To wonder how males are allowed to compete and win in female sports

[Bambambini]

NZ weight lifter Tracey Lebrechts has had her nationsl records broken and her place in the National team taken by a male Laurel Hubbard - previously Gavin. How is this fair and just why is this allowed?

www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/sport/other/nz-weightlifting-body-stands-decision-let-first-transgender-weightlifter-compete

I think rale is making an interesting point, unless I'm completely misreading the tone? I see it as a cynical, wry assessment of the current state of feminism.

That Minority Voices compete to be heard, that the public bends over backwards to be PC, that a black/lesbian/disabled feminist is going to be listened to more than the white/hetero/able-bodied feminist because the former checks more boxes on our current list of People Who Must Be Accomodated.

Feminism isn't fashionable, particularly feminism delivered by people in positions of every privilege except for their sex.

(Is what I see in the posts)

Are there any sports where there can be a 'level playing field' between sexes, where any sex could compete together without men having an advantage? I'm struggling to come up with any. Horseriding? Shooting? Table tennis?

I think rale is making the point that women's rights are not right on enough for the current sorry state of liberalism but with the additional point that that is deserved because women's rights are the whiny identity politics of white middle class mummies who play top trump oppression Olympics by claiming that patriarchal society a) exists and b) is harmful to girls and women.

Rale says that we have brought this current situation of trans ideology shitting all over female rights and humanity upon ourselves by "playing identity politics".

Horseriding, yes. The horse provides the muscle, the rider provides the skill. There are men's/women's classes in showjumping, for example, but mostly they seem to compete on a pretty level basis because it's not about the human partner's physical build. Or it wasn't when I used to watch and casually engage in equestrian sports, about 100 years ago. Horse racing is another matter, although that might be as much a matter of perception as physical advantage.

I think perhaps the mistake rale makes is assuming feminists are all the same? Whereas many of us either never bought into or now are becoming disillusioned with the sort of thing she describes?

rale124

I have to laugh at some of the comments on here. You only have yourselves to blame.

You played 'Oppression Olympics' and lost because transacceptance is a flashier fad of the day than white middle class feminism for the progressives. Much the same as the 'a white gay man is still a white man' hashtags which got pretty popular late last year on twitter.

This is how identity politics dies, in a haze of bitter infighting and the destruction of solidarity among the sociological classes (LGBT, ethnic minorities, women) that benefit from traditional left wing politics.

But no double down, this is obviously a case of male sexual terrorism against the female sports community and not identity politics.

Rale is mocking us.

I think Rale is merely calling it as he/she sees it. But the prose is too opaque for me.

I agree rale is mocking us but for all that she has made some interesting and valid points.

What the left wingers don't really seem to realise with their lift wing "liberalism" is that they are not very liberal at all.

Look at the comments directed at Jenni Murray for her very sensible comments. She's a bigot, deserves to lose her job blah blah. How dare she have an opinion which challenges the "accepted" view/party line? Virtually every university in the UK has some sort of limits on free speech and quite wide-ranging ones, not just banning the new Adolf Hitler type character. How on earth did we get to this?

This is why Brexit and Trump happened. People are not allowed to express views without being shouted down as somethingphobic so eventually when they get a chance to express their displeasure, they do so.

It is wrong that transwomen are allowed to compete as women. They, and intersex "women" should have their own categories to compete in in para-sport. I know someone will shout me down and say being trans is not a disability. But they are not, physically, women so they need their own events.

The trouble with finding sports where gender isn't an advantage would be only 1 winner rather than 2, all sports could end up male-dominated anyway.

It's depressing isn't it.

It's a valid point that liberalism is misogynistic.

Rather less valid is the painting of women's rights as identity politics and indeed trans activism as identity politics. Trans activism taps into the current queer/liberal/pomo enthusiasm for identity politics but it is fighting a class struggle. The trans movement is a men's rights movement and an anti women / women's rights movement. Mocking the erosion of women's rights as an identity politics loss is to fail to grasp that this is a matter of class (sex) not identity (gender). (Or perhaps a failure to care.)

Exactly fairweathercyclist it isn't liberal. It's neoliberalism.

This is a great talk by Gail Dines on the subject Neo liberalism and the defanging of feminism

So now International Women's Day messages on twitter are including Transwomen? They've actually got their own Transgender Day, but want ours too? AIBU to feel ragey? We're not coming from the same place at all, my experience being born a girl (and treated/mistreated accordingly) is not theirs.

So why is Caster Sem.... (yeah I can't spell it) who has no womb or ovaries but has internal testies classed as a woman with high testosterone rather than a man with low testosterone . wins lots of medals though

How do you know Caster Semenya's medical details? I don't remember her issuing a statement specifying what reproductive organs she has or hasn't got. I don't think bringing her case into the discussion helps at all, it's nothing to do with someone born male and going through puberty as a man who then identifies as female and wants to then compete as such.

I agree with assasinated

How do you know Caster Semenya's medical details? I only know what is freely available if you google a bit. Pint is why is she considered a woman with high testosterone rather than a man with low testosterone (you know given that the only reproductive organs she possess are male)

Because this is about women

I think Caster's AIS has been made public, perhaps I'm wrong.
AIS athletes (XY chromosomes, internal testes and partial or total insensitivity to androgens) are represented in elite women's sport at something like 1500 TIMES their prevalence in the general population.

So I think it's a valid point to raise - however, I've personally pit it further down the priority list behind tackling men who have never had any ambiguity over their male biological sex competing against women on the basis of feelz.

If we ever get that one cracked I'll move on to the issue of intersex conditions where a person who was raised as a girl, vagiba and no penis, and had no reason to suspect she wasn't anatomically female only to discover AIS at puberty.

Misogynists first.
Thorny grey areas later.

Caster Semenya hasn't made her private medical details public, and why should she? Various things have been leaked with no way of verifying any of the content.

Her issues are nothing to do with the issue of transwomen wanting to compete against women. There may well be a discussion to be had about people with intersex conditions and how they best fit into sporting categories, but that's not what's being discussed here.

Intersex is not the same issue at all. People don't choose (for sporting gain) to be intersex.

Gavin was the Executive Officer of Olympic Weightlifting New Zealand until 2013!!!!! He's 39 years old and has no business competing in elite sport.

He literally set the rules himself!

And he's HUGE. He held (until 2016) the national Junior (so under 20) record for the 105kg+ category. Given that women's weight categories stop at 90kg+ (sexual dimorphism, it's basic biology), it just shows how absurd it is for him to be doing this. He was in the largest male category when still a teenager! My son is strong and fit and till but he doesn't weigh anything like 105kg+. No wonder the 90kg+ woman had no choice but to give up.

This is the new national Junior record holder, standing next to a woman for scale. owa.nz/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/David-1080x675.jpg Would it be fair for him to compete as a woman?

Yes caster aside here the simple problem is men competing in women's sports.

It's wrong, unfair and unsporting and so much for 'this girl can' or can't now as s bloke had stolen her place.