Trans athlete wins in female swimming race

[bonfireheart]

www.lbc.co.uk/news/female-swimmers-transgender-lia-thomas-podium-protest-atlanta-result/

Don't know how true this story is but wonder if the public reaction to stuff like this will become more common.

Listened to the start of the LBC show where a guest introduced the call in by backing up a suggestion by Martina Navaratalova that in order to protect the women's category there should be a separate 'open category'. This seems sensible to me. As the guest said (I forget his name) no one is saying that we can't all respect everyone's rights to be called whatever they prefer but biological natal sex is the most important distinguishing factor between separating the sexes into two groups given the natural advantages that happen to natal males during puberty.

If the photos of LT had been doctored to make him look bigger, that the live videos of him swimming must also have been doctored as he's clearly much taller than that in the pool. Maybe he shrinks as he dries off?!

What the fecking HELL does his height have to do with it?

Does that mean he doesn't have a dick between his legs? Maybe it means that the dick is proportionally smaller and therefore less of a threat?

Honestly, the lengths these apologists will go to is fucking sick.

MAN does not belong in female sports or in their changing rooms.
It doesn't matter what damn height he is.

A couple of years ago, at the height of lockdown, I was teaching 'A View From The Bridge' online to my igcse class.

At the end of Act I, there's a confrontation between the protagonist, Eddie, & another character, Marco, where Marco challenges Eddie to lift a dining chair above his head - but there's a catch. You have to start by kneeling, & hold the chair at the base of one leg, before lifting it, without dropping it or letting it touch the floor after the initial lift, getting to your feet & triumphantly holding it aloft.

It's generally performed onstage with a prop chair made of balsa, because it's seriously difficult to do with an ordinary chair.

I set this as a silly homework challenge - 'video yourself doing the Marco lift!'

Well, year 10 loved it. I was bombarded with questions about how far they could cheat.

Plastic lawn chair? Fine, if it's got four legs.

Parent/sibling/mate holding the diagonally opposite leg? Good luck - you'll need to coordinate your balance...

Remove the other 3 legs? Eek, please ask the chair owner first...

The thing is, you need really good coordination & balance, not just strength. That chair REALLY wants to tip over. Get it a foot off the ground & you'll probably get it the rest of the way.

So once the results were in, I had quite a lot of students, male & female, triumphantly waving lightweight plastic chairs, after multiple attempts.

I had 3 who managed it with a chair from their dining room. Guess what they had in common? All boys.

& not even the strongest boys - the favourite, who was a massive gym bunny, gave up early because he couldn't get the damn balance right.

But none of the girls could get a standard dining chair even a few inches off the floor, because the bugger is HEAVY at that angle. They were good with the balance once they tried with a light, plastic chair, but they could not re-enact the 'original' trick, because they just weren't strong enough.

Strength isn't the only factor in sports; but it's usually pretty significant.

Shorter?

I genuinely thought Owen Jones was better than that.

@CorvusPurpureus

A couple of years ago, at the height of lockdown, I was teaching 'A View From The Bridge' online to my igcse class.

At the end of Act I, there's a confrontation between the protagonist, Eddie, & another character, Marco, where Marco challenges Eddie to lift a dining chair above his head - but there's a catch. You have to start by kneeling, & hold the chair at the base of one leg, before lifting it, without dropping it or letting it touch the floor after the initial lift, getting to your feet & triumphantly holding it aloft.

It's generally performed onstage with a prop chair made of balsa, because it's seriously difficult to do with an ordinary chair.

I set this as a silly homework challenge - 'video yourself doing the Marco lift!'

Well, year 10 loved it. I was bombarded with questions about how far they could cheat.

Plastic lawn chair? Fine, if it's got four legs.

Parent/sibling/mate holding the diagonally opposite leg? Good luck - you'll need to coordinate your balance...

Remove the other 3 legs? Eek, please ask the chair owner first...

The thing is, you need really good coordination & balance, not just strength. That chair REALLY wants to tip over. Get it a foot off the ground & you'll probably get it the rest of the way.

So once the results were in, I had quite a lot of students, male & female, triumphantly waving lightweight plastic chairs, after multiple attempts.

I had 3 who managed it with a chair from their dining room. Guess what they had in common? All boys.

& not even the strongest boys - the favourite, who was a massive gym bunny, gave up early because he couldn't get the damn balance right.

But none of the girls could get a standard dining chair even a few inches off the floor, because the bugger is HEAVY at that angle. They were good with the balance once they tried with a light, plastic chair, but they could not re-enact the 'original' trick, because they just weren't strong enough.

Strength isn't the only factor in sports; but it's usually pretty significant.

That was really interesting - I just mentioned it to my husband and we both had a go with one of our wooden kitchen chairs. He, almost 6ft and built like a rugby player, couldn't lift it. I, 5ft 4, could barely move it. It doesn't seem like it would be that difficult but it so is!

As a slight aside - here’s a chair challenge that only women can do

www.fatherly.com/health-science/chair-challenge-explained-viral-fitness-trend/amp/

What the fecking HELL does his height have to do with it?

It is textbook sparple! Pure distraction.

Look ..... there is a squirrel!

Pure distraction but alsoproof of the desperation of all those trying to pretend that there is no difference in athletic performance between men and women
Also quite entertaining as Lia's height is shrinking all the time. Now seems to be 5ft7 on some sites. By the weekend they will have disappeared.

Most trash websites that have picked up the trend or are fronts for keyboard warriors all of a sudden give height as 5'8". Others they have got to give it as 6'1". Quite modest for an open category swimmer. LT told Sports Illustrated they'd lost an inch in height through taking cross sex hormones, which sounds horrifically dangerous - is there such a thing as rapid onset osteoporosis? Vertebral fracture?

Do you not think that scientific investigation is a tad more involved than "I know a girl who was stronger than me"?

I'm not seeing how the scientific evidence supports the other side of the discussion. The evidence just shows that men have achieved better sporting results than women, which is something I don't dispute. There hasn't been a study which has determined how much of the difference is due to biological differences between men and women.

@greasyshoes, do you live on planet Earth?

On another site I saw that Lia was adapted as though he had a middle name like Rachel. A man would never wind his competitive brother up by openly getting further in a swimming competition with a nod to liar in a name would he?

@greasyshoes

Do you not think that scientific investigation is a tad more involved than "I know a girl who was stronger than me"?

I'm not seeing how the scientific evidence supports the other side of the discussion. The evidence just shows that men have achieved better sporting results than women, which is something I don't dispute. There hasn't been a study which has determined how much of the difference is due to biological differences between men and women.

You really are trolling and wasting posters time now.

I understand Lia's middle name is Catherine, his mother's name.

Im sorry that was a genuine error, her mother's name.

I think what really confuses me about this women aren't socialised to train hard enough is that what it's basically saying is either:

1. Even elite female athletes still don't train as hard as men and that's why they lose.

That option sounds pretty obviously sexist to me and not in a way that is a result of male and female biological differences so I'll park it for now but if that IS what posters suggestions meant let me know.

OR

1. In spite of men and women training equally hard when they've decided to compete in sport, fewer women compete so all the winners are men.

Now this actually makes no logical sense.

If we have 1000 women and 1000 men but only 200 women compete in sports there's no reason to think it will only be women who are worse at sport that compete. You'd expect at the very least it to be a distribution which correlated with the overall distribution of male athletes. So over time you'd expect to see fewer women than men with times they would win you a medal but not a factor many times higher than the number of competitors is lower.

What you're essentially proposing is that in this chart of pick a factor Vs sportiness women and men have the distribution attached but instead of times and distances being for the top X percent for men and women somehow the top X percent of women just forget to compete. Even if only 1/5 of the women in the chart compete statistically with the number of women who do pay sorry across the world the likelihood of all those top athletes being missing is incredibly unlikely. Which means the likelihood of socialisation causing the difference in performance is also not significant.

You really are trolling and wasting posters time now.

Yeah. Greasy is reduced to mindless repetition.

Didn't take long.

@Nacreous the numbers argument may work the other way - fewer women in a sport may mean that those who are in it are better. I read an interesting article (which I don't have the link for) about the number of female winners in ultrarunning; iylt may be less to do with 'better female endurance' and more to do with the fact that the only women who do ultrarunning are those who are exceptionally good at it.

Yes, I think that's a much more likely outcome given that most girls will do great than 0 sport so you'd expect those who do keep it up to be more innately talented than those who give it up rather than the other way round.

Oh fantastic.! How to get the very best female athletes? Make sure that most of them give up because of an unfair system! You couldn't make it up.

Arguing against myself, it may be both - ultrarunning is an event that smooths out the male/female physical difference enough to let the numbers argument operate.

The inanity of grease’s posts are quite startling. I am sure that they think they are making so much sense and that they clearly are onto something or they are not even a clever Whatabout expert. We have had much better whatabouterers here in the past.

This is like a primary school edition of whataboutery.

There hasn't been a study which has determined how much of the difference is due to biological differences between men and women.

You have been unable to link up any ‘studies’ you have actually written. And didn’t deign to answer a direct question on whether you had read any.

It is laughable that you make this statement after all you have posted, but it is also boring.

@greasyshoes

Do you not think that scientific investigation is a tad more involved than "I know a girl who was stronger than me"?

I'm not seeing how the scientific evidence supports the other side of the discussion. The evidence just shows that men have achieved better sporting results than women, which is something I don't dispute. There hasn't been a study which has determined how much of the difference is due to biological differences between men and women.

As I said earlier, you are asking for the imposile. A study that removes all socialisation would be deemed to be cruel, harmful.

And I gave you the easiest way to see simialr, non harful results. You just chose to apply your illogic and dismiss it. Maybe apply ypur twoering intellect and run an outline of a possible, non harmful study past me and I'll see what I can do!

Go on then greasyshoes - I’ll give you a starter. Look up “Q angle” differences between men and women. That isn’t determined by socialisation.