Another athletics one

[Worldgonecrazy]

I don’t often watch sport but yesterday caught a few minutes of the indoor athletics. There was one athlete in a women’s event who looked VERY male and won by a significant margin. Anyone else see the same thing?

The Williams sisters…

But their gait??

you'd have to go a long way to find a man who's built anything like either of the Williams sisters, seriously.

The original 2003 IOC Committee that said male people could compete as women post surgery contained an ex-athlete who was constantly challenged about her sex during her career. I'm certain her experience influenced the committee, why wouldn't it. I'm just sorry that she influenced it in that direction because I obviously think that was a sexist and wrong decision.

What we need is rules that work, and then to let men and women look however they look. Maybe start training yourself to do that.

Did you watch her interview after the race. She is incredibly feminine when talking and close up. Amazing athlete to boot.

But it doesn't matter how feminine she is. It matters that the rules have changed.

No, that's Nikki Hiltz, who won silver in the 1500m. She is female, identifies as trans.

Yep. Remember all the fuss about Tessa Sanderson bring a man? She wasn't.

*being

It is always worth remembering just how sexist sport was and how homophobic men's sport remains. Tbh women's tennis got a lot of homophobia back in the day. Journalists male and female wrote about Billie Jean King supposedly being a sexual predator on young women. They wrote those things because they were homophobic and back then homophobia sold newspapers.

The Eastern European athletes were all white. Testosterone causes the facial structure to change in a more masculine fashion, heavier brow, squarer jaw and so on........and of course the East Europeans were also winning most of the women's events. Sharon Davies also lost out on swimming medals to women because they'd been doped. She herself always had very muscular, well built shoulders and back.....for obvious reasons, but you didn't automatically question her sex.

You'd have to be very stupid, these days, to be doping given that the testing is now so stringent - so obviously in this case there might well be another reason, as I've suggested, such as naturally occuring higher testosterone levels.

But you cannot stop people from noticing and commenting on such incongruities. It was my husband who had been watching the race and had mentioned a very male looking athlete in the hurdles event.......and then when i was browsing Mumsnet there were others who had clearly had similar thoughts.

I cannot recall people thinking Tessa Sanderson looked male, but certainly recall always looking twice at Fatima Whitbread.

Competitors for the chinese women's 400M team in 2019:

I spent quite a few years competing in a power sport and the experience of training and my female teammates and competitors were a wonderful refuge from sexism, though other aspects of the sport brought it right back.

I agree that this mess has been weaponised by sexist insistence that we look at male people and don't see them as male. But you really can't always tell, at least from a photo or a few brief clips.

In the photo of the Chinese athletes above - even though for some reason the top half showing the athletes heads has been cut off - suspicions were raised, denied by the athletics authority, but the two were later disqualified from the women's event.

https://dunyanews.tv/en/WeirdNews/748901-Debate-surrounding-true-gender-of-Chinese-female-athletes-reignited-by-I

Well they clearly are not.

If gender identity is the metric by which to assign sporting classes so that transwomen compete in the women's category, then you can't have non-binary people in the women's category because their gender identity is different to 'woman'.

This is the hypocrisy of the gender ideology.

@MrGHardy There are no trans women completing in the women's category of elite athletics. They are not allowed.

*competing

No its the fault of (some) women, who even now cannot accept that we all come in different shapes and sizes.
Too bulky - You re a cheating trans who is erasing female sport.
Too thin - You re body shaming us all and risk an eating disorder.

We watched the indoor competitions and it never once crossed our minds that men were in female competitions, why ? because the governing bodies have banned trans women in competition & at this level they are very hot on cheating.

@Worldgonecrazy Why have you linked to pictures of just black athletes?

This is a really grim thread, and people really should think before they start commenting negatively on women's bodies

I watch a lot of sport & this woman isn't on my radar as "masculine" looking. Lots of female athletes are bulky and flat chested due to the demands of training, also women are built differently to each other. A small woman needs more muscle than a taller woman to run fast.

If she had long hair and false nails on would people still be saying she looks mannish? Think before you speak because assuming that someone who doesn't signal female is a man is a really awful way to think.

I've never heard anyone question the sex of the Williams sisters. They're clearly female, even if tall and in Serena's case powerfully built.

Martina Navratilova was one of the first very athletic and powerful female tennis players - before her it was all prettty much 'tappy tappy' tennis with frilly knickers.

which blows a hole in the argument that all this "questioning" is the fault of men in female sport.

Fatima and Sanderson were all way before the Trans in sport arguments.

Its women not accepting that, just like men, we all come in different shapes and sizes.

No subject should be off limits. It would be weird and hypocritical to think things but not discuss the reasons why.

....but you yourself questioned Fatima Whitbread.

any reasons?

Questions will always persist when there are obvious incongruities. Fatima Whitbread is, and certainly was, unusually masculine looking and built in a way that few, if any, other women are. Obviously she's female, and has had children - but you will never stop people picking up on obvious incongruities in appearance - it is human nature to do so.