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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

British Rowing consultation on trans and NB policy

142 replies

cakesandchocolate · 05/05/2023 12:36

https://www.britishrowing.org/2022/09/british-rowing-announces-revised-trans-and-non-binary-inclusion-competition-policy-and-procedures/

information with a link to feedback form open to all, not just BR members.
An opportunity to offer opinion on sport inclusion policy going forward

British Rowing announces revised Trans and Non-Binary Inclusion Competition Policy and Procedures - British Rowing

It is an update to the 2016 Transgender and Transexual Policy and is based on the latest published research and consultation across the sports sector

https://www.britishrowing.org/2022/09/british-rowing-announces-revised-trans-and-non-binary-inclusion-competition-policy-and-procedures/

OP posts:
Thread gallery
9
Helleofabore · 07/05/2023 07:32

I know Permanent.

One one hand you have people such as the male rugby players in the female teams making their arguments about it being ‘their’ place and they don’t want to be removed from the teams.

Then you have supposedly inclusive policies such as this that then leave those male rowers open to being removed from their teams because they should not have been in those teams to start with.

I understand what they are trying to do, but the reality here is that it is harmful to both male and female rowers.

What happens if that under 16 rower wants to move teams and the new team asks for the expert panel to reassess?

Or they age out and move up to another age group? Need to get reassessed ? Or if the next category doesn’t allow this rower to compete they have then ‘lost’ their team.

This is a minefield.

334bu · 07/05/2023 08:26

A Junior rower under the age of 16 intending to compete as a Junior Woman may be considered and approved by the Expert Panel on application without supporting medical evidence. This will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis and following determination that the trans or non-binary junior has not started puberty.

As the NHS states most boys will start puberty between 12 and 14, saying that medical evidence is unnecessary is a nonsense.

nothingcomestonothing · 07/05/2023 08:40

Personally I'd prefer not to emphasise the "women are weaker" arguments quite so heavily - my suspicion is that this is playing right into the hands of the MRAs that many posters seem to think I align with

it was about men having leisure, while woman kept the hearth and home, and women not taking part in anysport

This relates to something I've been thinking about a lot recently, inspired Blush by a post on the antipodean fruitfarm. The narrative is always about women being weaker, less than, being relegated to keep house while men did exciting important stuff. But from an evolutionary perspective, that's not what's happening. Men do the dangerous stuff because they are less valuable - if you've got 100 men and one woman, you get one pregnancy a year. If you've got 100 women and one man, you could get 100 pregnancies a year, thus hugely improving the chance of your species surviving. So men are built to chase and physically overpower animals for food, because they are much more expendable than women, from an evolutionary perspective. Women weren't stuck in the cave sweeping up because they were less good at humaning, but because a woman was far more precious a resource than a man, the men could safely be risked.

I'm not explaining it very well, the original post was more eloquent, but it did make me consider my own ingrained assumptions, even after decades of feminist thought and action, that women are less than, physically. We're not, we're more valuable.

sevenbyseven · 07/05/2023 08:46

Why shouldn't we emphasise the "women are weaker" argument? Women are, on average, smaller, weaker and slower than men. Surely that's the main reason for sex categories in sport Confused

Same way as children are smaller, weaker and slower so aren't expected to compete against adults. There's no shame in it, it's just biology.

zibzibara · 07/05/2023 08:56

@nothingcomestonothing even more uplifting is if researchers achieve and refine this in humans, men become entirely expendable:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11601-bone-stem-cells-turned-into-primitive-sperm-cells/

"the technique could allow infertile men to father their own children, and even allow women to produce their own sperm."

Bone stem cells turned into primitive sperm cells

If these cells can be turned into mature sperm, it could allow infertile men to father their own children, and even allow women to produce their own sperm

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11601-bone-stem-cells-turned-into-primitive-sperm-cells

littlbrowndog · 07/05/2023 09:06

SinnerBoy · 06/05/2023 12:48

Well Mark, it's all part of a sinister plot to make women the overlords (overdames?) above men. The main method is to give women loads and loads of extra rights, so that eventually, they can lounge about, chocolate and guzzling win the sofa.

And to control men's money, going to be the law that men have to give it all to their female partners and live in a rabbit hutch in the back garden.

Mwou ha ha hahah!

Shit - why am I laughing - I'm a bloke....

Our sinister plot 🙌🏽🙌🏽

imagine women taking part in sport against other women

how very very outrageous

Mark19735 · 07/05/2023 10:24

These threads are indeed a mixed bag. You get thoughtful, considered posts like the ones @nothingcomestonothing and @JustWaking have made in the last pages, and then you get rabid ones lacking any nuance and it's a real chore separating the wheat from the chaff.

I'm taking two things from what I've read so far. There is a relevant distinction between competing with, and competing against. Contact sports that pit opponents in opposition to each other have a safety dimension that might require a different treatment to sports where participants compete against the elements. Rugby and Boxing are meaningfully different in this sense to Skiing, Sailing, Shooting or Golf.

The second thing is this idea of inherent, or residual, male advantage. Some sports are relatively simple, in that a single function is tested to its extreme. 100m sprint, javelin, 50m butterfly, that sort of thing. The ones to which the Olympic motto of Faster, Higher, Stronger applies. I completely agree that in such sports, male advantage will often outweigh other forms of advantage to the extent that it would be justified to use eligibility criteria to remove this. That would improve fairness and restore uncertainty. But there are many other sports where male advantage is not inherent, or overwhelming. Equestrianism already sees women and men competing. In dinghy sailing, there is a sizeable advantage to heavier sailors in strong winds, but a significant disadvantage in lighter winds. This is addressed through the design criteria for the class of boat being used in a regatta and could be further equalised by rules about mast height and sail area, for example. I can't see how sex differences between sailors would come into the equation. In golf, there are many skills that a player must master - teeing off involves some aspect of biomechanics and strength, but there are already different tees for ladies and men. The remaining skills - assessing wind effects and the lie of the land, club selection, technique for playing out of the rough, and putting ... where's the inherent male advantage in any of those? There is no reason why golf couldn't be mixed.

We should design these sports and introduce rules that reduce barriers between men and women, not build them up. The rules of basketball were written by people who made choices - ones that mean faster, taller players score more points. But we can chose different rules. Netball places lower physical demands on competitors than basketball but requires greater shooting accuracy and much greater tactical awareness. Are accuracy and tactics things in which there is inherent male advantage? Many universities have mixed netball teams. Why is this a bad thing?

In the long run, the sporting associations will come up with eligibility criteria and rules that balance maximising grass-roots participation with maintaining a level of spectator excitement in elite competitions. Fighting this on ideological grounds across all sports and prioritising sex differences as the primary and universal discriminator is picking the wrong fight. We should be asking "how can we make this work" rather than saying "We refuse on principle even to consider the idea that this could work".

BellaAmorosa · 07/05/2023 10:26

sevenbyseven · 07/05/2023 08:46

Why shouldn't we emphasise the "women are weaker" argument? Women are, on average, smaller, weaker and slower than men. Surely that's the main reason for sex categories in sport Confused

Same way as children are smaller, weaker and slower so aren't expected to compete against adults. There's no shame in it, it's just biology.

I sort of agree with you and also @nothingcomestonothing
We're adapted for gathering and trapping our food (which the family group/tribe relied on for two thirds of its nutritional needs) rather than hunting and fighting. So absolutely, we are smaller, slower and weaker.

But...we would last longer in a famine (yay for thigh and bum fat) and have greater resistance to disease. Lower testosterone makes us more risk-averse and less aggressive, so we tend to live longer (assuming we survive childbirth!). Our joints are more flexible, our pelvises can in effect expand and contract. Pretty amazing, IMO. And all of this is because WE CAN GESTATE AND GIVE BIRTH - as well as run, jump, throw, swim, row, etc, etc.

There is no point in men's and women's bodies competing directly in sport. They're different machines, adapted for different purposes. The sexist logic is to say that if women are athletically inferior, we are physically inferior (not true, see above) and therefore we are just inferior in every way and not even proper human beings.

Most sports were devised as ways for men to practice hunting or fighting skills, so they reward physical attributes that males have. If the broom challenge or the chair challenge were sports, male people would struggle to even take part.

MrsOvertonsWindow · 07/05/2023 10:29

littlbrowndog · 07/05/2023 09:06

Our sinister plot 🙌🏽🙌🏽

imagine women taking part in sport against other women

how very very outrageous

So sinister. It's almost as if women were at one time banned from most sports and have spent decades carving out the rights to compete in our own right.
We had to fight men to "allow us" to compete and now we're having to fight the same Victorian males to allow us to continue to with hard won sports for women.

BellaAmorosa · 07/05/2023 10:30

@PermanentTemporary & @Helleofabore
You may have covered this, but it should be pointed out that case-by-case determination is cruel especially to kids because it will necessarily result in inconsistencies and perceived unfairness. BR will be drowning in legal challenges.

Paq · 07/05/2023 10:31

Women's bodies are different to men's. Often weaker which means we can't compete in strength/speed competition but differences also mean women perform differently to men in sports like gymnastics and skating, where the disciplines are different for men and women.

sevenbyseven · 07/05/2023 10:31

Mark19735 · 07/05/2023 10:24

These threads are indeed a mixed bag. You get thoughtful, considered posts like the ones @nothingcomestonothing and @JustWaking have made in the last pages, and then you get rabid ones lacking any nuance and it's a real chore separating the wheat from the chaff.

I'm taking two things from what I've read so far. There is a relevant distinction between competing with, and competing against. Contact sports that pit opponents in opposition to each other have a safety dimension that might require a different treatment to sports where participants compete against the elements. Rugby and Boxing are meaningfully different in this sense to Skiing, Sailing, Shooting or Golf.

The second thing is this idea of inherent, or residual, male advantage. Some sports are relatively simple, in that a single function is tested to its extreme. 100m sprint, javelin, 50m butterfly, that sort of thing. The ones to which the Olympic motto of Faster, Higher, Stronger applies. I completely agree that in such sports, male advantage will often outweigh other forms of advantage to the extent that it would be justified to use eligibility criteria to remove this. That would improve fairness and restore uncertainty. But there are many other sports where male advantage is not inherent, or overwhelming. Equestrianism already sees women and men competing. In dinghy sailing, there is a sizeable advantage to heavier sailors in strong winds, but a significant disadvantage in lighter winds. This is addressed through the design criteria for the class of boat being used in a regatta and could be further equalised by rules about mast height and sail area, for example. I can't see how sex differences between sailors would come into the equation. In golf, there are many skills that a player must master - teeing off involves some aspect of biomechanics and strength, but there are already different tees for ladies and men. The remaining skills - assessing wind effects and the lie of the land, club selection, technique for playing out of the rough, and putting ... where's the inherent male advantage in any of those? There is no reason why golf couldn't be mixed.

We should design these sports and introduce rules that reduce barriers between men and women, not build them up. The rules of basketball were written by people who made choices - ones that mean faster, taller players score more points. But we can chose different rules. Netball places lower physical demands on competitors than basketball but requires greater shooting accuracy and much greater tactical awareness. Are accuracy and tactics things in which there is inherent male advantage? Many universities have mixed netball teams. Why is this a bad thing?

In the long run, the sporting associations will come up with eligibility criteria and rules that balance maximising grass-roots participation with maintaining a level of spectator excitement in elite competitions. Fighting this on ideological grounds across all sports and prioritising sex differences as the primary and universal discriminator is picking the wrong fight. We should be asking "how can we make this work" rather than saying "We refuse on principle even to consider the idea that this could work".

This thread isnt about netball or golf or equestrianism or sailing. It's about rowing. So your arguments do not apply. Stop derailing.

MissLucyEyelesbarrow · 07/05/2023 10:33

Everyone knows that the only fair arrangement for girls and women is to separate the sexes, by sex, from the age that boys start to have a biological advantage (around 8).

Anyone who pretends to believe otherwise is either lying, or prioritising men's feelings over justice for women, or both.

sevenbyseven · 07/05/2023 10:36

BellaAmorosa · 07/05/2023 10:26

I sort of agree with you and also @nothingcomestonothing
We're adapted for gathering and trapping our food (which the family group/tribe relied on for two thirds of its nutritional needs) rather than hunting and fighting. So absolutely, we are smaller, slower and weaker.

But...we would last longer in a famine (yay for thigh and bum fat) and have greater resistance to disease. Lower testosterone makes us more risk-averse and less aggressive, so we tend to live longer (assuming we survive childbirth!). Our joints are more flexible, our pelvises can in effect expand and contract. Pretty amazing, IMO. And all of this is because WE CAN GESTATE AND GIVE BIRTH - as well as run, jump, throw, swim, row, etc, etc.

There is no point in men's and women's bodies competing directly in sport. They're different machines, adapted for different purposes. The sexist logic is to say that if women are athletically inferior, we are physically inferior (not true, see above) and therefore we are just inferior in every way and not even proper human beings.

Most sports were devised as ways for men to practice hunting or fighting skills, so they reward physical attributes that males have. If the broom challenge or the chair challenge were sports, male people would struggle to even take part.

Agree with all of this. I didn't mean in any way that women's bodies are inferior, just weaker as in less muscular.

Helleofabore · 07/05/2023 10:36

Mark19735 · 07/05/2023 10:24

These threads are indeed a mixed bag. You get thoughtful, considered posts like the ones @nothingcomestonothing and @JustWaking have made in the last pages, and then you get rabid ones lacking any nuance and it's a real chore separating the wheat from the chaff.

I'm taking two things from what I've read so far. There is a relevant distinction between competing with, and competing against. Contact sports that pit opponents in opposition to each other have a safety dimension that might require a different treatment to sports where participants compete against the elements. Rugby and Boxing are meaningfully different in this sense to Skiing, Sailing, Shooting or Golf.

The second thing is this idea of inherent, or residual, male advantage. Some sports are relatively simple, in that a single function is tested to its extreme. 100m sprint, javelin, 50m butterfly, that sort of thing. The ones to which the Olympic motto of Faster, Higher, Stronger applies. I completely agree that in such sports, male advantage will often outweigh other forms of advantage to the extent that it would be justified to use eligibility criteria to remove this. That would improve fairness and restore uncertainty. But there are many other sports where male advantage is not inherent, or overwhelming. Equestrianism already sees women and men competing. In dinghy sailing, there is a sizeable advantage to heavier sailors in strong winds, but a significant disadvantage in lighter winds. This is addressed through the design criteria for the class of boat being used in a regatta and could be further equalised by rules about mast height and sail area, for example. I can't see how sex differences between sailors would come into the equation. In golf, there are many skills that a player must master - teeing off involves some aspect of biomechanics and strength, but there are already different tees for ladies and men. The remaining skills - assessing wind effects and the lie of the land, club selection, technique for playing out of the rough, and putting ... where's the inherent male advantage in any of those? There is no reason why golf couldn't be mixed.

We should design these sports and introduce rules that reduce barriers between men and women, not build them up. The rules of basketball were written by people who made choices - ones that mean faster, taller players score more points. But we can chose different rules. Netball places lower physical demands on competitors than basketball but requires greater shooting accuracy and much greater tactical awareness. Are accuracy and tactics things in which there is inherent male advantage? Many universities have mixed netball teams. Why is this a bad thing?

In the long run, the sporting associations will come up with eligibility criteria and rules that balance maximising grass-roots participation with maintaining a level of spectator excitement in elite competitions. Fighting this on ideological grounds across all sports and prioritising sex differences as the primary and universal discriminator is picking the wrong fight. We should be asking "how can we make this work" rather than saying "We refuse on principle even to consider the idea that this could work".

I strongly suggest you read the previous threads you have been on to refresh your memory.

Women do not owe you your type of ‘nuanced’ discussion. Because your posts lack any knowledge of either feminism, biological reality, sports knowledge or any respect of women and girls. We know this from our previous interactions with you.

Fighting this on ideological grounds across all sports and prioritising sex differences as the primary and universal discriminator is picking the wrong fight. We should be asking "how can we make this work" rather than saying "We refuse on principle even to consider the idea that this could work".

You are talking bollocks. Your premise is false to start with. It doesn’t matter if you get new people to go through this with you. The result is still the same.

BellaAmorosa · 07/05/2023 10:37

@zibzibara
Fascinating article. The insuperable moral issue is that at some point the researchers would be experimenting on human babies!

BellaAmorosa · 07/05/2023 10:41

@sevenbyseven
I know you didn't - sorry if it came across as if I was scolding you. I was trying to agree that we can't pretend facts aren't facts.

MrsOvertonsWindow · 07/05/2023 10:45

Am always horrified when anyone - let alone a sporting organisation - talks about children transitioning before puberty. Supposedly responsible adults musing about little children giving up their future fertility, mental and physical health as if it's ok ! And then thinking they might be suitable to be elite athletes?

So many dangerous levels of delusion and failure to safeguard children.

SquidwardBound · 07/05/2023 10:50

Why do TRA types always want to insist the whole world is totally reinvented to suit them?

Let’s completely redesign all sport so that male humans don’t have to accept they are male. Change everything. Make it all massively complicated, like the worst RPG ever imaginable, all because just accepting that - however many categories, caveats, rules and intricate rituals you throw at it - a boat full of male humans will in statistically highly significant ways row a boat faster than a boat of women. Even if they’re all the same size and weight.

Helleofabore · 07/05/2023 10:57

Mixed sport exists already. Males can go and compete in those sports events as males so as not to take a female athlete’s place if the spaces are limited.

Accomodations to allow for the leveraging of males into female sports categories are unnecessary. If a team wishes to be mixed sex, they should make that decision and only ever compete against other mixed sex teams. Discussion on overhauling sports for the sake of male inclusion is discriminating against female people who wish to play their sports without males. Which is the vast majority of female sports people. Otherwise they would choose mixed sex sports.

Helleofabore · 07/05/2023 11:05

And besides, having accommodations to suit male people, requires those male people to be honest about their sex. Something that a few don’t seem to be able to do.

ManuelBensonsLeftBoot · 07/05/2023 11:05

Many universities have mixed netball teams. Why is this a bad thing?

It isn't - I hope that helps. But a man playing on a women's team isn't the same thing. Triathlon has introduced a blanket ban on male born people in women's events but still has a mixed relay category (but this can only be done by all the teams having the correct ratio of F/M competitors not by allowing any team composition they want - if you could pick any four competitors it would instantly became a men's event because even the women's world champion can't complete against elite level men. She may well be able to wipe the floor with Dave down the pub but not the 3rd/4th best man in the country.

All the non elite athletes in the London marathon start at the same place at the same time, men and women, they are running together, this is fine, it is a non contact sport so no one is hurt or disadvantaged by this. However, if (or in indeed when - see the controversy after the recent LM) one of those people with male physiology is recorded as a woman all of the woman who finish after them are disadvantaged.

Women's sport matters it's not just an excuse to get out of the wash up 🙄

NicCageisnotNickCave · 07/05/2023 11:32

These threads are indeed a mixed bag. You get thoughtful, considered posts like the ones @nothingcomestonothing and @JustWakinghave made in the last pages, and then you get rabid ones lacking any nuance and it's a real chore separating the wheat…

… from the woefully poorly informed mansplaining?

There is plenty of scientific evidence out there, no need to waste our time ‘debating’ misinformed talking points that are now better than the nonsense that comes out of a wonky Chatbot.

eg:

https://twitter.com/Scienceofsport

https://twitter.com/runthinkwrite

https://twitter.com/FondOfBeetles

https://twitter.com/hoovlet

I thought this was interesting (haven’t listened to the whole episode yet though)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BagXby1y3TE

The Most Compelling Argument Against Trans Athletes In Sports

David Geary explains the different capacities of men and women in sports. What do David Geary's findings suggest about the throwing accuracy of males and fem...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BagXby1y3TE

YetAnotherSpartacus · 07/05/2023 11:39

Personally I'd prefer not to emphasise the "women are weaker" arguments quite so heavily - my suspicion is that this is playing right into the hands of the MRAs that many posters seem to think I align with

I agree (and in fact said something like this a few years ago here). It then makes it harder to justify equal sponsorship and prize money.

My mother always said she preferred watching women's tennis because women had more skill and the game was more interesting as a result. I also believe that women still do better than men in some endurance events.

It's the way our narrative has been crafted in response to an agenda set by others. Yes, we are not as strong as men but without all the current gender ideology we would not have to shout about it and we could focus on our positives instead.

zibzibara · 07/05/2023 11:40

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