Chill out a bit, wims
Ah, this is charming: male sports writer tells women it will be inspiring if trans women do completely take over women’s sport. He does it with plenty of contempt, too.
They’re coming! Over the horizon, they’re coming! They’re coming for your medals and your trophies and your endorsement contracts. They’re coming, with their giant bulging muscles and enormous flapping penises, to ruin everything pure and good. Nothing will ever be the same again. Nothing means anything any more. For the trans people – and let’s call them what they are, men in sports bras – are coming. And all is lost.
Great first para; lets us know where we are.
This is the apocalyptic scenario currently facing women’s sport. At least, if you ask certain people. Still, a certain feverish hysteria has long characterised the debate over transgender, intersex and DSD (differences in sex development) athletes in sport, sharpened to a point by recent events.
“A certain feverish hysteria” – wink wink nudge nudge elbow elbow. Women, am I right?
[T]he first thing to say is probably: like, chill out a bit. For most of the arguments against allowing trans women to compete in female athletic competition rest on a scenario that borders on the fantastical. Are we really suggesting there are hordes of male athletes who will suddenly declare themselves female simply to game the system?
He never explains why it has to be “hordes” before we’re allowed to think and say it’s a bad thing. Hey it was just one woman who had her leg broken by Hannah Mouncey; that’s no big deal so chill, laydeez.
Then he explains why Navratilova is wrong, after giving a cursory acknowledgement of her accomplishments.
But on this one, she’s sadly misguided. You know what? Sport isn’t fair. Never has been. Genetics isn’t fair. Basketball players are blessed with height. Gymnasts are blessed with compact, flexible bodies. Fulham players are blessed with a preternatural ability to give the ball away on the halfway line. Economics isn’t fair. Geography isn’t fair. Privilege isn’t fair. What we call the level playing field is in fact a cosy myth, a homespun feel-good tale that hoodwinks us into chasing our dreams.
Therefore, abruptly change the rules so that women are forced to compete against men, so that the playing field will be vertiginously less level than it was when women and men played on separate teams.
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 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.
Says the man, about his imagined utopia in which women never again get to the Olympic podium.
Funny how they always make it about testosterone, isn’t it? Nothing about size. Nothing about muscle mass. Nothing about having been trained to be more aggressive, more violent, more confrontational.
Testosterone is the tack they take because they perceive it as a winning tack. Hey, we can reduce testosterone to female levels! Hey, we haven’t demonstrated that testosterone gives any real advantage! Hey, testosterone is just…whatever.
Yeah. But size, strength, muscle mass, and general attitude are the main reasons that woman’s sport was segregated from men’s sport, not testosterone. Some women are larger than other women, yes, and they will excel in sports. Not always. The basketball and volleyball coaches were always interested in me because I am tall. But I am clutzy and clunky and not particularly sports oriented. I do not have enough interest to make the effort to develop the sports skills. I am more interested in reading and writing and photography and science. Some women much shorter than me excelled in both basketball and volleyball, and I say, grand. They loved it; I didn’t. But they weren’t required to compete against male bodies that have differences from large women (and I wasn’t large, only tall).
I get the feeling he thinks that, because the world isn’t fair, women shouldn’t be allowed a chance without having to compete against men. Equality? Don’t make me laugh. There is little about women’s sports that could be called equal. They get less money, less TV time, fewer endorsements, less notice, less pampering and petting, and are often sneered at and scorned and treated with the modifier, woman athlete, that marks them out as something less than men, rather than noting that they are spectacularly successful in their chosen sport.
I don’t see trans-women clamoring for the right to squeeze grapefruits through their “girl-dicks”. That’s truly difficult, and only one sex can manage it, though I was reading a book recently that referred to the “first male to give birth”. Naturally, it was a trans-male. So, not a male body, no, not a miracle at all, simply a female body that had a brain attached which declared itself to be male. So now we have to face the ridiculous idea (frequently espoused by one PZ Myers, a biologist who should know better) that men can give birth, too. That men can have periods, too. That men can…fill in the blank.
Trans has really shown up a lot of men for what they are.
Funny how he neglects to mention that for too many female gymnasts , their trainers keep them to strict dietary and training regimes intended to keep those bodies as close to the undeveloped, childrens’ form as possible to maintain that compact, flexible, streamlined body shape. Never mind the retardation of physical developement and the associated problems later in life; gotta keep those medals rolling in.
Yes, because testosterone is the only factor that could possibly advantage male bodied athletes over female bodies athletes. (I’m rolling my eyes right now.)
The whole point of contention is that suppressing testosterone is insufficient to deem someone physiologically female and suitable to compete physically against women. Stop talking and listen for a second, dude.
He’s right that sports aren’t fair because we are all physiologically a little different, making some of us better than others even when we follow identical training regimens. When those physiological differences are sex-based though, there’s a very obvious solution: play against athletes who developed the same secondary sex characteristics as you. Play against trans women if you’re a trans woman who doesn’t want to play against men.
It’s cute that he thinks trans women dominating women’s sports would be great for trans kids but has nothing to say about the effect a complete lack of successful woman athletes would have on little girls.
WOW! Right to the “calm down, little ladies, don’t be so hysterical” tone from paragraph one and he never lets up. And, sure, what does it matter if women lose anything and everything as long as men are having happy jendafeels, right?
Wish I was still on Twitter to be helping tear him down but I hear those still allowed on the platform are doing a good job.
Maybe this dude is a gift — the kind of snotty old-timey male chauvinist pig that will peak trans more people.
This “life isn’t fair” line is bullshit. Yes, the world throws lots of unfair things at us, but we *as human beings* try to *treat each other* fairly. And sports specifically is supposed to be all about “fair play”. What fairness means isn’t obvious in every situation, but just dismissing the whole idea as something only bleeding heart liberals whine about is idiotic. But then, sports writers have never rated high on my list of Smart People.
(Usually, I couldn’t give a damn about anything in the sports world except in the most abstract way, but this term’s seminar is on Egalitarianism (including: what the hell is it?), so that particular line irritates me. Current reading: Elizabeth Anderson).
And it’s bullshit tripled when the breezy dismissiveness is about an unfairness to Not-self. A man saying “oh so women’s sport gets erased, so what” – not a good look.
Oh, so we’ve moved on from “there’s no reason to believe trans women will dominate women’s sports” to “so what if they do”. Duly noted.
Wouldn’t be so inspiring for the half of the human race who never got to see a female athlete on the top step of the Olympic podium.
By the way…
You mean, “trans girl” (i.e., a male child or teenager who identifies as a girl) seeing a “trans woman” (a male adult who identifies as a woman) on that top step. It ain’t going to be “trans men” up there.
But it’s quite clear this wanker doesn’t care about female people.
And notice that his argument relies on the familiar trick of pretending that intersex and transgenderism are somehow comparable.
Well, now, he may have heard PZ Myers make that argument, and PZ is an honest to gosh real biologist and everything! And unlike all the other real biologists out there, he knows that it’s possible to have a girl penis and a boy vagina.
Well, iknklast, it has been fun watching the PZ myers crowd sputtering and whining about how they have to admit that real women who don’t bow down to the trans movement really never have committed any violence against trans people. But don’t worry, they still cry enough about how dangerous real women’s words can be! Such a disappointment to see PZ just trash religion after religion only to support the new religion of transgenderism.
No, we are not saying that this will definitely happen, nor are we necessarily saying that it is even probable. We are saying however that there is the potential for it to happen, without specifying an probability or whether ‘hordes’ will do so.
Textbook strawman.
Those things are not analogous at all. Genetics isn’t fair, because it is a natural process over which we have no control. Sport is fair, to the extent that we want it to be fair, because it is a collaborative human endeavour over which we have direct control. We devise rules such that teams and individuals compete on as close to a level playing field as we can arrange. Rules against doping, rules against adults competing in youth leagues, rules against young adults competing in senior leagues, rules against able bodied athletes competing in disabled leagues, rules against athletes tampering with sporting equipment (their own or the opposition’s), rules specifying the exact equipment standard that everyone must use… and so on ad nauseum.
Rules rules rules every fucking where, in fine detail particular to every sport, all to maintain fairness (which itself is a human invention). Does Jonathan Liew oppose all of them? No he doesn’t. He expresses no disdain for the rules preventing say, a junior cricket team fielding adults, because even if he hasn’t specifically thought about age restricted leagues, it is patently obvious why they exist: without such restrictions, juniors would be crowded out by unscrupulous adults; the very concept of a junior league would evaporate. And then repeat that reasoning for every specialised league: the segregation exists to maintain that league, so that the participants within it have the fairest competition we can make.
And so the Liews, Mounceys, McKinnons and many more are well aware that unrestricted inclusion of all people in a specialised league would mean dissolving said league and turning it into a generic league filled with able-bodied young adults, because able-bodied young adults very obviously have higher physicality than the very young, the very old, the disabled. It takes but a moment of thought to see this, yet this thought was never undertaken when looking at sex segregated competition, and only when looking at sex segregation.
The takeaway message of this is: every demographic category that has different physicality deserves its own league so as to maintain fairness and representation for that demographic. Except the female sex. They are against female champions in a given sport, and only female champions.
Or as Liew puts it:
Now let’s imagine a female child or teenager seeing a- oh, I guess it only works one way. He is openly agreeing with trans champions entirely replacing female champions.
Further to the above:
The most charitable interpretation that I can come up with is that sex segregation has an ugly history outside of athletics. Much like race segregation, it has historically been separate and decidedly unequal, and so people are discourage from pushing for it partly out of an unconscious aversion to that old ugliness. However, this overlooks the fact that segregation within sports and athletics is due to a genuine inequality. Formerly, this was called sexual dimorphism, but now it is verboten to mention that it even exists for humans.
But as mentioned above, all it takes is a moments’ thought to see that there is a genuine reason for the various segregated leagues within sports and athletics, and so even this (overly) generous interpretation still necessarily includes lazy thinking as one of its components.
Also funny is the point I think I saw on B&W a few days ago, expressed by I forget which commenter: trans women are clamouring to be included in sports where large frames and muscles are advantageous, and only those sports. Strangely, none of them are pushing for inclusion in sports where small bodies and high flexibility are advantageous; the various areas of gymnastics come to mind, but rythmic gymnastics in particular. Just the masculine stuff, at least as far as I have seen so far.
Oh amazing, where did that happen? I have only just returned from travelling and must have missed it.
^ #13 swnow
Found it; how incredibly backhanded and reluctant it all was. I’m sure they will waste no time reverting to ‘terfs literally kill trans people’ and similar in the next clash.
a generic league filled with able-bodied young male adults, because able-bodied young male adults very obviously have higher physicality.
There. Fixed it for you. ;-)
[sotto voce]
Agreed, but sex was deliberately left out of that passage – which summarised the forms of segregation (and the very rational basis on which they are founded) accepted by transactivists – so that I could contrast them against the one segregation they don’t accept in the next sentence.
Holms, #15
Is it just coincidence that many or most of those same transwomen initially competed on a level playing field against men before revealing they were really women all along? Equally coincidental I’m sure is that none of them really achieved any level of success playing against the big boys.
Or even, the boys.
And yeah, just baffling innit – if testosterone reduction is the great equaliser in sporting ability, how did McKinnon’s performance jump from ‘total anonymity’ to ‘world champion’ upon switching leagues? Weird.
Also weird is that McKinnon competed in the 35-44 bracket of the cycling championships and not the open bracket. I guess McKinnon doesn’t like competing against bodies that have a clear and measurable advantage over hers…
Interesting. I wonder if we’ll start to see female transpeople entering into men’s sports where their female bodies could confer an advantage. Gymnastics, you suggest? And perhaps, I don’t know, figure skating?
And I wonder how the men will react. (Prediction: not well!)
Holms,
And let’s not forget that McKinnon opposes even minimal testosterone reduction requirements. McKinnon believes he’s a literal biological female (because of his girliefeelz) and therefore shouldn’t even have to reduce his testosterone levels.
The advantage of competing in the male league would be: no testosterone suppression requirement.
#24; the disadvantage, of course, being that he isn’t good enough to compete in the male league.