To clarify, the pictured poster Caroline Kwan is an ally, not a TERF. The TERFs referred to in the title are the ones ‘protecting a very specific idea of what a woman is’
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What do you mean by “TERFs”? Caroline Kwan is a leftist, not a TERF.
That’s correct, Caroline Kwan is not a TERF. The TERFs referred to in the title are the ones ‘protecting a very specific idea of what a woman is’
It’s not about protecting women. It’s about attacking women.
There I fixed your conclusion.
She almost, ALMOST has it!
Just a little bit of mental extension and she’ll realize that this is the same reason trans women should be allowed to play women’s sports as well
Also, these TERFs (and other bigots) haven’t seemed to have noticed that women who play sports at a high level like in the Olympics haven’t asked for their protection.
Everyone wants to play sports safely. You don’t need to ask for it.
Oh cool, let’s check out some TERF messaging:
Sport is inherently physical, so the different physiologies of the sexes matters. Whilst everyone should be able to participate in sport, the Sports Councils’ Equality Group’s International Research Literature Review states “There are significant differences between the sexes which render direct competition between males and females unfair in most ‘gender-affected sports’”. The peer-reviewed scientific literature found evidence that:
Alright, pretty reasonable start. We all want fairness.
On average, compared to age-matched females at any given body weight, adult males have:
- 40- 50% greater upper limb strength
- 20-40% greater lower limb strength
- 12kg more skeletal muscle mass [1]
Hold up, did we just use a study about (cis) adult males to argue that trans women shouldn’t be allowed? Oh no, that doesn’t seem very scientific… Well, I’m sure it’s fine, let’s check their references:
[1] Janssen et al 2000, Handelsman et al 2018
Okay, it’s fine, I’ll look them up myself:
Skeletal muscle mass and distribution in 468 men and women aged 18-88 yr
Okay well, that can’t be right, their numbers are just coming from a comparison to men, they’re just pushing the narrative that trans women and men are equal. Huh. Let’s check their other reference:
Circulating Testosterone as the Hormonal Basis of Sex Differences in Athletic Performance
Wait, this study doesn’t prove anything about trans women either. In fact, considering their comparisons of low and high-level testosterone in males, you could reasonably extrapolate that trans women on feminising HRT are comparable to their peers from this study. I wonder why the post didn’t bring up that possibility? Ah well, let’s move on, shall we?
Handgrip strength is often seen as a wider indicator human muscle strength[2] and mean maximal hand-grip strength over 2,000 European young adult males and females shows:
Oh, huh, still conflating cis men and trans women…
- Female handgrip at 329 Newtons
- Male handgrip at 541 Newtons
- Highly trained female athletes still have weaker hand grip than 75% of untrained male subjects [3]
Hmm, it doesn’t seem very feminist to perpetuate the wildly inaccurate myth that the majority of males would outcompete elite female athletes…
Okay, so would you like me to keep picking this apart, or could we agree that it’s scientifically unsound now? If any of these “facts” were relevant to the discussion of trans women in sports, I might (reluctantly) agree that there’s a safety argument to be made. But I think what this conversation lacks most is empirical evidence. It seems that if an organisation like the one you linked above, who ostensibly want what’s safest for all women, that they’d love to fund such a study that proves definitively what’s safest. That they wouldn’t care what the result was. So why have no studies into actual trans women been done?
I know this is quite anecdotal, but myself and most trans femmes I’ve talked too (who are on HRT) can describe the experience of losing that strength that comes alongside testosterone. If you want something more empirical, I have read countless instances of trans female athletes being unable to come close to matching their pre-transition Personal Best’s. In fact, the gap between their pre and post-transition PBs is often on par with the gap between female and male results more generally. I can’t recall a single instance where their PB went up after hormones. Whereas most athletes in their prime continue to push their PB higher.
The link was to disprove the previous claim and provide at least one example of women in sport calling for protection.
Whether or not they are justified in asking for a balance between saftey and fairness is a can of worms I’m leaving closed.
All I see is another progressive organisation that has been infiltrated by TERFs. The page you link too reeks of their tactics and arguments. The fact they’re based on TERF Island (UK) says a lot as well.
For the women involved that aren’t TERFs, I think it can be all too easy to subscribe to their arguments when you’ve worked so hard to achieve fairness and equality. But the conflation of trans women and cis men as equals, without any scientific proof, leads me to believe that even they are being deceptive here. I mean, the TERF tactic of denying trans men their identities also shows up towards the end:
Transgender men and boys, or non-binary women and girls, who do not take hormones or who have not undergone any form of medical transition, share the same physiological features as biological women and therefore should be welcomed in the female category.
Like, I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s fair to use people who dislike trans people to prove your point. You’re fair and reasonable to not want to open that can of worms. All I’m saying is that finding a definitively anti-transgender reference doesn’t prove your point, because there’s no way to seperate the TERF from the science in that article. Meanwhile, I have never seen an Olympic-class athlete complain about transgender women in sports until Angela Carini. And even she has turned around and profusely apologised for what she said:
“It wasn’t something I intended to do,” Carini said. “Actually, I want to apologise to her and everyone else. I was angry because my Olympics had gone up in smoke.”
She added that if she met Khelif again, she would “embrace her”.
So, I dunno, I don’t really think you’ve disproven that claim at all.
finding a definitively anti-transgender reference doesn’t prove your point
Ok. I think I can provide an example and avoid any sensitive topics. Co-ed soccer has different rules (e.g no slide tackles) because women have asked to be protected.
I have never seen an Olympic-class athlete complain about transgender women in sports
That wasn’t the claim I was countering. A more general statement was made.
Olympic-classwomenathleteshave never asked for protectionfrom transgender womenin sports.The original statement made was too broad.
Yes, we really need to make sure a sport where people punch each other into unconsciousness is safe.
Why didn’t I realize that before?
And yes, people who want protection do have to ask for it.
Regulations in general contradict you. You’re forced to wear a seatbelt whether you asked for it or not, even if you don’t want to. Not sure how that related to trans rights or sports, though.
It sounds like that’s her argument.
I was confused because despite the title suggesting she’s a TERF, this sounds on the face of it like a pretty trans-inclusive statement.
Ah, if she’s not a TERF it is pretty inclusive. The title made it sound like this person is a transphobe though and I have no idea who they are.
I’m pretty sure she isn’t a TERF, Caroline is a left-wing pop culture/politics streamer.
Not sure that she is. I can’t find anything that suggests that she is.
I found one tweet where she talked about the need to have trans actors play trans roles. I don’t think that would even occur to many TERFs.
So much of this fear and hysteria is bound up in the media’s need to find “perfect” athletes, rather than the social need to venerate exercise and healthy competition. You get this fixation on cheating and this endless bickering over who has an “unfair” advantage, while losing sight of the general value of people feeling inspired to play sports and swim and just get the fuck outside to touch some grass.
The need to know who should win the shiniest trophy seems to eclipse any other concern. It becomes a justification for all the hatred and bigotry that The Olympics was originally intended to cut against.
“Superman vs Thor” mentality.
I looked her up again to get caught up on what kind of info wikipedia has updated on her.
I really admire her stance.
So she was actually a robot all along…
Honestly I can’t believe she is so brave to face the world with a stance like that.
Courage.
Alfred Kinsey proved that everyone’s on the vertical-align spectrum.
What stance are we talking about here? I don’t see it indicated on the picture
it’s listed below age
Oh rofl ty
Reactionaries don’t want womens sports, they want beauty pageants with extra steps; something they can fap to. That’s why they go after somewhat brolic looking women, regardless if they’re cis or trans: they no make pp hard, therefore they shouldn’t be allowed
Look at how they used to require the female athletes to dress in beach volleyball. Men get loose, comfortable shirts and shorts, while woman were allowed a maximum of 10cm of cloth on their bikini bottoms.
And there were complaints when that was changed. Including the similar white knight shit going on right now- “how will they be able to perform at their best in shorts?! You’re forcing women to have a disadvantage!” No, they’re forcing your dick to have a disadvantage.
And people were pissed when the new options weren’t exposing almost their entire body. Got all angry about the woke giving athletes more options to choose from when performing their sport.
Phelps needs to be investigated because I’m pretty sure he is a largely a dolphin
I personally like to descirbe myself as tolerant. Not exactly progressive, but I very much see the struggle some people live with and so I decided that not being hostile to anyone is the least that I can do in case I don’t just straight-up support some causes. I had to get this clear, because my opinion doesn’t exactly match with the one detailed in the post or at the very least I find fault in it’s reasoning.
The problem is that all the “genetic advantages” that make someone a good swimmer for example, are all unrelated traits, that are not really rare in people, it’s just that it’s quite rare for them to all be present in one person who then also goes off to be a swimmer. Testosterone on the other hand is a single hormone, exceptionally important in becoming an outstanding athlete and for that precise reason it’s considered a performance-enhancing drug. If you look at it this way it’s not that hard to see the problem.
Being more muscular certainly is an advantage. Being taller also is. Longer arms also are. Lower body-fat percentage also is. Better stamina also is. Better agility also is.
Any boxer you pick randomly should be expected to have one or more of these “genetic advantages”, but all of them, resulting from a single condition is quite a different situation. Elevated testosterone levels are a single cause for developing some of the most important traits of a dominating boxer and so someone with such an advantage can’t be considered a freak of nature in the same sense that someone like Phelps can be. There isn’t a “swimmer hormone” that magically gives you all the advantages in swimming, but there is a “fighter hormone”, that does in boxing. I personally don’t think that Khelif could be anything other than a women. I just think that her body happens to overproduce a literal PED and that’s a problem for anyone who wants to go up against her or those that want to see fights that are more or less determined by technique.
Now for solutions and as far as I see there’s only one that doesn’t involve excluding her from boxing. Simply put her and anyone with similar conditions in a weight class based on their muscle mass and not their actual body mass. Moving her one weight class up for example would at least mean that her opponents have trained with punches of similar force to her’s, something that the lack of seemed to have been a problem for her foes in Paris. She would still have an advantage in terms of speed, but she would pay the price of having less fat for impact absorption. I think that would be a win-win scenario.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
An interesting rant! Cheers
Simply put her and anyone with similar conditions in a weight class based on their muscle mass and not their actual body mass.
Once you do that you will meed separate groups by height/arm length/anything else that is an advantage. Weight class already groups them in a way that avoids completely inbalanced fights based on muscle mass.
Not to mention the lack of volume of people who would fit the bill. Caster Semenya is the only other athlete I can think of, in recent memory, that might fall into this class & she was runner.
Fully acknowledging there could be other athletes, I haven’t necessarily looked, but I’d still wager the number is pretty low when it comes to this specific issue.
I appreciate that you are at least kind about it.
In general I don’t think she’s considered a dominating boxer. Other opponents certainly haven’t said so. Even in her last fight, her opponent had a longer reach. I think it’s kind of crazy that people are taking comments from one opponent so seriously, instead of just seeing that opponent as someone who had not properly trained.
We also have no proof of anything to do with her hormone levels or anything else for that matter. In fact, even the disgraced governing body that excluded her has stated it was not a testosterone test that they used.
i mean, yeah as far as test goes, it’s a PED, but at the end of the day, does it really matter significantly? I’m not sure.
Sometimes people have test so high it’s literally impossible to measure, there’s no real reason women can’t also experience high test either, though high test is also arguably bad.
Sure they might be physically bigger, but the hard to answer question here is if it’s any more significant than your average olympic athlete. With how prevalent trans people are (not very) and how common it would be for those trans people to be athletes (even less likely) i’m not sure it’s a huge concern or even a significant consideration.
At the end of the day, you’re already sampling for the most unusual, and weirdly built people, that’s why it’s the olympics. Excluding trans people from that seems like it might be a bit more redundant than necessary.
If it’s a real concern, proper class weighting would help, that’s a valid strategy, but another strategy is to simply have multiple medal winning categories.
Phelp’s unfair genetic advantage is no different! His mutation gives him advantages at pretty much all endurance sports, not just swimming, and that’s unfair. That’s a problem for anyone that wanted to go up against him. You can’t handwave this.
The Olympics is actually just a competition for which country has the most athletic mutants.
The Olympics is actually just a competition for which country has the most athletic mutants.
I’m going to hold onto that one to use later!
When you’re a gold medal winning man, you have overcome the obstacles of a normal man to become a superman.
When you’re a gold medal winning woman, you have overcome the obstacles of a normal woman to become a man.
That’s the logic at play.
That’s so gross, I like it
It’s easier to be a man than it is to be a woman, sadly. :/
This whole thing de-legitimatizes any point any TERF argument ever had, is what I’d say if there was any point they had to begin with.
The lizard people were actually amphibians all along!
How is that a TERFy statement as is? It’s this post ragebait or brainrot?
Thank God I’m not the only one, I assumed maybe this was a well known terf I guess?
That’s Caroline Kwan. Will Neff’s girlfriend(maybe wife) who is Hasan Piker’s best friend.
I think OP is taking their side AGAINST transphobia and TERFism.
Or wait…… I reread the post and I’m confused too.
Do they think Caroline Kwan is a TERF?
i think we need a normie olympics, it’d be like the paralympics, but for people randomly selected from the average population.
You should watch Takeshis Castle then. It’s pretty close to normie olympics.
Sometimes athletes go on, but the obstacles are so fucky even they struggle with it.
My kid said just the other day. “they should have an average person do it first so we could see the difference.”
Now I’m thinking which one would be the funniest. Hurdles are definitely up there
Diving, pole jumping, gymnastics in general
Fencing would be pretty amusing.
bonus points if it’s horse based (though that’s just jousting)
Relevant https://m.xkcd.com/2964/
Oh, right! Now I know why the image in my head was so vivid. I actually saw it before
Summer olympics: Pole vault
Winter olympics: Luge
For pole vaulting I’d be surprised if even one person would dare to do the jump. I’m pretty sure I’d chicken out, but to be fair, it looks like it’s really easy to get hurt
There are a LOT of Olympic sports that you probably shouldn’t “just do.”
i absolutely agree with your kid, get that kid on marketing stat!
I told her the same thing. She should pitch it for the next Olympics. She’d be 14 when that happens. Gives her four years to plan.
I’ll repeat what I said elsewhere about this debate. You probably wonder “so what should the rules be to include an athlete for women’s sports? Surely there must be some rule”. This is understandable but please realize that the transphobes who are pushing this aren’t concerned at all with the specifics. They’re not even interested in women’s sports. They want is to remove women from public life altogether. Not just sports but everywhere. Intimidating trans athletes into obscurity is just their most recent tactic.
So please remember that there is no test that will satisfy the transphobes. There is no fair rule that can be agreed upon, because the transphobes will always keep moving the goalposts. This gets extremely complex. There is no use in debating these people. They will debate forever, because the actual deep down motivation is disgust with trans people.
Save your energy. Don’t debate transphobes.
Never JADE (justify, argue, debate or explain)
How about you have to pinky promise that you’re a woman to compete in the Olympics?
It can’t really get more inclusive than that. Feel like a woman, compete like a woman.
If I felt like a woman one day at the local YMCA and joined the woman’s pickleball instead of the men’s and just totally wooped ass that would be hilarious. I smoke most of the men so the woman would get destroyed.
Your submission in “TERFs taking their gloves off for Imane Khelif” was removed for Transphobia.
lemmy.blahaj.zone admin is using photon? 😁
Certainly am :)
They’re not even interested in women’s sports.
Yes, they are just weaponizing one disadvantaged group against another. Just like how in Portland, they had disabled people sue to remove homeless people from sidewalks (even though majority of homeless are also disabled). Or when churches bringing up abortions of PoC being a “genocide” (which they don’t care about) so they can ban abortion for everyone.
That’s why transphobes shouldn’t set the rules. And when the rules are set, there will be backlash, which needs to be ignored by the scientific community and the authorities governing professional sport.
This is a tall order, but I do think the question of where the line must be drawn to guarantee fairness is a question worth answering, preferrably not by me, because I don’t have the credentials to deliberate on what’s fair and what isn’t. This is the role of science.
