Trans athletes in women's sports speak out - RT documentary

[SunsetBeetch]

Featuring Rachel McKinnon / Veronica Ivy.

Enjoy

"It's a human right to compete in sport"

Same old tired trope.

And it didn’t point out that McK has recently said (correct me if I am wrong) that it doesn’t matter that there IS residual advantage, the mental health impacts outweigh the harm to women. Obviously my paraphrasing but I think that was the gist.

Even if it were a human right to play sport, nobody is stopping them. They can run, jump, lift, cycle, anything they want, individually or on the men’s team. Just not with, and against, women.

One of the interviewees who self described as queer and fluid and competes in women’s powerlifting stated that a separate category wouldn’t be welcomed because it would be a denial of status as a woman. That would be hurtful.

Indeed. And JC explains that their queer identity means that they can completely self define their sexuality AND gender on a fluid basis which could change from day to day and rejects ‘your boxes’ (labelling).

Except when they want to enter the women’s powerlifting competition- then they consistently choose the ‘woman’ box.

Why does JC in their apparent constantly fluid gender never have ‘man’ days for competing?

I’m a doctor, and I’m so damn sick of people banging on about lowering testosterone levels.
It wouldn’t help even if you lowered them to zero. That would not shrink a man’s shoulder girdle, broaden his pelvis, shorten his femurs, lower his centre of gravity, reduce his cardiac output, oxygen carrying capacity, lung volume, fast twitch muscle fibre proportion, etc etc. He would still have a massive unfair advantage over every female athlete, and should be banned from women’s competitions, whatever he identifies as.

I find it baffling that we even have to justify why men can't be in women's competition.

Sporting competitions are split by sex. Some are also differentiated by age, disability, weight and ranking.

Why the hell did anyone decide you know what let's chuck away the sex split and replace it with a gender split. Why do we even have to argue the point?

I am particularly aggrieved that such a huge change to women's classificiation was made without public debate! So here we are arguing about it AFTER a rule change.

I feel a future campaign coming on about major organisations not being allowed to randomly and secretly change basic definitions like this. Maybe it would form part of a transparency and integrity measure.

I’m a doctor, and I’m so damn sick of people banging on about lowering testosterone levels. It wouldn’t help even if you lowered them to zero. That would not shrink a man’s shoulder girdle, broaden his pelvis, shorten his femurs, lower his centre of gravity, reduce his cardiac output, oxygen carrying capacity, lung volume, fast twitch muscle fibre proportion, etc etc. He would still have a massive unfair advantage over every female athlete, and should be banned from women’s competitions, whatever he identifies as

Hear bloody hear!

@Babdoc we need more doctors like you.

@StringyPotatoes

"I identify as queer so my sexuality is whatever I say it is whenever I say it is. It's different in sport though because I have to declare it" I highly doubt you have to declare your sexuality. You have to declare your sex though. Convenient that you chose to stick as "woman" for that, isn't it?

"It's a human right to compete in sport"
I did a double take and had to look this up. It is not a human right.

"Assaults on women in women's spaces by people identifying as trans just don't happen"
Yes, they do.

Honestly, I'd laugh if it wasn't so utterly disrespectful to women.

TRAs lie. The more I read the more I see the blatant lies. I can't believe they get away with it. That cyclist who came second and said she was fine with it is the type of woman who is going to make this fight very hard for us.

Lying to maintain/ grab power is one of the oldest strategies in politics. I mean look at the current UK PM ffs, weasel words are his MO.

What Rachel McKinnen said at the end is a really sad observation. Majority of society seems happy to parrot the TWAW line apart from when it comes to sports. But why is that? Surely women’s safety and right to privacy is more important. Women in prisons and hospital should have their own single sex spaces. It seems men care more about the fairness in sports than women’s safety.

@Jkrowling92

What Rachel McKinnen said at the end is a really sad observation. Majority of society seems happy to parrot the TWAW line apart from when it comes to sports. But why is that? Surely women’s safety and right to privacy is more important. Women in prisons and hospital should have their own single sex spaces. It seems men care more about the fairness in sports than women’s safety.

Give them an inch and they take a mile. Women need to be saying that transwomen are men across the board, in every respect.

They can call themselves "trans women" if they like. They can't call themselves women.

We're in this position because we've let too much slide. It will be hard to gain back what we've lost now.

It’s extremely difficult to get rid of tenured faculty in a US context (VI was an associate professor which means tenured). Usually it means you did something really majorly wrong, like many complaints, failure to do the basics of your job, etc. If VI refused to teach classes VI was booked to teach that is certainly something, but I don’t think it would be enough at my U for example. They usually want to work with you to avoid a lawsuit. The fact The university basically sued HER for the cost of the courses she didn’t teach and merely had to waive these fees definitely says something about how the legal wrangling went (not in VIs favor)...

I watched it all.

My thoughts were that they really needed an expert medical viewpoint on the cyclists claims. They were making all sorts of statements as ‘fact’, I’d have liked to have heard someone give some facts that had data attached to it.

Also the power lifter. They didn’t even claim they were a TW in the beginning of the video. They said they were gender fluid depending on the day. Interesting then that when a third category wax suggested they then claimed TWAW. Do they ever compete as a man I wonder? 🤔

What a weird comparison with Michael Phelps. Sure, he’s got physical attributes that make swimming an ideal sport for him (guess that’s why he didn’t try out for gymnastics), let alone other factors like excellent technique, strong work ethic, low lactic acid - but it’s in no way comparable to VI competing in women’s sport?

Lost

They never then point out that if a woman had exactly the same proportions of Phelps' body, she would still not beat him.

She would not have all the other male benefits starting at types of muscle, lung capacity and v-max, etc etc etc. It is a completely irrelevant distraction. Rather disappointing that a supposed academic would even use it as a comparator, unless they are counting on people not thinking critically about it.

@HollowTalk

Veronica resigned alright. The people Veronica mentions here (before leaving) are Veronica's colleagues.

And here's the appraisal.

Ouch! What a cracking report. Cracking. I'm smiling very widely. My face may even hurt.

Rachel McKinnon/Veronica Ivy's unpublished (!) doctoral thesis is titled:

"Reasonable Assertions: On Norms of Assertion and Why You Don't Need to Know What You're Talking About"

I am not joking.

Here is a direct quote from the abstract of said thesis:

“Similarly, I argue, whether one's assertion is true or false is not strictly relevant to the normative evaluation of an assertion.”

uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/handle/10012/6619

@niceberg

Lasted two minutes. Will try again later, but so far nothing said that is of substance or could constitute an interesting argument or thought-provoking opinion. Maybe it's just taking time to warm up...

One of the K. Farmers did an 'I watched this so you don't have to' review of this documentary and it was hilarious. I think it probably told you everything you needed to know about the content if you can't bear watching it.

@HollowTalk

Multiple choice tests for Philosophy 101!!!

I found this insane too.

Just watched the video. So many funny moments. Do they think they come across well, I wonder? I mean, they cooperated and got to say what they wanted. I don't think they could blame editing for their position failing to stack up at all in any way.

From the university report (leaving aside the dismal section on 'service'):

You challenge this argument in many ways, but you also have thus far evaded what might seem like the theoretically most important question: what is the normative basis for the distinction between men’s and women’s sports? You argue that the distinction simply exists as a practice, and thus should be governed by the same legal and human rights standards that should govern all our practices. And you argue that the supposed normative basis is not the historically or empirically true one , that women’s sports were in fact invented to keep women in a subordinate position. But none of this challenges your opponents’ conviction that the above standard should be the normative basis for what they understand as the justified distinction between men’s and women’s sports. None of it takes up the question of whether you think there is any normative justification for, and thus should be, a distinction between men’s and women’s sports. Maybe you don’t have to have an answer of your own to this question, but then you need a compelling answer to the question of why you don’t have to answer it.

What a weird comparison with Michael Phelps. Sure, he’s got physical attributes that make swimming an ideal sport for him (guess that’s why he didn’t try out for gymnastics), let alone other factors like excellent technique, strong work ethic, low lactic acid - but it’s in no way comparable to VI competing in women’s sport?

Phelps has genuinely got a very rare physiology that makes him uniquely suited to swimming.

VI has, um, not got a physiology that makes VI uniquely suited to cycling. There must be several hundred million human male bodies that are better adapted for the sport. VI's unique quality is not their physiology or their dedication to their sport and certainly not their performance in the sport, but their shamelessness. If there were world shamelessness championships no one could object to them winning, I think. But cycling championships? Fuck off.

And here is RM/VI 2 years ago arguing for no lowering of testosterone. Enjoy.

Oh for the confidence of a mediocre man.

USA Today (features RM/VI):

'There's nothing to be fearful of': Parents and activists fight to keep transgender girls in school sports'

eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/03/28/transgender-sports-lawmakers-target-girls-playing-high-school-sports/6995760002/