Nic Williams on Woman's Hour (Tuesday) talking about sport and gender identity

[OrchidInTheSun]

twitter.com/fairplaywomen/status/1069731404488077318?s=21

Nic Williams will be debating with Beth Jones, who is an academic at Nottingham Trent www.ntu.ac.uk/staff-profiles/social-sciences/dr-beth-jones

Also, male athletes will improve their performance if the wrestle bears and run from tigers
🤣
Let's not forget that some of those bears and tigers are actually humans who identify as bears and tigers and (because they tried really hard) were able to compete in the bear and tiger events
🤣

Yes Bowlofbabelfish, I often find myself thinking Now show me the extraordinary evidence that supports your extraordinary claims.

I think this "two sides of equal merit" has been seeping into public debate for a while, it's not just on this topic - vaccination, climate change etc.

I always hark back to No You're Not Entitled To Your Opinion, which sets it out nice & clearly

"The false equivalence between experts and non-experts that is an increasingly pernicious feature of our public discourse"

Actually, I think this might be a better email address to use for Woman's Hour:

[email protected]

You'll get an email reply that says this:

Please be aware that if you have contacted us with your views and experiences about an item that you have heard on Woman's Hour, then all or part of your message may be used on air unless you have specifically said that you do not want it to be broadcast. Alternatively, we may contact you to record your views for a later edition of Woman's Hour. If you have asked to remain anonymous we will respect that request.

so, you might want to ask to remain anonymous 🤔.

Great job with the transcript Pencils. Thank you. Has anyone got a link and start time so I can listen to it in all its glory?

You know, certainly women report that once they've been on oestrogen therapy they feel weaker, they run slower than perhaps they did before, but there's no kind of robust scientific evidence to say that either testosterone or oestrogen impacts directly on athletic performance.

I know exactly what Beth meant by this. We all do. But it could be taken that as there is no "evidence" to the contrary all transwomen retain the physical advantages of their male bodies and so should not compete against women. Even her own arguments go against Beth!

there's no kind of robust scientific evidence to say that either testosterone or oestrogen impacts directly on athletic performance.

Honestly, by this stage of the game, I'm waiting for MRAs to decide that outlawing doping by using testosterone was because of misandry. Feminists demonising male hormones or something. Free the T!

Probably a good idea for people to get screen shots of their posts on this thread. If you get deleted for something tiny (missing a s for example!) then there is a fair chance the deletion will be screenshotted to show how transphobic we all are on here. So best to have evidence ready in advance of any attacks.

Next week's Guardian headline Sophocles?

Don't see why not, bingle.

I'm sure Owen or Tim wassname could easily knock out five hundred words on why feminists hate testosterone before breakfast.

certainly women report that once they've been on oestrogen therapy they feel weaker Not my experience of HRT

Thank you Pencils - it's really helpful to have it transcribed (and I'm in awe of you - I would still be typing tomorrow..)

This thread has gone bananas since this morning!

After whooping at the craziness that Dr Beth was spouting this morning, I do now feel a little sorry for her in that it's more than possible that the phd was suggested to her (e.g that there was money available for it) and it was connected kind of to what she was interested in (body perception) where there probably wasn't funding etc etc. I can see how it could happen.

That doesn't excuse the cognitive dissonance that must have been required in the conclusion that inclusive sports must be a positive thing as it would be good for transwomen (whilst ignoring the enormous elephant in the room) but that is often how life works isn't it? (the falling into things rather than the cognitive dissonance..)?

Does anyone have a link to the Guardian article about the Lauren Jeska case that was mentioned earlier in the thread? The one that peak transed people.

PencilsinSpace - Thank you so much for the transcript - I'd have no access to radio without it!

Having read it through, all that is coming to mind is Hitchens' razor:

What can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor

I get the point that Woman's Hour is not the place for Laurent Bannock level Guru Performance We Do Science podcasts

guruperformance.libsyn.com

but we could have done with some light-touch references to just how significant the hormone differences are and what they represent (as per the Fond of Beetles post I've linked upthread).

“I don't think any trans person, regardless of whether they identify as male or female, pose a threat to their competitors ...”

Beth, who has a PhD in the subject, but not really grasping the basic concept of ‘competitive’ sport here!
And this is the cream of Nottingham Trent University’s academic crop!? Pfft.

it’s here

‘Her parents hope that UK Athletics will learn from her traumatic experience’

(of attempting to kill a man).

Peak Guardian

I actually think that Beth was deliberately ‘misunderstanding’ the question and wAs trying to imply that the host was asking about physical threats.

Guardian article on Lauren Jeska.

The problem is not so much the elephant in the room, more the elephants trunk....

The false equivalence between experts and non-experts that is an increasingly pernicious feature of our public discourse

Although I am increasingly suspicious of experts myself. Most of the nonsense being peddled on WH this last two weeks was from academics - including today’s PhD in utter bullshit. Academia seems to be sponsoring the production of experts in drivel but dressed up in language that non academics are not used to. This is exactly why the term expert has become problematic.

Here Binglebong. Starts at 10 minutes in:

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0001f05

fair point, rightreckoner.

I don't know why I was deleted. I must have let the M word creep in there.

I, like others, am infuriated by this unequal debate.

Transactivists have got absolutely nothing. Except science fiction, wrapped in fantasy, propelled by aggression.

Datum - probably because I've been doing Xmas decs today but your description below made me think of 'pigs in blankets'. Now when I read Twitter I'm going to have to work very hard to stop mental images of bacon wrapped sausages popping up in my head!

💪💪datun

oh god the difficulty of not using the m word

why can't I describe reality?

Is politeness really more important than truthfulness and freedom of conscience?