We cannot discuss sex and gender identity unless we agree on shared realities, such as the unarguable fact that men hold an intrinsic competitive advantage over women in sports. This is not a question that can even be debated in good faith. It is a fact, period. https://t.co/P4zZRa8DFL
What I’m saying. It’s not a “belief” or an idea or a claim, it’s just basic reality, without which we wouldn’t even exist. It’s a shared reality that women and men exist, and another shared reality that there are physical differences between them.
We cannot discuss sex and gender identity unless we agree on shared realities, such as the unarguable fact that men hold an intrinsic competitive advantage over women in sports. This is not a question that can even be debated in good faith. It is a fact, period.
Yeah, but if you reduce T to the Officially Official Number of Authorized Number of Womanly Nanoliters, all of those advantages go away so SHUT UP TRANSPHOBE!
It looks like this book review/puff piece is in a section called “ideas”. Well, this “idea” isn’t a very good one. But then, being a man, you can look at this dispassionately and logically, right? You must think you have no stake in this, that you can rise above personal interest and feelings that might cloud your judgement. I’m a man too, but I can see a world of hurt in this idea; hurt to the female half of the planet’s human population. And this idea is so poorly wrapped that this its sharp, jagged edges should be plainly visible to all who care to look at it for more than a few seconds. I wonder why you failed to notice them? It can’t be because you are a man (because I did see them). What is it that’s clouding your judgement to the degree that you are ready to hand over rights that aren’t yours ( women’s right to fairness and safety) to men who would destroy those rights?
Trans girls playing girls’ sports? How about a more radical idea: abolish the gender divide in athletics altogether.
The gaslighting begins immediately. “Trans girls” are boyss, and sports are segregated by SEX not GENDER. See Ryan’s comment above regarding “good faith”. It looks like this is in a section called “ideas”. Well, this isn’t a very good one. But then, being a man, you can look at this dispassionately and logically, right? I’m a man too, and I can see a world of hurt in this idea, and it’s so poorly wrapped that it’s sharp, jagged edges are plainly visible to all who care to look at it for more than a few minutes.
Translated out of genderspeak, we get a much clearer idea of what exactly is being proposed:
Boys in girls’ sports? How about a more radical idea: Get rid of women’s sport altogether.*
Put as bluntly as that, the idea is not so much “radical”, as “grotesquely unfair”, “cruel”, or “evil”. Interesting that this columnist has decided that this “idea” is one worth taking seriously and engaging with. We only recently emerged from a world without women’s sport. Why does writer want to tell us that we might be “convinced” that this is a good idea? Would he be so eager to devote the same space and reasoned treatment of a book that proposed the reinstitution of the Color bar in sports? If not, why not? Getting rid of women’s sport is on the same plane of outrageousness; why is that “idea” worth debating?
Also, remembering the fact that trans activism is willing to overlook and bury
the unarguable fact that men hold an intrinsic competitive advantage over women in sports.
and that they claim
that men maintain no advantage over women in athletics, that cultural factors drive men’s advantage, and that sex segregation in sports should end
that same logic would suggest that age segregation in sports should end as well. (And if you’re good with letting that particular camel’s nose into that particular tent, the MAP people have some “ideas” they’d like you to run up the flag pole for them, ‘kay?) Is this an “idea” that you would deem equally worth having a public discussion about? Again, if not, why not? Why is destroying women’s sport okay to entertain, when these other, no less ridiculous proposals are beyond the pale?
A new book makes a provocative argument…
The “provocative” part I believe; the “argument” part I don’t. Trans activists can’t “argue” anything, without redefining “woman” and “female”, swapping “gender” for “sex” and vice versa when it suits them, while otherwise bleating that they’re not the same when it doesn’t, or using circular definitions of “gender” that rely on sexist stereotypes. Without the deliberate, opportunistic confusion and conflation of sex and gender, there would have been no such book in the first place. Look. Men can’t be women. Men don’t belong in women’s sports. There, that was easy; game over, case closed, pulp the book, demand the return of the advance. There is no “arguing” around that simple, brute fact. Any other conclusion is bullshit disguised with hand-waving and intimidation. Anyone who continues to so “argue” wants to screw women over. There is no other possibility, given the facts of the matter. This is apologetics for cheaters and predators. Men who compete against women in women’s sports are cheaters. Men who demand and are given access to women’s change and shower facilities are predators. When men are forced into women’s sport, women lose, women suffer, women are victimized. And when the women complain (as they have every fucking right to do) they are punished. This is what ANYONE “debating” this issue is supporting. Trans activists are always so insistant that women have no legitimate reason to oppose trans “rights” and that the only possible explanation for their doing so is their spiteful, hateful, bigoted desire to hurt trans people. Well here’s the real, inevitable, predicted harm staring you in the face, and it’s harm to women. It’s baked into trans “rights”, and you have to hide this ugly fact by calling men and boys, trans “women”, and trans “girls” (or by using the generic “trans” in place of MALE when speaking about measures designed to protect women’s sports from male intrusion), and by elevating “inclusion” as the sole priority in sport, throwing fairness out the window.
…more convincingly than you might imagine.
Fuck off. You have no grounds to believe that my imagination is that infinitely elastic. There are no scenarios in which I could be “convinced” of this dishonest, dangerous, harmful bullshit that don’t involve my suffering from some kind of brain damage, or being threatened by a gun. That’s not being “convinced” by an “argument.” There has been no debate or argument as such, otherwise the trans side would have lost, and been laughed out of the arena, because it’s not talking about anything real. It’s nonesense, like astrology and religion. They don’t want a shared reality, because in reality, their position loses. What has happened in place of the more usual, open, accepted, democratic argument and debate is the steamrolling of reality by an ideology that has gained unearned power and influence, that can only maintain that power and influence by continuing to deny reality, and by punishing anyone who dares point to that reality in support of wome’s rights.
And Mr. Scharfenberg? This tiny snippet of your work is extremely revealing. It tells me more about you (and your editors) than you could have possibly imagined, without my having to read a single word more. This revelation is not to your credit. The fact that you find any such kind of “argument” “more convincing” says nothing good about you. (See above, men can’t be women, etc.) At best, it tells me that you have not really thought about this issue. At all. Ever. If you had, you would not be so breezily promoting this book, for promoting it you are. It tells me you are woefully ignorant on the matter of women’s sports, and you did not let any “research” you might have done diminish that ignorance in the slightest. At worst, it tells me that you have thrown truth and objectivity (not to mention your reputation) over in favour of an allegedly “progressive” ideology, the success of which is unavoidably predicated on knowingly, willingly, deliberately injuring women.
You have certainly sparked discussion, but likely not one you would have predicted or desired, because my interest is in you. Just a few sentences I know, but I left with two questions. First, what do you get out of selling out your reputation like this for the benefit of trans “rights”? Second, and more importantly, why do you hate women?
*Except trans activists don’t really want that. They still want to compete against womenas women, otherwise they acheive standings commensurate with their actual status as mediocre males, they lose the hit of “validation” and they don’t get to prve on women in the locker room. They just want eligibility standards to be “relaxed” enough to allow them in so they can still be on women’s teams, pretending that destroying the sexual criteria for eligibility doesn’t ruin their hoped-for “gender-based” one. Like most of the rest of trans activism, it’s nonesensical, contradictory, and incoherent.
The book in question is called Open Play: The Case for Feminist Sport, by Sheree Bekker and Stephen Mumford. One of the blurbs quoted on its Amazon page says:
“Sport has been in desperate need of a fresh, nuanced approach to gender, one which has women, nonbinary, and trans people at its core. Open Play challenges the patriarchal system that has dictated women’s participation in sport around the world. Its philosophy is simple yet revolutionary amongst the status quo of so-called ‘feminist’ approaches to sport. This book is not just a must-read, it should become foundational in the future of women’s sport from the grassroots to professional levels.” — Flo Lloyd-Hughes, sports writer and broadcaster
Sports doesn’t need any approach to gender, desperate or otherwise. Someone wanting to introduce this kind of “nuance” into this topic wants to see men on women’s podiums, and in women’s changing rooms. It’s not gendered souls out on the track, it’s not one’s innermost, true self doing laps in the pool, we’re not seeing how high a bar someone’s “identity” can clear, it’s sexed, physical bodies of flesh, blood, and bone that are reliably known to actually exist, that are competing. The concept of “gender identity” can’t muster enough substance to hold the kind of Gordian Knot that gender ideology, to the exclusion of all others, claims to be able to unravel. Please. You can’t tie a knot in either jello or smoke, and they’re both more real than “gender identity” will ever be.
It is not possible for women, and nonbinary, and trans people to be simultaneously at the core of anything. There’s no room at the inn, and trans identified males want to play Jesus and hog the manger. In practice, attempts to do this have always centered men’s wants and desires over women’s rights and needs. Women get shunted to the side whenever “gender” has to be taken into consideration, which, unlike sex, is a completely invisible, immaterial, undefinable, unmeasurable “entity” that is likely nothing more than an aspect of personality. Do we segregate sports by whether someone is an introvert or an extrovert? No. That’s not a salient criterion. Sex is, and no amount of handwaving is going to hide that fact.
“Nonbinary” females and trans identified females are still female; nothing that they do can change that. Hormone “treatments” that render them ineligible for participation in female sports are not the concern of female sports leagues; it’s a completely understandable consequence of the choices they’ve made, and nobody is obligated to make any accommodation for them whatsoever. Find a team or league that will accept you as you are, assuming you can make the cut. Similarly “nonbinary” males and trans identified males remain males. If the “treatments” they have chosen to subject themselves to result in their no longer being good enough to play on a men’s team, that’s too bad; join the billions of other men not good enough to make men’s teams. Don’t expect women to admit you to their leagues, because you’re not women, and never will be, however much you suppress your testosterone levels. Women are not just “men with low testosterone.” It’s insulting to women to pretend they are, and that monkeying around with T is all you need to do to become female.
It looks like the authors are trying to portray women’s sport as some kind of patriarchal ghetto to which women have been unfairly and unjustly “confined”, rather than a precious refuge which they have had to carve out for themselves against centuries of opposition, ridicule, and hostility. The basic physiological differences between male and female bodies (whatever the degree of overlap there may occasionally be within some parameters when comparing men and women) are real. They are not “cultural constructs” that can be overcome by women trying “harder.” It is not in any way “victimizing” or “infantilizing” women to acknowledge these physiological differences between the sexes. These differences call for separation of sport by sex, to ensure safe, fair competition, particularly for women. This is not a punishment. It is, to use the terminology of gender identity, an actual safe space for women, and a hard won space at that. But if you don’t know (or worse, refuse to acknowledge) what a woman even is, you’re not going to be able to understand (or you’re going to pretend to not understand) this need. Any “inclusive” definition of “woman” is solely for the benefit of men. They’re going to pretend to be “liberating” women from these patriarchal “cultural constructs” of imaginary physical differences between men and women in order to let men into women’s sport. That’s the only point of all of this, and there’s nothing in it for women. They can only lose.
Its philosophy is simple yet revolutionary amongst the status quo of so-called ‘feminist’ approaches to sport.
Uh-oh: “SO-CALLED ‘FEMINIST’ ALERT”. Presumably meaning the boring kind of feminism that wants to reserve women’s sport to women. How shameful! They want to “exclude” non-women from women’s sport, like Lammy’s feminist “dinosaurs” who were “hoarding rights.” The authors of this book are the fun, intersectional kind of “feminist” (see, we can use scare quotes too), who want to prevent women from having anything of their own demand inclusivity above all. Tell me: which group of feminists actually has the real interests and safety of women in mind as their first and only priority? Not the one who thinks that “gender” needs to be at the “core” of sports.
This thinking is a direct result of the triumph of the “culture-is-everything” school of thought that has plagued the humanities department of many a university. And when I say they believe culture is everything, I am being quite literal – they literally believe culture shapes reality. It’s Lysenko all over again.
In the end, this movement, like all movements that reject reality, will fail. It’s just a question of when, and how much damage it does along the way. I work in health care. The differences in the sexes are apparent in more ways than one. We know that women are far more likely to suffer from rheumatological conditions. We know that various drugs that depend on weight and volume distribution have to be dosed differently between sexes in some cases. We know that there are different risk factors for men and women for a variety of conditions, and when we screen patients we have to keep those risk factors in mind. Most of my colleagues will privately express that they know this transgender stuff is nonsense, but publicly say nothing about it.
Some of the younger interns are worryingly jumping on the transgender rights bandwagon. It’s quite odd, because they know of the biological differences between sexes and they know that there are many cases in which those differences result in meaningfully different management, but then they deny that there should be any acknowledgement of that outside medical/surgical management. They know full well that transwomen will have a competitive advantage, but insist that they still be allowed to perform in women’s sport (and surprisingly, both the female and male interns seem to believe this in equal measure, although that’s just from personal experience and is a mere anecdote)
In the end, this movement, like all movements that reject reality, will fail.
I hope you’re right. And yet reality-rejecting movements, like, say, the world’s large religions, have endured for centuries, or even millennia, and show no sign of going extinct* anytime soon, while true scientific and critical thinking have only been around for the blink of an eye, remain about as fringe as it gets, even to this day, and appear to be in rapid decline, even in universities…
Yeah, but if you reduce T to the Officially Official Number of Authorized Number of Womanly Nanoliters, all of those advantages go away so SHUT UP TRANSPHOBE!
It looks like this book review/puff piece is in a section called “ideas”. Well, this “idea” isn’t a very good one. But then, being a man, you can look at this dispassionately and logically, right? You must think you have no stake in this, that you can rise above personal interest and feelings that might cloud your judgement. I’m a man too, but I can see a world of hurt in this idea; hurt to the female half of the planet’s human population. And this idea is so poorly wrapped that this its sharp, jagged edges should be plainly visible to all who care to look at it for more than a few seconds. I wonder why you failed to notice them? It can’t be because you are a man (because I did see them). What is it that’s clouding your judgement to the degree that you are ready to hand over rights that aren’t yours ( women’s right to fairness and safety) to men who would destroy those rights?
The gaslighting begins immediately. “Trans girls” are boyss, and sports are segregated by SEX not GENDER. See Ryan’s comment above regarding “good faith”. It looks like this is in a section called “ideas”. Well, this isn’t a very good one. But then, being a man, you can look at this dispassionately and logically, right? I’m a man too, and I can see a world of hurt in this idea, and it’s so poorly wrapped that it’s sharp, jagged edges are plainly visible to all who care to look at it for more than a few minutes.
Translated out of genderspeak, we get a much clearer idea of what exactly is being proposed:
Put as bluntly as that, the idea is not so much “radical”, as “grotesquely unfair”, “cruel”, or “evil”. Interesting that this columnist has decided that this “idea” is one worth taking seriously and engaging with. We only recently emerged from a world without women’s sport. Why does writer want to tell us that we might be “convinced” that this is a good idea? Would he be so eager to devote the same space and reasoned treatment of a book that proposed the reinstitution of the Color bar in sports? If not, why not? Getting rid of women’s sport is on the same plane of outrageousness; why is that “idea” worth debating?
Also, remembering the fact that trans activism is willing to overlook and bury
and that they claim
that same logic would suggest that age segregation in sports should end as well. (And if you’re good with letting that particular camel’s nose into that particular tent, the MAP people have some “ideas” they’d like you to run up the flag pole for them, ‘kay?) Is this an “idea” that you would deem equally worth having a public discussion about? Again, if not, why not? Why is destroying women’s sport okay to entertain, when these other, no less ridiculous proposals are beyond the pale?
The “provocative” part I believe; the “argument” part I don’t. Trans activists can’t “argue” anything, without redefining “woman” and “female”, swapping “gender” for “sex” and vice versa when it suits them, while otherwise bleating that they’re not the same when it doesn’t, or using circular definitions of “gender” that rely on sexist stereotypes. Without the deliberate, opportunistic confusion and conflation of sex and gender, there would have been no such book in the first place. Look. Men can’t be women. Men don’t belong in women’s sports. There, that was easy; game over, case closed, pulp the book, demand the return of the advance. There is no “arguing” around that simple, brute fact. Any other conclusion is bullshit disguised with hand-waving and intimidation. Anyone who continues to so “argue” wants to screw women over. There is no other possibility, given the facts of the matter. This is apologetics for cheaters and predators. Men who compete against women in women’s sports are cheaters. Men who demand and are given access to women’s change and shower facilities are predators. When men are forced into women’s sport, women lose, women suffer, women are victimized. And when the women complain (as they have every fucking right to do) they are punished. This is what ANYONE “debating” this issue is supporting. Trans activists are always so insistant that women have no legitimate reason to oppose trans “rights” and that the only possible explanation for their doing so is their spiteful, hateful, bigoted desire to hurt trans people. Well here’s the real, inevitable, predicted harm staring you in the face, and it’s harm to women. It’s baked into trans “rights”, and you have to hide this ugly fact by calling men and boys, trans “women”, and trans “girls” (or by using the generic “trans” in place of MALE when speaking about measures designed to protect women’s sports from male intrusion), and by elevating “inclusion” as the sole priority in sport, throwing fairness out the window.
Fuck off. You have no grounds to believe that my imagination is that infinitely elastic. There are no scenarios in which I could be “convinced” of this dishonest, dangerous, harmful bullshit that don’t involve my suffering from some kind of brain damage, or being threatened by a gun. That’s not being “convinced” by an “argument.” There has been no debate or argument as such, otherwise the trans side would have lost, and been laughed out of the arena, because it’s not talking about anything real. It’s nonesense, like astrology and religion. They don’t want a shared reality, because in reality, their position loses. What has happened in place of the more usual, open, accepted, democratic argument and debate is the steamrolling of reality by an ideology that has gained unearned power and influence, that can only maintain that power and influence by continuing to deny reality, and by punishing anyone who dares point to that reality in support of wome’s rights.
And Mr. Scharfenberg? This tiny snippet of your work is extremely revealing. It tells me more about you (and your editors) than you could have possibly imagined, without my having to read a single word more. This revelation is not to your credit. The fact that you find any such kind of “argument” “more convincing” says nothing good about you. (See above, men can’t be women, etc.) At best, it tells me that you have not really thought about this issue. At all. Ever. If you had, you would not be so breezily promoting this book, for promoting it you are. It tells me you are woefully ignorant on the matter of women’s sports, and you did not let any “research” you might have done diminish that ignorance in the slightest. At worst, it tells me that you have thrown truth and objectivity (not to mention your reputation) over in favour of an allegedly “progressive” ideology, the success of which is unavoidably predicated on knowingly, willingly, deliberately injuring women.
You have certainly sparked discussion, but likely not one you would have predicted or desired, because my interest is in you. Just a few sentences I know, but I left with two questions. First, what do you get out of selling out your reputation like this for the benefit of trans “rights”? Second, and more importantly, why do you hate women?
*Except trans activists don’t really want that. They still want to compete against womenas women, otherwise they acheive standings commensurate with their actual status as mediocre males, they lose the hit of “validation” and they don’t get to prve on women in the locker room. They just want eligibility standards to be “relaxed” enough to allow them in so they can still be on women’s teams, pretending that destroying the sexual criteria for eligibility doesn’t ruin their hoped-for “gender-based” one. Like most of the rest of trans activism, it’s nonesensical, contradictory, and incoherent.
Bekker and Mumford, have a YouTube channel “Feminist Sport Lab”. The latest video’s title on the channel is: “Against Women’s Rights”.
I thought for a minute they may be trolling.
The book in question is called Open Play: The Case for Feminist Sport, by Sheree Bekker and Stephen Mumford. One of the blurbs quoted on its Amazon page says:
Sports doesn’t need any approach to gender, desperate or otherwise. Someone wanting to introduce this kind of “nuance” into this topic wants to see men on women’s podiums, and in women’s changing rooms. It’s not gendered souls out on the track, it’s not one’s innermost, true self doing laps in the pool, we’re not seeing how high a bar someone’s “identity” can clear, it’s sexed, physical bodies of flesh, blood, and bone that are reliably known to actually exist, that are competing. The concept of “gender identity” can’t muster enough substance to hold the kind of Gordian Knot that gender ideology, to the exclusion of all others, claims to be able to unravel. Please. You can’t tie a knot in either jello or smoke, and they’re both more real than “gender identity” will ever be.
It is not possible for women, and nonbinary, and trans people to be simultaneously at the core of anything. There’s no room at the inn, and trans identified males want to play Jesus and hog the manger. In practice, attempts to do this have always centered men’s wants and desires over women’s rights and needs. Women get shunted to the side whenever “gender” has to be taken into consideration, which, unlike sex, is a completely invisible, immaterial, undefinable, unmeasurable “entity” that is likely nothing more than an aspect of personality. Do we segregate sports by whether someone is an introvert or an extrovert? No. That’s not a salient criterion. Sex is, and no amount of handwaving is going to hide that fact.
“Nonbinary” females and trans identified females are still female; nothing that they do can change that. Hormone “treatments” that render them ineligible for participation in female sports are not the concern of female sports leagues; it’s a completely understandable consequence of the choices they’ve made, and nobody is obligated to make any accommodation for them whatsoever. Find a team or league that will accept you as you are, assuming you can make the cut. Similarly “nonbinary” males and trans identified males remain males. If the “treatments” they have chosen to subject themselves to result in their no longer being good enough to play on a men’s team, that’s too bad; join the billions of other men not good enough to make men’s teams. Don’t expect women to admit you to their leagues, because you’re not women, and never will be, however much you suppress your testosterone levels. Women are not just “men with low testosterone.” It’s insulting to women to pretend they are, and that monkeying around with T is all you need to do to become female.
It looks like the authors are trying to portray women’s sport as some kind of patriarchal ghetto to which women have been unfairly and unjustly “confined”, rather than a precious refuge which they have had to carve out for themselves against centuries of opposition, ridicule, and hostility. The basic physiological differences between male and female bodies (whatever the degree of overlap there may occasionally be within some parameters when comparing men and women) are real. They are not “cultural constructs” that can be overcome by women trying “harder.” It is not in any way “victimizing” or “infantilizing” women to acknowledge these physiological differences between the sexes. These differences call for separation of sport by sex, to ensure safe, fair competition, particularly for women. This is not a punishment. It is, to use the terminology of gender identity, an actual safe space for women, and a hard won space at that. But if you don’t know (or worse, refuse to acknowledge) what a woman even is, you’re not going to be able to understand (or you’re going to pretend to not understand) this need. Any “inclusive” definition of “woman” is solely for the benefit of men. They’re going to pretend to be “liberating” women from these patriarchal “cultural constructs” of imaginary physical differences between men and women in order to let men into women’s sport. That’s the only point of all of this, and there’s nothing in it for women. They can only lose.
Uh-oh: “SO-CALLED ‘FEMINIST’ ALERT”. Presumably meaning the boring kind of feminism that wants to reserve women’s sport to women. How shameful! They want to “exclude” non-women from women’s sport, like Lammy’s feminist “dinosaurs” who were “hoarding rights.” The authors of this book are the fun, intersectional kind of “feminist” (see, we can use scare quotes too), who want to
prevent women from having anything of their owndemand inclusivity above all. Tell me: which group of feminists actually has the real interests and safety of women in mind as their first and only priority? Not the one who thinks that “gender” needs to be at the “core” of sports.This thinking is a direct result of the triumph of the “culture-is-everything” school of thought that has plagued the humanities department of many a university. And when I say they believe culture is everything, I am being quite literal – they literally believe culture shapes reality. It’s Lysenko all over again.
In the end, this movement, like all movements that reject reality, will fail. It’s just a question of when, and how much damage it does along the way. I work in health care. The differences in the sexes are apparent in more ways than one. We know that women are far more likely to suffer from rheumatological conditions. We know that various drugs that depend on weight and volume distribution have to be dosed differently between sexes in some cases. We know that there are different risk factors for men and women for a variety of conditions, and when we screen patients we have to keep those risk factors in mind. Most of my colleagues will privately express that they know this transgender stuff is nonsense, but publicly say nothing about it.
Some of the younger interns are worryingly jumping on the transgender rights bandwagon. It’s quite odd, because they know of the biological differences between sexes and they know that there are many cases in which those differences result in meaningfully different management, but then they deny that there should be any acknowledgement of that outside medical/surgical management. They know full well that transwomen will have a competitive advantage, but insist that they still be allowed to perform in women’s sport (and surprisingly, both the female and male interns seem to believe this in equal measure, although that’s just from personal experience and is a mere anecdote)
[…] a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Shared […]
I hope you’re right. And yet reality-rejecting movements, like, say, the world’s large religions, have endured for centuries, or even millennia, and show no sign of going extinct* anytime soon, while true scientific and critical thinking have only been around for the blink of an eye, remain about as fringe as it gets, even to this day, and appear to be in rapid decline, even in universities…
* Not while the human species remains anyway…
Well, not fringe quite everywhere. As my witnesses I call the astronauts who returned to earth the other day.