Cheating is not a human right
No.
Show your support for trans and intersex athletes: #SportIsAHumanRight shirts, tanks, hoodies, leggings, and more!
The trouble is, what McKinnon means by “support for trans and intersex athletes” here is support for men who want to compete against women. He means men like him, who couldn’t win anything racing with other men, but has won medals by racing with women. So, no. Not going to show any support for that shit.
And I have some problems listing sport as a human right when it has been such an uphill battle getting water listed as a human right. I don’t think sport is a human right; it is a human activity that should be fair and equitable, but not a right.
Why the hell do we keep inventing new rights? And those rights invariably infringe on existing rights for some group of people?
@iknklast:
You beat me to it; one may as well say painting water colours is a human right. It’s a non sequitur.
I guess it’s to express the idea that people shouldn’t be prevented from participating in sport for arbitrary unjust reasons, which is surely true.
But McKinnon deliberately words his slogans in such a way as to obscure what he means.
I don’t think it’s quite that arbitrary or random. Think for instance of redlined urban neighborhoods that have no place to play sports, or schools that don’t have the funds for them. That’s considered a deprivation, and I think rightly so.
And you could fold painting watercolors into The Arts, which can also be neglected in underfunded schools.
I think it can be sensible to talk about both in terms of rights.
McKinnon, such a grifter.
To echo what Ms. Benson said, I think leisure time is a human right, as well as is equal (as much as possible) access to leisure activities, such as sport. So, to me, “sport is a human right” is a true statement, but from a perspective different from that of McKinnon’s.
Even if you grant arguendo that sport is a human right, that doesn’t entail that participation in high-level, competitive sport is a human right. The right to work in just and favorable conditions doesn’t guarantee you a job as the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
Nullius, even if sport is a human right, that right extends as far as having access to sport. It’s not a human right to compete in an under 11 team if you’re 25. It’s not a human right to compete in an under 50kg class if you weight 120kg and, funnily enough, it’s not a human right to compete in a female class if you’re a man. Wishing you were a women doesn’t make you a man.
What I’m saying. I think it’s reasonable to say access to sport is a right, and I think McKinnon is exploiting that idea to demand a quite different “right” that in fact tramples all over the rights of girls and women.
Do we want to see some giant McKinnon-type stomping his way onto Megan Rapinoe’s team? No we do NOT.
Rob covered much of what I was going to say. I’ll add:
Males who identify as transgender are not fighting to compete against other males (transgender or not), nor for that matter in sports like women’s gymnastics, they are demanding the “right” to compete against women, and in sports where male size and strength are advantages. I might have some sympathy were they trying to participate in events with no male equivalent, such as balance beam or rhythmic gymnastics. (There are, for instance, scholastic leagues that permit boys to join the field hockey team in areas where only girls play the sport.) But that is not the case.
Sackbut,
No thank you, never again.
When I was in secondary school I played for the school’s rugby team. Rugby is, as I’m sure you’re aware, a very physical contact sport. The girls’ hockey team challenged the rugby team to a game of hockey. Never before or since did I – or any other of my team-mates leave the field of play so bruised, battered, and bloodied.
The kicker is, the challenge was a two-game deal, one for each sport. The rugby match was played the week before, and we boys had agreed to play only touch-rugby rather than the normal, hard-tackling game, specifically to remove the risk of injuries to the girls. The ungrateful sods kicked the shit out of us a week later :-0
AoS, forgive me for laughing out loud at that story! (And I would guess that laxatives are a gentler constipation remedy than kicking. :-) ).
I recall a news article about one boy playing field hockey; it was pointed out that, yes, he wore the skirt that was a standard part of the team uniform.
AoS, I played rugby at high school. Quite apart from the fact that hockey players are homicidal maniacs wield lethal weapons cross code fixtures are always tricky. We played a game of netball (by default a girls sport then) against the A team. I came away from that non-contact sporting fixture battered, bruised and bleeding. We did win, once we figured out how to cheat subtly.
I was playing goal defence. Because I was so much taller than my marker, I’d been getting the better of those exchanges. Biggest laugh in the game was when I was about to receive the ball. She wrapped her arms around me from behind pinning my arms to my side as the ball bounced off my chest. A penalty obviously, but resulted in good natured ribbing, plus congratulations for having got that close to a girl.
Point is, mixed sports for fun – great. Mixed sports for serious competition? Even as a bunch of unskilled clumsy numptees near adult boys could easily turn the tables on talented trained near adult girls.
Every co-ed sport I ever participated in had a rule that you had to have at least X number of female players in the lineup/on the field at any given point in time. It was often a challenge in those days to get enough women to avoid having to default (or play shorthanded if that was allowed).
If only we’d known that all it would have taken was for one of us male-bodied folks to “identify” as a woman!
That’s all very well, but now I want a shirt reading “People shouldn’t be prevented from participating in sport for arbitrary unjust reasons.”
I was forced to play both rugby and hockey at school and can confirm that hockey was by far the hurtiest. Especially for those of us who couldn’t afford shin pads. In fact a hockey injury to the shin was partly responsible for me developing osteomyelitis, which had me on crutches for months. At least it got me out of rugby and hockey for a while.
As for myself, I want a shirt that reads “People shouldn’t be forced to participate in sport when they would rather be in the library”. Which, of course, is what happened to me in school, because we had to play sports in PE class, I was lousy at them, I got mocked (and was always being mocked for other things, I didn’t need one more), and never got selected by anyone at anytime to be on their team. I was the one they had to take, because we all had to play. No, really, I’m happy to sit this one out.
iknklast: My experience with sports was similar to yours, but I was lucky enough to have gone to a school in which I could choose from a whole bunch of different sports. Eventually I was able to find a couple that jibed with my bookish tendencies. Having those in high school was, I think, important for my mental health and development.
Team sports are not for everyone, and certainly not for me. Schools should offer more individual sports, like fencing, archery, riflery, karate, judo, skateboarding, etc. Hell, even something like competitive ballroom dancing would be a great opportunity for young people.
I too had a long list of things I’d rather have done than trudge around a big rectangle of mud in the freezing rain hitting and being hit for some end I didn’t understand. I was never even taught the rules of any of the sports; in British schools in the 70s you were just supposed to know. Either that or the sports teachers didn’t know the rules either. It didn’t seem to matter anyway, the main points were the mud and the cold and the violence and the being humiliated in the showers by the teachers afterwards.
Nullius, I had to do the PE thing in college, too, but the choices were better. They didn’t determine what we took. So I took bowling. It was fun, I never got good at it, but I did get to a level of mediocre, and that was all I ever needed to get a B in the class, graduate, and enjoy bowling for years until my shoulders went so bad I had to have them replaced. The idea of flinging a heavy ball down a lane is horrifying now, but there are still sports I could possibly do – recumbent bike, for example.
I too absolutely hated all the team sports we were forced to play. Lacrosse I think is the one I hated most, if only because of the stinky quality of the leather webbing on those sticks (but in fact not only because of that). FINALLY in senior year when there were only minutes left to enjoy it we were allowed to go for a walk instead of Playing the Sport. I think it’s good for kids to be outside and physically active part of the school day, but team sports are a whole other thing.
On the other hand I see the point of improving physical skills in a way I didn’t then. If there had been a range of options maybe I would have – fulfilling PE requirements at university caused me to discover I’m good at archery.