Fairness for women in sport

[akittencalledjesus]

A number of female sports people have signed a letter supporting the inclusion of transgender women in women's sports.

Fine. Billie Jean King can have monster serves aimed right at her. Megan Rapinoe can handle playing in the top leagues of the world and be aggressively tackled by much stronger men. Meanwhile transmen are still forgotten when it comes to trans inclusion.

The madness continues.

Women have always been at the forefront of anti-women movements. The anti suffrage movement for example (article from the days when I actually trusted the BBC).

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-42704341

These women signers have all enjoyed their own success - they don’t have to worry about the removal of safe, equitable and fair sport for them - because they have already had it.

This biased reporting is a good reminder of why I hate the G.

But more welcome sunlight.

That's absolutely disgraceful of them. Talk about pulling the ladder up after themselves.

Here ie a good, less Guardian, explanation of what's going on:

twitter.com/wddaughter/status/1341366277219250178?s=20

I have been staring about this all day - although not surprising from BJK and Megan (sponsorship deals to consider I guess). How can they hand on heart say this? They wouldn’t have had a look in if this was the case when they were starting out (didn’t Megan and her sister benefit from female sports scholarships???).

Talk about pulling up the ladder after you. They are a disgrace and I hope to god not going into schools to give inspirational talks to girls (or maybe I hope they are - they’d get short shrift from the teen girls I know).

Not staring about this - stewing over their idiocy...

Gotta say though, although this is very Guardian, the comments on that post are largely questioning how fair this really is. So at least there is a glimmer of hope. The more this happens, the more the tide will turn.

Ffs. I support transwomen in sport just not in the women’s category. There are open categories and mixed sex teams and sports where it doesn’t matter. Run jump ride swim walk play compete - set up a new LGBT friendly group and I’d come and support you - go for it!

Just don’t ‘identify’ in where you’ll win

Rapinoe should know better; she was in the USA national team that got walloped by a bunch of U15 schoolboys in a warmup match for international competition.

powershowerforanhour

Yes, but Rapinoe is at the end of her career, has all the money and trophies, so doesn't care about anyone else. Same as BJK, if she had to compete against males, then nobody would have heard of her.

I believe she (and her sister) benefitted from a female sports scholarship. How blind is she?

The Wikipedia article on tennis "battles of the sexes" is a sobering reminder of sex based differences: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Sexes_(tennis)

Billie Jean King may wish to reflect that while she is one of the few women who beat a man he was 26 years older than her.

The possible end of women's sport breaks my heart. And to see other women collude in its demise is despicable.

So the two most know of those are ones whose careers are over and will never have to compete against males?

Cool story.

I think sportswomen who support this are either very selfish - because they've got their scholarships and awards and so on already and are happy to throw future sportswomen under the bus - or they're very stupid and really do not see the issue. Regardless of anything else, oestrogen is never going to turn a broad 6'3 man into a petite 5'4 woman.

Agree with all the comments here - women cosigning their own erasure and successful athletes pulling the ladder up after them is saddening and maddening.

On the Guardian's IG post it was heartening to see a lot of people disagreeing and questioning this though. As another poster said, a glimmer of hope maybe?

Side note, that post (on Guardian's Instagram) has disappeared for me. I can't see it in their feed and while I can see some of the comments when viewing replies to a comment I made it's super glitchy - anyone else seeing this or just me? Is it possible they've taken it down due to backlash?

The Guardian Instagram post is still there. I've just had a peruse of it. Interesting responses, I think.

Mostly interesting responses. The real outlier being the one person who keeps 'reminding' people that oestrogen turns men in to women and causes them to have periods. And apparently that is backed by science.