Sprinters
I don’t usually link to the Washington Times, but there are exceptions to (almost) everything. Andraya Yearwood is a junior at Cromwell High School in Connecticut, and is trans.
She recently finished second in the 55-meter dash at the state open indoor track championships. The winner, Terry Miller of Bloomfield High, is also transgender and set a girls state indoor record of 6.95 seconds. Yearwood finished in 7.01 seconds and the third-place competitor, who is not transgender, finished in 7.23 seconds.
In short, they have a physical advantage and they’re not ashamed to exploit it. They should be, but they’re not.
(Imagine you felt like a child in an adult’s body. Set aside the problems with that idea [what is it to “feel like” a child?] for the moment and just imagine. Would you join children in their games, including physical games, and feel quite entitled to throw them to the ground, bloody their noses, wrench their arms? The correct answer is “No, of course not.” The same applies to 17-year-old boys who “feel like” girls and so compete in girls’ races, thus shutting out girls who would otherwise win or be eligible for more races.)
Miller and Yearwood also topped the 100-meter state championships last year, and Miller won the 300 this season.
Critics say their gender identity amounts to an unfair advantage, expressing a familiar argument in a complex debate for transgender athletes as they break barriers across sports around the world from high school to the pros.
“I have learned a lot about myself and about other people through this transition. I always try to focus most on all of the positive encouragement that I have received from family, friends and supporters,” Yearwood said. “I use the negativity to fuel myself to run faster.”
Well, that’s psychopathic. Yearwood should be paying attention to the “negativity,” that is, to the entirely reasonable objection that people with male bodies shouldn’t compete in girls’ races, no matter how sure they are that on the inside they are girls. They should realize it’s not fair and thus not sporting, and not race or else race on the boys’ teams.
One of their competitors, Selina Soule, says the issue is about fairness on the track with wider implications. The Glastonbury High School junior finished eighth in the 55, missing out on qualifying for the New England regionals by two spots.
Soule believes that had Miller and Yearwood not run, she would be on her way to race in Boston in front of more college coaches.
It’s not really a belief, it’s an obvious fact: she missed out by two spots and Miller and Yearwood are in those two spots.
The Connecticut Association of Schools-Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference, which governs high school sports in Connecticut, says its policy follows a state anti-discrimination law that says students must be treated in school by the gender with which they identify.
“This is about someone’s right to compete,” executive director Glenn Lungarini said. “I don’t think this is that different from other classes of people, who, in the not too distant past, were not allowed to compete. I think it’s going to take education and understanding to get to that point on this issue.”
Well think again. It’s not about the right to compete, it’s about the right for male-bodied people to race against female people in sex-segregated competitions. It is very different from other classes of people, who, in the not too distant past, were not allowed to compete, because it’s not about preventing them from competing.
Breaking barriers or erecting new ones for competitors who displayed the poor judgement of actually being born female?
Their right to compete is not violated by requiring that they compete in the male league. Only their ‘right’ to compete in any league they want has been violated, and since when does anyone have that right?
If transwomen athletes competed in men’s, it would be good for trans activism, for feminism, and for opening minds about sex and gender roles in general. I picture a visibly trans male athlete on the podium in “feminine” dress. What a transgressive and progressive sight that would be; an image that powerfully communicates the distinction between sex and gender, and broadens the cultural boundaries of “male” and “female.”
And that’s why trans activists don’t want it to happen: they’ve lapsed into a regressive ideology, and a greedy one at that, rigidly binding gender roles to sex, and bullying everyone into denying biological reality when one prefers the gender-expression trappings of the opposite sex. This is never clearer than when male athletes go beyond feminine pronoun requests and insist on being classified as biological females in sports, when we all know full well it’s both untrue and gives them an unfair advantage.
For one thing, it would powerfully show one of their core claims: not all women are female. Isn’t that what they want?
…Evidently, no.
Well, gosh, Ophelia, as long as I reduced my testosterone to child levels, I’m sure the IOC would say it was alright. And think how inspiring that would be for all the transchildren watching.
No, you dribbling idiot. Critics say their SEX amounts gives them an unfair advantage. It does.
Holms,
Indeed. Rather, what they want is that if you feel “womanly” inside yourself, you have to be fully affirmed as absolutely biologically female all the time by everyone everywhere, and whenever that doesn’t happen you’re being harmed by bigotry. Of all the possible ways one could cope with, interpret, make sense of, and process their dysphoric feelings, that has got to be the most childish, selfish, and psychologically unhealthy one.
Which they seem to be lousy at defining. What does it mean to feel like a woman? For me, I feel like a woman when I am being mansplained, overlooked, talked over, interrupted, sexually harassed, disrespected, and having a pap smear. The rest of the time (what little there is of it), I just feel like a person.
So, if testosterone levels are what it’s all about, why aren’t trans men on hormone supplements doing equally well in men’s sports?
I say until and unless trans men start appearing frequently on the podium along side their male born comrades, trans women have no claim to ‘equality’ in women’s sports.
#7
Remember that thread over at PZ’s, with the usual suspects getting as nasty as they love to do? One of them, Crip, gave me a run-down of the model of trans-ness as she has come to understand it, and it really did revolve around a person’s congruence or incongruence with gendered stereotypes. That is, it is not just our perception of their position (which has the potential to be a misinterpretation), it is also the explicitly stated position of the revolting people inhabiting PZ’s trans and gender related posts.
There’s an easy fix to this mess: trans leagues. Like we have men’s and women’s leagues, why not add trans-women’s and trans-men’s leagues. Problem solved. The downside, of course, is that that would require some people to give up their entitlement, which apparently is a no-no.
Asking trans women who went through male development to compete against trans women with the same physiology as them would be deemed “harmful” and transphobic. Uhg.
Remember when trans women didn’t demand people agree they were biologically female? When did that switch occur?
I realize this is preaching to the choir, but I hadn’t know how insane all this had gotten. Unless I misread the article & the law, Connecticut & many other US states require absolutely nothing but gender declaration to compete on the girls’ teams. Not even hormone therapy – these are males full on peak testosterone competing against girls. I read the policies for CT online & the only discussion of fairness was that it was unfair to prohibit someone to compete based on gender identity (not considering the point made that the competition isn’t barred, just the choice of team) and that any student “uncomfortable” with the locker room arrangements should be addressed one on one. That sounds like only the trans athlete’s feelings are important and everyone else should get over their “bigotry”. Please, Martina, save us!
Will a woman have to die before someone realizes the insanity of this? Or will a woman dying even do it? After all, only a woman, and it won’t be because the trans-woman is bigger and stronger, no, it will be the fault of the woman who died, no doubt.
And since men dying doesn’t seem to do much to fix football, why would I assume women dying would do anything to prevent men from playing women’s sports?
Re #9:
I read (I don’t watch TV) about Billy Porter’s tuxedo gown at the Academy Awards. I thought it was a wonderful statement, that a man could defy gender stereotypes in choice of clothing and still be a man. In a brief interview, he talked about how he felt “powerful” and “masculine” wearing it; OK, great, but one doesn’t have to be either powerful or masculine to be male. Then I read that he started wearing dresses as some sort of rejection of the Trump administration’s assault on transgender rights. I don’t see that at all. It seems that men wearing dresses is a flat out rejection of transgender ideology. Men who wear dresses are supposed to be women, don’cha know; they’re supposed to feel feminine.
OMG, I read somewhere about adults “identifying” as children. “ABDL” is a thing: Adult Baby Diaper Lover. It’s got its own segment of porn, apparently, where adult people pretend to be babies or toddlers. It’s insane.