Trans-abled and the Paralympics.

[JustTerfingAlong1]

I know this is the wrong area for this post, but I think it's the only one where I won't get jumped on!

Just watching the winter Paralympics and wondered if they would allow trans-abled to compete in the same way that they allow transgendered in the Olympics. Or would that be a step too far?

Anyone have any thoughts?

It won't happen.

Because there aren't a massive bunch of men who get their jollies from infiltrating disabled groups.

Well it’s takes years to get put in the right category. Using various point systems depending on your body and the sport concerned. So there’s no way able bodied person could
Just fake not moving an arm say and qualify.

Wasn't there a basketball team that faked intellectual disabilities, though? Resulting IIRC in that category being removed entirely, as it could not be properly monitored.

I think.

Wow, really?! I could believe that though

I read something recently (probably on MN) about people who sincerely believe they should have been born with fewer limbs and go to all sorts of dangerous lengths to try to lose them as doctors won't amputate, I guess the difference is that once they do 'transition', they don't actually have those limbs anymore.

Men have been cheating right along. I just googled it and there are both teams and individuals who cheat the disabled.

Jelly yes there was a team in the Special Olympics who faked learning disabilities. It's why the Special Olympics doesn't run anymore.

I imagine, due to the incredibly intricate grading system on ability that it would be more difficult for trans people to compete as their chosen gender in the Paralympics

Oh yes there is a minority's who identify as disabled but aren't. They do home amputations and stuff. I'd imagine that they're quite mentally ill

Not sure what team faked an intellectual disability, but Special Olympics is very much an important ongoing organisation, and the next world games will be in March 2019. www.specialolympics.org

Well it’s takes years to get put in the right category. Using various point systems depending on your body and the sport concerned. So there’s no way able bodied person could
Just fake not moving an arm say and qualify.

To be honest though you could technically apply this argument to transgenderism, since it's impossible to change sex. Whether someone is or isn't female, and whether someone does or doesn't have a disability doesn't come into it at all, though.

The reasoning I mainly come across IRL seems to be that people who identify as trans are extremely fragile and distressed, and so we should do anything we can do to be a cushion and to alleviate their suffering.

Online, the reasoning I come across tends to be that the M/F categories should be predicated solely on 'gender identity' rather than on their traditional definitions (linked to sex). Of course transactivists rarely spell out the fact that they are pushing a wholesale and inorganic change of definition, because that would get people's backs up (I would have more respect for them if they were just honest, really, but admitting the artificiality of this would clearly decimate the support they've got from people who have bought into nebulous transactivist rhetoric).

So either way, if we roll out the logic that transactivists are using, you could well argue that whether we see someone as disabled or not should hinge only on how they see themselves, and that to avoid causing mental distress in these people, we should agree that they are disabled when they are not.
(We've seen the seeds of this with Labour arguing you can self-identify as autistic, BAME, disabled.)

However, very few people do actually believe the logic that transactivists are using and it'll probably remain sex-specific without being rolled out to other spheres of identity. These people are playing along because it either serves their ends (big pharma, contempt of women, etc) or because they don't want to put their head above the parapet. I think that's why we won't see the rise of transableism on this sort of scale.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/11850236/British-Paralympian-hopeful-canoeist-dropped-from-competition-because-disability-is-psychological.html

This is the only case I can think of offhand and note it was considered unfair to other competitors. I presume since the paralysis she experiences, which as a patient with conversion disorder she genuinely believes is physical and insurmountable) from does not come from an injury she would not suffer from the other issues a paralympian paralysed by spinal cord damage would (lung capacity stuff, autonomic dysreflexia etc)

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0952qqf

File on Four had this interesting podcast about people getting around the classification system for the Paralympics. It had cases where for example people deliberately bound their arm to their side for ages before the tests to appear to have less movement. They managed to be classified to compete in a less able category and had therefore a better chance of winning against other competitors in that category.
I would sincerely hope that no one who "identified" as having a disability could get around the system in that way, which is why it amazes me that some people seem to have no issue with trans women competing against women.

All this trans stuff brings up some uncomfortable contradictions.

Why do disabled people need their own sport? Ultimately, at 5’6 and pronating terribly, I will never win a competitive running race, however hard I try. I would find it extremely strange, however, to expect someone to create a class of running race for short flat footed pronaters.

Equally, clearly, on any objective criterion, women’s tennis is not as good as men’s. It is slower and there is far less depth. People, including virtually all women, prefer to watch men’s tennis, which is why, on the black market, men’s final tickets sell for more than 4x tickets for the women’s final.

The whole fakery of the trans movement relies on us pretending the above two uncomfortable compromises do not exist.

And, guess what, this post will probably be deleted because it is ‘disablist’. It isn’t. But if you start to only allow one ‘permitted’ narrative, controlling the narrative becomes the end game, and one which the trans movement is playing brilliantly.

Sorry Grainne your right, my point about the special Olympics was incorrect.

It was the Spanish basketball team who faked disabilities at the Sydney Paralympics. They were disqualified two weeks later. There have been a few circumstances of people worsening their disabilities temporarily to get put in a category which gives them a better chance of a medal.

I think one of the main issues thrown up by the Paralympics is the categorization. Anyone disabled can have good days and bad days, disabilities can improve or worsen. I think that being encouraged to present as more disabled by coaches during the categorization process can't be good.

But I don't think there is a better way - there are as many graduations of disability as there are people with disabilities.

Exactly Yippee

Yippee,

Even before I read your post, I was kind of questioning myself about exactly the point you made.

I think that in the case of sports three things are important:

1/ is there a decent enough talent pool.

2/ is it truly competitive

3/ will people pay to see it.

I think everyone should have the opportunity to play competitive sport. I love it even though I am strictly average, but I would not expect anyone to pay to see me play, nor would I be offended if no-one turned out to watch me hack away.

Clearly in boxing weight categories are vital for safety, if nothing else. Do we really need so many of them though? On the other hand, is anyone demanding height or weight categories for sprinting or tennis, despite the fact keeping them open disenfranchises many many talented athletes?

In the case of disabled sports, is there really a deep enough talent pool for people with the very specific set of disabilities that make up each class? Often it seems to me that the winner is the athlete who has most exaggerated their disability rather than the most talented athlete. Since money has come to disabled sports the blatant cheating has been shocking.

Yippee, you are welcome to disagree with me, and I welcome it. However it is the censorship of opinion that I disapprove of and that has opened the door to men calling themselves women.

Basketball incident...

The 2000 Summer Paralympics in Sydney, which had already seen controversy with numerous positive drug tests, would be the venue for one of the most scandalous events in the sport's history. Spain was stripped of their intellectual disability basketball gold medals shortly after the Games closed[16] after Carlos Ribagorda, a member of the victorious team and an undercover journalist, revealed to the Spanish business magazine Capital that most of his colleagues had not undergone medical tests to ensure that they had a disability. The IPC investigated the claims and found that the required mental tests, which should show that the competitors have an IQ of no more than 75[17],[18] were not conducted by the Spanish Paralympic Committee (CPE). Ribagorda alleged that some Spanish participants in the table tennis, track and field, and swimming events were also not disabled, meaning that five medals had been won fraudulently.[18][1

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CheatingatttheParalympiccGames

Clearly in boxing weight categories are vital for safety, if nothing else. Do we really need so many of them though?

This is an interesting point - I know that in MMA the bandings are close enough that people do, fairly often, change enough to move weight class - 3 people have been UFC World Champion in more than one weight class. Yet these weight classes persist - I think that yes, safety is a factor with the large gaps, but with the classes next to each other, it must also be for reasons of competitiveness.

On the other hand, is anyone demanding height or weight categories for sprinting or tennis, despite the fact keeping them open disenfranchises many many talented athletes?

There are bands of 'expertise', youth teams/matches etc. People compete at different levels, and I think probably evens it out. If someone is so good that they don't belong in that 'band' then there will be rumblings, that person will be asked to move on.