Come at me, bro
This photo is just weird.
That’s Natalie van Gogh again in the middle. All the other members of the team are turned to the side, angled toward the middle person, while the middle person – van Gogh – stands and faces the viewer dead-on. The heights rise from each side to culminate in van Gogh, the tallest and widest. The others’ legs are only slightly parted, while van Gogh’s are in an emphatic upside-down V, aka a straddle. The photo is of a large domineering muscular man with a group of much younger women as his handmaidens on either side.
Is that…a publicity shot? A wtf shot? What is it? Why did van Gogh agree to the pose? Has the world gone mad?
Judging visually, I would say that this photo questionably shows a man flanked by two groups of four women apiece.
Aside from the obvious differences, they all look extremely unhappy.
Perhaps he is pissed off because he knows that no matter what he does in whatever activity he is into, he will always be outshone by that other Van Gogh, name of Vincent.
It’s the sort of PR photo I’d normally associate with a rugby or rugby league team. Sports that are highly masculine and where at times the verbal imagery used is one of war or combat. Why a cycling team is photographed at what appears to be a football stadium I have no idea. Could Van Gogh look any less like the other members of that team? They have a quintessentially male athletes physique. Still, at least they look like a professional athlete, unlike Mackinnon.
Not only central and face on, but also a step forward of the women as if to further emphasise his superiority.
I think arranging the heights that way is pretty common to do for esthetic reasons, as is having the middle person straight on and the people to the side inclined slightly toward them. I don’t think any message is necessary meant.
The straddle may actually be an attempt by Van Gogh to reduce her height.
I do agree that this looks like a large male-bodied person in a group of athletic women. And, wow, almost everyone looks unhappy. An attempt to look fierce that went wrong? They didn’t want to take this picture?
Jeez, Skeletor, I can’t keep track – yesterday you said I was taking you a little too seriously (because you were mostly joking) and today you’re back to this level of hyperliteral?? Yes I know there are aesthetic reasons to arrange people by height that way but that’s hardly all that’s relevant here! And…trying to reduce his height by straddling? Come on. Do you seriously literally think van Gogh is trying to look smaller in that photo? Or that the photographer was going for smaller?
Well Natalie is the superior athlete (and shouldn’t be allowed on the team, I agree, but I think this is meant to show off the star player rather than to say in general “haha women suck.”)
Well, if you’re right, that’s why I asked if this was a wtf shot. If Natalie is their “star player” and they decided to show that off with this photo…then wtf.
This is a ‘we are super tough and serious’ PR shot, a fairly common genre to any sport, where the captain or star player player is centered. And the effect would have been pretty good, had it not been undermined by the fact that this is a female team promoting a male as its lead. And so instead it looks like a man making a tough guy pose with his bevy of beauties.
So it’s a shot that says “Look out, here’s our scary-good star player along with the rest of the team, be afraid.” But then that just invites the entire world to yell “YOU’RE CHEATING.”
A highly unusual stance for a woman outside porn, but a very typical man spreading.
Yep. I really don’t know how they can see Natalie as anything other than a man in the wrong league. Surely the team management have to be privately embarrassed that they are benefiting from such an arrangement? And the actual female team members likely feel demeaned / relegated to an inferior position to some extent, shunted aside and the spotlight on their own efforts and talent usurped.
Or, if they genuinely believe that the process of transitioning erases all male advantage, how the fuck do they explain the dominance of a 44 year old in a sport where 35 is considered elderly? Because if maleness is removed as a potential explanation, by far the most likely explanation remaining is doping. Recall that even the legendary Lance Armstrong turned out to be doing so. His explanation being that it was the only way he could maintain his edge over the field at his age – 40.
Or if they want to go for a non-cheating explanation, the only one possible is that Natalie is simply more skilled, more dedicated to training. How is this not a backhanded insult to every woman in the field?
Sharron Davies, the British former Olympic swimmer, has joined Martina Navratilova in saying that transwomen should not be competing against women. Predictably, a certain Dr. McKinnon has labeled Davies a transphobe.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/swimming/47428951
It is a weird photo, putting this person’s crotch front and centre. Now that I’m thinking about it, if I’d wanted a team shot I’d have put the tallest and most prominent people in the back (as in two group photos I’ve been in in the past few months). It’s supposed to be a GROUP photo–unless you have some particular reason to do it otherwise, you want to do your best to ensure everyone is equally visible.
‘esthetic reasons’! Well, most people realise at a quite early age that ‘esthetic reasons’ are hardly so harmless as ‘esthetes’ like Skeletor would like to believe, and that appeals to ‘esthetic reasons’ for making certain arrangements (though perhaps ‘cliches’ would be the better word here) in photographs and elsewhere (the Fox News studio, for example, where a male is so often front and centre and flanked by four pairs of carefully disposed and manicured legs) are no more than wilful refusals to admit to the existence of what the person making the appeal in fact does recognise. A little knowledge and appreciation of actual art helps, in addition of course to honesty. Damn aesthetics.
I just kind of facepalm reading “It’s clear trans athletes don’t have an advantage”. First, it’s not clear and needs to be investigated, which it has not. The matter has not been delved into thoroughly. The data isn’t available to support an answer. Some of us would like for that data to be collected. Saying as much makes you a transphobe according to the Twitterverse though.
Second, no one has suggested trans athletes might have an advantage over their competition. The suggestion is trans women may have an advantage over their female competition in some sports. There’s no concern trans men will ruin sports for everyone because it’s not about trans-ness. It’s about physiology and male physiology trumps female physiology in some physical activities. Being trans disadvantages trans men in a lot of sports!
thewatersfine – and being trans is almost certainly no advantage for trans-men, and we don’t see them dominating male teams. Nor are we likely to.
And pulling out the female –> male transition is not uncommon when you want to elide the issues. PZ did it frequently, by posting pictures of bearded transmales who obviously had been male for a long time, and asking why it is so difficult to accept that person as male and let them into the men’s room. Yeah. He almost certainly had to know what the real issue was, and why it is a problem, and since he was all on board about the risks of unknown men in elevators, he probably gets it at some level, but his cognitive dissonance wouldn’t allow him to address the real issue in a meaningful way.
Once you drink the Kool-Aid, you probably only see a woman in that photo, because you refuse to see a man. The legs…the arms…so plainly masculine musculature.
One wonders what would happen were trans-men invading male sports and breaking records, barging opponents down, winning cycle races, etc. I do not like to imagine the aggrieved male chorus that would arise…