Laurel Hubbard wins gold

[TundraDweller]

Gearing up for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics -

www.stuff.co.nz/sport/other-sports/114222068/laurel-hubbard-wins-gold-at-pacific-games-after-losing-name-surpression-battle

This has probably already been posted but it does show clearly how little the IOC think of women. Are the rules around doping using equally shoddy research?

fairplayforwomen.com/emma_hilton/

Actually, wrong example as the Chinese are already so far ahead. But nevertheless, the floodgates will open and any nation could follow suit.

I know people - women- who still plop on with the TWAW line along with the "you're a bad mean person" when I bring this up. I have completely and utterly lost respect for them. I've never had an issue before where that's happened in such an extreme way. I've been able to have political and ideological differences with people while still liking them. Not this issue though. The misogyny of it just turns my stomach.

It is very hard to have any respect for any one who is ok with this isn’t it? It’s a very clear barometer of just not caring about women

^ Bernard that is it in a nutshell isn’t it.

Absolutely dancing. Dr Emma Hilton's Fair Play For Women speech is worth quoting again & again:

Male puberty is the point at which boys really open the physical gap on girls. To 10 years old, testosterone levels in boys and girls are broadly similar. At puberty, male testosterone levels surge and stabilise at around 20 times higher than in females. This surge shapes a boy into a man, and into a superior athlete.

Males are five inches taller than females. Longer arms give a greater reach and can generate more speed on a cricket ball. Bigger hand spans can more easily palm basketballs. Longer legs and narrower pelvises lead to better running gaits. Males need fewer strides to cross a distance and the strides they take are more efficient.

Males have around 40% more muscle mass, even when height is taken into account, and 40% less body fat. The muscle they have is denser, more fibres, larger fibres. Higher numbers of muscle stem cells make new muscle fibres, donate nuclei to strengthen existing muscle fibres, help healing. They have higher proportions of fast twitch fibres – these are the fibres responsible for explosive movement. Stiffer connective tissue – ligaments and tendons are tighter springs – means greater storage of potential energy and even more explosive power. In short, male muscles can move way more quickly and with far greater force than female muscles. And with larger hearts, lungs and haemoglobin pools, they can feed them more oxygen.

This list, now deeply familiar, is nowhere near comprehensive, and with 6500 differences in gene expression between males and females, there are still many unknowns. The majority of these differences are likely driven by testosterone-fuelled puberty – it is one hell of a drug. It has delivered us athletes like Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps. As the original anabolic steroid, used widely in the 1980s in state-led doping programmes, it has almost certainly delivered us a fair few elite females too.

If the IOC allow Hubbard to compete next year, their contempt for women and fairness is plain to see.

If the IOC allow Hubbard to compete next year, the floodgates will open

But apparently, it's up to the 'operators' of a group to decide what is acceptable, and if members who joined or paticipated in good faith dont like it they can go elsewhere. Regardless of if it's an international governing body or something like a FB group.

Grimbles

Exactly. The organisers decide everything even if it’s unfair or sexist. No debate.

This person transitioned in their 30s? And the transition took the form of what exactly? In what physical way is this person a woman - and in what mental way? In fact what way at all?

The IOC has absolutely no way to stop Hubbard from competing.

They have made their rules. Hubbard is following them.

There are ever-more interesting 800m runners who are emerging in women's athletics now. And by interesting I mean male.

And remember that gold, silver, and bronze in the women's 800m event in the 2016 Olympics were taken by athletes who are biological males.

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/rio-2016/results/sports/athletics/womens-800m

Gold - Caster Semenya (XY chromosomes)
Silver - Francine Niyonsaba (XY chromosomes)
Bronze - Margaret Wambui (XY chromosomes)

The media refers to these athletes as women with naturally-occurring high levels of testosterone. The media does not mention that the high levels of testosterone are natural precisely because they are male.

Yes, the almost universal failure of media coverage to mention that CS has a y chromosome was very telling.

An interview from 2018 with Laurel Hubbard in which a once respected hard hitting NZ journalist fails to ask anything of significance regarding the fairness of Hubbard competing against women, thus enabling Hubbard to basically keep saying that I just want to be myself and compete (subtext I don't give a stuff about anyone else, including these woman).
Quotes are from the Stuff article.

Hubbard's competitors all perceive that she has a similarly unnatural advantage. Iuniarra Sipaia, the Samoan 90kg weightlifter who lost to Hubbard in Australia, said, "I felt that it was unfair ... It only changed the physical side but her emotions, her strength and everything is still a male.

Tracey Lambrechs, the New Zealand weightlifter who had to shift down a weight category because of Hubbard, also used the word unfair

www.stuff.co.nz/sport/opinion/99544169/mark-reason-transgender-lifter-laurel-hubbard-carrying-the-weight-of-the-world

The article is dated 2017. The issue of Laurel Hubbard's being allowed to compete as a transgender woman has been bubbling for a while now, and it won't go away, however much Laurel Hubbard would like it too.

in which a once respected hard hitting NZ journalist

Mark Reason? Never been respected or hard-hitting. He’s lazy, all he does is take pot-shots at all blacks over perceived intentional rugby related misdemeanours while he also writes articles defending rugby players who abuse women- not so bothered by head injuries if they’re suffered by women in their home or on the streets. I’m not surprised he’s defending this male at all.

"The only hopeful thing I saw, last year, was Austra lia kicking up and saying it shouldn't be allowed in weightlifting."

In my opinion, it is two faced for both Australia and Samoa to complain about Hubbard, because they have both fielded transwomen in women's events.
Hannah Mouncey and Jaiyah Saelua.
The sports authorities are disgusting to allow this, and it is only going to get worse.
Kate Weatherly of New Zealand is still competing (the only New Zealand competitor in Women's category) in World Cup downhill events and finishing in the top ten.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Mouncey

www.looppng.com/2019-pacific-games/world%E2%80%99s-first-transgender-footballer-proud-be-%E2%80%98home%E2%80%99-pacific-games-85628

It's the confirmation that men (as a group) don't have your (women as a group) back that really shocks, isn't it? Shocks maybe the wrong word, but disappoints isn't strong enough.

It's the fantasy that men (with society's tacit support) entertain about themselves - that they are firm but fair when it comes to facts.

The reality feels more like indifferent to something that doesn't affect them directly.

A picture tells a thousand words. As Popchyk rightly points out:

Gold - Caster Semenya (XY chromosomes)
Silver - Francine Niyonsaba (XY chromosomes)
Bronze - Margaret Wambui (XY chromosomes)

Rio 2016 'Women's' 800m medal winners.

Bye bye women's sports.

JessicaWakefield Sorry , I didn't make it clear that I meant John Campbell who did the interview with Hubbard. I don't know anything about Mark Reason, but I posted his article because of the quotes from people unhappy with Hubbard being allowed to compete.

OtepotiLilliane42

Oh ok. In that case, I still wouldn’t refer to John Campbell as a hard hitting journalist. He’s a leftie mainstream media darling who literally fawns over his interview subjects. I really don’t rate him myself.

Andy I just checked and Saelua is still playing men's football, not women's, a position I have a great deal of respect for (listed on Wikipedia in the list of current players at the Pacific Games for the men's team, not the women's team). A principled approach, one which shows you can still play sport after transition as a member of your birth sex and one to be held up as a model for genuine inclusion.

Interesting decision from Samoa- who still have a law against male homosexual sex.

Indeed about naturalness. Saying 'some people say Hubbard has an unnatural advantage' implies that those who object to this are saying Hubbard is unnatural in a transphobic way. Whereas in fact we're saying that it's completely natural that male humans and female humans have physiological differences affecting most sports, which are effectively managed by having separate categories.

I'm not a third category person either. Two sexes, two categories. Putting trans people in a separate category really does look exclusive to me, and reinforces the idea that something happens to someone's sex when they transition. It doesn't. Hubbard should compete in the male category.

It so, so isn't complicated, complex, emotional, tricky, controversial or difficult, or any of the adjectives that are used by 'let's just be nice' commentators. The IOS rules were changed for 2015 because the scientists were told to find a way for transgender athletes at any stage of transition to compete by gender not sex. They've said so. The option to keep competing by sex was eliminated. Result: a step change in the number of women being excluded from fair competition.

Which leaves women with two options and here we stand on the knife edge in multiple ways with this bullshit, not just sport.

Be quiet, be nice, suck up the (massive) unfairness and disadvantage and meekly return to being the subordinate and oppressed class. But in a discreet way, pretending this is all ok and no negative publicity. Which will earn pats on the head and cookies for good girls, but will do intense damage to women in every way.

Refuse. Lose resources and spaces (and create new ones, and make it very public as to who is being excluded from publicly funded spaces and why, and force those in power to acknowledge the homophobia, racism, misogyny, disablism and classism that it will represent). Lose jobs (and sue the crap out of people and drag it through every court as publicly as possible). Lose funding (and find new sources, supported by other pissed off women.) Refuse to enter races. Sit down on the track and lose that funding and that support but do it together with the rest of the half of the human race this shits all over, because they can't do this to all of us, and more women are waking up all the time.

We're reaching the chaining selves to Downing Street, preparing for force feeding and being clapped in irons stage, folks.

Extracts from the article below:

Born male, Saelua is one of Samoa’s “fa’afafine” – roughly translated as way of the woman – a third gender that is commonplace in Polynesian culture.

• it is not, it is common in Samoa only, who are the only Pacific island I'm aware of where it’s still illegal to be a gay man.

She has decided to delay her full “transition” to becoming a female, in order to continue playing for the national team, with the Oceania World Cup qualifiers for Russia 2018 set to commence next year. The Pacific Games and Olympic qualifiers are also on the horizon.

Saelua had, in a sad indictment in the western world, not suffered discrimination until she travelled away from her homeland. In fact, she laughs at the very notion when asked if she had ever suffered discrimination prior to leaving American Samoa. “No, none at all, there are lots of fa’afafine in American Samoa that play soccer, and other sports, and even in other national teams in other sports. We are all given an equal opportunity to play sport.”

• the very tradition of fa’afafine is rooted in homophobia and sexism, young transgender who fail to learn the history of it, are ignorant and neglectful of the many gay men it hurts. Samoans are often deeply religious, with Christianity brought to the islands.

The gay struggle is coming to an end, and it’s time for transgender women to play a part in the world”.

• again, it’s actually homophobia that created a situation where Fa’afafine is common, note that they specified ‘transgender women’, because they’re only M to F.

Obviously we know that we’re nowhere near the end of the struggle for lesbians.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/football/2014/aug/29/jaiyah-saelua-transgender-footballer-interview

I agree with your analysis of the social forces behind the phenomenon of Fa'afafine, Jessica. From an outsider's POV though the thing I find striking about Saelua is that they completely knock the foundations out from under the common trans argument that "sport is all about inclusivity and letting all people take part therefore (and it's the therefore which is up for grabs) not to allow transwomen to play women's sport is exclusionary."

Saelua's example shows that transwomen can be included in sport in a fair and principled way, by continuing to play men's sport.

There’s no point anyone saying ‘but TW are scarce: there’s still room for women - if only in second place’

It’s an arms race. If one side fields TW then every side needs to field TW. They’ll take first, second and third place.

If a team doesn’t have TW yet you can bet they’ll be scouting for them.