That women shouldn’t be forced into silence over males competing in female sports

[Ikeasucks]

NEW Zealand has selected a 43 yr old transwoman to represent them in the Olympics in the women’s weightlifting competition. Female athletes feel they are being forced into silence on the issue. How did it come to this?

www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/females-told-be-quiet-transgender-issue-ex-weightlifter-2021-05-07/

YANBU, it's cheating.

Trans men can't fairly compete in any catagory.
Of they compete as men they'll lose. Unfair for them. It's also unsafe.
If they compete as women they're effectively doping on testosterone so unfair to women.
But that's tough for them. It is not for women to roll over.

Transgender athletes should absolutely be able to compete with the gender that they identify with.

Why? Why should they be able do this?

Women's sports don't exist just so that males who don't want to compete against other males can go in the women's category instead. That's not what women's sport is for.

@BellaTheDog

I’ve just been thrown off the Sydney Vegans Facebook page for talking about this. But not before they called me all kinds of names. I have been a part of that group for years.

So much for free speech.

Bella, that's despicable. I'm so sorry.

I also think that Hubbard won't win - they are much older than the other competitors, and have also had recent injuries. Plus, if Hubbard does appear at the Olympics then it will all eyes on them as a 'test case' to see whether women should 'let' males compete in female categories. So there may, or may not, be a little bit of, ahem, 'performance adjustment' going on as well.

@TwitterTwatterofTinyMinds

Coming to this debate rather late, sorry.

For me this also highlights the danger of suggesting that choices don't have consequences - that you can have it all.

I am of the view that sex is a biological reality, and gender a social construct which layers assumptions and stereotypes onto biological sex, so perhaps see things through this lens.

I do have compassion for those who feel for whatever reason they are being asked to live under the 'wrong' gender assumptions, and understand that they may wish to 'change'. However with all choices come trade offs. If it is so desperately important to your own mental health, well being and sense of identify that you present as female having been born male, then by all means do so - how far you go in terms of hormone treatment and surgery should be your choice.

But in making that choice you may have to accept that some other things will be closed to you in future - one of these may be pro-sports. This is not because trans people are being punished, or because of an anti-trans view, but to be fair to the whole.

Everyone has to make these trade offs in life - women who compete at the top level in sport for example throughout their teens will have probably not enjoyed many of the typical teenage pleasures in favour of training.

There are plenty of ways to 'affirm' your own identity which do not fundamentally compromise the rights of others, do those, but don't expect to take a male body into a female sports category.

I only hope sports governing bodies step up to address this.

Came on to say this but you've worded it better.

I certainly don't get the impression that Hubbard revels in the negative attention the way that Dr Ivy does. I think an injury or a loss is quite likely, maybe even before getting there.

Personality does make a difference to how these things are presented, unfortunately.

@DrSbaitso

I'd love to see the third "open" space for everyone who truly thinks sex doesn't matter and will put their money where their mouth is. The response to it will tell us volumes.

How long do you reckon it'll last?

I wish MN posts had 'like' buttons.

bambam2019
They don’t feel safe competing in their own caragory (and again, this brings me back to a PP point that it is not the job of women to validate someone’s feelings, which is a fair point and something for me to think about!)

This is something you said quite a bit upthread. I'm interested to know what you mean by 'safe' in this statement.
It is something I see written a lot, but don't really know what it is meant to mean in context.
How do transwomen feel 'unsafe' in sport?

I also think that Hubbard won't win - they are much older than the other competitors, and have also had recent injuries. Plus, if Hubbard does appear at the Olympics then it will all eyes on them as a 'test case' to see whether women should 'let' males compete in female categories. So there may, or may not, be a little bit of, ahem, 'performance adjustment' going on as well.

I think we'll know which way the wind is blowing by the bookies. Of bets are allowed, I will be placing a big bet on them ahem. Losing.

@Letsgetreadytocrumble

I also think that Hubbard won't win - they are much older than the other competitors, and have also had recent injuries. Plus, if Hubbard does appear at the Olympics then it will all eyes on them as a 'test case' to see whether women should 'let' males compete in female categories. So there may, or may not, be a little bit of, ahem, 'performance adjustment' going on as well.

I didn't think of that. That would actually be worse...essentially match fixing with the long term goal of destroying women's sports long term, and meaning whether or not Hubbard wins, women athletes lose.

Even if no medal is won, a woman will have been unfairly deprived of a place in the national team.

Also, if Hubbard is older than the female competitors, had injuries etc, and still got better results, that’s likely down to the unfair biological advantage from being male sex.

Team places, top coaching, best facilities, money, time, Olympian label. Lots and lots of things women are losing.

@AllTheUsernamesAreAlreadyTaken

I’m a bit torn. I’m obviously completely livid and disgusted that women’s sport is just being thrown away like this and women are bullied into silence BUT if this person wins a gold medal, it will really bring it to the forefront and crystallise the disparity and complete unfairness. The sooner more people realise the consequences of this TWAW rubbish, the better.

This has been mentioned once or twice, and I only hope it’s correct. However it relies on a certain faith that most people, and our current social power structures, have an over riding sense of decency and fair play. I am concerned that that is simply not the case. Women have what our foremothers fought for. Decency, fair play and even rational and reasoned argument have been missing from the British cultural scene for some years. On a globalised scene these things are entirely absent.

I wonder, as I have wondered for a while, how trans people have so much power now. Given how many trans people there are in the world, how are so many getting through to compete in high level sport in the first place? Talent and ability alone get you nowhere on these levels, money matters more even just within one country.

In sport, enhancing drugs are rightly policed, why? They give an unfair advantage. If the great Venus Williams played in the men's tennis, she'd be lucky to be 200. Is that lack of will to win, do you really think Venus Williams lacks skill? The USA women soccer team won the world cup. On the returning to the US they played the Dallas under 15 boys squad Its evolution biology, men are almost always physically superior, we're smarter. 😏 Women are great in different ways. Why do we have male/female sport at all? This new trend discriminates against women and not men. If you treat to groups with inherent differences equally, is not the inevitable outcome is to create an unfairness. Someone transitioning to male and competing is going to get wasted. Girls train all their lives, families supporting them, before/after school training. Is it fair on them?

We are though. We're called transphobic (akin to racist)

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Sexes_(tennis)

I think this will be a good opportunity to set up a physical protest. The Olympics will have worldwide coverage and so it will mean that concerns are aired. However, we will have to be very clear that this is about women's rights and not trans, as any deviation from polite debate will be painted as bigotry.

Because ultimately this is about the fact that girls matter and women matter
And not whether or not trans people exist or matter. They obviously do, but not more than anyone else.

That was weird @aliseia. It's almost like you deliberately posted a porn link so it would get deleted and then you could claim awful transphobia later.

To be fair to aliseia they've spammed lots of threads with that porn link not just thee ones.

The irritating part of it all is that it’s gaslighting. Every adult person knows that generally adult men are bigger, stronger, faster than adult women with this amplified at elite level. That some there are some 200cm women and some 150 cm men doesn’t mean that, over a population, men still aren’t taller than women.

Yet even though these sporting advantages are obvious and we can see it it somehow it all has to be proved by science before the blindingly obvious can be accepted.

It’s a bit like if domestic cats and cheetahs had their separate running 100m races and suddenly cheetahs starting infiltrating the races that previously only cats could enter . It’d be obvious to all it was unfair but there’d still be those who felt domestic cats weren’t being inclusive enough. The arguments could be:

• some cats can dash up trees very quickly so if they tried harder they could do it on the flat
• some cheetahs, maybe due to limb differences or injuries may be slower runners and that proves it’s fair
• cheetahs don’t run with their spots, focusing on their spots is weird and obsessive
• the cats aren’t trying hard enough (to be fair, domestic cats are unlikely to exert themselves unnecessarily)
• there’s no scientific evidence proving that cats are slower then cheetahs
• cheetahs have been “passing” as domestic cats for years and running races with cats and you’ve never even noticed so it’s less of a problem than you think
• some cats are fluffier/bigger/faster/more aggressive than other cats and there aren’t different categories for them, so why exclude cheetahs as well?

How weird.
It would be handy if the deleted messages had a brief explanation, as obviously one could draw the wrong conclusion.