Only sort of fair
Woman who writes a column for the Washington Post tells women to shut up and take it.
Competition is never equal, and it is only sort of, approximately, occasionally fair. The best we can ask is that it be meaningful, that it teach us something about ourselves. This is the context in which transgender athletes enter into sport, and the people who would reduce this self-seeking to an unfair “them” against “us” are missing the point entirely: Sport doesn’t tell us who we are biologically, but spiritually, and psychologically, and the first thing it tells us is not to be victims. So it’s a step backward for so many women athletes to cry frailty in the debate over trans participation.
Stop. Stop right there. Stop right there, shut up, hit yourself in the face.
It is not a step backward for women to want to continue competing against other women. It’s a step in the same direction we’ve been going ever since women were allowed to play in serious sports at all. It’s not backward or whiny or weak or cowardly or whatever other snotty sneery insult you’re trying to sneak in here: it’s just the same division of sport into men’s and women’s for the sake of fair competition for women. What do you think you look like, calling women names for wanting that?! Accusing women of “crying frailty”?! And by the way you meant fragility, you hack. Frailty is a moral term not a physical one. You’re a hack and a coward and an enemy of women.
…the lawsuit brought by San José State co-captain Brooke Slusser and 10 other Mountain West volleyball players asking emergency injunctive relief to bench a San José State player for, in their view, not being a proper woman doesn’t clarify the matter.
Snotty. Snotty, snide, childish. It’s not about “not being a proper woman”; it’s about being a man. Men are not “improper” women; men are men. Propriety is not even slightly the issue. It’s not about etiquette, it’s about bodies.
Frailty (or fragility)
Old misogyny, new package. Apparently we think Serena Williams is frail/fragile (at least when we don’t think she’s a man) because she can’t beat the top men and doesn’t pretend she can. Of course we do, because we live in a world where a lot minus a bit is practically fuck all and basic mathematics is a distantly remembered skill.
Frailness or fragility. There is a perfectly cromulent noun for the adjective “frail”; it’s just not “frailty.”
Before one can be a proper or improper woman, first, be a woman.
Also: good point!
So let’s take this to its logical conclusion…. If men and women can fairly compete together, that assumes that women are as strong/fast as men. Therefor all those women who have been assaulted, murdered, etc must have been complicit, otherwise they could have just fought the men off/run away.
I believe the philisophical/technical rebuttal here is “Stop smoking the drapes”
I would truly love to hear some coach or pundit try to convince a bunch of male athletes, who play for big money or great glory, that sports are meant to teach men some ethereal undefined thing about themselves.
Unless you’re Shakespeare. ;-)
Oh, don’t you know? Only women need to learn this thing about themselves, this undefined thing. Men just play sports; they don’t need to learn about themselves, except learn what they want to spend their money on.
No, Shakespeare meant frailty when he said frailty. Good illustration.
Interesting moving of the goalposts. She implicitly admits that it is not fair but now the argument is “it’s not about winning blabla.” I think that is a sign of hope: the time where you could publicly state that TiM don’t have an advantage in sport without being ridiculed seems to near its end.
Apart from that: so why can’t the TiM not do sports with the men? Because it would be unfair?
What about doping? Why have separate women’s sport at all?
I’m inclined to agree with the point that sport doesn’t tell us who we are biologically – but that’s because it doesn’t tell us who we are at all. Hence the spiritual (ugh!) and psychological stuff is a non-starter too. Still: if it did tell us something about who we are, you can bet your bum that who we are physically would be pretty high on the list of things it tells us.
The point stands, though, that sport is about physical prowess. It’s about beating people. Sometimes beating them literally – think boxing – and sometimes in the other sense – think running. And sometimes the person beaten is a bit vaguer – does the climber or the casual fell-runner beat herself? God? I’m not sure. But physical prowess is still, even if not the whole story, then a pretty big part of it.
It’s very odd that denying that should be such a big part of the argument here, except that were it not, the rest of the argument’d fall flat.
I’ve learned a new word! ‘Cromulent’. I think it’s cromulent, and shall use it henceforth. Thank you, Ophelia!
Heh. I picked it up from somewhere terminally online myself. Probably Pharyngula.
Apparently this is the introduction of cromulent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4qP42Aqpbg
I picked that one up from my husband, and was pleased to see Ophelia using it. My husband has a wide vocabulary of rarely used words, perhaps from being a librarian, or perhaps not. I also like irascible…another word I saw here a while back. Part of the reason I come to this site is the vocabulary.