NFL player likening trans to race in sport debate

[ImaginaryCat]

An article in the Guardian by an NFL player who, in my opinion, spectacularly misses the point.

www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/apr/15/trans-kids-youth-sports-bills-legislation

He talks about "anti-trans" (FFS it's not anti-trans, just pro-women) sports rules being like the barriers faced in life by black or poor kids. How sport has the capacity to be a great leveller making everyone feel welcome, irrespective of race or background.

Except it's the complete opposite. It's about someone with a massive fucking physiological advantage being able to push girls out of sport.

Getting kids from deprived backgrounds into sport is a great goal to have.... as is encouraging more girls to stick with it for longer. Making them compete against male bodied competitors is not going achieve that.

But as a bloody huge bloke, how would he even know what it's like to come up against that kind of competitor? It's great that he was able to overcome racial discrimination to excel at his sport, but he's talking out of his arse to think being blocked for your skin colour is anything like being blocked for your wider shoulders, larger lungs, more developed muscles, etc, etc!

The guardian have lost touch with reality.
This bit was particularly good:

I first read about the anti-trans legislation being signed into law and pushed to our youth through an article about women’s sports. About protecting cis-gendered girls from the participation of trans girls in what was written as, “an unfair advantage”, or “an attack on women’s athletics”, both of which by science and reason are untrue

(Rolls around on the floor laughing)

This is awful. But I've found that most male athletes understand the issue.

How many women play in the NFL? I suspect it must be close to zero as even the worst player in the NFL will have massive advantages over a very good female player! Not like for like at all!

It’s worth repeating:

Trans people are not ‘banned’ from anything, and nobody is proposing that they should be. Like everyone else in the world they are able to play in any sport in their sex class. Like everyone else in the world they should not be allowed to play in the opposite sex class.

I mean no disrespect to the dead with this post, but I think something does change with men if they have daughters. Like Kobe Bryant. I didn't just start realizing men were human when I had a son, but I think it is a genuine phenomenon with many men who have daughters. Disheartening, but good in the end.

I agree @BrandineDelRoy, my DH is heavily invested in this debate because we have a sporty daughter. Since the age of 8 the girls and boys have had different qualifying times for county competitions (before anyone might start taking puberty blockers). He's horrified by the idea of her competing against one of the boys in the team just because they 'feel like a girl'.

If we didn't have daughters I don't know if I'd have got him on board so easily. The discussion around prisons and rape crisis centres might have felt too far removed.

The thing is, trans athletes are a problem for sports for numerous reasons.

If a transmen is competing against natal women they've got an unfair advantage of they're on testosterone.

If a transman competes against men they're at risk of injury.

If a transwoman competes against women they've got an unfair advantage.

If a transwoman competes against women the women are in danger of injury.

So I can see why it might be seen as 'banning' them from competing, because there's no safe and fair space for transmen and transwomen are only safe competing as men.

So to me there's only a few solutions.

1. a third catagory where competitors must sign an injury waver to acknowledge any injury of a female bodied person by a male bodied person is a risk they're willing to take.
2. only trans people not on medication can play in their birth sex catagory.

I think this needs to be looked into but it speaks volumes that the current solution presented is to bulldoze women's sports with these individuals.

How many women play in the NFL?

There are few sports as sexist as American Football. At school level it is virtually non existent, same in colleges which is vital in American sports. The Women's Professional Football League started in 1999 and folded only eight years later. Two years after that some sleazebags started a rather different female competition The Lingerie Football League - I am not kidding.

Perhaps this dude should think about that before he kicks off about equality in his sport.

Before I clicked I guessed it was going to be a bloke.

Sadly I have no prize to give myself.

It honestly impresses me how lefty men have managed to flip the script on sports so much that now women are the bad guys, on a par with Hitler ignoring Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics, just because we want to retain sex-segregation in sports.

Why did sex-segregation in sports start in the first place, out of interest? Because men excluded women from sports due to our sex. Women were stopped from participating in any sports because we were told we were too physically frail to compete. This didn't just happen in the 1800s. This was happening right up until the 1960s and even later. I think all of the time of the male coach who tried to physically drag Kathrine Switzer out of the Boston Marathon in 1967. Because women didn't run marathons and were assumed to be unable to even participate in such an event. Sex-segregrated sports were created so women could have a chance to pursue the sports they love and find fulfillment DESPITE male discrimination. Sex-segregated sports were created to spare the feelings of males who didn't want women running in 'their' marathons or competing in 'their' Olympics.

Men on the left have conveniently forgotten that history and now somehow women are evil segregationists because some of us recognize the toxic narrative that is returning to sports. It is a narrative that says that the male body is the default, the norm, and if women lose out by competing against male-bodied people, well, that's just tough luck. Male feelings come first and if that causes physical, mental or personal harm to women then it's a small price to pay.

They're actually trying to have it both ways - they do argue, as you just did, that women's sports are "segregation" and the result of women being told they weren't allowed to compete, for a variety of reasons.

So a lot do argue that the segregation should be ended and they should be reintegrated, and then the best person will win, regardless of their sex.

(And if women are currently worse, it's mainly due to lack of opportunity - when they get to compete with men, and given equal training and resources, there's no reason they couldn't fulfil their untapped potential.).

But they don't argue that very loudly - that's the "extreme" position. They mainly advocate the "moderate" one - given that the current division isn't going away yet, and it is an arbitrary segregation, the least you could do is let people into the division of their choice for now.

So everything you've just said they are aware of, and it's how they justify it in their fuzzy little Woke brains. They look at the "segregation" history and ignore the fact there are two fundamentally different body configurations, and mixed sport would render the people with female bodies uncompetitive.

The segregationists who said women were "not strong enough" were right, statistically. That exclusion could be reversed - making sure the "men's" events were "open". And many actually already are! But opening up the "men's" events to women doesn't eliminate the value of women's events for wider inclusion, just as allowing Paralympic athletes into the Olympics doesn't eliminate the value of the Paralympics.

There are lots of people who are not able-bodied males - it should be possible for the non-able-bodied and females to compete with and win against their peers, and not only be rewarded if they can beat able-bodied males.

(If I was Woke I'd say insisting people be judged by able-bodied male standards was bollocks-normative or something).

It is a significant problem that we just don't see much mixed-sex sport happening, so you don't often get to see elite male and female athletes alongside each other like this:

And a lot of people just don't do physical work themselves. People don't routinely observe the male-female difference. I don't know a male athlete's excuse would be though. Do they just not notice the women's events at all?

I really don't get how men can NOT realise there is a real difference in athletic abilities between the sexes. I use Strava and for certain runs it tells me the quickest speeds for men and women - big difference. Do these men just think women aren't trying hard enough or do they really think that something magical happens on transition to take away the physical advantage?

".........About protecting cis-gendered girls from the participation of trans girls in what was written as, “an unfair advantage”, or “an attack on women’s athletics”, both of which by science and reason are untrue".

Seriously? Do these people just make up the facts to suit themselves or are they intentionally thick? They do realise that men and women ae physiologically different don't they?
THAT is a scientific fact, not an opinion. Science and biology is not transphobic, it is just fact. You cannot identify out of your biology regardless of your 'feelings', and sometimes biology matters.
The utter crap these people come up with in order to appear to be inclusive, amazes me. The science is there and its not hard to find.
Even a simple Google search will show you the basic differences between male and female physiology as it relates to function (lung capacity, muscle mass, strength, pelvis configuration and many more).
Male bodied people will never be female bodied people. The physical advantage will always be there and it is not a level playing field.
Have a look at some of the readily available pictures on the internet of male bodied people playing in female teams and tell me you can't spot the male bodied person, and tell me that person does not have a physical advantage.
Garbage.

The entire Guardian article is based upon a cunning sleight-of-hand with language.

One absolutely cannot compare race with trans.
And this is simply because, race is something that you ARE. Trans is something that you DO.

Therefore, your race is fixed, it is immutable. But anyone can be trans.

It's that simple.

Thx for posting the video clip, @NecessaryScene1 ! It paints a thousand words.

Sloppy journalism from the Guardian.

I can't even get past the concept that sport should be some great leveller. Sports training is a fucking money pit and absolute vampire in the number of hours both a child training and their parent has to put in when you start getting to national level, never mind adding equipment and travel to the mix.

DS1 is 12 and is a competitive swimmer. The fastest girl in their squad can't match the times of the slowest boy. One day, people claiming that biology doesn't matter will be thought of in the same vein as the flat-earthers!

It’s very sad that a successful sportsman can say Being born Black, queer, trans or of any marginalized community puts you behind the starting line of any race without noticing the 50% of the population who would come last in any racing event because our bodies are different from those of the winners.

As for stating that science and reason show men have no advantage over women in sports — of course that’s a lie. But he probably doesn’t know that because the trans lobby simply keep repeating it. It doesn’t matter that it’s untrue and there is of course no evidence to support it. Just keep repeating it and people will believe it.

Shame on The Guardian for spreading lies.

It's a crap article and a bad premise. BUT bringing Race into the argument can be worked to our advantage:
There are 9 protected characteristics but most of these are not distinguished or separated within sport. We don't have separate sports categories for people if different ethnicity/skin colour/religion, because that would be regressive and divisive. Only 3 PCs are used in sporting categories: age, disability and sex. Why these 3? Why is it ok to give the Over-40s, or all the wheelchair-users, their own separate team, when we wouldn't dream of allowing a sports team exclusively for Hindus? Two reasons: fair competition and player safety. Disabled sports teams are not set up so that disabled people can play sport with "their own kind", but so that they can play sport safely and competitively Therefore, in discussions about Women's sport, we apply this principle. Some people argue that "Women's" sport should refer to the biological sex class; others think it should refer to gender identity. If the Women's category uses the "biological sex" definition, then we can defend the existence of our own sporting category on the basis that it achieves safer and fairer competition. However, it we attempt to define the Women's category based on gender identity, then it is no longer a legitimate category because it becomes based on a preference for playing sport with "your own kind". So if people want to start bringing Race into the debate, that's fine by me. Including transwomen in the Women's category is far more divisive than excluding them because it creates a sporting category based simply on a preference for being with "one's own kind", akin to dividing teams by race or religion. So who's woke now?

It's a bloke thing.

A lot of men really only empathise with men. And understand how men who do not meet the default are treated and thought of. If a man has something which means he is not default then that empathy can be increased.

So with the trans thing they look at trans women and know how hard it will be, what other men will think etc. What sort of treatment they might have had. And they think well they need a hand up.

The impact on women and girls doesn't cross their mind. They're just not sort of real somehow. And if they don't want to help these males who have likely had and will have a tough time then what the hell? That's an awful position to take. Why wouldn't they help people who are struggling? It's no big deal for them.

It's just a consequence of men prioritising men. Business as usual.

This seems quite contrary to what most people know - a man competing in a women's sport is a cheat. Some people would use less charitable terms.

I wonder if the athlete who claims trans women have no advantage actually believes that you can change sex. I think belief in the wonders of medicine and science could seriously be behind this thinking. I'm quite, quite serious.

If you see the world in terms of proper men and non men then yes.

Why should any sort of non man be excluded from things for non men. Especially if they have been through life being thrown in with men when they would have been seen as differently (probably) and had a bad time (probably).

Sport is often a tribal thing for men, team sport. It's been described as a replacement for battle!

The most popular in England is football.
The supporters see their team as a tribe they are in, the men go into battle with other men.

And look at what happens.

Racist abuse towards the players off the scale
Notoriously gay men rarely come out. I remember Justin fashanu not sure how many since then
Misogynistic abuse of the wives and partners of the players

That sort of thing.

For loads of men sport is for real men and real men are a certain way.

The others are not interesting and who cares what they do.

There's a lot of antagonism about even having women's football mentioned in the news that I've heard. It's not for women. Some men get quite angry.

There's a lot going on with all this.

both of which by science and reason are untrue

Pull the other one!

Yep. Nothing to see here.