I get that the arts have been captured, but how come sports?

[JellySlice]

Arts are, after all, all about feelz and challenging societal norms. Populated by people who perform and create. By people whose bread-and-butter is external validation of intangible internal thoughts. So I get that trans beliefs can be part of this and be accepted.

But how the hell did sports get swept up in it? Sports are almost entirely about quantifiable, measurable physical events. Driven by intensely researched biology, physiology, chemistry, physics. How did trans beliefs become accepted, and integrated into sports in total contradiction to the self-evident and empirically-proven facts of sex-differences?

Given that the average man is instantly peak-transed by TW in women's sport, how can the sporting authorities not be?

I suspect because sport so clearly distinguishes between the sexes on a biological basis. If sport can be conquered by fictions about biological sex, there’s pretty much nowhere else for women to go.

I’m actually startled that a sphere, which is based on the material reality of bodies has folded so quickly to the demands of fantasy, but can only believe that when push comes to shove, men will prioritise men, even men in a dress, over women.

Maybe it got rolled into the question of how to manage intersex athletes, treated as a medical condition rather than an ideology.

As for the arts, they weren't always full of feeling people who think as you say. That's a phenomena of how we see art today. So maybe that says something about what we value more generally.

It’s because the social sciences are viewed as “science” but the bar for proofs in those disciplines are far lower and woolier than the hard sciences.

However when it gets to the media it’s “scientists have found...” or “a study says...” and people are inclined to treat that with the same gravitas as a finding in a hard science.

In short we’ve shifted and fiddled with the definition of science itself, and opened up the floodgates to full on post modernism there too.

Something I saw on spinster.

Tartigrade@Waterbear**@spinster.xyz
"A lot of women think sports are trivial, so they shrug at the destruction of women’s sports by letting men compete in them. Men tend to take sports very seriously, but a significant portion of them don’t think women’s sports are real. I have heard them wonder what the point is, if the best woman athlete can be beaten by a mediocre man. I think a lot of sports governing bodies are full of men like this. They see women athletes as playing for participation trophies anyway, so what’s the harm if women lose to hormone hobbled men?
Men like this would blow a gasket if male swimmers were handicapped with extra time to make things “fair” for dysphoric women athletes."

And, like just about everything else, sport is mainly run by men. The English and Australian cricket boards. The IOC.

The UN equality group or whatever it's called, don't know so much about, but the UN seems to me to pretty much on a par with the big NGOs that have shown themselves to be safe havens for me abusing power to satisfy their desires. So no surprise there either.

We're not allowed anything.

*men ffs, not me!

Yes I would say because everyday sexism. What men do is important, whereas women's sports isn't.

As When said, sports, like many other things, are run by men. But I suspect part of the reason might be deliberate targeting by organised activists towards anything that is exclusively single sex. This isn’t some random occurrence. It’s being driven and what we are seeing now is the effect of many years of under-the-radar positioning and lobbying.

I was listening to a CD of a detransitioned trans bio male. He was talking about his experiences growing up and how he had an older brother who beat him in absolutely everything and he always felt he was second best and/or not good enough. He said he just didn’t feel like a successful male and that he was “doing boy wrong”. I haven’t listened to the whole thing yet but it did make me wonder about these bio males who are so keen to get a place on the podium as “transwomen”.

If you have paid any attention to the Manosphere, such as the documentary made by Reggie Yates mentioned in another thread, you will know that their ideology is that the whole world is set up so that things are easier for women. They believe that we always get a break. I wonder if so many of these “beta men” as they call themselves don’t understand that it’s dominant men who are calling the shots for EVERYONE. So you only need a few of them scattered through these sports organizations to decide that decimating women’s sports or enabling a more mediocre man to win is actually a way for them to surreptitiously win too.

DH is involved with hockey at a national level. I have raised possibility of trans m2f players with him and disappointingly he’s just 🤷🏻‍♀️ he says they already play mixed hockey so it’s no different. I said this wasn’t mixed teams of equal nod of men & women but a male bodied player in a female team and he was still “women’s hockey is very physical, there wouldn’t be a problem” he really could not or would not see the problem :/

It's because sport is, and always has been, highly political.

People like to talk of 'keeping politics out of sport' but in the next breath are waving their flags and supporting their nation. It is a tool of propaganda.

Civil rights were promoted via sport. Women's rights were promoted via sport. Cold wars fought via sport. Totalitarian governments undermined via sport. Of course the trans privilege activists have targeted sport. As for why the men at the top go along? They're cowards, and don't much give a thought to women anyway.

It depends what you mean by sport. Sports administrators seem to have been captured, but everyone - and I mean everyone - I know who participates in sport thinks trans playing in their 'identified' sex is ridiculous, dangerous, and unfair.

I participate in a lot of sports and this subject had come up a few times. None of the female cyclists want to ride against tw cyclists; none of my male rugby playing friends want to face a transman on the field. My karate group is mixed sex - women and men train together and even do light sparring together, but not a single person wants to do competitive fighting against a transperson.

aliasundercover

That is a very fair assessment. I suspect the administrators will come to regret their purely political decision but it may take an entire stadium booing a Laurel Hubbard type with billions across the world watching on for the penny to drop.

The public are not on board with this at all.

It's because sport is, and always has been, highly political.

I also think this. Wherever there has been money in sport - IOC, FA, etc - there has been high politicisation and rampant corruption. This has made them ripe for capture by aggressive and well funded lobby groups.

And lo: women get fucked over. Such a surprise.

It's a parallel to the inclusion of men in the women's sector: lobbying works and is utterly, utterly blind to the service users or participants of the orgs it's lobbying.

It's a management problem. Our elite classes are useless.

Men who run sports know full well who the men are when it comes to pay.

I just think many people underestimate how many people will jump at the chance to reinforce the hierarchy, or go along with it/pretend it isn't happening, as long as it isn't them.

My DH is of the view that

1. It won’t happen
2. If it does, it’ll only be a tiny nos of ppl who want to do it so it’s no biggie & far more important things to worry about
3. But it won’t happen anyway

He’s a volunteer & trusts his national hockey association to know what they’re doing as I suspect do most ppl involved at his level

Kit19

I am sorry to say that your DH is very wrong. Transwomen are now competing at the highest levels in some sports, and they are achieving high results, which means they are stealing from women.
Kate Weatherley of New Zealand managed a 4th place last weekend in a World Cup mountain biking event in Europe, and has now managed to win 2 successive New Zealand championships. Weatherley won their first event as a woman very easily, just three weeks after competing as an average male. Then we have Laurel Hubbard who has won weightlifting events at the Pacific championships. Then there is the infamous Rachel Mckinnon.
We shouldn't forget Lauren Jeska, a transwoman fell runner who is now in prison for the attempted murder of a UK Athletics official. Jeska's national fell running titles still stand, a fact which I find incredible.

www.athleticsweekly.com/tag/lauren-jeska/

www.singletracks.com/blog/mtb-interviews/kiwi-dh-racer-kate-weatherly-shares-her-story-and-highlights-from-her-first-world-cup-races/

www.rootsandrain.com/rider136238/kate-weatherly/results/

@andyoldlabour

Oh I know :( I’m very disappointed he won’t listen to me. I’ve cited various examples of where it’s happened but he just can’t see that it will happen in ‘his’ sport

Politics.

I read a theory somewhere that the huge growth in organised sport, and in spectating, since the Industrial Revolution is because sport replaces the physical labour that is no longer an everyday feature of most people's lives. Also that it fulfils a visceral need for tribalism and aggression, that is no longer met by widespread war and instability.