Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To be *livid* at this? Attempted murder of man working to make women's sport fairer

356 replies

Sporadicus · 22/09/2016 16:31

So not only did Jeska use their unfair advantage to win medals meant for female athletes, but Jeska then tries to murder the man attemting to restore fairness to women's fell running:

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/transgender-womens-fell-running-champ-8891893

And yet, the BBC decide it's not relevant to the story that Jeska was born male:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-37439875

OP posts:
neutralnancy · 22/09/2016 22:36

trevortrevorslatterfry apologies for my comments and about the 'fun' and 'non-competitive' nature of fell running. I was being slightly facetious and responding to two female fell runners who had already posted on this thread who seemed to think it wasn't a problem competing against a transexual woman. In the light of the fact that there would be a distinct biological physical advantage in being a male born athlete it was the only conclusion I could draw. Having heard further responses on this thread from women who take part and are put out by this unfair advantage (and some who were unaware they were up against a male born athlete) it's blatantly obvious that fell running is highly competitive and something is seriously amiss when the playing field is not level. I am personally in awe of the strength and stamina of fell runners both male and female and completely understand that it's a highly competitive sport. Sorry for being flippant but it was fuelled by my own incredulity.

hazeyjane · 22/09/2016 22:36

Just on our local BBC news, no mention of transgender, 'unclear of motivation' and a statement that judge is waiting for psychiatric report. 3 people stabbed, one nearly killed, terrible.

napmeistergeneral · 22/09/2016 22:42

It's like AskBasil says. Many of the posters who either actively object to the statement "transwomen are not women" or are "well it doesn't bother me so who cares/why should anyone care" seem to rely on either sweeping statements with no basis in objective fact ("you just need to feel like a woman to be one") or on anecdote ("I knew a transwoman once and she didn't always win at running").

Neither of these positions engage with what I believe to be the central concern of those posters for whom the conflation of transwomen with women is deeply problematic. What exactly do is a woman is if a man can become a woman? I've just never seen this outlined in a robust, quantifiable way. That strikes me as a very telling absence.

To be clear, the quotations above are paraphrases not quotes from this discussion.

Amandahugandkisses · 22/09/2016 22:52

It's unreal that the trans element of this hideous crime is being left out. It's absolutely the nucleus of the whole story. Madness.

ExitPursuedBySpartacus · 22/09/2016 22:58

JHFC. Please don't tell me that AnnaLee is on here.

I'm not sure I can cope.

HalsallRedux · 22/09/2016 22:59

Just came on to echo hazeyjane - saw this on the local news having read the start of this thread earlier today. Astounded to hear it reported that 'the motivation [for the stabbings] was unclear'.

powershowerforanhour · 22/09/2016 23:02

Woodifer, I think the fairness is where you put the line. With boxing weight divisions, someobody whose natural fighting weight is near the top of their division has a bit of an advantage over somebody near the bottom of the division, and possibly also someone who is naturally a bit heavier and has had to starve off muscle as well as fat to make the weight. But everyone accepts this is fair because you have to put the dividing line somewhere and it's nice and clearly defined by one easily measured parameter.

Whereas for example in Olympic athletics, the IAAF have been forced by CAS to err far too far towards the male end of the spectrum when choosing where to put the line. By allowing intersex and transpeople in women's sport, I feel that this effectively turns sport into "male" and "other"- as usual- male as normal, default human, woman as everyone left over.

The decision to let people who have never had ovaries, have had and may still have testes with the irreversible advantages (pelvis shape etc) that this brings, into women's sport seems based on a deep rooted sexism to me...using biologically male athletes as the point of reference, saying well their testosterone is 1000% higher than a woman, OK well trans/intersex can have 300% higher testosterone than a woman...still not as high as a man therefore Not-man, therefore woman. I don't believe this definition was chosen to save biologically normal female athletes with PCOS and outlyingly high testosterone from being excluded, I think it was from a sexist way of defining women- ie wholly in relation to men ( and perhaps instinctively not wanting to sully the lovely pure mental image of proper Man with anyone "less"- hence lumping the lesser all together and labelling them all Women.
(OK I concede that my "defining a woman as anything less than a perfect man" theory does not account for FTM people- but they will be vanishingly rare or non existent in the top echelons of men's sport for obvious reasons).

Bambambini · 23/09/2016 00:02

The whole sports angle was what made me sit up and really take notice as i've always took part in several comp sports. Thing is -

TW insisting on competeing as women rather than men - the only people at a disadvantage here are women and girls. Men no longer have to compete against them = win/advantage

Males who identify as females and compete against women and girls = win/advantage

Women and girls = lose/disadvantage

Men and women can generally see this. Most transfolk deny this or don't care. Made me come to the conclusion that this thinking is anti women.

GreatFuckability · 23/09/2016 00:11

Last time I checked autistic people and women don't generally go around stabbing colleagues with kitchen knives for investigating their cheating.

what kind of stupid statement is this? Are you suggesting that women and/or autistic people don't ever commit crimes?!

Bambambini · 23/09/2016 00:12

Women don't committ violent crimes at anywhere near the rate and severity of men. Can't speak on autism.

GreatFuckability · 23/09/2016 00:16

that's as maybe, doesn't mean they don't ever commit crimes, does it?

Tonya Harding springs to mind.

powershowerforanhour · 23/09/2016 00:19

Is she the one who chopped Nancy Kerrigan's legs off or something?

Bambambini · 23/09/2016 00:21

True, and Lizzie Borden. I think Princess Di said "Bloody" once. I'll think of a few more.

NotMe321 · 23/09/2016 00:22

Last time I checked autistic people and women don't generally go around stabbing colleagues with kitchen knives for investigating their cheating

OP, since you can't claim that neither any woman nor any autistic person has ever stabbed anyone, this is not a valid argument. Face it, plenty of people have been convicted of violent crimes where the motivation would appear wholly inadequate to other people.

stitchglitched · 23/09/2016 00:22

Tonya Harding didn't commit violence. A man did, hired by two other men. Just saying.

Bambambini · 23/09/2016 00:24

I killed a crane fly with my tennis racket yesterday (true story) and I ran over a pigeon a few years ago (another true story).

NotMe321 · 23/09/2016 00:27

It's a huge issue affecting women right now.

It isn't, you know. Huge issues affecting women right now include trafficking, starvation in the Yemen, AIDs in countries where adequate treatment isn't available, cultures where they are regarded as wholly subservient to men, FGM etc - but strangely we don't seem to get ten threads within a few days in relation to those issues.

GreatFuckability · 23/09/2016 00:33

bambambini so, are you saying that women don't ever commit violent crimes? and that autistic people don't ever commit violent crimes? because that was my question.

powershowerforanhour · 23/09/2016 00:39

Well you work away starting those threads if you like. We can still discuss this too. Just because terrible awful hideous womens' rights transgressions happen, doesn't mean we can't discuss quite-bad transgressions, like women being unfairly blamed for an increased proportion of serious crime. Or violent people who are biologically male in womens' prisons.

NotMe321 · 23/09/2016 00:44

is there a journalism body we could complain about mis-reporting?

Try complaining to the Press Association that a news organisations hasn't reported the precise version of the story that you think is relevant and see how far it gets you. This is the organisation that gives the barest rap of the knuckles to papers that report direct untruths.

Miffer · 23/09/2016 00:45

NotMe321

You may be right, it's not right now which is why I am fucking glad that we have threads like this.

We are literally being being fucking erased.

FGM? Don't you mean vulva mutilation? How are we supposed to talk about FGM or womens subservience when we aren't allowed to talk about women or females?

It's such disingenuous bullshit. Why talk about Yemen when the death toll in Syria is worse? Why talk about AIDs when we can talk about malaria? Why don't you go and research all the bad stuff, rank it and then let us know which one we should talk about. Cheers.

napmeistergeneral · 23/09/2016 00:46

Notme123 it is when the very concept of "woman" and therefore by extension "women's issues" is being gradually chipped away at and redefined.
So would it be okay to talk about trans issues if there were an equal number of threads per day covering the issues you mention?
There's always going to be lots of issues relating to women at any one time; the existence and significance of other issues doesn't invalidate the existence and significance of this one.

WinchesterWoman · 23/09/2016 00:46

Surely with court reporting, unless there are special and particular reporting restrictions, these details can be reported after guilty plea/conviction?

It is rare for reporting restrictions to remain in place between plea/conviction and sentence. That's just an excuse surely.

WinchesterWoman · 23/09/2016 00:48

Has the Telegraph link been taken down?

stitchglitched · 23/09/2016 00:48

Male violence is (IMO) the biggest issue affecting women. So when a brutal act of male violence is being reported as female violence I actually think that is a bloody big deal.