Athletics: China field a women’s relay team featuring two men

[Haworthia]

This was as predictable as the day is long. China are well known for their, er, intense pursuit of national success at the Olympics. What better way than to field two blokes but insist they’re women!

I mean, look at them.

On Twitter there were numerous people suggesting that they were possibly women who have taken massive doses of testosterone. Personally, I don’t think testosterone could ever give a natal woman such masculine faces.

They’re men.

twitter.com/savewomenssport/status/1167544600002748417?s=21

I showed my husband and his response was:

'2 men! No, wait, its 3 men - I wasnt sure about the one on the right till I looked down'

My 7 year old immediately recognised the middle 2 as men.

Can the Chinese Daily News define ‘woman’ please, because I think they are using the wrong dictionary.

Eric Vilain is a believer in 'gender identity'.

He's a bit inconsistent though, isn't he?

I get the impression that, in the context of sports, he is an intersex advocate who conflates and separates transgender and intersex as it suits him. He said this in 2016:

Vilain, the UCLA geneticist, sees what he calls a "schizophrenic" conflict between the Chand ruling and the IOC guidelines on transgender female—not intersex—athletes, which was rewritten in November to allow an athlete to participate in competition as a female if her testosterone is below 10 nanomoles per liter, same as the old IAAF standard. "The guidelines are very favorable for transgender athletes, and a great advancement," says Vilain. "But the same rule was struck down for intersex athletes. It's illogical."

Where, then, does this lead? Perhaps Olympic sports should establish a third gender category: intersex. A more likely possibility, given societal trends: "You put everybody in the same bag, just compete by gender identity," says Vilain. "Right now the social activists are winning. So you can have Bruce Jenner saying, 'I'm Caitlyn, and I'm competing as a woman.' Nations have a huge investment in sports, and they would do this. And that would be a disaster for women's sports. It would be a sad end to what feminists have wanted for so long."

www.si.com/olympics/2016/08/11/caster-semenya-2016-rio-olympics-track-and-field

The whole thing is just so ridiculous.
Professional athletics and sport is not about how you feel but what your body is capable of.
Separate categories based on sex is purely to create a fair playing field for the competitors. Nothing is going to change the fact that male and female bodies are quite different. This is very obvious in the photo of the Chinese team.

This is so easy to understand, isn't it? It shouldn't need to be said.

Those athletes are not even bending the rules, never mind breaking them, but that's because the rules are utterly ludicrous. Made by men to suit men and to hell with the other half of the population.

Those athletes are not even bending the rules, never mind breaking them, but that's because the rules are utterly ludicrous. Made by men to suit men and to hell with the other half of the population.

Exactly. The rules say that men can compete in the female category if they have a 'female gender identity' and low testosterone (for a man). They don't have to convince anyone that they are women, or that they think they are women, or look in any way like women.

What is a 'female gender identity'? We are changing sporting categories according to this, and changing laws. Yet nobody seems to be able to define what a 'female gender identity' actually is.

I get the impression that, in the context of sports, he is an intersex advocate who conflates and separates transgender and intersex as it suits him.

That was my impression. Most of his work seems to be about intersex, but he has also ventured into the realms of gender identity and sexual orientation (he has published papers about a biological basis for both of these). The NCAA document where he was quoted earlier is from 2011 and he doesn't seem to have published much about transgender recently. From that quote from 2016, it looks as though he might have done a bit more thinking about where this is going in recent years.

Vilain has also written that the rules have been written on the basis of inclusion rather than fairness:

Vilain told me that the NCAA’s rules were also aimed at inclusivity and that the governing body aims to give everyone the chance to compete. Creating rules around transgender participation, he admitted, was extremely challenging. He said that the entire concept of anatomical equality for transgender athletes was simply not feasible, and thus, it was not a stated goal of the NCAA’s rules.

“It is not about making everybody biologically equal, and I think that is a common misconception when we start talking about transgender athletes,” he said. “People want transgender [females] to be physiologically identical to [born] females, and if they’re not, it’s unfair. That is not possible.”

Dr. Vilain referenced the structure of the pelvis and the mass of certain muscle groups as anatomical differences between the male and female body that will always be somewhat different. But achieving total equality is not the point, Dr. Vilain said. The purpose of the NCAA’s rules is to, in a sense, shift the transgender female athlete’s muscle mass and physiology away from that of the average male. The goal is to create a pathway to include the transgender athlete, not create total equality.

“Can you turn a man’s body into a woman’s body? The short answer is ‘no,” Vilain said. “I think we need to move past that idea completely.”

ThePurpoted

That is absolutely vile. Their entire idea of "fairness" is to let a tiny minority of men beat women. What the actual fuck.

"The goal is to create a pathway to include the transgender athlete, not create total equality." -> and with that exclude high school girls from scholarships that will be taken up by transgirls.

Bespin

"yep she finished 7th totally dominating woman's sport again."

Parroting typical trans validation propaganda. You take transwomen not dominating as evidence that everything is fair. Heard it over and over.

Have you ever thought what this man would achieve against men (without HRT to be fair)? Take Laurel Hubbarb - as a man never won anything. As a 'woman' suddenly Common Wealth and on the way to break the world record. At an age where most women in the sport are long retired.

Yes this person did not win, but that doesn't mean they didn't have an advantage. Your disingenuity is very telling.

twitter.com/FionaSnp/status/1168550430198181888

Fiona is a ding dong - either doesn’t get the point (you lot are horrid to say these brave and stunning women look manly) or doesn’t give a chuff (if they say they are women then they are women, you horrid lot).

Either way, 🛎 🔔

The Fiona Robertson who believes that Yaniv is a woman?

Iq of a gnat

Christ she's an idiot. Does she not know this went viral in China first? Or does she think the Chinese are racist against themselves?

Bit of arse handing going on in that Twitter thread, I'd say

Fiona demonstrates perfectly why genderism is not compatible with women's rights and safety. We're no longer allowed to challenge men in women's spaces, because they might be women in their head or otherwise.

"Christ she's an idiot. Does she not know this went viral in China first? Or does she think the Chinese are racist against themselves?"

She doesn't actually believe this is racism. But it is just another thing to accuse the other side of.

It's what happens when you decide to believe the first lie. That men can become women by declaring it so.

Then you have to believe all the other lies; the trans cult demand it of you. And then you lash out at those pointing out how utterly absurd it all is.

Wasn't she the dimwit who said that because Yaniv is a woman, it demonstrates that female predators use their womanly ways to abuse girls and women?

Or some such idiocy.

The SNP is not short of thickos. See also: Mhairi Black.

Fortunately they also have Joan McAlpine and Joanna Cherry who are women of intelligence. Otherwise they'd be unelectable.

The racism angle is also interesting because when I first saw the headline I thought that it might be hard to tell as Chinese men can look very feminine from my viewpoint. So I was expecting to be thinking I wasn't sure. But I saw and heard two men without doubt.

In a twisted way i sort of admire her. She's sticking to her opinions in public despite the fact they require her to believe seven impossible things before breakfast. And of course there are elements of truth that she's using; female athletes are policed for their appearance; of course racism exists and will sometimes appear in this issue. But how on earth can this not cause her to think again? It seems like a wilful naivety, or a sunken cost fallacy so huge that it's enveloped her (see also the maven of mayhem or whatever her name is).

Your disingenuity is very telling.

I’d say it’s more (also?) a paucity of argument - it’s a feature not a bug of the TRA position.

I can’t see the racism here. Chinese men and women have never been accused of looking excessively masculine in the way that black men and women have. It would only be racist if their race made them more likely to have masculine features but it’s the opposite in fact.

It’s racist in the sense that all those idiots who think there are “four cis women” in those photos are assuming the Chinese people who raised concerns on Chinese social media about the sex of other Chinese people aren’t capable of accurately sexing their own race.