Trans participation in sports comic strip

[Itsagiven]

Spotted this on Mermaids’ Twitter ‘Bodies aren’t binary So why are Sports?’- a lovely, youth-friendly comic-strip lamenting the unfairness of trans women weightlifters being excluded from women’s weightlifting competitions. They even get in a dig at ‘anti-trans’ group ‘Fair Play for Women’.

Others sports mentioned.
Mermaids described it as ‘Truly Amazing’. You might disagree. thenib.com/gender-divisions-in-sports-trans-athletes/

I see they are exploiting people with DSDs again.

This cartoon is rage inducing. It takes cogent feminist points - the fact that women face artificial barriers in professional sport, the fact that gender neutral sports like shooting are segregated by sex, the barriers women have to face to become professional athletes- and uses them to claim that it’s “patriarchal” to deny trans women a spot in women’s sports. Personally I can’t think of anything more patriarchal than a man declaring himself to be a woman and then beating women at their own game. Lots of mentions of black women and intersex disorders just to confuse things further. Perhaps the most baffling bit is where it says it’s purely a social construct that women aren’t as good at sport as men, and they have been segregated not to give female sport an actual chance to thrive but to deprive women of male medals (and of course Judith butler is cited). This is insane. Yes, to a certain extent women are socially disadvantaged in sports. But when you get down to it the power and strength of male athletes overpowers women- i remember reading that if the Boston marathon was made gender neutral women would not , on their current times, win a single medal.

I also think it’s useful to focus on pronouns here because ones sympathy is activated for the plight of poor women arbitrarily excluded from women’s sports. But when you read the comic as “men who say they are women” it takes on a very different light. And, as ever, notice these postmodern arguments are never deployed to destroy youth sport or the Paralympics - only to take stuff away from women.

I can't be arsed to read all that, but I find the multiple "person with upraised baseball bat" images... odd... considering the association of that pose with misogynistic threats from TRAs.

There's also an image that looks like a weapon sticking in to a woman's stomach... when you look closer the "weapon" is a little road with a little person running on it but I assume that artists know what they're doing when they draw images like that. Deeply unpleasant.

oh ffs when you scroll down and it's got a bit about "if a black woman is not a woman..." Seriously these racists need to shut the fuck up.

Perhaps the most baffling bit is where it says it’s purely a social construct that women aren’t as good at sport as men, and they have been segregated not to give female sport an actual chance to thrive but to deprive women of male medals (and of course Judith butler is cited). This is insane. Yes, to a certain extent women are socially disadvantaged in sports.

So... what they should do, given the fact that humans are a dimorphic species, is:
A) campaign for there to be two categories, open and women's. Women's for females with no historical or current testosterone advantage over the normally observed women's range. Those who think sex is just a construct ought to be perfectly happy to be included in the open category, shouldn't they?
And
B) more parity in terms of funding, facilities and status for these two groups.

So women can have a chance at formerly-male medals but also women's sport is given its chance to thrive.

Yes, the drawing of the faceless, looming man brandishing a baseball bat was disturbing and VERY reminiscent of those bat-wielding TRA images. DARVO.

One problem with an open category, at least in contact sports, is that it is simply unsafe to have men competing against women, and this negatively affects the men participating (who might have an increased likelihood of seriously injuring an opponent), even if the woman accepts the risks. A secondary problem might be to deprive women's sports of its best athletes, thus rendering women's sport second class. I don't really know what I think of these arguments.

Linked to this, does anyone know what is behind not allowing world records to be officially recognised if they are in mixed sex competition? This was not something I knew.

Urgh. What a mean spirited cartoon.

What I’m getting from that is that the best way to improve women’s sports is to make sure that they include male bodies. This will raise standards and improve credibility and funding.

Er, no.

I think natal female / open is reasonable for many sports (a lot of sports already are this way - but very few women make the cut), while three categories will be the solution for others.

This comic strip is idiotix

does anyone know what is behind not allowing world records to be officially recognised if they are in mixed sex competition?

It's only in a few endurance sports, where pace-making or draughting is important. A female marathon record would not stand if the woman had male pace-makers, a female cycling record would not count if the woman rode in a male peloton.

I can see arguments for both sides of this, but I think they're probably got it right: if women's cycling records counted when they were draughted by men then ALL female cycling records would be set this way, there would be none from female only events.

... of course it's quite rare for men and women to compete alongside each other anyway, there are few events where this would be an issue.

It is a load of unscientific illogical rubbish.
I agree with Errol, if they don’t believe in segregating sports by sex, they should all campaign for all men’s categories to be renamed ‘open’, and compete in those, and leave women’s sports alone.

I wouldn’t have thought any serious female athletes would want to compete in an open category as they would be at such a disadvantage.

there is so much nonsense there it is hard to know where to start but I shall pick this one

They point out that womens world records do not count if they ocur during mixed events

There is sound reason for this as male runners can act as pace makers for women. No world record men or womens will count if pace makers are involved.

and the story about Nicole Hanselmann is just plain dishonest. Road cycling is a sport where individual riders often put on a spurt to try and break the rest of the pack by daring them to go along. It is a very difficult thing to do, usually the pack will catch up as it is easier to ride in a bunch.

Nicole did this and caught the male cyclists, which shows she could in a short spell go faster than the organizers believed a woman could do, as they did not want the two races to interfere with each other, she was asked to stop. It proved a point that the womens race had to be catered for but it did not show that she was better rider than the males or the other females.

Nicole finished 74th in her race.

One problem with an open category, at least in contact sports, is that it is simply unsafe to have men competing against women

I don't disagree, I was saying that in the context of the idiotic 'sex is a construct' excuses. If they really believed that then they should have no problem signing up for an open category and leaving the women's alone. Or for that matter, if they really believe sex is a construct then they'd surely want to compete against the best with the men not the women excluded from it.

Convaluted and contradictory. The author states that there is no definitive scientific test for the female sex after blithely claiming sex is a spectrum. They also suggest that women are held back by women only events and that we can be competitive against men if allowed to compete against men. If that's the case surely it makes more sense to be fighting for the abolishment of single sex categories not for male inclusion in female events.

If this person truly believes biological sex is a spectrum, that single sex categories harm women and prevent us from doing our best, then how does it benefit a transwoman to restrict themselves to the 'inferior' women's category when they could be achieving their best in the male one?

*convoluted - really wish we had an edit function.

Personally I can’t think of anything more patriarchal than a man declaring himself to be a woman and then beating women at their own game

It's a deeper level of patriarchy than most of us conceived would ever occur, I think. It's off the charts.

@334bu

I see they are exploiting people with DSDs again.

What else do they have.

Besides saying that acknowledging that males have an advantage over female people in many sports is supporting white supremacy

@FWRLurker

I think natal female / open is reasonable for many sports (a lot of sports already are this way - but very few women make the cut), while three categories will be the solution for others.

This comic strip is idiotix

A friend of Arsetelix and Obolix, presumably!

This comic strip is idiotix
— A friend of Arsetelix and Obolix, presumably!

This is a topic that really interests me and I still couldn’t make it all the way through that self serving word salad.

And let’s not forget dogmatix

The sheer irony in that - whines about power structures but refuses to see the simple solution that they can always participate in the men's category.

I couldn't read much. It's just too fucking stupid.