The trans takeover of sport

[auntycartmanslargertesticle]

"One of the most influential, powerful and visible institutions upholding the gender binary is sport – where participation is predominantly segregated by biological sex, rooted in the widely-held beliefs about fairness and the biological advantages associated with being male. Such beliefs are over-simplistic, legitimise discrimination, and hinder the sports participation of transgender (intersex, trans, non-binary) individuals. With the rapidly growing societal visibility of transgender people, there is an unprecedented need to address areas where discrimination may arise."
Five new professorships offered in how media treats transathletes. Their statement of purpose above.
www.findaphd.com/search/ProjectDetails.aspx?PJID=97224

@AuntyCart aren't these PhD's fields for research, not professorships? But clearly hindering the participation of women in sport is no problem at all. I wonder where the funding's from.

These programmmes are fully funded. I tried to find out who is funding but wasn't successful. Maybe someone more familiar with academia and where/how to look could find out;

Cross post there -great minds. Yes funding?

I wonder where the funding's from

I think this is key to the direction the research will take. Given the vast sums of money invested by some very wealthy men in the trans movement, I suspect this will be a long winded way of telling us we are making a fuss about nothing. This will be despite all empirical evidence to the contrary.

Or perhaps I am feeling very negative and cynical about the plight of women today.

I suspect those American 'philanthropists' myself, George Soros, Jennifer Pritzker et al.

The newly formed Gender and Sport Centre for Doctoral Training, led by Dr Gemma Witcomb, is recruiting 5 highly motivated PhD students to explore the current and changing landscape of sports participation for transgender adults and children and recommend changes to promote inclusive participation.

Sounds fair enough. Wouldn't be surprised if there was a portion of government funding behind this; the government are currently pushing trans participation in sport in a big way, probably because fit and active people are generally slimmer, healthier, happier, better integrated into society, more productive, and critically cheaper from a healthcare perspective.

Yes I guess got that wrong about professorships-sorry- anyhow alarming enough as it is. I suppose its what the students do to become professors. I don't know that world.

Only having done a research module as part of a BSc but not actually done any research myself, I can't claim to be very up in this. But I thought research aimed to get at the truth of something, not bolster a fallacious argument. Start some research with a hypothesis but if it's proven to be incorrect, you have to acknowledge that. We can clearly see the expected outcome from these PhD proposals, so not actual 'research' then. More like propaganda?

Start some research with a hypothesis but if it's proven to be incorrect, you have to acknowledge that.

Not necessarily; you can undertake a PhD to achieve a particular aim, or attempt to answer a specific question. The aim of these it would appear is to, as quoted above, "explore the current and changing landscape of sports participation for transgender adults and children and recommend changes to promote inclusive participation."

So I guess the aim is to establish the best ways to facilitate trans inclusion into sport.

Could easily have government funding, or even sports association funding (as they're quite keen on outreach and participation too), as well as potential funding from trans groups.

thought research aimed to get at the truth of something, not bolster a fallacious argument. Start some research with a hypothesis but if it's proven to be incorrect, you have to acknowledge that.

In theory - having worked in research in academia myself I would hope for this outcome but knowing the politics and economics of universities I'm not entirely convinced that this is what happens in practice.

A professorship would be more likely to be senior lecturers than students. Unless it is adoption of US progression titles which I believe some UK universities are doing.

I have been investigating Soros and one thing hes put alot of money into is influencing opinion on the net. In Hungary if I understand it right they have made some NGOs illegal because Soros was funding the NGOs and they were being duplicitous and political. The rise of the right scares me but the liberal left feeds that.

www.ncsem-em.org.uk

There is a shit load of bad research. Most gets ignored.

I'd like to see some women's sports organisations funding some research into whether male physique offers an advantage in their sports and if it does to research what handicaps could be put in place that would make it OK to allow a man to participate fairly.

No bias one way or the other. Let's just look at what's an advantage in rugby, table tennis, shooting, long jump, asymmetric bars, everything. Quantify it and then do some experiments on what can be changed to make the man be equivalent physically to the females.

I personally expect that in most sports the answer will be that it is impossible but I'd be happy to be proved wrong with proper research.

I'd like to see some women's sports organisations funding some research into whether male physique offers an advantage in their sports and if it does to research what handicaps could be put in place that would make it OK to allow a man to participate fairly.

I would like to see this too.

I think some of the research proposals look useful, the one about measuring hormones and impact on sports performance does (possibly not an accurate description of it by me there). And we do need some objective stats. I find this one "gender binary is sport – where participation is predominantly segregated by biological sex, rooted in the widely-held beliefs about fairness and the biological advantages associated with being male. Such beliefs are over-simplistic, legitimise discrimination, and hinder the sports participation of transgender (intersex, trans, non-binary) individuals" a bit worrisome myself with its statement that the traditional view is over-simplistic. Males don't necessarily beat females - I'm sure most men I know would be soundly beaten in tennis by someone of Serena William's abilities, for instance, but that's not really what we're talking about is it? I suspect unfairness to women is about to be further legitimised. No doubt their results will be fascinating.

I have no problem with research seeking to increase the inclusiveness of sport for transgendered people. I do have a problem if the focus is on moving women out of the way to make way for whichever other marginalised group is being supported.

RunRabbit, agree but the results of this won't be ignored at they'll be publicity-worthy. I can see the headlines now.

A huge body of research has already been done, its in the scores and results. Its the reason why some sports are segregated by sex and others aren't.
Trans gender athletes can compete with men and have their own results, since their results are closer to men's than women's.

I'd like to see some women's sports organisations funding some research into whether male physique offers an advantage in their sports and if it does to research what handicaps could be put in place that would make it OK to allow a man to participate fairly.

I completely agree with this (except for the fact you've mentioned allowing a man to participate fairly, and I would say transwoman).

But isn't the research you descibe not needed if womens and mens sports are separated? And you can't use statistical models to compare the bodies of the sexes since competitive athletes almost by definition have exceptional bodies. And why can't trans compete as their birth sex? I don't understand why they need to compete as their chosen identity or even have a separate category.

Oh, there's lots of money going into creating trans 'science'. None of it is actually scientific, but if you find enough TRAs to create this shit you can bury people in citations and say it's a done deal and STFU you transphobic bigot.

Let's not take money from womens sports. Women are already paid less and losing prizes to trans competitors.

It's not a 'trans takeover of sport'.

Trans-identified females pose no threat to men's sport. If they did, you can bet that sporting bodies would suddenly become much less enthusiastic about 'trans' inclusion.

It's a male takeover of women's sport.

terfandserf
I guess that means it is taxpayer funded.
Its not trans-sport research in general-itsthis research.
The queereze genderspeak about the evil binary empire institution and the nepharious concern with fairness-the horror-the obsessive belief about the biologial advantages 'associated' with being male. The research is hanging about fora and utube profiling terfs and other bigots. You have to be a narc to become a professor these days. They might even come to mumsnet. Commonsense there. Terrifying.

The projects discription:
This project will examine how the participation of transgender people is represented in the media and the public discourse related to this. : Content, thematic and discourse analysis will be used to explore media representations of gender-diverse sports personalities (e.g., South African intersex athlete Caster Semenya), as well as social media discussions of the issue of trans/intersex participants in competitive or team sports (e.g., Twitter discussions) and first person discussions (with cisgender and non-cisgender participants).