Reading all the posts about “transwomen” or “transgender women” etc, I’m reminded again just how important clear, accurate language is.
Every single “transwoman” is, of necessity, biologically male. That is the reality.
And where sports are segregated, as the vast majority are, on the basis of biological sex, no biologically male person has any business being in the category set aside for biologically female people. That’s all there is to it. It should be entirely straightforward, an open and shut case.
But all this talk of a “different kind of women” clouds the issue.
There is no other kind of women. There are adult human females and that’s it. No one has ever come up with a non-circular alternative definition of woman that includes some adult human males, because there isn’t one. There is no single characteristic that all women share except that of being biologically female adults.
Whatever state of functionality that biology may be in, what it definitely isn’t is male. Which is what the people some call “transwomen” are. Adult human males. Asking - often demanding - that the rest of the world play along with the pretence that they are adult human females.
And the rest of the world has been doing so for far too long, in far too many ways. Because we live in a world where male people fundamentally matter more than female people.
You can see it right here on this thread. The appeals to be kind, to insist on the importance of these people having their “fun”, their right to conceal their sex even in situations where their sex matters.
The female people adversely impacted by this pretence, though - no such obligation to be kind to them, to prioritise their fun, to think of their rights to fairness in sport, as in many other arenas. They don’t matter, their feelings don’t matter; they are cast, as always, in the role of service humans, there to make the lives of male people better at their own expense.
This is not a minority civil rights movement. Biologically male trans people as a class are not the most vulnerable, marginalised community there is. It’s all poppycock. A tiny minority are actually vulnerable males who should be afforded the same care and protection as other vulnerable males, but the vast majority are privileged males taking full advantage of that privilege to trample all over the few rights women had managed to win prior to the exponential growth of the “trans rights” movement and the irresistible rise of gender identity ideology.
The examples on this thread of the multiple males taking opportunities, awards and recognition away from women, at every sporting level, bears that out. It’s shameless misogynistic narcissism, and it’s time we as a society stopped enabling it. Each one of us can start by challenging ourselves on the language we use, by refusing to play along with the charade that biologically male trans people are in any way a subset of women.
We are told it’s courteous to use preferred pronouns and language like “transwomen”, or, even worse, “trans women”. It’s not courteous. It’s a mark of female subjugation, of female people’s rights and needs being subordinated to the wishes of male people.
It’s extremely discourteous, unkind, and harmful to women - female people - when male people are allowed to insert themselves in the category of “woman”. We can see the real world consequences here, as in so many other areas.This is not social progress, it’s the same dynamic as always: male people privileged at the expense of female people. Patriarchy as usual.
OP, huge congratulations on your achievement - the many posts on this thread from grassroots level competitors make it clear just how important these events are to those who take part in them, however far from the elite ranks they are, and clearly placing does matter. I’m sorry the official record of it was stolen from you by the actions of a cheating male and the collusion of a male-favouring sporting body.