If you don’t see the issue with TW being classed as women please read this.

[bambambini]

Especially if you have daughters who play sports. Do we really want to have “woman” “girl” “female” totally redifined so that sny msle can say they are a woman? If yes- are you really ok with your daughters facing this now and in the future?

amp.theage.com.au/sport/afl/hannah-mouncey-visits-afl-house-after-failing-to-get-information-from-officials-20180202-h0swtp.html?__twitter_impression=true

When a person is standing on my foot it makes no particular difference why they're doing so, I just need them to stop doing it. "But what if standing on your foot makes them feel better?" is not a convincing counterargument.

Where sport is concerned, it is about transwomen having an unfair advantage or posing a physical risk by virtue of their size and power. That doesn't change regardless of why they have identified as trans.

In life we can't have everything. You have to have certain fitness requirements for the military, certain eyesight requirements to be a pilot. Transwomen need to accept that they cannot fairly and safely compete with women in most sports. They can't have everything, though they certainly try, and give not one iota of thought to the actual women they unfairly displace.

Would Kirsti have a realistic chance in a male football league at 48? There are a number of transwomen who want a second bite of the cherry as they get older.

It's the "actual women" thing again. That's what takes away from your argument; because it shows how much this is just thinly veiled bigotry, in which you view trans women as inferior, disguised as you fighting for women's rights.

The difference between having to accept some bits of life being unfair and this situation is that trans people are discriminated against in every avenue in their lives, and so it's not the same as a regular person being told they need better eyesight just like everyone else. Because of the comments like above, they're constantly having to prove that they are worthy, that they belong, and this is just another way to show them that they're not/they don't.

Also, what happens if you have a 6ft 5 female, weighing 250lbs, wanting to participate in the same sport? Should she not be able to participate because of her size, and the "unfair advantage?" By your argument, based solely on her stature, she wouldn't be able to take part. Does that seem fair? Or is that reserved only for people who are born into the wrong bodies?

you view trans women as inferior, disguised as you fighting for women's rights

I do view them as inferior women. Because they're not women. They're not inferior human beings, less deserving of employment, healthcare or housing. If I thought that then yes, I'd be a bigot. But I don't. If I think transwomen know less about being a woman than I do, I think that's perfectly reasonable. I have lifelong experience of being female. Including the crap bits.

And they're not fighting for women's rights, they're fighting against them.

I don't view transwomen as "inferior".

But I don't view them as women, either. Because they simply aren't.

What they are, are people who are entitled to live as they choose, without discrimination or fear. Which is what most transpeople want, as far as I can see.

But that doesn't mean that the small but oh so vocal percentage who want more than that should be allowed to define what being a fucking woman fucking well means!!!

lso, what happens if you have a 6ft 5 female, weighing 250lbs, wanting to participate in the same sport? Should she not be able to participate because of her size, and the "unfair advantage?" By your argument, based solely on her stature, she wouldn't be able to take part. Does that seem fair? Or is that reserved only for people who are born into the wrong bodies?

Have you missed the posts about STRENGTH, MUSCLES and TESTOSTERONE

I am not sure many people on here have said that a tall , well built women shouldn't play sports

I have posted about this before but my 13yo dd does athletics at a county level. At last years school championships she was competing against two very obvious males (can you guess where they placed?). They are 13 ffs. Myself and another few mums who also have daughters in the same event approached the officials who told us that they had been told the competitors are female, so therefore they are. I am fairly certain I won’t be able to convince my daughter to compete again this season despite the fact that if these two males weren’t competing she would have had the best results in the country. It simply isn’t fair and it’s discouraging a whole generation of female athletes.

@octoberfarm

I am a transwoman.

I realise you probably do think you're doing the right thing and I'm sure you probably do mean well, but could you please take a step back and actually think about the bigger picture for a second?

Self identification will not help people struggling with gender dysphoria and people genuinely struggling with who they are and who they're supposed to be. Gender dysphoria is a lot more complex than simply wanting to be the opposite sex and feeling distressed by the sex you were born as. Simply being able to self identify as the opposite sex will not magically make it all better and in some cases may even make it worse because the reasons why someone feels that way are not being addressed. It's a bit like sticking a plaster over a broken arm and hoping it will just get better.

You mention suicide among trans individuals but did you know that mental health support for trans people is being made more difficult to access and in some cases withdrawn completely because therapy is now being viewed as conversion therapy. There have been heartbreaking accounts from parents of trans children on here about how they and they're children were just left to deal with things on their own and were refused therapy. I myself struggled to find a therapist recently who was willing to be neutral in their approach and let me lead the way.

I can assure you that this is a relatively new thing. When I was a teenager things weren't perfect but at least counselling was available and we weren't trying to just stick a sticky plaster over the wound. Five years ago I also had no problem accessing therapy even if it meant paying for it myself. I personally don't think it's a coincidence that this whole self ID thing and the withdrawing of mental health support both started happening around the same time.

I do worry about what will happen to young people dealing with gender dysphoria if self identification does become law. I fear that all mental health support will be taken away completely and they will be told to just self identify but that won't make anything better.

Transwomen are not women. We are trans. We have rights but they are different to women's rights because we are different. And that is okay. To paraphrase Miranda Yardley (I think it was Miranda Yardley), sometimes treating everyone equally is the most unfair thing you can do.

in which you view trans women as inferior

Nobody on here thinks we are inferior.

Different, yes, but that is not a bad thing and is not the same thing as being inferior.

Or is that reserved only for people who are born into the wrong bodies?

Nobody is born in the wrong body.

My body is not wrong.

It is my mind and society that is wrong.

Mostly society.

Let’s not kid ourselves about our biological reality here. Here’s the break down:

Having a large head allows for a large brain. Which is an advantage.

But large head make young more vulnerable at birth and they take longer to develop to the point of independence.

Walking on your hind legs is evolutionarily advantageous.

But this makes it impossible to hold your young and fight off a predator at the same time.

Having a strong partner to help you drive away predators while you hold your young is an advantage.

But this puts you in the more submissive position.

Our evolutionary biology makes us what we are. It is what has allowed humanity to develop to this point. However, it is also the tool used to hold women back.

Our size has been used against us again and again. Because way back when we stood on two legs our job was defined by our need to have someone else protect us while we cared for the babies.

Our the last hundred thousand years men have used this to pigeon hole use by biology. Our biology has been the weapo of oppression by patriarchal societies. Everything from the size of our brains apparently making us weak minded to the fear of what we do with our vaginas. Every part of our bodies has been used by men to ‘prove’ that we are lesser.

They did such a good job that we believed it. We were made to see our bodies as lesser and dirty and inconvenient to society. To not celebrate its beauty or power.

We were socialised to accept the roles given to us and to connect those roles with our biological purpose.

The message was: have children because that is your job, but only with your husband, who has complete ownership of your body and may us it as he pleases and if you ever get any pleasure out of it then you are a slag and no better than you should be.

So my issue with the current TA narrative is that they are trying to erase hundereds of thousands of years of biological oppression by erasing female biology. We’ve taken it back. It’s ours now. Fuck off with your patriarchal gender bullshit. It’s just the list of rules you lot created to keep us locked up.

We’ve basically been gaslightedai very the beginning of human history.

Also, what happens if you have a 6ft 5 female, weighing 250lbs, wanting to participate in the same sport?

Apples and oranges.

A tall heavyset woman is still a woman. She will still have the bone structure, pelvis shape and lung capacity of a woman.

A man of the same height and frame however will not. In fact even a man of a smaller stature will still very likely be physically stronger than her.

And no, hormones will not change these things. Hormones can only do so much. They are not miracle workers.

Leaving aside all the other arguments and going purely physiology based factual.

Sport segregation is purely down to sex based size/strength differences.

Even a quite delicately built chap is stronger than most women. This is a factual statement devoid of any value judgements.
A man 10% taller than a woman is much more than 10% stronger due to differences in skeletal structure and musculature.

When it comes to strength/speed based sports like rugby, there are very good reasons why the sexes do not play together. Spinal injury is an ever present risk - a male playing against a female increases that risk many times over,

If you had an eight year old boy you’d be horrified if they were playing against a pubescent boy - it’s basically the same thing. That’s why the sexes can do most training together but not face off on the pitch. It’s a safety issue.

An adult Male has had his body sculpted by testosterone- even if his testosterone levels are reduced by hormone treatment his musculature remains. It’s grossly unfair and physically risky for such an individual to Be competing against women.

Myself, I’ve done martial arts. I was competent and strong. And no match physically for ANY of the males on strength even though I was better than many of them with technique. My younger brother is rail thin, not a scrap on him, and he’s vastly stronger than me, with a greater reach (I know because I fought him a lot!)

Look, I knew girls growing up who were in compedative sports. Some quit because they just wanted to "be themselves" i.e. Do teenage girl things, have non sport friendly hair and nails and relationships and friendships and focus on more frivolus stuff. Thats incompatable with how seriously you have to train.

Now if a sportsman decides that its important to HIM to focus more on HIS laydie looks than to keep his place in mens sport, HE IS NOT BEING EXCLUDED FROM SPORT. He is making a choice that many women make which is incompatable with keeping your place in sport.

Women DONT get to do both. Women cant get boob jobs and bum fillers and train less so they "soften out" and still demand to have a place found for them in compeditive/professional sport.

If your looks are more important than your training. You lose your place like everyone else. That is fair and equal across the board

octoberfarm, I don't understand when you say that women's rights are being pitched above transwomen's rights.

Women currently have the right to compete against people who share their biological sex. Transwomen also have the right to compete with people who share their biological sex. What is the problem with that?

october Genuine questions for you:

1. Do you have daughters?

2. If you do have a daughter, how would you feel, if she decided to take up Boxing, and really excelled at it. Maybe she was so good, that she made a profitable career out of it. But then one day, she was in a match with a 6ft 3 trans woman, and spectacularly lost. And then, more and more, she was being placed in the ring with trans women (some of whom still had penises), and eventually she had to quit her beloved sport altogether, because she was losing too many matches?

Genuine question.

Octoberfarm did you read FlopsyMcdoodle's post? What would you say to her daughter? '
What you are saying to her in effect (and every woman who competes in sport) is - 'just step aside sweetie, and be satisfied with not winning any medals or breaking any records, as long as the boys who identify as women aren't upset or feel discriminated against'.
Now give yourself a pat on the back for throwing other females under the bus, just to give males more chances than they already have.

It's the "actual women" thing again. That's what takes away from your argument; because it shows how much this is just thinly veiled bigotry, in which you view trans women as inferior, disguised as you fighting for women's rights

Not inferior, just different. This is an inescapable fact. It does not mean TW are any less valid as human beings, but acknowledging they are different to a person born, raised, and socialised as a female.

I wouldn't teach my kids to put their needs before the needs of perfectly nice other people, and so I don't see why I should view my rights as a woman as sacred and untouchable when pitched against rights of a trans woman - I genuinely believe we should have the same rights

Well you are certainly socialised as a woman. Transwomen are absolutely happy to put their rights above perfectly nice women - taking places on sports teams from perfectly nice women. Probably because they are socialised as men.

By the way I don't know of a belief system that requires you to love your neighbour MORE than yourself. It seems that only men get this message though.

Loling at Octoberfarms use of 'perfectly nice people'.
Perfectly nice people don't cheat at sports. I honestly don't understand how anyone can defend this.

I can't understand how anyone can NOT have a problem with this. There's a reason why sports are segregated by biological sex. Transwomen entering women's competitive sports are cheaters.

I'm always baffled by the cognitive dissonance required to hold at one and the same time the belief (contrary to all obvious physical evidence) "women and men are physically as strong as each other in terms of musculature/ability to run fast/ability to throw things and if I don't believe this, it will be the end of women's rights because I will have admitted women are physically less strong and therefore..." (never quite sure where the "therefore" in this line of argument is meant to go) and to hold, at the very same time the belief (on the basis of no evidence whatsoever) "women have such things as lady brains and this is what makes transwomen really and quite literally women, and to think otherwise is to be a bigot, and an entrenched belief in ladybrains is no threat whatsoever to women's rights, no, none at all."

Also - having a son who plays rugby, and having had many female rugby playing friends over the years, regarding the claim that there is a rugby club somewhere in the UK which is happily letting a 15 year old girl practice full contact tackles, scrums, rucks, etc. against 15 year old boys in training... Either that poster is flat out lying, or the coach at their rugby club needs their coaching licence revoked as soon as possible. It just isn't safe.

I can't read fast enough to keep up. I can't get over the sense of entitlement these people show.

If Kirsti or Hannah rock up to a women's choir, what happens then? They can't reach the notes. Is the music transphobic? Will the choir have to change its repertoire to include them?

Can you imagine the fuss if women started demanding the same sort of changes? Christ, a woman was hired to play a fictional alien time lord and look at the reaction that inspired!