Anyone watching QI?!

[Anothernewname123]

Setting aside Sandy's women's party views of what a woman is, there is a fascinating dynamic between the natal women (Toksvig & Pascoe) seemingly excluding Jordan 'penis piano player' Gray).
Not least when the topic of discussion was the physiology of women making them better at ultramarathons than men 👀😁

There won’t be anything much to see. Black Cat can’t answer the question, so deflected and started to throw insults.

Yes, that didn't take long. It's not FWR that's the problem, it's those that try, and fail, to stir the vipers nest.

I think our default belief set is that sex is real, and there are differences between males and females physically. When we are primed to think that “trans women are women” we have to suppress this (creating cognitive dissonance). But what’s interesting is they seem to have forgotten they are supposed to think TWAW and have just resorted to the default set of beliefs. I have an ex friend who is a massive trans rights supporter , stopped speaking to me because I was a TERF etc. one day she posted online something like “the best bit about lesbian sex is no penis so no pregnancy!” (She’s straight but identifies as queer of course). Of course she knows sex is real , her true beliefs just came out.

I haven’t seen the clip but so long as grey didn’t get into a strike this is fine. It’s the ideal world- we should be allowed to speak as women about our experiences as the female sex , and not feel compelled to silence or censor ourselves because a male is present.

You’ve got to the age of 59 and still believe in literal sex change?

or do you just think women and men are ‘concepts’ and biology has nothing to do with it?

I wonder how difficult it is for a female athlete in a more global sense to achieve entry to elite sports though.
I suspect that the barriers are many and start young.

Yes. The trouble with the arguments about muscle mass and pelvic angles etc is that they miss out the other issues that women's spaces/sports/shortlists/prizes were set up to counter - sexism, and the reproductive burden, namely.

Beryl Burton was a pretty awesome cyclist back in the day.

In 1967, she set a new 12-hour time trial record of 277.25 miles[5] – a mark that surpassed the men's record of the time by 0.73 miles and was not superseded by a man until 1969.[6] While setting the record, she caught and passed Mike McNamara who was on his way to setting the men's record at 276.52 miles and winning that year's men's British Best All-Rounder. She is reputed to have given him a liquorice allsort as she passed him.[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryl_Burton

I thought both those women were fully TWAW so not sure of this

It is a very human thing to believe in something that cannot be demonstrated to be true. The world is full of religious people. They call it faith.

I don't necessarily think your belief that humans can change sex makes you bad. Many religious people are also really good people. I count them as friends, family and neighbours despite my atheism.

There is only a problem with these faiths if the believer imposes their belief systems on others against their will and refuses to recognise the humanity of those who do not share the belief.

Jasmine Paris is an exceptional athlete. Without question.

But https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarathon women are not faster than men.

I would love to see the data behind this fact:
https://runrepeat.com/state-of-ultra-running
'Female ultra runners are faster than male ultra runners at distances over 195 miles."

If there are 95 men running at paces that range between 11 minutes per mile and 15 minutes per mile and say that averaged out at 13 minutes per mil and 5 women who run at 12 minutes per mile - does that make women faster than men or does it make the amazing 5 women better than some or many of the men but not better than the fastest men. Only the most amazing women make it to the start line while many less able men do.

(I see the same in A level results for Maths and Physics - Girls do better but they are under represented. It does not follow that if they were equally represented the result would be the same.)

There is only a problem with these faiths if the believer imposes their belief systems on others against their will and refuses to recognise the humanity of those who do not share the belief.

Yes, although I suggest that someone who feels they have to attack people who don't share their beliefs are often struggling with doubts about their own faith tbh. Cognitive dissonance makes people prickly.

She is reputed to have given him a liquorice allsort as she passed him

I love this.

Alot of people [women] don't want death and rape threats. So they have to be TWAW in public.

Yes, but if we don’t recognise that male physiology and anatomy is (in reality when the numbers come in) an advantage in ultra running as much as any other sports, then ultra running will be exempted from the social benefits of segregation of the sexes. Courtney Dauwalter will get 23rd place overall. Not 1st woman.

It may be incredibly niche as a sport, but as it stands, Jasmine Paris is the fastest woman to run the Montane Spine Race.

What happens with these people is that they say they are TWAW because they think it's the nice and progressive thing to do, but they refuse to put any thought into the implications. Bridget Christie, for example, is fully TWAW, but also says that "all women go through the menopause". Well, no, they don't - not if trans women really are women.

They all know, just as we do, that Sandi Toksvig and Sara Pascoe share a common set of experiences as women that Jordan Gray will never share. But they are never going to follow that thought to its logical conclusion. Why? Well, cowardice would be my guess. Who wants to be JK Rowling, receiving enough death threats to paper her house?

Cowards with an eye on their bottom line £££££

It's like job applications - generally men will apply if the meet some of the critera; women won't apply unless they meet all of them.

I've seen a few interviews with people who run or cover ultra endurance events and they say that the women who enter are incredibly well prepared and have trained carefully for years, whereas a significant number of men just rock up having done the odd ordinary marathon and assuming they'll be great at it (presumably these are also the ones who think they could beat a lion in a fight). So far more men drop out or do really badly, thus bringing the average down.

It's always predictably tedious that the drive by scolders choose these type of threads and not, for example, the prison ones or the employment tribunal ones.

Anyway, the point made by a pp about rock climbing and the prediction that women would overtake the men not coming true was interesting - the difference in upper body strength obviously can't overcome a difference in weight.

There's no need for your nieces friend to 'change back to being male' because he is and always will be male.

Women need separate races/rights because of both physiological and structural differences between the sexes.

I find it so hard to believe the bait and switch that's been pulled that has somehow managed to convince people that because some males say they can opt into/be victims of sexism they are therefore female. It's fucking mad.

You've woefully misunderstood the GC stance. And ironically, this is the only post on this thread with any kind of 'attack' vibe.

Following up on this from Black Cat:

Look up the term 'pedantic assinine semantics' and you're there !

I did as you suggested, and actually, ‘asinine’ is spelt with one ‘s’. Latin root, innit.

But your creative misspelling has an onomatopoetic quality to it, I have to give you that!

But seriously, those who believe men can become women are, well, just not correct. At best, they can become feminised males, and if they take puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in childhood, they’ll have health problems all their lives. And for what? Trying to reach an impossible goal, an ideal image of ‘woman’. I feel sad for these young people but also for those in middle age who embark on asinine stunts such as playing a piano with their penis in front of a live TV audience. Just goes to show: there’s no fool like an old fool.

Headslap

Obviously the last line should read can overcome a difference in weight.

So did I! Which is why I was surprised by last night's episode of QI. It was like they forgot that TWAW and they were being Team Terf without even realising it. Jordan was a silenced spare part.

I don’t think their stance will have changed. They just have real life and trans politics in separate spaces in their brains/thoughts and they carefully never look at the intersection between the knowledge and the belief so that they can continue to hold the belief.

I

I don't think there was 'an atmosphere' between anyone involved, but Jordan seemed uncharacteristically quiet. I was surprised that things were stated as they were though, without any effort to make the content completely non-triggering for trans identifying people. That seems to happen in so many other contexts. It was just as if there were two men, two women and another man, who wanted to be a woman, present. Nobody was disrespectful, but there was no pandering, avoidance of certain topics or linguistic gymnastics - more like back when everything was normal and we didn't have to pretend to believe in gender woo to avoid being called hateful bigots.