Facebook post on women's sport

[DistantVworp]

I know my post got deleted last night, but I wanted to give a brief update. Beardy woke bro is still silent, but a female friend of his agreed with me (and also made other points on T-levels, anatomical structure).

Another female friend then told me it was all tiresome terf talking points and I was being unkind (and that I didn't think intersex people exist) plus I needed to use trans women not transwomen blah blah.

Anyway, posted again to point out

1. Everything I posted was factually correct and wasn't it interesting that she dismissed it as terf bullshit without actually being able to counter the facts.
2. Intersex women in women's sport is a totally separate debate. It's one I think is important to have, but has to relevance to the topice we were discussing.
3. Don't call me a terf - and linked to terfisaslur.com

Feeling a lot more confident today - onward and upward!

Do people genuinely believe there is no physical difference between men and women or is it just a distraction tactic?

From what I gather, people supportive of males partaking in female sports because said male "identifies as a woman" is that....

"yes we know there are some physical differences between m/f but those physical differences don't matter, we don't care about fairness for women, the only thing that matters is validation for male people's identity and blah blah intersex blah blah"

Helmetbymidnight

I needed to use trans women not transwomen

What’s the difference here?

Well there is that Helmetbymidnight I clearly haven't thought this through properly

@Meredithgrey1

I needed to use trans women not transwomen

What’s the difference here?

In the first example, trans is being used as an adjective to describe the noun ‘woman’. In the second, transwoman is a compound noun of its own accord.

It’s the difference between a red car that you drive and Redcar the place you might live or visit.

@Babdoc

Have they explained how they think lowering testosterone can in any way at all shrink the shoulder girdle, lower the cardiac output, reduce the lung capacity, shorten the femurs, widen the pelvis, lower the centre of gravity, remove the fast twitch muscle fibres and reduce the oxygen carrying capacity of a male athlete, to enable him to compete fairly against women? Because I’m a doctor and I’d love to see their evidence!

Me too!

I would also not be afraid to say on your Facebook post “OK. Let’s assume that there may be evidence that overturns everything we know so far about male and female physiology and with some more research, it might be possible to prove that transwomen and women can compete on a level playing field with certain adaptations. Why are we operating on the assumption of inclusion pending that evidence? It’s equally fair to exclude transwomen until we have that evidence, because if it turns out not to exist, then they’ve had a number of years of advantage that will have been very unfair to women, so let’s avoid that”.

@Meredithgrey1

I needed to use trans women not transwomen

What’s the difference here?

Trans woman is indeed like an adjective to describe a woman. Like tall or short or black. Using it concedes the point that TWAW. I use transwomen for that very reason or preferably a term that doesn't include the word woman at all but is banned on mumsnet. Must be kind ( which only applies to women).

I’ve found this thread very interesting and informative. I used the term trans women on a different thread because auto correct changed transwomen and I was ignorant of the difference.
I’m shocked and annoyed that auto correct did that.

Well done, OP! There will be plenty of others who read but don't feel brave enough to respond.

"The quote is from the same website as the red and green graphs, I'm sure if what you say about testosterone suppression was "known" it would have been at the top of the page"

When I was competing at cycle racing, I had chronically low testosterone levels, it didn't stop me competing and I was faster than most guys. The alternative would have been to have T patches and have to give up competitive sport. My personal best at 10 miles, set in 1981 on a course in Kent, is still faster than the current women's course record set by Olympic gold medallist Jo Rowsell a few years ago.
The physiological differences between better than average men and elite women are pretty obvious.
Kate Weatherley was an average male downhill mountain biker in New Zealand. Three months after competing in the male category, they changed to the women's category, won their first race by a long way, then won the New Zealand women's downhill championship.

@gardenbird48

"The IOC's policy follows the second line of thought and requires that males have low levels of testosterone in order to compete against females. To my knowledge, none of the boys on this site had testosterone within the levels required by the IOC. If they did, they would almost certainly have not performed as well. Because of this, the statistics are not an apples to apples comparison to what competition between males with low testosterone and females would look like. "

but we also know that testosterone suppression makes very little overall difference to performance. In fact I think they found that increased training can counteract any drop in performance, so I think one lot of apples is probably as good as the other.

I'd like to know if people are also arguing for any male with artificially lowered testosterone to be allowed to compete in women's sports. Is it necessary to also have a feminine gender identity (unverifiable) or to identify as a transwoman (also unverifiable), or should any male who lowers his testosterone below a certain level also be allowed to compete against women?

It seems discriminatory to make these decisions based on an unverifiable self-declared identity, when the physical characteristics might be the same for someone who doesn't share that identity.

Well done DistantVworp!

The whole lowering testosterone/“no trans Olympian” argument is just rubbish and just distracts from the hundreds of women and girls who have been negatively impacted by just a handful of trans athletes competing in women’s and girls’ sport. That these women and girls who have been impacted negatively are invisible to TRAs tells you all you need to know.

@DistantVworp

Now we're onto TWAW and I'm a horrible bigot. So I asked her what makes a transwoman a woman....

dont exspect an answer on that anytime soon.

Iv asked that question of true believers many times, never got an answer so far.

Brief update - woke-bro has responded, as has my female ally!

Woke bro has basically said:

1. Chromosomes aren't a good way to split people up (and how chromosome testing would be wrong and if you only tested trans athletes that's transphobic). And sex isn't binary.
2. Strict rules in place at the Olympics.
3. Sports isn't fair, transwomen don't have any overall advantage over cis people and if you start worrying about hormone levels then you will get cis women being told to medically reduce testosterone.
4. He does think there is a nuanced conversation to be had (success?) on how to include trans athletes, and cases like Laurel Hubbard could be taken into account when establishing guidelines, but the conversation is mired in transphobia and people are using trans in sports to whip up transphobia.

My new friend (love this woman who I've never met) has then replied basically saying that he is accepting that women's sports shouldn't exist then...

I am going to respond, likely not until the morning as I am totally shattered. Key things I want to bring up are:

1. Again, intersex is not relevant to the discussion on trans participation in sports.
2. Strict rules in place at the Olympics - I know there were a lot of flaws in the process (if anyone can point me at anything helpful that would be great), and the 'evidence' was mainly Joanna Harper's paper. Point out all the advantages that reducing T does not affect.
3. Ask him why he thinks women's sport as a category exists.
4. Talk about fairness / safety / inclusion (ref the World rugby stuff).

there's a few points upthread I want to include Babdoc and Sophoclesthefox made great ones so I want to work them in.

Anything else you think I should bring up? I will re-point him at the Emma Hilton / Tommy Lundberg paper as he's completely ignoring it.

Thread by fondofbeetles on the ioc 2015 policy change (comparing to world rugby).

mobile.twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1316722820353798144

Proud of you, OP 👏

youre doing great op,

try and keep it light, play to the galley a bit.

i cant take these jokers seriously, i mean they genuinely dont know about biological differences between men and women? strength and speed are substantially different- and this is not just anout the olympics but all levels of womens sport- why does he think women should not be allowed sports without men?

@aliasundercover

I used to use 'transwoman' as I don't like writing 'trans woman'. Recently I've been avoiding even that as I don't want the word 'woman' to be used at all when describing these men.

I use 'trans' to 'transperson' these days.

I like that! If woman had no meaning anymore then surely ‘person who is trans’ is equally as acceptable.

Fair play for women have loads of great stuff

fairplayforwomen.com/sport/

Also this is a great at a glance guide

Woke bro has basically said:
1. Chromosomes aren't a good way to split people up (and how chromosome testing would be wrong and if you only tested trans athletes that's transphobic). And sex isn't binary.

• as you say, intersex isn’t relevant, and if chromosome testing which would involve one cheek swab, one time in an athletes whole career is transphobic and too difficult, then how would the routine monitoring of T levels be any less so?? Bonkers.

2. Strict rules in place at the Olympics.

• that still involve t levels many multiples of the norm for women. Not that strict.

3. Sports isn't fair, transwomen don't have any overall advantage over cis people and if you start worrying about hormone levels then you will get cis women being told to medically reduce testosterone.

• he’s advocating for mixed sex across all sports there, which I’m sure he won’t give a shit about, but he should at least own that. Also, hormone levels are just one metric.

4. He does think there is a nuanced conversation to be had (success?) on how to include trans athletes, and cases like Laurel Hubbard could be taken into account when establishing guidelines, but the conversation is mired in transphobia and people are using trans in sports to whip up transphobia

• I think he’s a lost cause from this, but I would suggest the possibility of having an “open” category replace the men’s and keeping the women’s category protected. Also I’d ask how he thinks it could be discussed without “transphobia”.

Good luck!

Thank you all so much, will see what he comes back with. I think he is a bit of a lost cause, but as someone on my previous thread said, he's probably not really my audience - I'm talking more to the lurkers and other friends who may at least go away and think a bit.

Sports isn't fair, transwomen don't have any overall advantage over cis people and if you start worrying about hormone levels then you will get cis women being told to medically reduce testosterone.

Are you or he American out of interest? Seeing sports instead if sport more and wondering if it is coming to the UK.

This does suggest he's lost & you should think of the lurkers who have better knowledge of human beings.

It might be too philosophical but, the main questions for me are:

Why do we split sport into male & female? (we know the answer is 1st because of the physical differences - which he sort of accepts by talking about hormones).

If gender identity is an internal sense of self - what would be the purpose of splitting sport by that? What would it be for ?

Obviously the male female categories already exist, so that's where we are, but if the rationale for women's sport is abandoned there will be no justification for keeping separate women's sport.

Good luck!

Sports isn't fair

I hate this argument. It often coexists with "be nice", "you shouldn't only care about winning", etc. It is demanding female socialisation from females who compete. It is telling women that women aren't allowed to be competitive even in competitive sports.