Lia Thomas - Social Media

[waterbabys]

Honestly this is just a rant.

I have now seen at least 4 or 5 people on my social media (friends and family so cannot delete them) who have ZERO background or interest in sport, now sharing articles defending Lia's right to swim with females. I feel like I'm going mad. Every time I see posts like this I want to challenge them, I know all the facts & stats because as an ex-national swimmer I've followed this story intently, but ultimately I'm a coward afraid for my job.

😩 RIP women's sport. I feel like giving up.

This is a good link to share www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/andrew-castle/women-discriminated-in-sport-trans-swimmer-lia-thomas/

I've seen the opposite I don't know anyone who buys into these strange ideas. Even DS who is in uni thinks its all crazy.

Someone I loosely know posted a FB comment in response to an article defending Lia Thomas. Her comment was along the lines of “Trans women are women. If cis women aren’t happy to compete against them, they should start their own cis women’s events”

I don’t know her well enough to work out if she’s poking fun at the absurdity of the situation or being serious!

@ChiefInspectorParker

It's no wonder that the people who stand with GCs are (mostly) on the (far) right of the political spectrum.

Are they, aye?

🤣

The idea that understanding biology and that male and female bodies are different is a political position makes no sense to me.

The wrestler is a trans man who competes in the women's (girls?) competitions, as the law in their state demands they compete against the same natal sex. The controversy there is that this athlete is allowed to take testosterone where the other competitors are not. Hence they have an unfair advantage. They may want to compete against male competitors, but legally they cannot atm. So a natal female competing against women.

The swimmer, did spend a year on the men's swim team in their last year of college, but it's unclear if they competed and how they placed. They don't swim competitively since leaving college, as far as I can tell.

The hockey player was on women's teams throughout their career. Not sure what the point of this case is, as it's a case of a natal female playing in female teams.

The boxer had one match against a man, and won. Since then they can't find an opponent willing to fight, presumably because any opponent sensibly don't want the additional risk (than against a male) of seriously injuring their opponent. Also, the boxer is 35 or older, and trying to get a professional boxing career off the ground at that age is going to be a big ask whatever sex you are.

We'll know it's about equality when all the people who defend Lia start talking about how we can handicap men to make it fair for transmen to compete.

In fact, lets have that conversation now.

How can we make it possible for transmen to compete with professional male swimmers?

@PineForestsAndSunshine

Someone I loosely know posted a FB comment in response to an article defending Lia Thomas. Her comment was along the lines of “Trans women are women. If cis women aren’t happy to compete against them, they should start their own cis women’s events”

I don’t know her well enough to work out if she’s poking fun at the absurdity of the situation or being serious!

😂 I like this idea, (although hate the word cis) but yes, let's have cis womens sports and cis womens toilets - cis women everything!

Mack Beggs (the transman wrestler) is 110lbs and wants to go up against men.

That’s 7.5 stone. Smaller than most adult females.

That’s ambitious.

Post this. My mates have well and truly peaked. We have a woman’s group and one of them put this pic up.

So the people I've seen posting these things are all in their late twenties/early thirties, all desperate to be woke. And when I say no interest in sport I mean they don't play any, they don't watch any, they literally have no interest in it. One of the posters I've deleted off Facebook now (meant to do it a while ago anyway), the rest I don't feel like I can since we're closer or family.

I had written out a few very measured responses but deleted each one as all the other comments were in support of Lia and I could just see a pile on coming!

With regards to that Catherine person's inference that I'm some kind of homophobe or conservative - far from it, but whatever suits your narrative. And as for all those multitudes of examples of transmen in sport (a total of four...) none of them are competing at the top of their sport's male categories are they? Funny that! Only females losing out to transgender athletes.

Ranking in the country before and after transition:-

200yd freestyle:-
Was 554th. Now 5th.
500yd freestyle:-
Was 65th. Now 1st.
1650 freestyle:-
Was 32nd. Now 8th.

@waterbabys post that pic I put up a couple of posts ago. Diffuses the tension.

@EdgeOfSeventeenAndThreeQuarter

Mack Beggs (the transman wrestler) is 110lbs and wants to go up against men.

That’s 7.5 stone. Smaller than most adult females.

That’s ambitious.

Beggs competed in the 110lb (50kg or 7st 12lb) category while at school.

Is there any indication that Beggs is still in that weight category now, several years later, greater exposure to testosterone, and, presumably, competing at college level that has fewer weight categories?

I've never ceased to be surprised that men who are shorter than I am, and look slimmer than I do, are nonetheless, approx. 20kg heavier.

Wrestling has weight classes which partly negates the male advantage. Beggs wouldn't be expected to wrestle heavyweights (just as light boxers are not expected to box heavyweights). But most other sports do not segregate by weight.

I've had the exact opposite experience. People who had never really considered this debate at all previously (huge numbers of people) are pretty much all now starting from a "well this is completely ridiculous, isn't it" position.

@PineForestsAndSunshine

Someone I loosely know posted a FB comment in response to an article defending Lia Thomas. Her comment was along the lines of “Trans women are women. If cis women aren’t happy to compete against them, they should start their own cis women’s events”

I don’t know her well enough to work out if she’s poking fun at the absurdity of the situation or being serious!

Perhaps poking fun as the outcome would be to have a separate trans woman event which would be quite small in the numbers of athletes.

But maybe she was reversing that argument in her head? Though hardly anybody is actually 'cis' as that requires having an abstract gender identity just accidentally matching one's sex, not based on that sex. The latter is the true case for almost all people.

Thanks for the links Catherina I will go back and read them properly, but a quick skim rather goes against what I think you are trying to show?

The swimmer is Lia Thomas's friend and while it does say he was invited to chose whether to join the men's or women's team (he chose the men's) it doesn't say whether he competed for that team...

The wrestler wrestles in the women's division.

I have no idea whether the hockey player is on the men's or women's team, but did wonder whether this was like the Canadian (?) footballer at the Olympics, who played on the woman's team as an out transman?

The boxer states that people do not want to fight them when their opponent finds out that they are a transman. I wonder why that would be? Could it be that the men don't want to risk being beaten by a female, or that they don't feel it would be a fair fight? Either way, unfortunately for Patricio it seems that potential opponents see sex rather than gender identity like most people do

It's no wonder that the people who stand with GCs are (mostly) on the (far) right of the political spectrum. It is not about "being nice", it literally is defending our rights from that crowd.

I am a bit late to the party here ,but I note that Caterina is pushing the guilt by association trope again. To their way of thinking all GC people are right wing fundamentalist Christians snd who must also support the invasion of Ukraine just because Putin is supposedly GC.

I am sure that they would object and rightly so , if it were put forward that trans people and their allies were just like, eg Gordon Pike( a prison officer who was an advocate for the inclusion of male prisoners in Scottish women's prisons) who is at present in prison for an appalling crime. Transgender people are no more guilty of this than GC women are guilty of Putin' s aggression or the extremism of some right wing people.

@334bu it’s a lazy narrative tho. This isn’t a left vs right thing. It’s a ‘how much do you care about women and girls safety or not’ thing.

The swimmer [Bailar], did spend a year on the men's swim team in their last year of college, but it's unclear if they competed and how they placed. They don't swim competitively since leaving college, as far as I can tell.

They did compete in Varsity swim competitions in the 2019 competition year, but did not make it to NCAA finals.

This is another good piece to get people thinking a little bit deeper than the surface. Oooo an actual trans person who was involved in high level sport thinks it wrong too. Well d’oh yep. Many trans people don’t want to take women’s safe spaces, prizes, quotas and langauge. They want acceptance and better health provision. Like the gay rights movement did.

news.sky.com/story/lia-thomas-caitlyn-jenner-claims-transgender-swimmer-was-not-rightful-winner-of-womens-race-at-us-college-championships-12574125

Ye Alcoh it is the lazy narrative of someone who doesn't have any argument to counter the claim that Lia's inclusion is deeply unfair.