Laurel Hubbard to go to Tokyo

[Biscuitsanddoombar]

Not a surprise and hopefully it’ll open some eyes about the utter ridiculousness of allowing someone who is male to compete against women in weightlifting

www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/may/05/trans-weightlifter-laurel-hubbard-set-to-make-history-at-tokyo-olympics

This wouldn’t be an issue in woman’s gymnastics though. Can you imagine this even being an issue on the floor disciplines (sorry - don’t know what it’s called but I love to watch and the men’s is very different than the womans).

You don’t need the brute strength (as in weightlifting or like in the shootout) but a flexibility and ‘lightness’ (I know that doesn’t make sense but if you think of a male gymnasts solid muscle then look at a tiny wee female gymnast who looks small and light but has amazing strength plus flexibility - jumping and sailing through the air like a bird).

• Problem with power lifting is, it’s a bit niche. If it was a TW gymnast they’d be A LOT of world wide interest.*

I'm cynically inclined to think many men wouldn't care much unless it was beach volleyball.

Not with the skimpy ‘uniforms’ they wear

This wouldn’t be an issue in woman’s gymnastics though.

Did you miss this video being discussed here the other day?

www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/females-told-be-quiet-transgender-issue-ex-weightlifter-2021-05-07/

This wouldn’t be an issue in woman’s gymnastics though

Power to weight ratio is everything in gymnastics - it's why some countries allegedly gave puberty blockers to their female gymnasts to retain the prepubertal ratio and not be troubled by the centre of gravity and body fat changes of puberty.

Female snowboarders have come a huge way in a short time because so many of them weren't told that they couldn't do [X]. It's still unlikely that they'd ever manage to avoid training injuries or have the strength and stamina to do the effortless pipe work etc. that even mediocre men do.

Composition of muscle fibres matter - men's is fantastic for this fast twitch stuff like snowboarding and gymnastics.

[quote lionheart]www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/females-told-be-quiet-transgender-issue-ex-weightlifter-2021-05-07/[/quote]
That's a pretty good, factual report.

Females need to refuse to be silenced - and good men also, should not do nothing. Whoever is doing this silencing needs to learn to listen.

I compete in a different strength sport (powerlifting), and Hubbard has obviously been discussed a lot on related forums.

It is really heartening that, aside from a couple of (male) voices, most competitors in my sport are very clear in their comments that while trans athletes should be able to somehow compete, it shouldn't be at the detriment of women.

It gave me hope 😊

My experience of most coaches is that they will do anything to win. NZ is a country that is both sport and winning at sport obsessed. Unless people in power start to speak out and the women competitors start to show they won't put up with it, I honestly believe we will see more and more of this especially from countries such as China and Russia.

@Changemusthappen

My experience of most coaches is that they will do anything to win. NZ is a country that is both sport and winning at sport obsessed. Unless people in power start to speak out and the women competitors start to show they won't put up with it, I honestly believe we will see more and more of this especially from countries such as China and Russia.

Again cynically... I'm inclined to think counties like NZ may belatedly remember women's rights when their Hubbards start being thrashed by TW from other countries. I'm sure some of the larger countries can find a few people like Jenner in their prime if they try - and Russia and China can say well look, you want us to be 'progressive' like you.

Telegraph telling it like it is...

www.telegraph.co.uk/olympics/2021/05/07/laurel-hubbards-olympic-games-spot-affront-fairness/amp/

It’s in the Times too but I’m not a subscriber...

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/transgender-weightlifter-laurel-hubbard-set-to-make-olympic-history-6jzlhm3vn

@AuntyFungal

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (and again).

We need male competitors from the big money sports to come forward.

Ex players who now sit comfortably on the commentary sofas to discover their femininity.

Tennis, golf, F1 & football - all high TV profile, big prize money sports.

Come on; these people have trained and competed, have kids, know what’s going on in the sporting world. Understand the issues. They can’t just be sitting there in the green room going, “yeh, that Sharron Davis she’s a right terf. What the fuck does she know about sport.”

Problem with power lifting is, it’s a bit niche.
If it was a TW gymnast they’d be A LOT of world wide interest.

It’s death by a thousand cuts / gradual colonisation from the periphery.

Daley Thompson has already spoken up in support of Allison Bailey. I understand he's been spotted at meetings, too.

@ferfaffle

Currently in NZ. The news coverage on the main TV channel wasn't as celebratory as I expected - there is a clear appreciation of the issues. They interviewed a female ex-weightlifter who said she was really disappointed that a female lifter was missing out on the spot and that she was all for equality in sport, but that 'right now equality is being taken away from us'. She said that other female lifters were asking her what they could do, because it wasn't fair, and the answer was nothing, because every time they tried to speak up they were told to be quiet. The report then had a brief quote from a 'Gender Minorities' person saying that it was encouraging, because trans people faced a lot of barriers to getting involved in sport. It then cut to the NZ Olympic coach who just said that under the current rules, Hubbard met the criteria, so that's how they would be moving forward. The item finished with the female reporter saying that while some would see it as ground-breaking, others would see it as little more than cheating.

Not what I expected at all, but I guess NZ is a very sporty country and strong ideas of fair play are going to come into the debate here, at least in sport.

That's interesting, thanks.

NZ punches well above its weight (population-wise) in many sports, so any Olympic medallist is feted in their homeland.

NZ of course gave women the vote in the 19th century.

Uneasy juxtaposition for the sports-mad media there...

ErrolTheDragon

I agree. When the female’s word records start to look very close to male world records no one will be able to ignore it. By that stage, it will take a great deal to unwind the policies.

Let’s hope it doesn’t get to that point though.

[quote AngeloMysterioso]Telegraph telling it like it is...

www.telegraph.co.uk/olympics/2021/05/07/laurel-hubbards-olympic-games-spot-affront-fairness/amp/[/quote]
Superb article.

@Justhadathought

Two decades. I think the girls he beat last time were in their early 20s and from underprivileged backgrounds in Samoa. I bet most of the women competing will be under 30. It makes me so angry that this idiocy is allowed

I often cringe when poor arguments are made even worse by throwing the "colonialist" word at a wall to see if it sticks...but this might be one situation where the optics of a colonial legacy are well, pretty obvious. A mediocre white man sweeping in, taking over and now dominating indigenous women on her own land.

I'm almost feeling grateful to Laurel Hubbard for taking the sports authorities at their word and presenting the problem so directly. Tifanny Abreu's likely Olympics place hasn't cut through in anything like the same way. Abreu is 37; the average female Olympic volleyball player is 27.

Another Mail article

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9553101/Fury-decision-let-transsexual-enter-Tokyo-Olympics.html

[quote AngeloMysterioso]It’s in the Times too but I’m not a subscriber...

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/transgender-weightlifter-laurel-hubbard-set-to-make-olympic-history-6jzlhm3vn[/quote]
I've finally learned how to do share-tokens! www.thetimes.co.uk/article/25c3ee2c-aea6-11eb-bda6-057976012425?shareToken=12d060d18dcafc69ca586129b535284d

As for the Telegraph article quoted above, it was a corker, with some useful arguments AND facts (names, dates):

• At the 2018 Commonwealth Games, she began with a weight 7kg heavier than that of her nearest challenger. During the same competition, Hubbard suffered a dislocated elbow, which she feared would be a career-ending injury. It deprived her of the gold medal on the Gold Coast, but it protected weightlifting authorities from the blizzard of protest that such success would have drawn.

• Women are not expected to dominate as weightlifters beyond 30, never mind 40. Hubbard’s seven closest rivals in the Oceania standings have an average age of 24. It does not take much to realise that her supremacy owes less to any quirk of longevity than to a body bulked up through 35 years through natural male hormones. But still no administrators have the gumption to block her, or to suggest that she is denying opportunities to women whose very physiology prevents them from reaching Hubbard’s standard.

• Re: women competing for the Oceania places, Feagaiga Stowers is mentioned above, but the article also suggests: Spare a thought, perhaps, for Australia’s Charisma Amoe-Tarrant, who will miss out on a protected place at the Olympics just because Hubbard is able to continue exploiting a blind spot in the rules.

• Samoa’s prime minister, Tuilaepa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi, has entered the fray, saying: “It is not easy for the female athletes to train all year long, and yet we allow these stupid things to happen.”

(www.telegraph.co.uk/olympics/2021/05/07/laurel-hubbards-olympic-games-spot-affront-fairness/)

Yes. There seems to have been, and to continue to be, an assumption that 'inclusion' was the primary goal and that this could only be interpreted one way. You could argue that the most inclusive thing the IOC could do would be to scale the Olympics back to sport that requires minimal infrastructure so that less rich countries can have a more even playing field. Rather than, frankly, shitting on women's sport because they don't give a damn as long as the brown envelopes keep coming.

I read something ages ago about how the starting point for the IOC was not, let's look at this objectively. But, we need to include transgender people, what rules shall we set.

The testosterone level set is within normal range for men. Normal. It's 3x higher than the top of normal range for women. From the off that sounds wrong.

And the bottom line is. Always. The idea/ belief that males can be treated as female in xyz things if they meet some pretty arbitrary test. Why is this even on the table? That standard males can be considered female. Under any circs. At all.

And for all this talk of inclusion, what if trans men?
They won't be able to compete against the women if they have had any hormonal intervention. And presumably wouldn't want to anyway.
They won't stand a chance qualifying in the men's competition.
Where's the inclusion for them???