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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: Andromeda
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stui magpie wrote: | David wrote: |
Instead, when it comes to a policy of exclusion (particularly one that would reflect and enhance broader disadvantages), the question for me would always be: why? What justifies it? |
So I'm a male of African ancestry, therefore more likely to be disadvantaged. I'm not fast enough to make the 100m for my country, let alone win an Olympic final. I decide to identify as female. No surgery or hormone treatment, purely gender identification. Then I want to try out and compete in the same event but as a female. What justifies my exclusion? |
You missed my point – I'm not saying that sport is a field upon which we should redress social inequalities. I'm saying (in the bracketed section) that excluding transgender people from sport reflects and enhances their existing disadvantages, and thus has political dimensions. That's not a reason to give a random transgender athlete a gold medal just for showing up, or allow them to start running thirty seconds before everyone else, but it might be a reason to consider the broader implications of continuing to exclude them. Basically, all I'm saying there is that such a grave decision needs a strong justification, not a response along the lines of "*shrug* nobody said life was fair". It goes without saying that there is no sense in which the inability of black men to play women's sport relates to racial discrimination.
A more apt comparison would be if African-Americans weren't able to enter many sporting organisations – as, in fact, happened in many cases a century ago, perhaps in part because of worries about the humiliation that might be caused by whites losing to them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson%E2%80%93Jeffries_riots _________________ All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Location: somewhere
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but those black americans were real natural born women.
transgender should compete before they transition - this guy waited til he was 35 to become her, he had plenty of time - maybe he just wasnt good enough? so now she wants to try? _________________ You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: Andromeda
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On the contrary, I think the editorial team at Crikey should give themselves a collective uppercut for letting that piece be published, seemingly without editorial intervention.
It's not that there's not a legitimate debate to be held over these issues, but this is a hardcore TERF screed written by someone who is clearly hostile to transgender people's very existence. It's like inviting a KKK member to a public debate about racial affirmative action policies in the workplace.
The first clue to her disposition on the topic is her refusal to accept trans women as women; she refers to them throughout the piece as male. That might be okay at The Daily Caller and fellow far-right sites, but that is way beyond the acceptable norm in mainstream publishing in 2021. One would have thought Crikey would be better than that, and while I don't think they're overtly hostile to transgender people in the same way that, say, the UK arm of The Guardian is, they've unfortunately got a pretty long track record of cluelessness on this subject. This is just the first time to my knowledge they've published an unfiltered transphobic screed that's not couched in the more innocent-seeming, "just asking questions" language of "gender-critical" feminism.
Quote: | When males are included in the female category, what happens to the women and girls? They miss a spot on the team, they self-exclude, they are withdrawn by their parents, they are silenced if they resist, they lose out on the opportunity for prizes and scholarships and are threatened with loss of sponsorship. Inclusion really means exclusion for women and girls. |
And black is actually white and up is actually down in this author's world, apparently. Obviously inclusion of someone in a sporting event with finite numbers means someone else misses out on a spot. That's not "exclusion" in any meaningful sense. Whether including trans women will lead to a spate of boycotts from cis female competitors as a political statement, on the other hand, seems pretty unlikely – but even if it does, that's their choice and that is in no sense a policy of exclusion. I feel pretty confident there'll be plenty of cis women eager to take their place.
Quote: | This is exemplified by the repeated, erroneous claims that Christine Mboma, Beatrice Masilingi and Caster Semenya are female athletes who are excluded for having high testosterone levels. These competitors are biologically male with Y chromosomes but were born with disorders of sexual development (commonly known as “intersex”) that caused them to be raised as female. Their exclusion is based on the benefits of a material androgenising effect from male-typical testosterone levels. |
This is particularly eyebrow-raising. I'm happy to be corrected if wrong, but to my knowledge – and brief investigations into other articles about her case seems to back this up – Semenya is not biologically male. She is intersex, which means she was born neither female nor male (the presence of a Y chromosome does not automatically place you in the "biologically male" box and anyone who tells you it does has failed Biology 101). Intersex children may not have clearly defined genitalia one way or the other, and may exhibit both male and female characteristics throughout puberty and beyond. To say that person is biologically male because they have some male characteristics is, well … you see what you want to see, I guess.
Quote: | The female sports category must be protected for biological females, and men must start being more accepting and inclusive of gender non-conforming males instead of expecting women and girls to sacrifice the opportunity to play safely and fairly in their own sports. |
This is a typical bullshit talking point that TERFs love to wheel out: that transgender women are not in fact women but merely "gender non-conforming males" who need to be more accepted in male spaces (i.e. so they can **** off out of women's spaces, like women's toilets and so on). To call that thinly veiled bigotry would be to imply that there's any veil here at all: the author a) rejects transgender identities; b) considers trans women's presence in any female space as unwanted, dangerous, etc.; and c) attempts to justify this position with a lame bait-and-switch that it's actually all men's fault that transgender people have been treated like shit by society. Funny then that TERFs seem to be the ones on the frontlines pushing for exclusionary policies that damage transgender people's capacity to function in society.
Quote: | The hyperbolic statement that males with a trans identity are being “banned” from playing sports is nonsense — they are free to compete in the category of their biological sex |
Yep, just like gay people were free to enter heterosexual marriages before same-sex marriage was legalised. Same argument, exact same ploy. The question of why women would want to compete in a sporting event for men is elided because, to the author, they're men, end of story. You don't have to be pro trans rights to see that as a view that's somewhat lacking in nuance.
Quote: | When we watch elite female sporting competitions we want to see the best women athletes the world has to offer. |
And we will if Hubbard et al are allowed to compete, which has always been my view: transgender women are a class of women who may exhibit certain biological advantages in competitive sport. Unless you're under the naive impression that biological advantage isn't already a major factor in who does and doesn't get to compete in elite sports, then that shouldn't be an issue – unless, of course, you think trans women are men, in which case that's where the battle lines of the debate are drawn, and I guess this author gets two cheers for being honest about her (transphobic) position on that question. _________________ All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Location: somewhere
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Transgenders are NOT actual woman, that’s the whole point, transgenders are transgenders, women who were men, nothing on earth, no operation or drug will change that ever. Even if they were born with a female mind, their actual biology will always be male. Gender is not decided by testosterone levels or surgery.
They are not a class of women that may have an advantage, they were not born extra tall, born extra strong, born extra fast, or extra talented, they were born men.
If transgenders feel the need, not right, to compete at the Olympics they should do so before they transition. _________________ You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either!
Last edited by think positive on Fri Jul 23, 2021 6:53 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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Hey, I said there were glitches
Hubbard is the most interesting case.
She is 43 years old. Not many weightlifters are going at anywhere near that age.
She competed as a weightlifter before transitioning to female at an age when most athletes careers have finished.
NZ would only take 1 superheavy (87+kg)female weightlifter to an Olympics, there is zero doubt she has taken the spot a biological female would have got.
Her training as a weightlifter before transitioning undoubtedly gives her an advantage, as does the rules.
Quote: | Hubbard has been eligible to compete at Olympics since 2015, when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued guidelines allowing any transgender athlete to compete as a woman provided their testosterone levels are below 10 nanomoles per litre for at least 12 months before their first competition. |
https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/new-zealand-names-transgender-athlete-hubbard-womens-tokyo-olympics-2021-06-20/
So we're letting people compete in the Olympics against females with male Testosterone levels?
Quote: | Doctors measure testosterone in nanomoles per litre (nmol/l) and the reported “normal” healthy range in males is anywhere from 9.2 to 31.8 nmol/L. It is about ten times lower in females, with “normal” levels considered to be between 0.3 and 2.4 nmoL. |
https://theconversation.com/testosterone-why-defining-a-normal-level-is-hard-to-do-113587
Testosterone is a prohibited PED under WADA both in and out of competition _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Location: somewhere
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So the drugs taken should prohibit them from entering, so why don’t the rules apply to them? _________________ You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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They aren't taking Testosterone, they're taking drugs to reduce their testosterone, the opposite of a PED.
I'm fully supportive of people who want to transition, but biology is biology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUBAx8jbYNs _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Location: somewhere
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I didn’t say they were taking it, they take something though? How could it be legal?
But I agree! _________________ You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: Andromeda
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Good article, thanks. Hopefully a bit of a reality check to everyone bemoaning the end of women’s sport. _________________ All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Location: somewhere
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Yeah I’ll listen to Martina Navratilova and Caitlin Jenner! _________________ You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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swoop42
Whatcha gonna do when he comes for you?
Joined: 02 Aug 2008 Location: The 18
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Clean and jerk, snatch.
Tonight's Olympic weightlifting program or Stui's checklist for his first night out in Darwin? _________________ He's mad. He's bad. He's MaynHARD! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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A little from column A............. _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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Just wanted to say congrats to the classy way North Melbourne had Danni Laidley back at the club during the week _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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