A tiny residue
The Times asks a silly question: Who Should Compete in Women’s Sports?
The answer is in the question. Women, duh.
But the full title is: Who Should Compete in Women’s Sports? There Are ‘Two Almost Irreconcilable Positions.’
Only when it comes to women, right? Nobody else is expected to nod compliantly to such a ridiculous set-up. Who should win a prize established for black writers? There Are Two Almost Irreconcilable Positions – I don’t think. But it’s ok to bully women that way, because women are required to be Nice, which includes giving away their own rights and smiling pleasantly while they do it.
While scientific and societal views of sex and gender identity have changed significantly in recent decades, a vexing question persists regarding athletes who transition from male to female: how to balance inclusivity, competitive fairness and safety.
No they haven’t. Scientific and societal views of sex haven’t changed in recent decades, it’s just that a small faction of entitled men has invented a new version of “gender” that has a lot of people confused and intimidated.
The article is long, and pandering, and annoying. It refers to the physical advantage males have as “residual,” as if it’s mostly gone but there’s just this tiny little wisp remaining that stubborn Karens are making a big unwomanly fuss about. Who oh who oh who should compete in women’s sports, I just can’t figure it out.
I’d bet that more than a tiny residue of the reason people fall in line with the gender identitarians is exactly this.
This is a pathetic beat-up. Must have been a slow news day.
Oh, that’s rich. So exactly when do advantages become unfair? Would it be fair for Usain Bolt to compete against women in a race? I mean if, and only if, he identifies as a woman, because then they would be peers, right?
Why is nobody outraged that there aren’t more trans men in men’s sports? Why is there no outpouring of concern for their Human Rights?
It’s true nobody is trying to pass rules to exclude them, for some reason, yet clearly they are underrepresented in men’s sports. This suggests systemic transphobia. Why not make special rules, and handicaps for the Assigned Male At Birth men, so trans men get fair shots at making teams, too? This may involve deconstructing our socially constructed notions of athletic competition, but so what? Aren’t team sports especially important, gender-wise, for men, offering opportunities for character-building and masculine bonding and manly stuff like that?
When are the ACLU and the New York Times and the Twitter Wokerati going to address this rank injustice?
The Bolt comparison really misses the point. His advantage over the rest of the elite male sprinters comes down to mere fractions of a second, his 2009 100m world record of 9.58 seconds being just 0.18 seconds faster than current mens’ world champion Christian Coleman’s 9.76 seconds. To put that into perspective, Coleman’s time would see him finish approximately 2m behind Bolt in a head-to-head but around 7.5m ahead against Florence Griffith-Joyner’s 1988 world record of 10.49 seconds and almost 10m ahead of current womens’ world champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce’s time of 10.71 seconds. Bolt would finish around 9.5m ahead of Griffith-Joyner and over 11m ahead of Fraser-Price
Of course, Bolt didn’t run a 9.58 every race but he almost always ran sub-10 seconds in finals, but then so do most male top-level sprinters, whereas no woman has ever ran a sub-10 second 100m, and the norm for women at the top level is around 11 seconds. All that is to say that for Bolt’s advantage to have been considered unfair he would have had to have been pitted against competition for whom it was physically impossible to run a 10 second 100m, so either junior runners or women.
Allowing men to compete as women won’t result in a once-in-a-generation scenario as with Bolt and Griffith-Joyner running against their own sex, but it will result in men who would be also-rans in the mens’ races taking all the top places in womens’ sports, with women being relegated to perpetual also-rans. In fact, get enough men-as-women involved and the worse-case scenario would possibly mean never seeing women compete at the top level again, all the finals places going to men.
Whenever I’ve brought this possibility up to those who believe TWAW, I’ve been accused of paranoia (or phobia.) That’s just not going to happen, because transwomen are such a small minority, and only a fraction of that number would want to play competitive sports. I’m just imagining problems into existence.
While that’s debatable, it’s interesting to note that this response seems to concede that it would be a problem. “Yes, that scenario would be unfair, but it’s not a live possibility.” It makes me wonder then what their cutoff point is. 10% of top women in sports are transgender: ok — or not ok? 15%? 25%? 75%? And if they think they can set that statistic— how would they enforce it? In sports, the rules on eligibility have to be specific.
Which of The Most Vulnerable People On Earth will they kick off the rugby team?
Yes, but it doesn’t require a majority of women’s sports competitors to be transwomen. One TiM can do it in any given sport, move the record to a place where a woman cannot win, take the top spot and deny it to a woman. That will change the goal for all women, to a goal women cannot achieve. RachelVeronicaMcKinnonIvy seems to be set on doing just that for bicycling.
One contender with that much advantage can destroy sports for a lot of women.
@iknklast;
That probably moves the question over: if they’re okay with one transgender contender setting a women’s sports record no (natal) woman can beat — what about two? Ten? Every single women’s sport?
If their main comeback is “but that won’t happen,” then they’re only okay with it up to a point. Trying to figure out that point is likely to send them in one of two directions: screw it, it’s trans women’s sports now — or women’s sports are not open to transgender contenders.
This article is about intersex athletes in women’s sports. Still relevant:
https://www.letsrun.com/news/2019/05/what-no-one-is-telling-you-about-caster-semenya-she-has-xy-chromosomes/
I’ve gone from being fully supportive of Semenya to being unsure what to think, and that article makes my head hurt even more. All three? Holy cow.
I don’t fully agree that the reason separate women’s sports exist is fairness; rather, I think it’s opportunity (and it certainly is at the college and secondary school level in the US). There’s reason to have separate women’s divisions even in endeavors where men don’t have a physical advantage, such as chess or billiards. But the physical advantages are the most obvious reasons not to allow men who identify as women to compete in the women’s divisions.
Actually, Sackbut, men do have a physical advantage in billiards; as my husband discovered when he tried to play snooker whilst dressed as a woman for a charity event.
He’d previously been highly critical of the way women hold the cue, especially in professional snooker. It was only when he tried playing with a sock-filled bra in the way that he realised that it is impossible for a woman to hold a cue the same way that a man does. Unless, I suppose, she has a mastectomy as ancient archers were reputed to have.