these guidelines?

Can't imagine the penised women being keener on doing it than the penised men are

They'll do it for a bit, to validate themselves and force themselves into some more women's spaces. Then they'll decide they can't be arsed any more, and leave it to those other less important women. They'll obviously be glad to do it.

You're so right, Mary.

This page moves fast! every time I think I've caught up it says I have a new page to read!

For those worried about being on the facebook group - go onto your view your activity log and you'll see that joining the group is the only thing that appears publicly (or at least it is on mine ) but you can click to hide it from your timeline.

I have to say that I'm very grateful for this thread it has really opened my eyes, I had not heard of the rule being changed and didn't think of the implications.

The statesmen article gave me a bit of WTF moment, I have PCOS but am very much not intersex thank you very much!

The language we're able to use without getting lampooned is getting ridiculous, I remember quite recently un-following a parenting page on facebook because it said we should now call it 'chest feeding' because breastfeeding is offensive to trans ftm and that all mention of her, mother and woman should be taken out of prenatal literature because it might offend the previous. What the fuck has happened? have I moved to a different planet? are women supposed to just become invisible? is anything that might possibly hint to being female now something offensive and something to be ashamed about?

I don't usually get riled up but this has me wanting to sit in a darkened room for a while screaming fuck off repeatedly, especially the Maria Miller fiasco, oh yes how fucking dare women speak up about issues that directly affect them, know your place or we'll brand you a crazy feminist - which is fine by me I'd rather be a crazy feminist than turkey voting for Christmas in total denial.

Thing is, Maria Miller thinks she and the idiots she listens to are the feminists and we're only "purporting to be feminists". Why on earth does she think we bother if we're not interested in women's liberation/rights? Just to spread our eeevil transphobic views?

She's very happy to tow the line isn't she, obviously we can't be real feminists it's just easier to demonise the people affected. This in an issue which affects 50% of the people in our society but it's so much easier to pretend it will only affect a transphobic minority of angry women.

If the athlete does have to prove no unfair competition - as Pistorius did - then the governing body can say no, be challenged repeatedly and it comes down to the evidence standing up in court, with the onus on the athlete to provide adequate evidence to prove their case.

That is fairly reassuring.

I still don't get why someone biologically male would ever be considered 'female enough' to be allowed to enter into that process though really.

Seems to me that participation in a sport is delineated by sex, like most of them, or it isn't, like equestrian events.

If it is, for a good reason, then anyone who has grown up as male will have physiological advantages. So that person would have to make a case that they were a particularly weak or developmentally disadvantaged example of a man, even before transition, it seems to me. That seems curiously at odds with a 'faster, higher, stronger' field of endeavour.

Might there be a risk that such a person could only make this case by not training to achieve their potential fully? So being able to improve after being accepted. Surely too obvious to an expert.

Yes. I do think she's stupid enough to genuinely believe it though, as her new transactivist friends will have told her and she isn't going to question anything they say.

Or, I dunno, floundering in speculation, is it possible a male-born athlete could choose a sport they personally are not best suited to and prove no advantage that way. Would have to think a lot to arrive at a credible example but, like someone too heavily built entering a marathon, or someone too slight wanting to sprint.

Could there be an example where that individual could be measured as not having physiological advantages over women competitors in that field? Yet the same person could potentially beat women in other sports e.g. More strength based ones, if they trained for that.

So a sort of finely tuned self-handicapping system.

One would need to know more about what counts as 'advantage' in a sport and how it's measured.

With marathon runners, a male runner equalling the women's record is already an extremely good male marathon runner, suited to the event, performing to their full potential.

So, yes, can they just say 'I don't have an advantage because I'm just not quite as good as the best men but perform at the same level as the best women.'? Or, as I'd guess would be the case, would some of their physiological measurements e.g. lung capacity perhaps, be notably different from the women. In that instance, where male and female performances are quite close, do the male athletes just have a consistently slightly different physiological profile than the women?

In that case, a man not exceeding any of the female attributes, so with no unfair advantage, would probably fail to match them in other attributes. He'd just be not a very good runner.

I mean, he wouldn't be able to run as well as the women.

Annie, it might be unfair to link to the interview with Matt Kroc, mainly because she has retired and went straight to full medical & surgical transition.

"In July 2015, Kroc came out as genderfluid but states that she prefers feminine pronouns. In September of the same year, she announced that she had begun a full gender transition, starting both surgical and hormone treatments, and would be ending her lifting career."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janae_Marie_Kroc

It's a weird feeling reading her past achievements as made by a "she" and I really wish this convention of rewriting history would stop. It makes people's stories hard to understand and - well, misgenders the person who achieved those things! (Not helped by the fact transwomen's misdeeds seem to remain attached to the old male persona )

However. Here's a picture of Janae Kroc and one of Olga Gemaletdinova, the world +84kg deadlifitng champion.

And here's a quote about her: "The strongest female deadlifter in IPF’s recorded history was only able to tie with a man who was, literally, less than half her size. And she had a gear (equipment) advantage on him."

It's really, really hard to believe that 12 months on 10 nmol/L testosterone would enfeeble Janae Kroc's body to the extent she was a fair match for Olga G.

I hope retirement means she won't be humiliating herself by putting it to the test but some other fucker will.

O.M.G. archeryannie!!

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janae_Marie_Kroc

www.bing.com/images/search?q=janae+marie+kroc&FORM=HDRSC2

That was an amusing cross-post :)

Whoo-hoo! This thread's on "In the news" :)

gendertrender.wordpress.com/2016/01/26/olympic-committee-eliminates-medical-gender-change-requirement-for-male-athletes-who-want-to-compete-in-womens-sports/

I found this bit interesting

"outsport.com cites Joanna (John) Harper, a Portland radiology tech with a Master’s Degree, as the driving force behind the new guidelines. Harper is a marathon runner who competes against women since he began to undergo transgender cross-sex hormone treatments a decade ago. He is a pro-transgender and anti-intersex activist who spoke out in 2014 against the then-current (10 nmol/L) testosterone allowance for assigned-female-at-birth intersex athletes ( the one since overturned by the Dutee Chand lawsuit) , because he felt it was too high, and unfair for female athletes:

“In order to fully understand this new ruling, it is necessary to look at some numbers. The normal T range for men is 10-35 nmol/L (nanomole per liter), with an average in the low twenties, and for women it is 0.35-2.0 nmol/L, with an average of about 1.5. The IAAF chose to set the maximum level for women at the nominal male minimum of 10 nmol/L.

This decision has serious implications for all female athletes. Higher T is an advantage and no typical female will get anywhere close to 10 nmol/L without doping. Thus, the agency has set a bar for the dopers, and they will aim for it.”

Now that the Court of Arbitration in Sport has ruled that intersex athletes like Dutee Chand may compete with their naturally occurring testosterone levels for the next two years while the CAS gathers more data, Harper appears to have changed his tune. Now he apparently advocates for males to maintain testosterone

I still don't get why someone biologically male would ever be considered 'female enough' to be allowed to enter into that process though really.

Because the new definition of female is 'someone with serum testosterone levels below 10 nmol/L'.

Because the definition of female has been redefined to include biological males on purpose.

Gender Reassignment/affirmation surgery has been rebranded as "compulsory sterilisation" by the activists. The IOC probably wants to stay on their right side by dropping the requirement for surgery.