Bodily Autonomy, the Human Right to Enhance, Sound Familiar?

[RethinkingLife]

I hadn't heard about these Enhanced Games. But this is one of the clearest, boldest contemporary moves towards transhumanism, isn't it? It's amazing marketing and a push towards leaving the limitations of our current bodies behind with science and technology (and many drugs).

The basic premise is simple and reliably shocking. What if we just removed all barriers to taking drugs in sport? What if we rewarded and celebrated drug-assisted achievements, explored the wild frontier of juiced-up human potential, and introduced newer, kinder language to destigmatise the unfairly marginalised drug-taking community, so dopers become “Enhanced”, non-dopers “Natural”, supporters and consumers “Allies”?
Enhanced Games: drug-friendly sports competition gains prominence even as the backlash grows
Read moreWell, then you end up with the Enhanced Games, billed (by itself) as the Olympics of the Future, the first edition of which is still promising to take place some time this year. …
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Look through the bumf and there’s stuff there about how it’s actually more, not less, healthy to take drugs. There’s a timeline showing that even the ancient Greeks and Romans were juiced to the gills on performance skag, but then the Romans also washed their clothes in piss and were legally permitted to murder their children.
There’s a degree of snarling hatred for the elites, those dear old legacy powers that are always holding you back. There’s a rag-bag of body autonomy stuff, some big-pharma boilerplate.
Mainly though this is all about freedom. Astonishingly, shamelessly, brilliantly, drug-addled athletes are presented here as a marginalised minority group, victims of mass prejudice, the last frontier of social justice. It is hard to express just how disorientatingly post-truth this all is. Best perhaps just to dive right in to the part where the Enhanced Games makes this statement. “‘Doping’ is a colonialist slur that reeks of symbolic and historic violence against both the Black and enhanced populations and needs to be removed from our vocabulary”.
Yes. This is real. What they’re saying is that being on drugs is pretty much the same as being black. They’re going with doped lives matter. They’re comparing the burdens of “the enhanced community” ie drugged athletes, with the struggle for civil rights, the legacy of slavery, with centuries of blood-soaked racial apartheid and its associated scars.
This is of course deeply cynical and cheap. But it is at least non-exclusive. Being on drugs is not just like being black. Being on drugs is also like being gay. “Think back 50 years ago, being a gay man was like being enhanced today. It’s stigmatised, it’s marginalised,” D’Souza has said, and true to this vision the Enhanced website carries a detailed section on the trials of “coming out” as enhanced to your family, friends and colleagues (who frankly don’t care, please put your singlet back on), with much talk of allies, support networks and being kind.
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And really just think how much money there is to be made here, not just in TV rights and advertising, but from the actual drugs, the as-yet undreamt-of high-performance juices, all of it marketed via a live laboratory show. Four million Americans already take PEDs (performance-enhancing drugs), which really isn’t that many, considering. Those revenues are untapped, the market wide open.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/feb/24/grotesque-enhanced-games-removes-brain-barrier-in-quest-to-get-running

I think they took this idea and ran with it in Red Dwarf, certainly the books, not so sure about the TV show. Eventually goalkeepers were the exact size and shape of the goalmouth. I didn't realise it was prophetic. I thought it was comedy and satire.

I didn't realise it was prophetic. I thought it was comedy and satire

The language, the forced teaming of Enhanced with Black and gay civil rights. Even down to #BeKind. It's like having déja vu.

What an amazing playbook these people have funded to have brought this so far.

https://amp.theguardian.com/sport/2024/apr/11/its-a-joke-enhanced-games-swimmer-should-face-life-ban-says-aquatics-chief

Weird how the Guardian are so against this when they are cool with men competing in women's sports and cool with athletes taking hormones if they also say magic words. Weird how they point out that the Enhanced Games are conceived of by venture capitalists as if that's a bad thing in their opinion....why is big pharma good but venture capitalism bad, in their eyes?

The Times had a piece yesterday about a Nike innovation centre where they developed a running shoe that gives already very good athletes up to a 4% boost.

Obviously this gets viewed as controversial too in competition terms but all I can think is cry me a river when men are allowed in women's sports and it's called a civil rights movement.

You can never level the playing field between males and females but if sporting bodies really wanted to they could just give all competitive runners a pair of these shoes.

Yes, this is definitely "enhanced" because with the current Olympics you are allowed to take certain performance boosting supplements, use certain equipment and as we know men are allowed to reduce their testosterone levels to that of a man receiving prostate cancer treatment and be eligible as a woman.

So it's a bit of a stretch to call Olympics etc fair and these enhanced games as something else.

Look through the bumf and there’s stuff there about how it’s actually more, not less, healthy to take drugs.

Tell that to the female E German athletes virilised by performance-enhancing drugs, or the weightlifters left with life-limiting liver and heart damage caused by performance-enhancing drugs, or imprisoned for roid-rage violence.

Welcome to Transfantasyland.