Olympic ignoring of women
The Guardian does a long conversation with athlete and “LGBTQ+” activist Tom Daley:
Isn’t part of the problem that the LGBTQ+ community is at war with itself over trans rights? The level of fury between trans rights activists and gender-critical feminists astonishes me, I say. Daley nods, and says it’s dangerous. “The LGBT community is so fractured right now over certain issues. And that’s when the right are going to get us. They’re going to try to break us down. And if you think they’re just going to take away trans people’s rights, you’re wrong. It’s going to go much further than that, and we have to stick together as an LGBTQIA+ community to stop that happening.”
But it isn’t a community. The T part is a different subject, a different category, a different issue. Mashing them together is very useful for the T but very the opposite of useful for the L and the G. The G are being very slow to figure that out, probably because they’re not the ones who have to deal with the men invading women’s sports and women’s rape shelters and women’s changing rooms.
Daley goes on to perform this very “not my problem” blindness:
Daley has 2.2m followers on Twitter. In June, speaking at the British LGBT awards, where he was named Sports Personality of the Year, he condemned the decision of Fina (the administrative body for international water sport) to ban trans athletes who have been through any part of male puberty from elite women’s competition. Daley said when he heard the ruling, “I was furious. Anyone that’s told that they can’t compete or can’t do something they love just because of who they are, it’s not on. It’s something I feel really strongly about – giving trans people the chance to share their side.”
He feels very strongly about letting men ruin women’s sport. How women will feel about that simply doesn’t impinge on his awareness at all. Women, meh, who cares, they need to shut up and take it.
For so long, Daley has been regarded as a national treasure. But as he takes a more active role in the charged debate about trans athletes, it is inevitable that opinions about him will become divided. In an interview with GB News, former Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies responded to Daley’s speech by suggesting that as a male athlete he doesn’t have any skin in the game: “Tom is male and this does not affect him in the slightest … I think we have to listen to the women, and Fina were the first governing body since 2015 to actually poll their female athletes and listen to their coaches.”
That’s not suggesting, it’s pointing out, and rightly so. Of course he fucking doesn’t have any skin in the game. He’s a man. I am so sick of watching men blithely ignoring women’s rights in favor of the made-up “rights” of men to “do something they love” even when that means women don’t get to do the same something they love.
Does he think that ultimately inclusion trumps fairness? “No, of course not. But, as human beings, we have to be a little bit more thoughtful before banning people completely from something. If kids are doomed to never be able to do what they love, they may well just give up.”
That applies to female kids too, you stupid prick. What about the female kids who just give up???
The issue of trans women even became the battleground for the Tory leadership election. Penny Mordaunt, a contestant on Daley’s ITV celebrity diving show Splash! in 2014, was accused by rivals of being a “woke warrior” for her previous support of trans women. Mordaunt desperately tried to distance herself, insisting she had never claimed “trans women are women”.
Is this what he means by LGBT issues being hijacked? He nods. “Think of the tiny percentage of trans people in the population, and prospective Tory leaders are using that to win votes. I don’t understand why people think they have to be less woke in order to lead a country. “How can understanding people’s feelings be a bad thing?” He trails off, lost for words.
Again. Listen carefully. Women have feelings too. Women. have. feelings. too.
aley has always been one of life’s planners. I met him again in 2015 when he’d just turned 21 and was living with Black, a prominent campaigner in the fight for US marriage equality. Daley was mapping out his future – a gold medal at Rio, a career in television after diving, marriage and kids at some point. He said he knew he’d be the disciplinarian because he was tougher than Black, despite the fact that his partner was 20 years older. Two years later he and Black married, and in 2018 Robbie was born with the help of an egg donor and a surrogate.
You know – some woman and some other woman. A couple of women. Bitches. Karens. People who don’t matter. Trivial worthless people without feelings or ambitions or goals who just happen to have the eggs we want and the ability to gestate the baby we want. Technology, basically.
He’s planning to order a second baby. Yet more Karens to deal with.
It’s so very tiresome to have to point that out.
And yet we must, because there’s a subset of people in thrall to this nonsense who seriously just haven’t thought about it like that or don’t feel they have permission to voice that objection.
It makes one want to scream.
Exactly, which is why that “stupid prick” emerged, a brand of epithet I generally try to avoid, but when it’s yet another man blithely trampling on the rights of women to defend the pseudo-rights of men I CAN NO LONGER AVOID.
Lying McLiarson.
Pay attention, blockhead: NOBODY is being told that “they can’t compete.” NOBODY is being told that “they can’t do something they love.” Nobody is “being told” anything of the sort. They are told they CAN compete. They are told they CAN do what they love. They are told they CAN do these things, precisely because of what (not who) they are. They are males. They can compete in the men’s division, just like all the other men. They can do what they love, at the level that their skill and abilities will attain for them. They are NOT being “excluded.”
To the extent that men are excluded from women’s sports, they are specifically NOT being excluded “for who they are.”. They are lying about who — actually what — they are. They are men, even though they falsely claim to be women. They are not the opposite sex. They cannot change sex. They are men. As men, even men who say they are “transgender” (an incoherent concept), they are fully INcluded, as they always have been, in the men’s division.
I wonder if he realises the significance of this: an admission that there is criticism coming from within his own ‘community’.
The usual misdirection; trans women are welcome to compete in the male division, as any male is.