Will there be any males in women's teams at the Olympics?

[iknownothingnow]

Discussing men in women's sports with my husband, who believes it will never happen (despite me telling him it already is). He asked if this will be the case during the olympics?

Can anyone give me any info to back up my argument as, if not this time, perhaps it will be the norm in years to come?

I want my DH to engage with this issue as we have sporty girls in the family, but although he agrees with me he just thinks it will never be allowed so not worth worrying over.

With the World Athletics Federation awarding each Gold Medal winners $50,000
I’ll be surprised if we don’t see more males with DSD’s competing in women’s events.

Get him to look at www.hecheated.org and www.shewon.org

For the Olympics this year? Or generally?

Did you read there are more than 70 trans peope playing in FA games at the moment ? They could all be male people playing in female games. Is he ok with that?
“Around 70 transgender footballers are among many millions of players who take part in the grassroots game on a weekly basis”

https://www.itv.com/news/2024-05-21/fa-resists-government-pressure-to-change-its-transgender-inclusion-policy?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1716359079

Does he understand that those male players can (and some have ) cause significant injury. I believe one of the women who played the Flying Fruitbat team in North Sydney broke a leg after being injured by one of those male players in that team and said she cannot play again.

Ask him if he thinks that is acceptable that female players carry extra risk of injury this way if he wishes to dismiss it as being ‘not widespread’ or not that many.

To play devils advocate here as I'm not sure myself, but those who won previously all seem to have DSD (I had to look that acronym up) so I assume it was argued they could be born women?

They weren't born women. They were all born men with non-standard external genitalia, but inside they have testes, not ovaries.

They may have been brought up as girls to begin with, but in eg Semenya's case, he behaved like and was treated like a boy all his life.

There are coaches who look for African athletes with these DSDs so they can win medals and cheat women. Do some research!

One of those was Ekkart Arbeit. A man who has a lot of experience in the impact of testosterone in female sports events. And was a coach for the South African athletes. I believe he was on Semenya’s coaching team at one stage.

@Helleofabore don't get me wrong, he really doesn't agree with it but he just says it will never happen, so don't worry.

It's me that infuriated, although I never see anything about it on mainstream media and again my DH says as soon as there is more publicity it will stop as the public won't stand for it.

Hence me asking about Olympics as it would bring it to a wider audience.

Do bears sh*t in the forest?

The likes of the BBC insist on hiding the truth. They call Semenya a woman with naturally high testosterone while knowing full well that he's male. If your DH is waiting for them to tell the truth then he'll be waiting a long time as gaslighting is their official policy

Ok.OP. But it IS happening. And it is happening at every level where sports have not made strict policy.

And even where policy has been made there are law suits threatened.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12099673/amp/Transgender-rugby-player-raises-thousands-bid-overthrow-safety-laws-banning-players-born-male.html

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/NdWmFiAMX4ycdvoh/?mibextid=KsPBc6

Note the size of this player. Knowing that Swansea Uni released a study on female bodies and the impacts in rugby on concussion in female players. This person puts other players at significant risk and still demanded access to teams.

Did you husband miss the news when GB cycling excluded male cyclists? the cyclist Bridges made plenty of news stories about it. And yet around the world other cycling bodies are still allowing male people to dominate the female events.

So he is wrong. It IS happening and despite all the news generated about Hubbard, Lia Thomas, and Bridges, public awareness is not hugely high and some sporting bodies are still allowing male athletes. Even in the UK.

The biggest issue, and one I find myself regularly trying to get my husband to really really see, isn't the olympics right now it's the future of women's sport in general.

Why, if you have a child now, would you want to encourage or support them to train 2 hrs a day, stick rigorously to a nutritional plan, to sacrifice time with friends, icecream on a day out etc when what they are experiencing is:

• boys in their changing rooms - seeing the boys naked and possibly more disturbing, being seen naked by boys. Especially sports like swimming where competitive suits actually take about 15 minutes to put on because they are so skintight.
• boys taking their medals and places on podiums
• boys being celebrated as the best examples of girls.

So where does that leave women's sport in 10years?

Bodies like the IOC are at least starting to change rules for elite sports, but for every stage below that, the stages that train, develop and make ready these athletes for elite sports, the guidelines are just 'be kind, be inclusive'.

Simply, even one woman losing a place or medal at an event to a man is one woman too many.

Yes. FlabMonsterIsDietingAgain

And in the case of the Flying Fruitbats meeting in Sydney, a team’s coach said he had lost 24 players from his team because of this one team’s participation in that metro level league. 24 female people now self-excluded as a direct consequence.

At least one top champion elite level female cyclist left the sport in the USA because she was losing the winnings she needed to continue at that level to the male cyclists in her sport.

But also, if girls are competing and losing against male children, they are not going to stay in sport. The choice of the next future elite level female athletes will be from a smaller pool and may not be there in some sports. Despite some ideolistic **people’s belief that girls and women should not be in sport for the potential of winning, but for the wonderful love of participation, why would girls losing to boys stay?

** this is a general observation based on previous threads where posters come and tell us that participation is the key and that sports should be much less competitive.

@FlabMonsterIsDietingAgain funnily enough although DH talks about elite sport it was when I asked how can women get to be elite, if at grass roots levels their spaces are being taken up by boys? Girls will just give up. My husband did sit up at that point and conceded it.

My DH also only ever watches all things BBC esp news, so that may be why he hadn't seen anything about it.

Why is he waiting to see if it happens in this Olympics? Why wasn't he outraged that it happened in the last one?

'Laurel' Hubbard competed. It's not some future hypothetical possibility.

sounds like you’re getting through @iknownothingnow 👍

I bet he thinks scarlet Blake is a woman still thanks to bbc reporting

So your dh thinks it's only a problem when he considers it to be a problem he cannot avoid, and this threshold is so high it is not met by father of two, Caster Semenya, winning the women's 100m?

@CatonmyKeyboard I'm ashamed to say I didn't know about these cases in the last Olympics. So can't lay blame at my DH door only.

We are of an age where our news and sport coverage is mainstream.

Very rarely go on any social media.
Now I'm aware I will be speaking to everyone o know about it.

Don't be ashamed op. I was a Guardian reading BBC watcher until the Isla Bryson case in Scotland (rapist who could have gone to a women's prison) and it was only then that I started really paying attention. I want to apologise to everyone who was here 10+ years ago raising the alarm about this. In a sense your husband is right. Once people actually know what's going on most of them are outraged.

@MagnetCarHair he just can't comprehend how it will be "allowed" at an elite level. He says it's cheating on every level and any sane person will agree. He thinks the 'public' will stop it so no point me being worked up about it!

I just wanted some info to back up my argument that it's happening now and in fact sports governing bodies ARE allowing it.

So thank you for these links, I will get myself more informed as I know I am ignorant too.

At the moment, I'm listening to the audiobook of Unfair Play written by the Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies and, although I'm only a couple of chapters in, I highly recommend it.
https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/unfair-play-the-battle-for-women-s-sport-thrillingly-fearless-the-times-sharron-davies/7605027?ean=9781800752825

@MinorDisaster thank you, I will read it. I have also ordered the women who won't wheest book. Although I know it not about sport, it is about men in women's spaces which is something I am also learning about.

In fact, I went into some loos at a station a while ago and a guy was in there, I thought he had wandered into the wrong area and kindly pointed it out to him and got a tirade of abuse.

I then realised he could be considered to be dressed as a woman (flowery trousers and top,long silk scarf) with long hair but to me was obviously a bloke.

I scurried away feeling confused and upset with the feeling of doing something wrong, as I certainly didn't mean to be offensive. But he/she scared me and I will never use public toilets again if I can help it.

Bloody hell, what is the world coming to.

Also look up:

Lia Thomas - male US university swimmer (mediocre male swimmer, top “female” swimmer). Female college swimmers were forced to swim against Lia(m), AND change with/in front of the biologically intact (often with erections) male.

Hannah Mouncey - biological male Australian handball and Australian Football player. Competed against and injured female athletes, moved from handball to football as the handball team refused to shower with Hannah.

Rachel McKinnon has had a lovely time trashing women's cycling.

I think the answer is that there'll probably be one or two in low profile events.

Numbers are restricted by:

(a) some sports having rules that explicitly don't allow it (the high profile ones being athletics, cycling, and swimming); and
(b) of the 200+ countries who compete at the Olympics there being realistically only about a dozen or so that are sufficiently captured that they'd ever contemplate such an absurd thing as sending a man to compete in a women's event... we're basically talking about Australia, NZ, Canada, maybe the US, and probably a small handful in NW Europe.

So, yeah, there'll undoubtedly be the odd (doubtless late middle aged) bloke from one of the above countries who sneaks into shooting or similar, almost certainly doing his best to fly under the radar, probably unsuccessfully.

Get him to read this piece for an appreciation of how the trans lobby view the matter:

https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/athletics/caster-semenya-news-gender-martina-navratilova-trans-cas-jonathan-liew-column-a8792861.html

Quote:

But let’s follow this argument all the way through. Let’s say the floodgates do open. Let’s say transgender athletes pour into women’s sport, and let’s say, despite the flimsy and poorly-understood (sic) relationship between testosterone and elite performance, they dominate everything they touch. They sweep up Grand Slam tennis titles and cycling world championships. They monopolise the Olympics. They fill our football and cricket and netball teams. Why would that be bad? Really? Imagine the power of a trans child or teenager seeing a trans athlete on the top step of the Olympic podium. In a way, it would be inspiring.

When people are this deluded, and the rules don't stop them, they will take advantage.