Life-changing opportunities are missed
A Belgian weightlifter says dealing with transgender issues in sport is “impossible” but the presence of Laurel Hubbard in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic games is “like a bad joke” to women athletes.
The women athletes have been keeping quiet, though, for all the reasons we know about.
Anna Vanbellinghen of Belgium has broken the athletes’ silence with a considered statement on Hubbard’s achievement.
Vanbellinghen has a chance of qualifying in the same weight category, the over-87-kilogram super-heavyweights, and is therefore directly affected by the presence of Hubbard, who transitioned to female at the age of 35.
Others have voiced outrage at Hubbard’s presence in women’s sport, most often on social media, but Vanbellinghen is not making a personal criticism.
“First off, I would like to stress that I fully support the transgender community, and that what I’m about to say doesn’t come from a place of rejection of this athlete’s identity,” Vanbellinghen said.
Why would she “like to” stress that? Because of the relentless bullying that greets any complaints about male athletes stealing women’s prizes.
This athlete’s identity can be a dandelion or a wheelbarrow or the moons of Venus, it doesn’t matter, the point is what he is in fact, which is a person with a male body, aka a man.
“However, anyone that has trained weightlifting at a high level knows this to be true in their bones: this particular situation is unfair to the sport and to the athletes.”
Vanbellinghen, 27, whose qualifying efforts were disrupted by injury, pointed out that the retained benefit of taking steroids, even years earlier, is widely known.
“So why is it still a question whether two decades, from puberty to the age of 35, with the hormonal system of a man also would give an advantage [in competing against women]?
“I understand that for sports authorities nothing is as simple as following your common sense, and that there are a lot of impracticalities when studying such a rare phenomenon, but for athletes the whole thing feels like a bad joke.
“Life-changing opportunities are missed for some athletes – medals and Olympic qualifications – and we are powerless.”
Well, that’s being a woman. Life’s tough.
A similar point was made by Jerry Wallwork, President of the Samoan Weightlifting Federation, which has had athletes competing against Hubbard since she transitioned in 2017.
“I was one of the people who opposed it [having Hubbard in Olympic qualifying] greatly back in 2018,” Wallwork said.
But I do feel that we cannot keep throwing mud at Laurel and blaming her, even though our female athletes are in direct competition with her and could miss out on competing at the Olympic Games.”
No, I disagree. Wallwork says it’s the IOC’s doing, and that’s true, and they suck, but it’s Hubbard’s doing too, and I think we absolutely can keep saying so. He’s blatantly cheating, and he knows it, and it’s simply revolting.
Source. Note that testosterone is an anabolic steroid.
If we grant for the moment that a trans woman is entirely a woman, even so, that woman is one that has been taking anabolic steroids since approximately age 11.
1. X = T’s doing p is unfair.
2. Y = T believes X.
3. Y or -Y.
4. S believes X is obvious.
5. If S believes -Y, then S believes T doesn’t believe something obvious.
6. If S believes T doesn’t believe something obvious, then S believes T is [insert terminology uncomplimentary of intelligence].
7. If S believes Y, then S believes T is knowingly doing something unfair.
8. If S believes T is knowingly doing something unfair, then S believes T is culpably cheating.
9. S’s saying X is “throwing mud” at T.
Reality is messy, and sometimes you gotta throw mud.
Yeah, he didn’t end up on that podium accidentally, nor was a gun held to his head. “validation” trumps fairness.
Also, would the New Zealand Olympic team be as silent if other nations fielded male ringers, if their own women’s team was made up solely of, you know,women? Or what if other countries had bigger, burlier, stronger TIMs on their “women'” weightlifting rosters? Are they good with cheating as long as they’re the only ones doing it? And as long as they’re winning? An “advantage” in the rules like this one disappears as soon as others start to join in.
Just imagine an athletic arms race in which women are wholly supplanted by TIMs in certain sports. If it’s permitted, it will be done. Pretty soon everyone is building battleships, and pushing as much through the loopholes as is possible. “It would never happen,” has already turned out to be a lie in plenty of other instances (see for example: prisons). How likely is it to remain an improbable, scaremongering fiction if money and fame are on offer?
This has been very much a story of “top down” change, with institutional capture being inecessary for the success that trans activism and gender ideology has so far attained. How far can this be imposed on the rest of the general public? Perhaps appealing to the sports viewing audience might be of some use. I think many people are completely oblivious to all the furor and controversy that blows up on twitter and in academia. Their first exposure to the issue could very well be the intrusion of boys and men into female athletics, maybe watching Hubbard in Olympic competition. How many members of the average public will actually understand that they are seeing cheating men invading women’s sports? (Though it is not likely they will learn this from captured broadcasters and media outlets.) Will they see this as fair or just? Will the average member of the public stand for this? Do they really want to watch men cheat? Not “transgender” or “transwomen” athletes. MEN. This is why the fight for clear language is important.
Perhaps we have seen the high water mark of genderism, and that the apparently sudden, and growing, institutional concern over legal risk exposure at having been misled by Stonewall, marks a changing of the tide. I’m hoping there’s a potentially huge load of peak transing just about to happen…
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This athlete’s identity can be…or the moons of Venus,
It seems appropriate that the identity is something that doesn’t exist