To be relieved the world is starting to see some sense?

[portugalq]

Fina bars transgender swimmers from women's elite events if they went through male puberty www.bbc.co.uk/sport/swimming/61853450

But oh God no, I got some utter crap about being the same as gay rights back in the day.

It's a total false equivalence. Being gay affects nobody else and requires no external validation from anyone. Even if you do believe it's sinful or somehow wrong, you can hold that belief and gay rights will still never impact upon you. Gay rights take absolutely nothing away from straight people.

But these "rights" take everything away from women, not least by effectively denying that they exist as a separate class to men. They require external validation and all must agree to the belief, to the point of women giving up their own rights, safety and equal opportunities or face the consequences. It compels behaviour and the exclusion of women and denies you the language to explain what's going on.

It's absolutely nothing like being gay. As Simon Fanshawe has said, when he was marching for his rights, he wasn't demanding to be called straight.

Thank you @ReneBumsWombats - this is exactly it. Trans rights impact and contravene women’s rights.

Unlike equality battles that have happened in the past - suffrage, civil rights, gay rights - which are right and just, and do not impact on other groups, trans rights absolutely do impact on women, and are in many ways deeply misogynistic.

Thank you Sharron Davies for taking on this fight.
Today is a good day in the marathon / slog that has been the last several years.
Thank you @mumsnet for allowing us to discuss here, when so many spaces were closed to debate. Onwards and upwards!

The Times is reporting that World Athletics and FIFA could follow suit

The interesting thing about this is that World Athletics have been grappling with the issue of male DSD athletes for a while.

The rules state that in some, but not all distances, XY athletes with DSDs have to suppress their male levels of testosterone - although not to female levels - to compete. They are over represented in sport with Mboma and Niyonsaba expected to do well in the upcoming world athletics champs.

caster Semenya wasn’t a “biological woman with naturally high testosterone” as Semenya claimed, but a biological male who went through a male puberty and had all of those advantages when competing against woman.

By using 12 years as a cut off age those children with the types of DSDs where they appear female at birth, or at least “not male” but go through a male puberty will be kept out of female sport.

I suspect World Athletics will grasp this with both hands

The question is, will Coe get this done in the next few weeks, before the World Athletics Championships, or wait until Mboma denies Dina Asher-Smith a medal first?

It's a bit annoying that all the announcement makers and decision makers seem to be men. and that it's taken them this long to state the bleeding obvious

I am sure that Megan Rapinoe would have no problem fielding a team with some men who said they were women. She would be able to put them in the positions where male build was an advantage.

It's much more powerful to hear women in what are predominantly individual sports of swimming, cycling or boxing saying that it's not acceptable.

Yep.

It's only not transphobic when a person with a penis says it.

Let's hope this is the end of "transwomen are women. No debate"

Again to quote Simon Fanshawe: "I cannot accept that they are women. They are transwomen and I respect them for that."

Again to quote Simon Fanshawe: "I cannot accept that they are women. They are transwomen and I respect them for that."

Absolutely!

Why is being a trans woman worthy of respect?

More so than being any other type of human, I mean.

I didn't take it to mean that he thought they deserved more respect than other people. I took it to mean that he acknowledged their gender identities and was supportive of them expressing it and being themselves, but he couldn't accept that they "are" women, because they're not. They're transwomen.

Social status

Men steping down, and reducing their social status.

"extremely impressive or attractive"
And
"endure or face (unpleasant conditions or behaviour) without showing fear"

Well, it can't be easy being either a trans man or trans woman. All people should be treated with respect though (with a few exceptions, obviously!) including those who wish to live as the opposite sex.

Let's hope this is the end of "transwomen are women. No debate"

Absolutely, and there are going to be some very prominent people who insisted that TWAW who look very stupid indeed.

I don't suppose any of those who issued rape and death threats to JKR and the like are going to be offering up apologies any time soon though.

I also wonder why FINA want a third category of competition when surely "Female" and "Open" are the only two that are necessary ie. scrap the men's category.

There’s the rub - men must be named and centred. The “Open” category others men, and merges them as part of the “not-women” category.

It’s inconceivable (to men) that they would not be named. How dare we suggest they be “othered” ?

</sarcasm font off.

I also wonder why FINA want a third category of competition when surely "Female" and "Open" are the only two that are necessary ie. scrap the men's category.

Got to pander to the men but hides the fact that the situation now is effectively Open and Male.

It's not easy being a woman.

And our feelings most certainly aren't pandered to the way trans women's are.

I agree that all people should be treated with respect, but trans people aren't entitled to any more respect than anyone else in my opinion.

Megan Rapinhoe might sincerely believe that including male football players in female teams is fair but I doubt she would feel the same, if she had lost her place in the World Cup team and all the prestige and money that followed from it, to a probably quite mediocre male football player or maybe even her under 15 counterpart in the schoolboy team which thumped the USA'S Female World Cup winning team.

Under 15 boy counterpart

A third "Open" space will effectively be another men's competition. No female born person will have a chance. Two shots for men, one for women.

However, I'd be prepared to accept it (with gritted teeth) if it meant keeping the women's sports protected and stops it from being the "hobbled/middle aged/crap men" category.

When did people forget that you can't have everything you want in life? If transitioning is so important, then you have to accept that some doors may now be closed to you. If you're lucky, new opportunities may be available. That's just the way it is. You can't have everything - get over it.

I suspect Open will be extremely unpopular or devalued as a category, but it’s sensible to have it.

it’ll effectively function as (and be perceived as) a second tier men’s category. One where anyone can have a go, but everyone knows the real prestige is in the Mens category.

The risk is it becomes a place for people who didn’t quite qualify for the Mens to access competitions anyway. If adopted at grassroots level, Open may end up full of men and boys who are just short of a qualifying time and need a chance to swim
at a particular level to try to get one, or to go to the (for example) nationals when them missed the QT for the mens. So a less prestigious men division 2 category. But where you might find yourself swimming against the odd woman or transperson.

I expect it will turn out to be quite hard to set QTs for the Open category.

And it’s likely that many trans women don’t want to swim in Open anyway. Or Mens. They want their identity validated (and the biological advantage) to be gained from being in the Women category.

I find that male people find it harder to understand this (yes, I'm generalising). They haven't lived with the knowledge of sharp limits on things like their fertility, their likely odds in a fight or race with members of the opposite sex and the impact of a baby on their body and subsequent career. To find out that there may be restrictions imposed upon them by their biology is very, very, very difficult for some of them to accept. They've never faced it before.

That's why women who try to state that TWAW like to use a "be kind, be wonderfully inclusive and progressive like me" approach, while men who do it usually show offence and quite astonishing ignorance at the idea that they couldn't become women if they wanted to.

They'll often claim, in essence, that women are just hobbled versions of them, or with added interior incubators that have no significant effect on the rest of their biology. They can't understand that gestation and delivery are complex processes that require extensive physiological differences and they frequently forget about periods altogether. The women know this is bollocks, so to speak, but their Cinderella complex makes them think there's some reward or inherent goodness in pretending it doesn't matter.