Paralympic male athletes like winning against women too

[YellowFish12]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-57338207

The photos are ridic, huge man celebrating beating women in a rcce.

I really hare the way the BBC has quoted verbatim the "sex assigned at birth" crap and makes a million references to "cis women".

Maybe I should identify as having some sot of disability and go compete in the Paralympics? I think I might identify as only having one arm, and compete in swimming.

Or you could identify as a non swimmer 🏊‍♂️

I see in that article that Petrillo's visual impairment has had to be downgraded.

Cheat.

And while we're talking about the BBC, this anti-Mumsnet article
annoyed me too:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-57285368

"On the UK's biggest online community for mums she didn't get the support she was hoping for.

"I went on to Mumsnet to find people like me, who would tell me it was going to be OK and that the way I was feeling was totally normal," she says.

Instead she was greeted by a wall of harsh judgement.

"People said I was ungrateful and didn't deserve to have children," she says. "I was told Social Services should take my children away.""

This isn't the Mumsnet I recognise.

I see in that article that Petrillo's visual impairment has had to be downgraded

Yup cheater does what a cheater does... the letter from the women athletes said they are happy to run with the male-born person, but don't want the male-born person competing against the female-born people for titles. What could be fairer than that? If the male-born person just wants to be accepted as a lay-deeeeee? But no, the male-born person wants to WIN WIN WIN at any cost.

They seem to have a disproportionate number of "yay trans, stunning and brave!" articles.

I know right? They are so one sided and really normalised the 'trans language' about othering and downgrading women.

The first part of the article, the part about the trans athlete is fantastically garbled. If it is put in chronological order, it becomes blindingly obvious that this is not about fair access to sport, but about validating one person's desires.

At the age of 41 (ie pre-transition) [Fabrizio] won 11 national titles in three years in the male T12 category for athletes with visual impairment.

Valentina started living as a woman in 2018.

Six months after starting treatment [Valentina] had lost about 11 seconds in the 400m and 2.5 seconds in the 200m.

[Valentina] is now 47... it was only last September that [Valentina] ran as a female para-athlete - at the Italian Paralympics Championship, [and] won gold in the 100m, 200m and 400m T12 events.

"Better to be a slow happy woman than a fast unhappy man."

Slow? Hardly!

@FuriousAndFrustrated

And while we're talking about the BBC, this anti-Mumsnet article annoyed me too:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-57285368

"On the UK's biggest online community for mums she didn't get the support she was hoping for.

"I went on to Mumsnet to find people like me, who would tell me it was going to be OK and that the way I was feeling was totally normal," she says.

Instead she was greeted by a wall of harsh judgement.

"People said I was ungrateful and didn't deserve to have children," she says. "I was told Social Services should take my children away.""

This isn't the Mumsnet I recognise.

No. I was a long time ago but even so, I don't recognise that description as there tends to be an instinctive empathy for posters with PND.

It's interesting it's buried in what seems to be serious problems with her own group (the main hook for the story).

Better to be a slow happy woman than a fast unhappy man
I know I didn't get that either!

Not exactly slow smashing women off the podium left right and centre?!

Six months after starting treatment [Valentina] had lost about 11 seconds in the 400m and 2.5 seconds in the 200m.

What is often missing from these stories is what their training regimen was before the performance loss was recorded. Did they train at all? Or did the transition take precedence?

And what is also missing is an acknowledgement of the age-related fall in performance, which depending on discipline and individual athlete can fall off a cliff at a certain point in time. So transition, for which the median time is indeed mid-forties to mid-fifties, also happens to coincide with quite a natural drop in performance for many male athletes.

So if a 25 year old male transgender athlete was competing against 25 year old female athletes, what performance gap would we see there instead?

The known cases seem to involve mediocre male athletes past their prime competing against much younger female athletes. The former would not be competitive against male athletes in their prime, but they're still good enough to be competitive against female athletes in their prime. So the performance gap these stories tend to mention is not as big as it would be compared to a male in his prime, but the fact it still exists at all is proof of the considerable male advantage.

That this doesn't seem unfair in any way to the BBC ... well I don't understand how they can't see it.

I defended my brother who's three years older than me! Until four years ago, if you'd talked to Fabrizio (the name Petrillo was given at birth), Fabrizio would have given you the idea he was sexist. He was a tough guy who'd speak dismissively of women and then be a woman in his private space

Truly stunning and brave.

Sorry, going off topic, but that other BBC article reads like promotion for her group. The tone isn’t very BBC either (my emphasis):

As the group grew, a smattering of petty Facebook groups were set up to bitch about Kate and dissect screengrabs of her personal posts. Occasionally her name has cropped up on gossip forums like Tattle Life and she's felt the sting of having her appearance, and parenting, ripped into by strangers.

Indeed one might think that attitude still persists CassandraTrotter someone who is dismissive of women finds it much easier to dismiss them out of sporting achievements Never mind. The little silly women don't matter.

At 41 this person was regularly winning titles in their proper category.

About 3 years later they transitioned and their times plummeted.

Since then they have begin to compete in the female category where, despite losing so much speed, they are still running much faster than women.

Makes it blindingly clear how much faster males are than females, and how irrelevant the results are of cross-sex hormones on males.

I wonder how old were the females this person was racing against.

Six months after starting treatment [Valentina] had lost about 11 seconds in the 400m and 2.5 seconds in the 200m.

I imagine most male athletes competing against female athletes would run slower. (a) because they don't have to go as fast to win and (b) because it's useful to them to make some pretence that it's fair.

Has anyone seen anything where it shows the ages of the people in the races that VP won the medals in?

This is at least interesting from the trans academic doing the research into advantage in sport

"Hormone therapy won't turn trans women into cis women but the goal, in terms of sports, is to mitigate the advantages that trans women gain by virtue of going through male puberty, to the point where you can have meaningful competition between trans women and cis women."

One of the first times I've seen an acknowledgment that there is currently an advantage that needs to be mitigated.

She is now 47, and recognises that this is her last chance to compete at the Paralympics, but she wants to keep running whether she gets to Tokyo or not.

This is what stood out for me.

Tbh i really couldn't give half a shit about how many seconds slower a male person might be now then before. No males in female sports, EVER. It's really not complex. It's really not hard. Just no.

Even one male who beats one female in a sport competition is one too many. If only 100 women are allowed to rank - and say the transwoman is ranked below 99 of the women, it's still not fair. I care more about that one women at 100th spot than I do about the man who would steal it.

@FlyPassed

Tbh i really couldn't give half a shit about how many seconds slower a male person might be now then before. No males in female sports, EVER. It's really not complex. It's really not hard. Just no.

This. A billion times over. I don't want mitigations, handicaps- I don't want anything except no males in women's sport.

It will take at least 10 more years of research to fully understand the effect of hormone therapy, Harper says. In some sports trans women will need a handicap, she suggests, but how much handicap isn't yet clear.

10 years of more research funding? Nice one.

Also what's with all the third person talk? Is it a translation thing?

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.outsports.com/platform/amp/2020/11/9/21555550/ness-murby-trans-come-out-paralympic-canada-track-athletics-discus

Another plot twist. Now this Canadian Paralympian, who identifies as a trans man, has qualified in the blind discus. No prizes for guessing which category they'll be competing in!

What should we rename the women's category? Miscellaneous? Everything but the Kitchen Sink?

Agree with the OP. Egregious.

But (not the point).... I couldn't help chuckle at the verb used in the article about the blind discus athlete...

The Paralympian, who has competed nationally and internationally for three different countries — Australia, Japan and Canada — in three different sports — goalball, powerlifting and Para athletics — said he has been eyeing 2020 for a while as the year to talk more openly about his true self.

Sorry.

@FlyPassed

Tbh i really couldn't give half a shit about how many seconds slower a male person might be now then before. No males in female sports, EVER. It's really not complex. It's really not hard. Just no.

Allowing trans women to complete fairly in women's sport is complex in the same way that the motion of the planets was complex when they tried to make it work with Earth at the centre.

Sports authorities will go down a never ending path of adding nuances and special cases and exceptions and tests and checks and balances and tweaking to try to make it work but new problems and flaws will keep popping up because it's all based on a fundamental error.

Allowing trans women to complete fairly in women's sport is complex in the same way that the motion of the planets was complex when they tried to make it work with Earth at the centre.