Vulnerable people
Some academics are angry that male people won’t be allowed to play on women’s rugby teams.
World Rugby’s proposals to ban trans women from playing women’s rugby have been criticised by dozens of academics, who have written to the sport’s governing body to insist there is “no evidence” that trans women pose a safety risk to others playing the sport.
One, that’s absurd, but two, it’s beside the point. Women and men are physically different in many ways, and that’s why they compete mostly on separate teams. Trans women are physically men, so they should not force themselves onto women’s teams.
The letter, which has been co-signed by 84 leading academics from a range of fields including sport, public health and sociology, also questions the science behind the proposed ban and warns it will discriminate against vulnerable people.
Women are vulnerable people. Women as a group are vulnerable to men as a group. Trans women are socially vulnerable in many ways, but they are not physically vulnerable to women in the way women are physically vulnerable to men. Forcing women to accept men who identify as trans in their sports would discriminate against vulnerable people. It’s bizarre how quickly all these “academics” have lost sight of the vulnerability of women to male physical dominance.
“We are opposed to World Rugby’s proposed ban of an entire population group from playing women’s rugby: non-binary people assumed male at birth and transgender women,” it says. “There is no peer-reviewed, scientific evidence to justify a ban which would only be harmful to trans and gender diverse people.”
Who said anything about banning “non-binary” people? Anyone? Surely women who call themselves “non-binary” are not banned from women’s rugby? It’s only men, whether trans or “non-binary,” who are banned from women’s rugby. And there’s no such thing as “assumed male at birth.”
However, World Rugby has issued a robust defence of the research on which its recommendations are based, as well as its application of that research, which has concluded there is a minimum of 20% to 30% increase in injury risk factors when typical male-bodied and female-bodied players are involved in tackles – even when trans women suppress their testosterone in line with International Olympic Committee rules.
I wonder if any of these 84 academics have female children. If so I wonder how many of them would genuinely feel perfectly happy for their daughters to play rugby on teams that include men who identify as trans women.
Sounds to me as if these academics need a refresher course in anatomy. Probably because over-specialised.
If these dons’ sportsmanship is as robust as their scholarship, I expect they’d love for their daughters to gain an unfair advantage. Whether they’d feel perfectly happy for their daughters to play rugby against teams that include men might be a different question.
Sure, there’s no evidence…if you close your eyes and ears and ignore the evidence. Just like there is no evidence that violence against women will increase if male-bodied people are allowed access to women’s room; all you have to do is wave your hand and claim the evidence is biased (and throw in racist, with a couple of snide mentions of cis-women and Karens, possibly a handful of ageist claims about “old” women), and the evidence disappears! Poof! It’s like putting two scoops in front of Pussygrabber Donnie…gone in a flash.
Would I be correct in thinking that what appears to be the latest switch of terminology, namely that a person’s sex is now said to be assumed rather than assigned at birth, is because we are told not to make assumptions as they are often wrong?
Well, congratulations to them for making the identification of a newborn’s sex sound even more unreliable than assigning, with the added bonus that they get to keep the ‘AMAB/AFAB acronyms. Bloody ABWACs (assumed bright when at college).
It’s going to turn out that this letter is exactly like the letters full of “scientists” that support intelligent design.
A sociologist signing this letter is as irrelevant as *I* (chemist) would be signing it, as the ban is about a safely issue that can be studied by researchers in sports medicine.
And at any rate, the proper way to show that World Rugby’s decision is wrong is to put up your own evidence about how transition completely removes all advantage trans women have over women and how they do not pose a safety threat to women players of the game, now that World Rugby has gathered evidence that suggests there are advantages and threats to safety. This letter … does not appear to be that.
From the article …
This is a case study in how to lie with statistics. The writers of the letter want you to read that as “3.4% of American school students identify as trans”, but they’ve added on “gender diverse” and “not sure” to fluff the numbers up. If that’s an example of the quality of the rest of the letter, well … I think we know how seriously World Rugby should take it.
This needs some of those clap emojis.
Sports *clap* are *clap* separated *clap* by *clap* sex *clap* not *clap* by *clap* gender *clap*.
They always have been, so if anyone wants to change that around, they really need to grapple with the reasons that sports were separated by sex in the first place. Like the fact that most things we call “sports” at the moment just so happen to be things that male bodies do really well at when compared to female bodies.
These “nonbinary people assumed male at birth and transgender women” are MALE! Why can’t they begin to acknowledge that?
So many of the arguments for allowing transwomen to play on women’s teams work perfectly adequately as arguments for fully co-ed sports. Is that what they really want to advocate? If not, what, then, is the purpose for having separate men’s and women’s events, if some men are allowed to compete in the women’s competition?
(I do know people for whom that’s an explicitly sought end position, the elimination of separate sporting events for men and women. It’s very strange to me.)
Yes that, that’s what I was trying to get at. Why were sports divided by sex in the first place? So that women could play too, basically. The physical differences meant and have always meant and still mean that women need their own teams and leagues to be able to play at all, so this petulant “There’s no evidence that trans women have an advantage” is just…just maddeningly coat-trailing and infuriating and above all misogynist.
Surely by “assumed male at birth” they meant “assigned male at birth”. They were just mixing up their “ass”es.
I’ve read that some TRAs are claiming that the penises of “lesbian” trans identified males feel and smell different than those of cis males — more like vaginas, really. Gender identity carries womanhood. Perhaps this same line of reasoning is being followed for rugby. Transwomen don’t really move with the same power and motivation as men do. When you’re tackled by a transwoman, it just feels different. Gentler and softer, somehow.
Sastra:
Agreed. It’s a case of mind over body. One’s body can be whatever one thinks or wishes it to be. So while hefty shoulders on a non-trans male rugby player can be used to create mayhem and damage to the opposing side, on a trans male body they function instead as cushions or shock-absorbers; as long as their owner wants them to.
QED.
One wonders how they know? How was the research done on this? Who made the determination? What were their objective standards? Huh? WTF?
This is just like the argument I have heard that since transwomen are women, their bodies are women’s bodies, and therefore they are just like women who happen to be larger than other women, but are allowed to play women’s sports.
Too bad for them that the evidence doesn’t back this up.
Hey, you guys! If you have a penis, you are male. If you ever had a penis, you are male. If you were brought up male, you have had a shitload of male privilege, even if it doesn’t feel like it to you (because you really, really wanted to be a girl, and no one would let you). If you were brought up male, you imbibed a strong sense of entitlement that females do not get. You were taught to be confident in your own abilities, something most females do not get, in fact, many of us get the opposite. You were taught that you are important as a person, and are allowed to pursue what you want, and don’t have to spend your entire life nurturing and caring and so forth.
I’ll believe TWAW when transwomen (1) don’t leave the toilet seat up;; (2) get talked over in every meeting, and have their ideas credited to someone else; (3) do the bulk of the cleaning in their family; (4) get crapped on by absolutely everyone because they go out to work while someone else takes care of the children; and (5) get their ass grabbed/breasts fondled/upskirt pictures taken/dogpiled on the internet just for saying something perfectly ordinary. Not one of those things…ALL OF THEM. Because that is our life.
When they are told that they have to stay at the local college, while loser brother is given whatever he wants, because college is more important for boys? Yeah, I’m guessing they haven’t heard that. When they are told the man they worked with gets a raise because he has to support a family (even though he has no family and I am a single mother)? Yeah, I’m guessing they haven’t heard that. When they have tampons or pad shoved in their face at school or on the bus because they bled too hard, and it showed on their pants? Yeah, I’m guessing they haven’t heard that. When they have more education than anyone they work with, so are assigned the extremely complex and difficult tasks of making the coffee and watering the plants? Yeah, I’m guessing they haven’t heard that. When they are dangled on a man’s arm as a trophy, because they are attractive and intelligent, and the man wants to move up in the world (and pretends to the wife she isn’t a trophy wife)? Yeah, I’m guessing they haven’t heard that. When they are told to smile all the time, even as the men around them have no smiles on, because it’s just ordinary shit going on and not a lot of reason to smile? Yeah, I’m guessing they haven’t heard that.
They have no idea what being a woman is about. They only play at woman; we have to live it every day of our lives.
Sorry for the length of the comment. I’m feeling a bit pissy and needed to rant.
@iknklast;
Transwomen will be women when they’re expected to renounce women’s soccer, women’s changing rooms, and women’s everything else because It’s Better To Be Nice Than Right, and they shouldn’t/wouldn’t want to make other people uncomfortable, now would they?
Aw, no, you peeps have this whole “being a woman” thing wrong, it’s not about being talked over and ignored at promotion time and expected to do all the cooking, it’s about making duck face and flicking your hair back and forth and wearing chase me-fuck me shoes.
This had me laughing:
It’s pretty clear how they know, they pulled the fact out of their collective arses.
Whilst I can claim no personal knowledge of the feel and smell of any other penis than my own (well, the feel of my own penis, certainly. I think that if I could smell my own penis I’d either be concerned about my standards of personal hygiene, or booking a visit to my doctor. Or just a damn sight more flexible than I’ve ever been) and have no empirical studies to draw on, I can still confidently dismiss the idea.
Simply put, every human has his or her unique scent, which is the sole reason that tracker dogs can do their thing. Because of the existence of this unique scent there can be no one generic odour to all penises and therefore no distinction between those on men and those on men who think they’re women. Further, smell and taste are directly related, and I have had enough candid conversations over the years to be able to assert that there is a wide range of scents and tastes within men, as well as variance in how they feel.
For the same reasons as above, there is no generic scent to vaginas, so while it’s technically possible that some transwomens’ penises might smell like some vaginas, this also means that some vaginas might smell like some penises on men who don’t think that they’re women, which negates that part of the TRA narrative.
As for the idea that transwomens’ penises feel more like vaginas, I can only conclude that the people who believe this have only ever felt one or the other, not both.
Still, to prove their case all the TRAs need do is organise some studies where the participants are blindfolded and asked to seperate men from transwomen by the feel and smell of their penises alone. Imagine the positive PR value if their success rate turned out significantly better than chance.
Even this first clause of the first sentence is dishonestly framed. Women’s teams have always banned male entrants since their inception; that’s what it means to say that the team is for women. It is only recently that the idea has been advanced that males should be granted entry if they ‘identify as women’, and so the Rugby organisation is forced to reiterate the ban that has always been in place.
@iknklast #13, every time I read something like this, hear it from women, or observe it happening, I can’t help but be grateful I was born male. I do not have a wish to suffer any more than I already do, so why would I want to trade my current position for that of a woman? There is only one answer to my mind – misogyny.
It is indeed – it had me in a fury right from the beginning. Yes, chum, men should be banned from playing women’s rugby, BECAUSE IT’S WOMEN’S RUGBY.
This is why we have to be obstinate about refusing the language changes. Saying “trans women” makes it sound as if we’re talking about women even though we know trans women are not women. It’s subliminal, it’s conditioning, and it works. It’s much of why this nonsense is having such a long run.
How about transwo-MAN.
In fact, I feel a song coming on: “Hey hey, I’m a transwo,/ Hey hey, I’m a transwo,/ Hey hey, I’m a transwo…. MAN!”
Copyright and royalties all mine. My agent will handle all enquiries..
This is why I’ve always been a pedant regarding the value neutraility of exclusion and inclusion.
But regardless, this stupid argument says that men, however defined, should not be prohibited from playing women’s rugby. I mean, it’s consistent with the Queer Theory goal of dissolving all boundaries between concepts, but seriously.
Omar: You may have to get a lawyer.
NiV: I don’t see any competition there, but whatever floats your boat. I might consider Charlie McKenzie as a support act if he asks me nicely; provided he is available when I open.on Broadway; which I prefer both to the West End and Vegas. I had a little difference of opinion with the owner of a casino in Vegas. Don’t worry. The day is not far off when he will get his.
I could go on.
Who are the 84 “leading academics”? The Guardian doesn’t say and neither does any other site I’ve found that mentions the letter. What are their qualifications? The only name I have found is that of Holly Thorpe, who is a Professor in the School of Health at the University of Waikato (New Zealand). I’m surprised she counts as a leading academic.
According to my trans-speak decoder ring, leading academic means “academic who agrees with me”.
I need to brush up my understanding of trans-speak. It’s clearly going to be an essential skill in the future.
At the beginning of 2019 I sent the Guardian a donation to support their journalism. At the beginning of 2020 I was planning to do the same thing until I saw the extent to which they had become the voice of trans lib.