The Glorious Victories of Trans Athletes Are Shaking Up Sports

[zanahoria]

www.wired.com/story/the-glorious-victories-of-trans-athletes-are-shaking-up-sports/

this stuff keeps sounding more like 1984

does the author have any idea how ridiculous they sound?

I thought it was no more awful than many other articles I'd read - at least it included testosterone levels accurately, though it was still highly partisan on all fronts - until the last sentence which absolutely made my jaw drop and revealed the author to be attempting to twist reality far more even than Id realised.

I would wonder what on earth was happening in journalism. Except I can see what's happening to Allison Bailey, Professor Selina Todd, Raquel Rosario-Sanchez and Dr Kathleen Stock and others. Attempts to cut off their ability to earn a fucking living and eliminate their memory and experience from society. I was afraid to go to the WPUK meeting on Friday because I work for the NHS and it's easy to find me (nothing happened, all was fine). The attacks and the fear they engender really beggar belief. The bravery of those women.

These days, the more athletically outstanding a woman/girl is, the more likely I am to query if they are male. I don't quite think that's what the writer was driving at though!

Yeah.... No.
The suicide line is trotted out, transwomen feeling better about their body after years in the wrong body, by competing against women in their sports, just....
Not. Women's. Problem.

How athletically outstanding can a girl or woman be before we no longer see her as female?

Holy shit. That is next level jaw drop.

I had assumed this was a sarcastic headline and they were referring to how these MEN are peak-transing the country.
Doh

I thought it was a joke at first but hard to tell these days

It was the last sentence that smacked me in the jaw too.

Translation: actual women are rubbish and if the odd one really stands out, she is probably not a woman.

If we accept that sports aren't fair, why have categories at all?

Men out of women's sports. Now!

That headline though. Not sure if satire or..?

Hmm, that headline.

I've just been watching "World on Fire" on catch-up and it sounds like the sort of thing the American journalist would be made to read by her party handler.

Hilarious headline.

'How athletically outstanding can a girl or woman be before we no longer see her as female?'

You've got to be shitting me.

I mean, you really should be asking yourself, if you are a liberal minded social justice type, what the hell has happened if you respond to women talking about males in their sporting categories taking their places, medals and records by saying "Life isn't fair".

I cannot think of any other group who have faced and still face significant oppression and disadvantage that someone who thought they were a good guy would shrug and say 'Well, life isn't fair, suck it up". Jesus.

"If we accept that sports aren't fair, why have categories at all?"

Indeed. Why not allow unregulated doping too?

Glorious athlete so outstanding.

”As a transgender person myself, I don’t want to compete in a third category, which many people would see as a freak category.”

This was my jaw hitting the floor line. So this person considers intersex people to be freaks and refuses to have any part in that. Says it all doesn’t it.

The arrogance and narcissism is breathtaking. I think I might have peaked yet again!

“ So which approach is most fair? “Fair is a very subjective word,” says Joanna Harper, a transgender woman, distance runner, and researcher who served on the IOC committee that developed that organization’s current rules. It boils down to whom you’re trying to be fair to, Harper says. “To billions of typical women who cannot compete with men at high levels of sport?” Or “a very repressed minority in transgender people who only want to enjoy the same things that everybody else does, including participation in sports?””

The writer essentially acknowledges the advantages that being Male has and quite openly lays out all the arguments as to why sports should be segregated by sex, that to do otherwise is unfair to women, but who cares, men who think they’re women are oh so oppressed and so are so much more important. Fuck them. I am so tired of this bullshit.

"Sports and life have never been fair." Why do people keep saying things like this as if its some sort of gothca?
Miller and another runner, Andraya Yearwood—“have amassed 15 different state championship titles that were once held by nine different girls across the state.”
Nothing to see here,and sounds really fair so just be nice.
That last jaw dropping sentance reminded me of an interview of Miller and Yearwood.
Remember the "run faster" advice.

A quick Google of the author doesn't show and tra tweets, or retweets, nothing really to do with the debate.I find it odd. And she's an athlete.
Could this be female socialisation? Be nice and inclusive but at the detriment of females and to the benefit of males?(is that what female socialisation is?)

"Sports and life have never been fair." Why do people keep saying things like this as if its some sort of gothca?

@Oncewasblueandyellowtwo

Whatever happened to striving to make sport as fair as possible? Do transwomen's feelings override that now?

"But as more transgender athletes rise to the top of their fields ...."

But transgender athletes theoretically should be no better or worse than any other athlete. If they're rising to the top of their fields - and I bet this mostly means men-to-'women' rather than the opposite - it's because they're bigger, stronger and more muscular.

Only athletes with XX sex chromosomes should be able to enter women's events, in my view.

"Life's not fair" is usually said by someone who is about to be very unfair to someone else.

Are trans people shaking up women's sports or are they having a negligable impact? The article makes both claims, they both can't be true.

Laurel Hubbard is 10-20 years older than the other women in the top ten in recent weightlifting competitions. No, life's not fair. That's why we have sports categories, to make it a bit fairer so that we can actually enjoy watching it. It is enjoyable to watch fair competition even though not everyone who wins every competition is objectively 'the best of all time' or whatever. I really enjoy watching women's sport even though participants wouldn't beat male teams. I enjoy watching junior sport even though fully grown adults would beat them.

I'm not an advocate for a trans sports category, I'm actually with Joanna Harper on that one, it's exclusive and discriminatory to me. Likewise I'm very keen on clear hormone rules because it would be another incentive for women NOT to take testosterone due to their trans identity (I'm against all medical transition and note that many trans people see medicalisation as done to comply with transphobic processes - absolutely - social transition only and no rewriting of history such as birth certificates etc). Open category with doping rules where that's appropriate to monitor (and of course 'open' includes XX women if they wish); women's category based on declaration in the first instance with XX karyotyping where necessary (i.e. starting with any competition that has ramifications beyond its own existence - not parkrun, but definitely where national rankings or funding of any sort are at stake).

”As a transgender person myself, I don’t want to compete in a third category, which many people would see as a freak category.”

Presumably, Harper thinks all para athletes are also freaks?

This is truly a new low.

"Glorious victories" sounds like Soviet cultural propaganda circa 1963.

A very insightful article. The writer makes some excellent points.

www.womenarehuman.com/thats-not-a-female-weightlifter-its-a-man-baby/