Continuation thread re IOC/trans policy and related trans issues

[fidel1ne]

Also a plug for the FB group

www.facebook.com/groups/ATWIWS/

Ice. Are you a woman?

Only I'm wondering why you dismiss the idea that girls need female role models.

Additionally do you deny that Rihanna is a role model and has an impact on little girls?

I think we should ban "transphobic" from this thread.

It's a ridiculous charge

"I feel some might think you as being transphobic is that you claim absolute knowledge of things that many will see as nothing more than opinions."

I have posted dictionary definitions and am not going to apologise that those definitions are not as vague as you want them to be, so that you can say that transwomen are women.

Transwomen are not women because:

Woman = Adult human female (from any dictionary)

... where:

Female = Of the sex that can bear young or produce eggs (from any dictionary)

One cannot be a woman without first being female, and transwomen are not female as per the above definitions.

QED.

None of the above is opinion.

If you ask for my opinion, it is that there is something very wrong with your worldview if you sincerely believe that posting dictionary definitions so we are all clear on the basics of this topic is bigotry.

nooka that is a good point. But at school level I would just have multiple teams...if the 1st teams is mostly boys and a few girls and the 2nd team is 50:50 and the 3rd team is mostly girls and everyone who wants to be on a team can be on a team and play at their own level...then where is the problem? And nobody need ask anyone what gender they are....

cote I certainly wouldn't class the definitions (there existence or anyone quoting them) as transphobic. Facts are facts. But transwomen pushing all women out of sport isn't a fact.

It's fucking incredible that some countries still don't let women compete but TW are instead of women

Iran. Do they field a full Olympic women's team?

Posie I am a woman, although I intend to be a man for the purposes of playing badminton in the future...

I don't know anything about Rhianna whatsoever. Is there a gender story there?

If a TW gets a place in a squad of fifteen then clearly a woman is pushed out.

Little girls dreaming to be the fastest women in the world.....

Ice. Are you a woman?

You don't just wake up one morning at age 19 and decide you will start training for an Olympic sport.

You start at age 4 and when parents realise there is no hope for their quick and strong girl who keeps her eye on the ball to make the US women's soccer team or swim team or volleyball team or track, etc, etc., they will stop devoting their weekends to schlepping daughters hundreds of miles to tournaments or meets, and that will be the end of competitive girls' sports, which drive competitive high school sports. Because girls like to win too, and as they progress into the last years of high school and start looking at a university team it becomes more and important as a motivator to think they can win. When it comes to being scouted, winning matters.

I know dozens of parents who spend thousands of dollars annually on travel teams and all that entails -- practices five times a week, squeezed in on top of homework, travel and overnighting costs for the family for tournaments, summer sports camps for three months. Then there are sports doctors for the inevitable injuries, and physical therapy. This is what American middle class sporty girls' lives and their families' lives look like. Why would you bother with any of that when teenage boys are going to get the spots on the girls' soccer/lacrosse/basketball/volleyball/track/ or even the softball or water polo or swim team just because they have testosterone and all that goes with it in terms of skeletal and muscular development and aggression?

Ice. Were you a girl?

Rihanna is a role model to girls because SHES A WOMAN

I really hope girls don't look to Rhianna as a role model..a cursory search suggests she made her money out of extreme sexualization of herself.

For one thing if you don't look like that you aren't going to make your money from that...and for another it would be nice if we could convince girls they have something to offer society other than sex, beauty and titillation.

I already said I am a woman...what more do you want from me? I am a woman by cotes definitions...does that help?

Maryz yes, Rachel Dolezal did just that and was rightly pilloried for it.

math that description sounds mostly like a childhood blighted and wasted. We should be thinking about how to save people from that existence not promoting it!

I mean what the hell kind of parent puts their kids through that? And what happens to all the people who didn't quite make it? Years and years of bonkers behaviour for them, their parents, their siblings (oh god the poor siblings - I have seen them watching the crazy gymnastics class after baby gym...all sad, lonely, ignored and sacrificed on the altar of whether the special one will pull off the key move in front of the key person) and then they don't quite make the olympic team. Fuck that.

Maryz whether or not if screws your statistics depends on how many people do it. In Thailand I imagine they have real problems...but then they also have enough transwomen to produce an entire category for them and I believe they have their own toilets in some schools also.

maryz I actually thought that Rachel had a reasonable point. I don't think her saying she identifies with black culture is any more unreasonable that a man saying they identify with female culture.

Did she take a job a black person should have had? That whole question raises some uncomfortable sensations...are their jobs only black people should have?

Are their jobs only women should have?

Are white people incapable of promoting black issues? Are men incapable of being feminists? Some people on this thread have said as much....

That is nonsense, IceBeing. Parents who love and cherish their daughters 'put them through that'. It stands to them for life to have had the experience of competitive sport, and their siblings most have the same experience themselves.

'oh god the poor siblings - I have seen them watching the crazy gymnastics class after baby gym...all sad, lonely, ignored and sacrificed on the altar of whether the special one will pull off the key move in front of the key person) and then they don't quite make the olympic team'

Indeed, 'fuck that'.

Participation in sport and being fully supported by your parents in participation has been proved to build girls' self esteem by setting them up with a strong work ethic and great resilience. Girls' sports show both girls and boys that there is more to girls than their titillation value for boys. Muscles, strong physique, will to win, self discipline, willingness to work with a team, take coaching, accept constructive criticism -- all of these qualities are extremely important for girls.

In other words, girls' sports are incredibly important as an antidote to the Rihanna culture we are all awash in. Or do you have any better ideas?

Icebeing I'm currently living in the US and the description that math gave of kids doing sport is very mainstream. In fact I think all of my DD's friends have schedules like that. And the parents really do spend thousands of dollars a year on it. I think it's because they can end up getting scholarships for university through sport.

math yes MATH. or Maths as I guess we call it. I will agree sport is better than popstar/pornstar as a role model though.

penguin I guess if transwomen were taking sports scholarships off women then I would find that a bit of a travesty. But then if there were different male and female scholarship pots in the first place it would be a bit shit.

Are their jobs only women should have?

Female boxer maybe? On all seriousness, I can see your point but still can't agree that someone genuinely thinking this guidance will have a huge impact on girls sport is transphobic.

They might be wrong (I think they might be in the UK at least) but if they're not making up what they think will happen just to 'get at' transwomen then I think you're using the term too loosely.

Do you know what posie the accusation of being trans phobic has been kicked around so much, that it has become meaningless to me

The criteria is ridiculous. I don't care if people want to cal me trans phobic. Carry on. But can we just then quickly move on to discussing the actual issurs