Wednesday: The End of Sport for American Girls

[WootMoggie]

This screengrab is from the new presidents own web site.

I wonder how this well this is going to go down when they try to implement it.

The Supreme Court will have the last word on this, won't they?

I think sports will wake people up actually. Sometimes you need to see the inequality to understand that it goes beyond feelz.

I tried to have the trans chat with a couple of my American (Democrat) friends recently and all I got in response was "I think we should listen to the people who are directly affected by this"

Do these Dems have young daughters who are good at sport, or even interested in pursuing a professional career in sport?

When they themselves are "directly affected" we might hear them singing from a different songbook.

Woke millennial Democrats have daughters too. I'm hoping that's enough to eventually wake them up. Pun intended.

Point is, it's not about seeing the reality of these policies. It's about caring enough to challenge them.

People can huff about unfairness and then go about their day. Apathy is oppression's best tool.

It's not about sunlight alone. If no one is prepared to stand up and push back, all that will happen is women and girls lose their rights and freedoms in broad daylight and no one stops it.

This is how the "other side" see it:
www.outsports.com/2020/5/28/21273259/trump-administration-connecticut-transgender-student-athlete-federal-civil-rights-lawsuit

Note the assertion (with no supporting evidence) that trans athletes have no advantage.

I fear it's far from a done deal that the Supreme Court will come down on the side of women's rights.

highame
Lots of States wont implement.

Do they genuinely have that option?

• and what are the consequences if they exercise it?

(sorry - don’t know how the US works in that respect)

People can huff about unfairness and then go about their day. Apathy is oppression's best tool.

It's not about sunlight alone. If no one is prepared to stand up and push back, all that will happen is women and girls lose their rights and freedoms in broad daylight and no one stops it.

But how do we stop it here in the UK? Even if a petition were to be allowed long enough to get 10,000 signatures it'd just get turned down by our overwhelmingly male government.

Sorry @BuntingEllacott I meant to quote you and forgot quotation marks.

Biden makes my skin crawl.

@justanotherneighinparadise

I think sports will wake people up actually. Sometimes you need to see the inequality to understand that it goes beyond feelz.

I’m (perhaps over optimistically!) in this camp too.

Prisons are ‘out of sight, out of mind’ situation but with sports it’s all out there for the eye to see.

A really high profile event (Women’s Wimbledon Final, Olympic 100m etc) will wake the world, especially since sport* is one of the few ways that working class people from all countries, including developing countries, can achieve global success and celebrity through hard work and dedication.

*obvs not all sports are equally accessible, but the ones you can practise in an inner city with almost no equipment and/or subsidised coaching (ie running, football, boxing, basketball etc) are the closest we get to witnessing meritocracy in action.

Plus men, who are largely able to file feminism and transgenderism under ‘not my circus, not my monkeys’ understand the inherent unfairness in someone like H Mouncey having a career in men’s’ sport and then, when close to retirement/post injury/reaching their sell by date ‘transitioning’ to the women’s category, even if they don’t generally give much of a fuck about women’s sport.

Plus, anything that gets Rachel-Veronica-Ivy-McKinnon back on a talk show or news broadcast is guaranteed to win a few more round to the feminist view point. Worse spokesperson ever!

@teawamutu

The Supreme Court will have the last word on this, won't they?

They will - eventually. But at the moment they're often refusing to hear cases about this.

I posted this a little while ago:-

The US Supreme Court now accepts (or, rather, doesn't reject) transgender toilets and locker rooms in the USA

About a case from Oregon where the school district had implemented gender free locker rooms and toilets in its schools and parents objected.

It went to the Court of Appeal which sided with the school and then the Supreme Court refused to consider hearing the case.

The current make up of the Supreme Court is very republican. Trump got to appoint three supreme court judges. On pretty much every issue this is terrible from my perspective, but on this one it seems like a boon. I really can't see them passing this. Republicans aren't on board with this stuff. And Self ID in sport is going too far even for loads of otherwise supportive democrats.

@ArabellaScott

Biden makes my skin crawl.

I have to agree with that. Glad Trump’s out but I am wary of Biden.

@ISaySteadyOn

Who was it who said that the only difference between right wing men and left wing men is the position of the boot on women's necks? QED Biden

Andrea Dworkin. The quote continues "To right-wing men we are private property. To left-wing men, we are public property." Spot on with the likes of Biden.

I think sports could wake people up - but what you really need is something high profile. It would need to be the Olympics, or similar, because not many people watch women's rugby or football. And it would either have to be something really obviously unfair (biological male wins women's 100m, for example) or, sadly, a woman being badly injured by a male athlete. The other potential sport has for waking people up is boys taking girls' places in schools' sports teams, because parents are acutely alert to injustices faced by their own children.

Oh shit.

Are sports scholarships for university big in America? If so, that’ll piss some parents off - on both sides of the argument!!

I fear that by the time it reaches the Olympics, any TW athletes will be referred to everywhere as women, their wins will be reported as triumphs for women and any dissent or even discussion will be well and truly stamped on.

I should probably stop posting on this thread as I'm quite despondent about it today.

@KittyValentine

Are sports scholarships for university big in America? If so, that’ll piss some parents off - on both sides of the argument!!

Huge. So Terri Miller and Andraya Yearwood are well on the way to taking sports scholarships which could have been the only route to a college education for a young woman from an impoverished, underprivileged background.

The most egregious example of this was 50 something basketball player Gabriella Ludwig who took up a sports scholarship that could have gone to a talented young woman - despite Ludwig having already benefitted from such a scholarship as a young male back in Ludwig's 20s.

I fear that by the time it reaches the Olympics, any TW athletes will be referred to everywhere as women, their wins will be reported as triumphs for women and any dissent or even discussion will be well and truly stamped on.

I think the only way this won't happen is if you have unscrupulous countries fielding women's Olympic teams who were literally on the men's team four years prior. To be honest this seems like an obvious loophole for hyper competitive countries like Russia/China who have histories of doping. If this happens I suspect the US might have something to say about it.

Do you remember the American Fottballer who took the knee a while ago?

And he was pilloried and had not much support. Now sportsmen across the world take the knee re: Black people's Rights (Very simplistic explanation)

Great Thundberg was a very lone figure outside her school. A year later....hundreds, and then thousands of young people took to boycotting school for the day...then on to the streets.

Do you remember the two black male Olympic winners? Heads down. Fists up. (Shoes off if I remember correctly?)

Girls. Young women. Women and their male allies are going to have to have a physical symbol of protest going forward. A recognisable stance when peacefully protesting outside womens prisons that house males ie Highdown or when men in womens teams steal medals in the Olympics.

So far I can only think of the simple head down, fist raised and booing for sports arenas/Olympics.

Any other suggestions?

Sweet Christmas! I’ve just googled Gabrielle Ludwig - I have no words. How are people so blind about this issue?!?

I think we are inevitably going to see now exactly what we predicted form the start: the exclusion and disenfranchising of women from sport. And everything else.

Yes it's beyond depressing. However it may eventually result in enough women getting angry enough to wake up, stop being so bloody thick and standing up for their rights and those of the rest of half the human race. I suspect too that male winners dominating female sporting events are going to find the watching crowd a bit less enthusiastic than they would like; its going to become like what they've done to the word 'inclusion'. No one likes to actually say anything, but a lot of eye rolling happens because they know what is going on.

Sorry, have just listened to Eddie Izzard talking about 'girl mode' and how he will be acting in boy mode. So depressing.

Since he seems to think I need to know about this, I feel he needs to know that I shall be watching him acting in a 'pissed off with all this' mode.

And a 'doesn't it suck that I got born with the biology that means I have to endure sexist crap like this constantly while not being allowed to talk about it' mode.

And a 'you used to notice and care about this kind of thing, isn't it odd you've stopped' mode.

I have many interesting modes too. I'm pan mode.

Sport is not going to be the issue, it's going to be access to women's changing rooms and sadly the first assault or worse by someone who was born a man (and not had gender reassignment surgery) that will get the issue noticed.