AIBU - Transgender 'athletes'

[HappyHippo1234]

To start off - I have no issue with trans people at all. The only issue I have is transgender females (male to female) competing in women sports.

Yes, they may have been taking hormones and they have lost some muscle and gained some fat. But, they have stronger bones and bigger spines, hands, feet, lungs and hearts. Basically trans females have an advantage over biological females.

What I absolutely HATE about the situation, it the trans athletes attitude, it honestly disgusts me. Did they never take biology as teenagers or learn about puberty?
For them to sit there with their wins and say that they have no advantage just p*sses me off. Are they stupid or ignorant? There's no way they don't know they have an advantage. Do they not realise they are taking wins away from girls and woman who have spent their whole lives training for a sport only for it to be taken away from someone who was a mediocre male.

Look at Lia Thomas, she was somewhere in the 400-500th best college male swimmer or something like that. She is now trans and BAM she is number 1 and winning everything.

It just annoys me to no end. Especially the trans woman who you can tell that they KNOW they have a major advantage and are cheating the system and then sit there with a SMUG GRIN on their faces. I mean every Caitlyn Jenner said it's wrong.

Sorry for the rant. My DD15 has been upset all week as on the weekend another girl beat all the girls by a huge stretch in her cross country meet (her team is usually 1st but were bumped to 2nd). At first everyone thought this girl was great, until one mom heard the group the girl was with discussing the results and how it was great for the team that this girl came out as trans and was boosting their results etc! Fair to say that news travelled quickly and there were MANY parents complaining to officials. But surprise surprise nothing was done about it. So at the award giving ceremony everyone waited as everything up to 1st place was given out and as soon as they got to the 1st team, I would say 95% of people walked away. It felt harsh but necessary!
(Also the girl was 16 and had only recently transitioned from what we could gather and when you actually looked at her you could tell she had gone through at least some portion of male puberty). Again nothing against the girl just don't think she could compete.

And to get around all these discrimination lawsuits, I think they should change the categories! Have an XX category and an XY category, that why there is no debate and no 'discrimination' as you can't identify as XY if you are XX! (And then also have an open category where trans, non-binary etc. can compete).

SORRY THAT WAS SO LONG. NOW FOR THE VOTE:

YABU - Trans (XX) women are woman and should be allowed to compete with XY women, even though they scientifically have an advantage.

YANBU - They will always have an advantage and so should not compete with XY women.

Yes you have made it clear about how you feel about other MNers throughout the thread.

You even agreed with the post that was deleted for clearly making a false negative generalisation. You don’t like the way people, most of us women, post. You have your own prejudices about how you believe women should behave, including how we should interact with someone who clearly has not got women and girl’s needs as their priority and makes not only ludicrous false assertions about feminism, but repeatedly doubled down on harmful misinformation despite having it pointed out how harmful that misinformation was.

Did you seek to clear up the misinformation that females should be competing, even in boxing, with males? If you did, I am sorry that I missed it, what argument did you use? Did it work because that poster doubled down on boxing and then brought in golf….

I have no issue if the transgender woman has not been through male puberty, there is little to no advantage over female athletes in that scenario.

That can't be right. When my children were born we had different percentiles to follow depending on their sex, with males being significantly bigger on average. Boys also have mini testosterone growth spurts before puberty. Height+power will equal an advantage, no?

Then you need to factor in even if they were exactly the same physically, girls have societal barriers and expectations to overcome and boys have more opportunity both now and historically.

But if a boy doesn’t go through male puberty, that would be because he had been given puberty blockers at primary school. Are you really suggesting it’s ok to give children dangerous, life altering drugs before they’ve even reached secondary school?

Even if a male born athlete hasn't gone through puberty, that's a place that's been taken from a female born athlete. It's reducing opportunities for born girls in favour of born boys.

It might make for a fair race, but it's still inequality.

A puberty blocked male may still have a height advantage and may still have skeletal proportions and leverage and hip placement that may carry advantages.

There is also some discussion around some male patients replenishing their bone density whereas females who have taken puberty blockers do not. So bone density if they are regained will be at a male level (if I remember correctly).

There is also the issue around the issues of the fibre thickness within female brains. I suspect that male brains will continue to develop thicker fibres not affected by testosterone. So those males don’t take on the same risks as female athletes.

Males of any age do not have to deal with the menstrual cycle and pregnancy.

while I suspect for now the definition will be males with pubertal advantages, I suspect that in the future that research will show there will be advantages that are not derived from testosterone and those athletes will also be excluded.

Again, the question that needs to be asked is what other athlete from outside a protected category is to be included into a protected category that should exclude them? Including those athletes that have lowered performance due to a medical treatment or through deliberately shaping their body at particular way?

Why should this group of males be rewarded or compensated through access to female sports categories?

YANBU
Male borns competing in women/girl's sports isn't fair, for so many reasons and, as a woman or girl, how humiliating and scary to be in the same changing/shower areas with them. It's a disgraceful state of affairs and I'm very worried about the kind of society females are having to live in. I am able to opt out of swimming/gym/changing rooms but not everyone can, and why should they give up an activity or sport which they enjoy? In any case, what about mixed wards in hospitals and jails, no chance of opting out in those places. It feels as if women and girls have absolutely no places where they can feel safe, have privacy and dignity when in various states of undress and there is no fairness in sports with males competing against females. You really couldn't make it up.

It's interesting that Mark's vast experience in coding gives him elite insight into the differences in how men and women think and express themselves (and surprise surprise, the conclusion he insinuates is that women are irrational)... and yet despite pages of evidence and explanation, he can't understand what the difference would be in a boxing ring or golf course.

How were trans people included here that makes you believe that it was “a good example of genuine trans athletes helping to create a solution.”

Because from what I remember, the core of this decision was based on the Sports council’s work from 2021 from the link below, a survey covering 3000+ people which returned around 80% that members believed that the women’s category be protected and one on ones of a range of people. Some of which were trans athletes.

https://www.sportengland.org/news/new-guidance-transgender-inclusion-domestic-sport-published

“I think posters here may have forgotten or not realised that trans athletes were involved in this decision”

So, do you have any evidence that male trans people positively influenced the British triathlon’s policy? I can assure you that many posters here who have been following what has been happening in female sports categories have not ‘forgotten’ and we most certainly realised ‘trans people’ were consulted. however, I have not seen that male trans people were involved in positively shaping the policy.

For instance, I seem to remember Jon Pike was one of the first people to start discussing ‘open’ categories as a solution. And swimming (FINA) adopted it before British Triathlon did. So that was not a new concept.

Let’s not forget that a team of very dedicated women, from athletes to biologists to feminists and many more ,campaigned and used the research available to present to Sport England who made their guidance in 2021. It was rather controversial at the time I recall, and many of those women involved have experienced negative impacts from doing so. Particularly people such as Sharron Davies. I believe some men were also involved in those presentations.

Then over the past 3-5 years there have been a growing number of women putting themselves on the line to even get to make presentations to decision makers. Remember in 2015, the IOC did not include any female athletes in the process to make decisions about the female sport categories. So much work had to be done by women to get heard or even have their opinions considered and not dismissed as transphobic.

So, finally by the time Triathlon starts to make their move, and it was gutsy at the time considering World Athletics took a long time to state they had concerns too and were publicly stating that changes had to be made, but by the time Triathlon announced they were reviewing , a huge amount of work had been done already. They utilised that past effort.

If you have any information on which trans athletes actually worked with British Triathlon to shape this policy towards protection of female sports categories, I would be interested to know. Those trans people should be applauded if they positively shaped this policy.

Or are you just repeating the news that male trans people were consulted and you have drawn the conclusion that they positively supported the protection of the female category? But that you don’t actually know this to be true.

But HAS parasports got it right? It seems pretty arbitrary to most.

Para sport always reviews the way it classifies athletes and how they compete.

But a poster above said para sport had found a way for athletes to compete fairly so proving males and females can compete together.

Except I personally don't think that argument stands up to what the poster seems to be getting at as males and females compete separately - but against athletes who are assessed to have the same level as disability.

In fact, reading up on the reaction, trans people and allies seem to feel they were ignored. One ally complained that British Triathlon included Fair Play for Women who have been very actively campaigning and not ‘anti-trans’ at all (they are very inclusive of females who haven’t doped on testosterone but are trans in the female category and they are encouraging males who are trans to compete as males).

But no, I haven’t seen any support for the British Triathlon from the usual LGBT groups.

So, I am happy to see something that shows that there was some male trans people who positively supported this policy and had positive input.

If someone had a banned substance slipped into their drink unwittingly before they ran, they’d still be banned if they failed a doping test.
The intent doesn’t matter - they’ve still cheated.

Whether or not someone is ‘genuine’ trans (whatever genuine trans means) they’re still cheating if they play sport in the incorrect sex category.

‘Off putting’??!

It’s not ‘off putting’ in the slightest. At least not for you.

You said you were hiding the thread way back at the beginning - but you have literally been glued to it, refreshing it, reading it, posting on it the entire way through.

’Off putting’? Pffft. You love it.

I reckon if readers can’t cut through / scroll past the quips and push back against misogynist posters to read some excellent posts from posters with knowledge and understanding about this topic and instead focus on the ‘tone’ the information is delivered then they aren’t really interested in the topic.

My suggestion is we have a bio men, bio women and a trans category.

Now if the transwomen are right, then we'll find all the categories won by the transmen.
If a transwoman has no advantage over a bio woman, then by the same thinking, a transman should have no disadvantage against a bio man.

“Second wave had it (broadly) right. Third wave went off track. The backlash and ensuing GC movement is dominated by rabid, ill-informed and hate-filled rhetoric. Trans issues are mental health issues. Treating them as women's rights issues is, in my view, a strategic mistake.”

I am going back through this bonkers thread, as I tend to do and realised why this post bothered me.

What this person has done here is show just how ignorant they are about this topic. But also clarified in my mind that this really was someone posting from a men’s rights activist view point (even though they didn’t seem to understand that they did).

Any person who understands the basics of the different waves of feminism understands that most of the people that others label ‘gender critical feminists’ are second wave feminists!

I picked up in another thread a sledge about ‘intersectionality’ and didn’t process that until during the night these posts all started to come together and really prove who this poster was and what they thought they were achieving.

And it is rather surprising that posters shaming other posters for their supposed hate, don’t seem to have once addressed the hate that was apparent in this persons posts. I am still going through the thread so I might find posts telling this poster off for their tone, for their transphobic points that were there.

Maybe those hypocritical posters who were so focused on tone policing and trying to portray women as coming from a place of hate will look at their own oversight and understand why posters reject the fuckwittery of shaming us for our ‘tone’.

They are immensely hateful posts and the "arguments" presented were pure sophistry: shallow, baseless and already refuted many times.

As I have seen this poster elsewhere, I was no longer inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. I'm in awe of you for your comprehensive, well-reasoned and fully substantiated responses. I think you were extremely generous.

The moment he completely showed his... hand was the "well you wanted equality" comment. Like I said, most people actually avoid that one these days because it's a) demonstrably ridiculous to state that protections aren't necessary for equality and b) immediately outs you as the kind of misogynist who is angry that women fought and continue to fight for their rights, and wants them to be constantly punished for it. So they will jump on any "argument", however nonsensical, to remove those rights while attempting to use the "equality" claim to justify it.

They see it as a form of poetic justice, because they never understood what equality was to begin with. Since they never gave a shit.

As PPs have said, if you agree with equality and fairness and are a principled person, a couple of sarcastic responses to blatantly misogynistic and vexatious posts shouldn't be enough to turn you to unfairness and oppression instead. If they are, you were never for equality and fairness in the first place.

You can agree with my principles while still thinking I'm a mouthy, sarky cow. My husband manages it just fine.

Although the latest complaint now accuses us of having "faux outrage". I'm still waiting to hear what on earth makes anyone believe our outrage isn't sincere...

I am still laughing at the final paragraph here.

The first paragraphs indicate that this poster actually doesn’t support trans people at all. (Yet, some posters who were keen to deride women for wanting to protect women’s sport still haven’t seemed to point out the transphobic nature of this person’s posts…. Almost as of maybe those posters shaming others are doing it for other reasons than supporting trans people also.)

However, the final paragraph comes across as bravado. It really does. It is a wonderful twist. Making the usual extreme trans rights activist statement of ‘you are all going to die out soon’, and leveraging Watson, while continuing to try to frame their own posts as having a superior reasoning and evoking of the strong emotion they wanted us to feel. This was projecting what this poster really feels about women who disagree with them. Emma Watson must be the epitome of compliance this person desires.

”You might hate me for it”

Oh hilarious! No. I haven’t even managed a mild dislike of you. I do disagree with just about everything you have said. But seriously, you are but a long long of posters that we will forgot while we continue to work to protect women. As many of us have done now for decades. Because… remember we are those second wavers you seem to have said ‘got it right’ … but are now telling that we strategically are going about this all wrong…

You really did resort to trying to emotionally manipulate readers because it is clear that you understand that what you posted here was misrepresentation after misrepresentation.

You tried to deny it Mark but comments like these really are men’s rights activist points.

“Non-men (the original special category created to allow more fair participation by half the human population who were disadvantaged by their biology from competing in an 'Open' category).”

(to be fair, I had missed that post originally- what a post full of fuckwittery it was! But clearly this was an indication of your intention from the get go- the rather obvious inflammatory use of non-men)

“I guess fairness means something different when you're looking to smash the glass ceiling than it does when you are punching down to someone who is mentally ill and struggling to find their place in the world.”

and

“If you take a hard line, ultra competitive, winner-takes-all approach, then there should just be one category - an open one. But the people justifying women's sports as a separate division are loathe to acknowledge that it is having a very limited and specific definition of 'fairness' that creates this issue in the first place.”

and

“The only reason GC's would want to prevent men and women playing golf together is because they fear the glory would flow disproportionately towards men”

and

“Men have subsidised women's grass roots and competitive sports for years, because society deemed it equitable. GCs who aren't prepared to include trans people at all on a point of principle are just pulling the ladder up behind them”

And

”when all that it does is reinforce male prejudices about women's capabilities - prejudices that do so much more harm in other socio-economic areas where it affects the lives of millions. Gender pay gap? Well ... clearly it's justified because women are weaker and tire more quickly and have periods and babies, right?”

I did not see any of the posters who were intent on tone policing women posting about protecting women’s and girl’s sports even once push back on this poster.

Why?

And why should girls starting out in lower level sport be cheated?

If it continues women's sport will not exist in a generation because girls will simply quit sport early on.
Why would they bother to keep competing when they cannot possibly win.

Girls face enough barriers to take part in sport as it is.

The ego of male cheats trumps women's rights every time. Yeah, great bloody life lesson.,🙄

And why should girls starting out in lower level sport be cheated?

Because then they'll never make it to higher levels to begin with, and then we won't need any protections at all.

And as various posters on this thread have shown, that's a good thing to a certain type of person.

*I did not see any of the posters who were intent on tone policing women posting about protecting women’s and girl’s sports even once push back on this poster.

Why?*

Because he’s a tedious tit, and there’s no point?

Well @Mark19735 I did look back through this thread, because I often do this on a thread with so much fuckwittery from posters.

Particularly posters who have contributed little but who seem intent on shaming other posters, usually women, for their ‘tone’ for their bluntness, for their mockery of a person who posts such derisory posts while attempting to position themselves as some kind of morally superior poster.

I found just how deep your misogyny and your hatred of feminist and women ran. I had missed a few, you see. Although, you do keep repeating that being trans is a mental illness, and I suggest you need to understand just how transphobic that thought is.

So even though some people will have read your posts as being supportive of trans people, the reality seems to be that you really were just here to goad feminists while showing you actually don’t seem to respect trans people either, or people with disabilities for that matter. Your posts indicate how little you respect people with disabilities, people who are trans and women who disagree with you.

Meaning in my mind that your main focus here was taking pot shots at feminists. Who you don’t understand much at all.

While some other posters took further attempts at shaming posters responding to your misinformation, derision and derogation. What the small number of posters who all seemed to follow the same line don’t realise is that so many posters reading along, and it will have thousands of readers and will have more in the future, is that they see the pattern just as clearly as we did.

It is like a script.

The first post may be agreeing with a post telling people how horrific MN is and how pro-women. Of course, they have phrased it as ‘anti’ trans. Which to anyone with a knowledge of feminism would be ridiculous because feminists are fighting to maintain the rights of all females, which include those females with trans identities. Don’t worry, most people who try that anti-trans label forget those females… but we don’t. We never do.

However, that first post shaming other posters will be along that ‘this site / board is so horrible because …’ - whether it is agreeing with a post stating that or saying it themselves, or both. Then the following posts will continue to attempt to shame other posters. Maybe just one of the posts will offer some engagement with the topic, maybe. Then the last lot of posts will be along the lines of ‘I DO understand the topic, I DO believe x (despite posts that show that to be very doubtful) and I agree with you partly but it is the way you all say it that is the issue here!

Or maybe, the tactic is not ‘I agree with you’ but some misogynistic advice about how women’s tones are blocking people’s understanding and we should all just be nice.

You @Mark19735, you did seem to go there too. But then you just doubled down with more men’s rights activism points.

The motivation of the other posters that wrote about how women were just saying things the wrong way or were ‘anti-trans’… I think that this thread has been an excellent demonstration of your own motivations. You completely missed the actual transphobia and ‘anti-trans’ rhetoric because that poster was also joining in deriding, diminishing and shaming the posters you disagree with.

It was right there. And not one of you pushed back on this poster.

This is a clear demonstration of virtue signaling. It is dishonest and it is hypocritical.

Note to readers: once you see the tactics used and how they are used, you cannot unsee them.

I have not come across this poster before. So, I did not have the hindsight. I was responding in good faith as I try to do.

However, you know that I need to work through the fuckwittery when I come across it. I cannot let it be.

I'm glad you do. On the one hand, giving him time and energy is what he wants. On the other...jeez, what an absolute job you (and others) did on him. His arse wasn't just handed to him, it was delicately spit roasted and delivered on a silver platter with a chef's kiss.

Yeah. I got that bit about a tedious tit, thank for the evocative descriptor. But of course, my question was obviously not aimed at you.

It was aimed at others.