Not alike
So here is Ian Kennedy’s wisdom on why women don’t want men in women’s sports:
Transgender women in hockey.
It’s a topic being used by politicians to pass harmful legislation removing rights from transgender people. Meanwhile the presence of transgender women in women’s sport is being defended by human rights advocates, allies, sports governing bodies, and the LGBTQ+ community.
Why? Why are human rights advocates defending men intruding in women’s sport? Women’s sport is for women, so obviously men should stay out of it. Adults don’t play on Little League teams and men don’t play in women’s sports…unless they’re selfish narcissistic pigs.
At the roots however, research and scholarly analysis has shown that the exclusion of transgender women from women’s sport is based on the same discriminatory premise that historically has excluded cisgender women from sport, and founded gender categorization in the first place. The current push to exclude trans women from women’s sport is founded in the policing of women’s bodies, and the devaluation of women and women’s sport as lesser than men’s.
Wrong. The premise that excluded women from sport was not at all the same premise as the one that created separate sports for women. The motivation is different, the reasons are different. Also, it’s not “policing bodies” to know that men are not women.
The attempt to subjugate women, and now trans women, are rooted in the same sexist and misogynistic ideas of the inferiority of women compared to men, and that women who deviate from societal norms need to be controlled and paternalistically protected.
Nope. Seeing women as inferior is not the same thing as seeing men as not women. Men really are not women. Women really are not inferior. Those are two independent statements.
In hockey, this presents as cisgender women fighting to exclude transgender women, which ultimately places all women at a lower value in sport and society.
No it doesn’t. Saying men are not women doesn’t place women at a lower value. Women are not men, and saying so doesn’t place men at a lower value. See how that works?
True. But what is overlooked here is this simple question: How else are these poor inadequate bastards going to have a chance of winning.? Sport is not about mutual respect.! It’s all about winning, and by whatever means.
My own ambition is to buy a grizzly bear, and enter it in the local dog show. I reckon it would eat the opposition alive.
and founded gender categorization in the first place
Wrong, it was sex categorization.
I think the “women are inferior to men” trope is a deliberate and intentionally confusing rephrasing of “women are not as strong as men.” This is the same sort of move as conflating/confusing sex and gender in the TWAW bait and switch. His whole argument collapses if you replace “transwomen” with “trans identified males.” The “inferior” strawman phraseology (along with the assumption that TWAW) sidesteps and camouflages the “superior” male strength issue of TiMs, while trying to make it look like those defending women’s sport would be making really fast, talented (natal) women ineligibl,e instead of preventing men from invading women’s sports. “What, you think women are inferior and need protection? You’re penalizing women who are better!” By putting it this way, he can play the “range of abilities” cards and pretend to defend women’s”equality” and women’s sport by calling for the participation of “all women, ” in women’s sports, including those who were AMAB but are now 6′ 7″ and 275 pounds.
That’s the “GBTQ+ community.” L are the victims, not part of the perpetrators, of the forces cheering on the takeover and destruction of women’s sports.
What “research and scholarly analysis” has shown that? Show your work. I don’t believe there is any such “research and scholarly analysis,” because when women were “excluded from sport,” they were completely, utterly, and totally excluded. There was nowhere for women to go. Excluding trans-identified men from women’s sport isn’t because they are too weak and inferior to compete. The “discriminatory premise” deployed against women left women with nothing at all. The “premise” for trans-identified men’s exclusion from women’s sport isn’t “discriminatory” in the same way. Trans-identified men have always had the broadest avenue to sports participation open to them: they have always been able to compete in the men’s division. In fact, many of them did, until they decided they could win more easily by competing against women instead. Cheese champions. Cheaters. Liars.
How are trans-identified men being “subjugated” in any way, by keeping women’s sports for actual women? Short answer, they’re not. They have full access and opportunity to compete in the men’s division. That’s not “subjugation” of any kind. Liars. Gaslighters. They have rocks for brains if that’s the quality of their “thinking.”
YNNB: It’s the same thinking that leads people to have a hard time with “all men are created equal”. If men and women are equal, then it simply can’t be the case that there are real athletic differences between men and women. Contrapositively, if there are real athletic difference between men and women, then it simply can’t be the case that men and women are equal. Such thinking confuses equality of moral with equality of capacity. Adhering to it requires denying reality. When the implication is refuted by showing that there are in fact athletic differences between men and women, the refutation is misunderstood to apply to the idea that men and women are equal.
Unfortunately, many people, including women, have bought into the implication. Remember when Serena Williams had to plainly state to a disbelieving audience that she’d decisively lose if she played in the men’s league? I’ve seen many examples of women who were straight up unaware of the strength difference between men and women. How the hell do you live in the world without noticing that most men are bigger and stronger than you?
All part of the dishonest framing that transactivism is dependent upon to carry its “arguments.”
I’m sure that Veronica Ivy or some other trans-philosopher has spouted that sort of bullshit. In fact, I’d be surprised if they haven’t. Doesn’t actually meet the widely accepted definition of “research and scholarly analysis” IMO, but I guess if you’re deluded or desperate any port in a storm.
I’ve read various attempts at arguing the relationship between the two, and I would not describe it so glowingly. Abuse of jargon to cover weak and scattered thinking would be nearer the mark.
There was a Twitter thread by someone a few months ago (sorry, don’t have a link) showing examples of women being excluded from male sports to actually protect the males from competition.
The examples were (1) skeet shooting and (2) soccer in Great Britain after WW II (when the number of young able-bodied men was small).
So that totally proves the point, I hope you are convinced now.
Ten years ago, I would have thought the same thing. Then I had a student who, at the age of 20, was shocked to learn that trees were not dead when they lost their leaves in the winter, but came back again in the spring. Did they not notice the bare tree all winter? And the growing leaves in the spring? No, they didn’t.
There is a lot of ignorance of the real world out there now. It isn’t heating, because the AC keeps your house colder in July than you would tolerate in December. The trees die off in the winter and new, fully grown trees appear in the summer. Men are no larger or stronger than women.
Reality is no longer important to people who believe that all of life is in the worldwide web.
Oh, come now, a biologist should know how trees work. A new tree grows inside the old, dead tree’s corpse. That’s why the tree gets bigger every year: the dead parts are forced outward in an ever widening set of concentric rings. And the bark gets rougher and thicker because it’s been dead for so long.
Obviously.
What’s that? What about evergreen trees? Um … Shut up, that’s what.