AIBU to be disappointed that not every ( active ) member of MN has not taken part in the Olympic committee's trans policy poll thread?

[SurferJet]

It would take two minutes & you have 3 choices - support, protest. abstain.

What's stopping everyone taking part?

I didn't post on either of the 'poll' threads for the same reason I almost didn't post on this one. I knew how it was going to go - there are a lot of loud voices on MN when it comes to a general anti-transgender feeling. I, in the most part, disagree with much of what these voices are saying, and when I have entered into discussions in the past it has been met with ferocious return fire and often patronising explanations as to why I'm wrong and everyone else is right. I'm too tired for an argument, and to be honest, if I was looking to talk about trans issues I would go elsewhere to a much less polarised place, as the issues really do interest me, despite being a ciswoman (and happy to call myself that, yet knowing full well not to apply the term to anyone else without checking first).

So yeah, in short I'm very much over reading the opinions of people I disagree with and have no intention of wading back in to this fight. I hope you get what you want from your polls and your fb campaign.

I get the impression that a lot of the 'dont give a shit' posts are because they are tired of hearing about trans issues, not because they dont care about womens issues. The trouble is by this including the word 'trans' it does make it look like a trans issue, you have to get past that to see where we are unhappy.

splendide previously for a TW to compete with women, they had to have had gender reassignment surgery and have been declared 'a woman' by professionals. Self declaration means that any individual can declare themselves to be a woman. The criteria they have to fulfil is to have hormone therapy for a year. Mans normal testosterone levels are 10-30 nmol/litre. Women's is approx 1-3 nmol/litre. For a TW to compete with women their testosterone has to be

captain the poll thread sort to cut through all the arguing and is asking for 1 word answer, in oirder to gauge feeling

For any person to compete as a woman, they have to have

Was just gonna say what maryz did
9nmol-1 is not an abnormal male level

It's not just the Olympics:
International Quidditch Association (IQA) promotes gender inclusion by allowing people to self-identify. During a quidditch game, each team must have at least two players in play who identify with a different gender than at least two other players. The gender that a player identifies with is considered to be that player's gender (Rulebook 7 Section 7.1.3.).

Crikey, I didn't know this was all still going on, the poll thread is locked and the arguments are very repetitive.

The Womens Sports Foundation, American, started by Billie Jean King, have supported this, citing Title XI as the underlying constitutional imperative. So the USA has little choice but to allow it. It makes for an interesting read

www.womenssportsfoundation.org/home/advocate/title-ix-and-issues/title-ix-positions/participation_of_transgender_athletes

For me it boils down to 2 things:

1. Physiology: are transgender women at an advantage through having lived/trained/competed as men? The answer is undoubtedly yes, for the majority. Whether that advantage is significant depends on many variables.

2. Gender politics: is it right that we, as a society, will allow an individual who decides to be female to have rights, to be accommodated in a wide range of activities, that supersede/override those of individuals born female?

The answer there, in some arenas, seems to be to add a tag to the word female, cis, and so to make 'categories' of female (and males, but far less often), all of which are equal. Yet, we are asked to be so wary of discriminating against our genetically male sisters that their wants and needs take precedence: see previous trans threads ad nauseum - changing rooms might have been the most obvious one to consider in this light.

I think it is unsupportable that trans women can, with little or no gender reassignment, little or no chemical changes to their bodies, join any female arena. Why do we value women so poorly? Why do we have an imperative to be fair to genetic males that overrides our imperative to be fair to genetic women?

All of the above disappears if a genetic male commits to his female life fully, via chemical and surgical removal of his masculinity.

There are measures that are well known, that can be used to assess this, that the OC have chosen to set certain chemical measures at a rate 10 times higher than those acceptable in genetic females tells us all we need to know about the continued gender imbalance!

An MN poll is rather useless.
I imagine the issue will be resolved when the first man tries to run against women and female athletes boycott all the races.

I also suggest the OP camps out outside the IOC if it means that much to her. Gets her MP on the case or organises mass protests.
As it is it means almost as little as "if you agree share this on FB". Even if all MN members post on the poll thread.
Why not start a proper petition, or a proper poll? Try Survey Monkey.

IOC "...below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 months prior to her first competition (with the requirement for any longer period to be based on a confidential case-by-case evaluation, considering whether or not 12 months is a sufficient length of time to minimize any advantage in women’s competition)."

So it might be longer than 12 months Maryz, if it needs to be to stop an advantage.

Realised my post could be read in ways I did not intend.

I mean that the limit of 10 is nothing to do with this particular set of guidelines. It was that anyway. Any person under 10 can compete as a woman. This already includes intersex, whose previous levels may well have exceeded that spontaneously when younger and not competing at a high level, but are required to be once they reach the top flight.

Agree with Lweji, start a proper poll or piss off.

The one before her second competition Iam.

An MN poll is rather useless

No. That's not strictly true.

In itself yes, it's just a list of anonymous names saying 'yes / no / couldn't give a shit/ fuck off /
But MN is a massively popular site viewed by 1000's of people a day. Many of these people will be interested in this issue, see the strength of feeling on display & encourage them to join other petitions etc. Equally, many wouldn't have heard of this iat all so it's drawing attention. where else on the internet is this happening?
Social media is changing lives - it's where we get our information from & where we gather to debate issues.
This thread was never intended to have a go at people who aren't agreeing with me ( do you even know how I voted? ) but merely to attract attention to an issue that some may have missed.

But it was intended to have a go at people who didn't vote on it.
You have no right to do that and, quite frankly, it put me off even voting on it.
For such righteous attitude you should be doing a lot more on the issue than demanding that MNetters vote on a thread, particularly when accusing them about not caring about other women.

trojan my thought on the matter is that women cannot be reduced to a testosterone level; it should not be considered in isolation...which it isn't with actual women/intersex people. It seems it is the onlky requirement for TW thoufgh

But you have already read why it is useless, it is self selecting, look at the responses it got.

Any MNer who is against, or can't be arsed, ignored it.

Social media is indeed changing lives, please, don't add to its debasement of scientific data. The results of that thread are not polling data, not unbiased, are meaningless.

As for discussion, it is about as useful for that as the debating societies that choose to ban speakers instead of challenging them!

Actually arguing the point, it's incredibly difficult to distinguish true men from women in some cases.
The main distinction that matters in athletics is distinct body capacity, which is in a large part determined by testosterone. Otherwise there would be no reason to separate men from women.
So, the best proxy is to test testosterone levels. It has always been done and testosterone has been used for ages to give some female athletes a competitive edge. Notably pre-iron curtain collapse.

All of this will make a mockery of the previous 'femininity' ethos of acceptable levels of testosterone!

www.livescience.com/50938-female-athletes-testosterone-olympics.html

The science hasn't changed, just the interpretation of 'acceptable'.

Testosterone is a key indicator in cases where sex is unclear.

This is not reducing women to testosterone levels.

This is checking athletes for permitted levels (of many substances) in their bodies. It is one test of many. Applied to both men and women, in terms of invasiveness and regularity.

If your problem is that excess testosterone is relevant only to eligibility for one sex events, what do you want to do? Reduce the limit such that it excludes naturally higher testosterone women? Remove the limit? What exactly is wrong with the existing threshold of 10, and was there a campaign against it back when it was introduced?

How would you recast the rules on intersex athletes if the limit is wrong? I am assuming you would not retrospectively strip medals.

I have a lot of other things to think about - I can't find the energy to get worked up about this.

Statistically, how likely is it ever to happen anyway?

It pissed me off when the cis word I g came up so I generally avoid the issue. For such a small minority there seems to be a whole lot of energy going into the trend of the moment.