Women’s sports are prospering so it’s time to give them to men
Outsports, self-described as “the leader in LGBTQ sports news & commentary for athletes, coaches & fans,” tweets:
For decades, women’s sports have existed to create opportunities for cis women and non-binary athletes. It’s finally time to include trans women in the growth and prosperity of women’s sports. Let’s have that conversation.
For decades, women’s sports have existed to create opportunities for women – but not all that many decades, and it took a fierce struggle, and the struggle for funding and coverage and fairness continues. Yes, women’s and girls’ sports exist to create opportunities for women and girls to play sports , and why shouldn’t they? That was the whole point, remember? Girls didn’t get that much opportunity, and neither did women, so quite a few women and girls thought it would be good to fix that problem. The situation has improved but certainly not as much as it could have. Why the hell should women’s sports now include men who claim to be women? Men already have sports, they don’t need to take over women’s too.
The sheer entitled gall of it is just disgusting.
Illustrating it with DOCTOR McKinnon doesn’t help, either.
Updating to add: there’s also an earlier tweet (with the same wording) that has 200+ replies. Hostile replies.
I ponder the intentionality of that slogan’s placement. Sport is a man right indeed.
I do like a conversation that starts with the counterparty dictating all the terms and disallowing all alternatives by definition.
One aspect that is really is startling about this ‘sport is a human right’ angle is that as constructed, the ‘transwomen-are-women so should compete against women’ line really could not construct a more total barrier to participation in sports for transmen. The alternative of competing based on your chromosomes produces far fewer barriers. That may or may not feel unfair for cases like Semenya, but for the overwhelming majority it produces the possibility of fair competition.
Those who are genetically males, and have male sexual apparatus, should IMHO compete as males in competitive sports. After all, they only want to compete in female sports because their genes and hormones give them an advantage; ie there they have the best chance of WINNING.
I do not know of anyone born male but who has since had sex-change or gender reassignment surgery competing anywhere as a woman, though there may be such.
But maybe worth a try: a stipulation that the only people born male eligible to compete in females-only competitions must first be castrated, and each converted, in the words of the immortal Christopher Marlowe, into a ‘chaste and lustless eunuch’. Surely not too great a sacrifice for those whose primary devotion is to their sport, and keen on participating up to Olympic level?
At least worth a try.
Otherwise their best chance at gold might be competing in a special ‘born male but trans’ category all of their own. But then again, that might reduce their chance of WINNING.
Nobody born male (and they stay male for the rest of their lives, too) should compete in females’ sports. Obviates any need to revenge-castrate-eunuchize anyone. Never mind that castrated eunuchs still don’t belong in women’s sports. That’s still unfair to the women, so it’s a useless idea.
@#4: Purely voluntary of course. Never said otherwise.
I know it’s been said, many times, many ways, but …
“Sport is a human right”. Granted arguendo, this does not get us to “transwomen must be allowed to compete in women’s sport”.
It’s like granting the existence of a first cause or prime mover. Doing so doesn’t get us anywhere near the existence of a personal, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent deity.
To repeat a question I brought up in a previous thread: assuming we adopt the view that sex = biology and gender = personal identity, why is it being taken for granted that sports are segregated by “gender” and not “sex”?
It seems fairly obvious that we have separate men’s and women’s sports because of biology. If we did it for cultural reasons, that would imply exactly the kind of gender stereotypes that were used to prevent women from competing in sport to begin with. Basically, we have separate divisions because of testosterone and bone and muscular structure, not because women are too delicate and nice to be cutthroat competitors. Or because Serena Williams or Megan Rapinoe need to be affirmed in their gender identity.
Not to mention, we generally don’t segregate sports based on other aspects of identity. Sports aren’t generally segregated by sexual orientation.* Or political ideology. (“We’re the Objectivist Baseball League! Sacrifice bunts are prohibited.”) Etc. And when we do, it’s generally just for low competition, social events.
*– Though I do recall reading about some national gay softball tournament that ran into controversy when some teams were accused of using straight “ringers.”
Well there’s a difference between segregation, i.e. sex segregation across the whole sport, and a particular tournament for _______s. As you say, generally just for low competition, social events. There’s a ball field in my nabe and I often see mixed-sex baseball games going on there.
I was thinking earlier this morning of doing a little photo display of variations in lesser and greater ape dimorphism. Fun fact: the lesser apes, gibbons and siamangs, are all but identical in appearance. At the other extreme, male gorillas are huuuuuuge. Queen Kong wouldn’t have worked at all.
Maybe King Kong identified as Queen Kong and went on the rampage because of lack of validation.
Ophelia, I like your photo display idea, but may I suggest comparison shots of women’s knuckles to the bruisers in the above shot?
AoS – not to mention comparison of women’s thighs to the ones in the above shot.
I’ve never really understood this “sport is a human right” assertion; may as well say chess or parasailing are human rights.
I think I kind of understand it. Most sport used to be largely for the rich, and in the US at least the opportunities varied enormously depending on whether you lived in a rich school district or a poor one. If it’s seen as a right then it makes sense to spend public money on, say, maintaining playing fields in parks, after-school programs, and so on. I have no objection to the idea that kids shouldn’t be deprived of access to sports because they live in an impoverished urban neighborhood.
So proud of all the people on Twitter who are just taking that nonsense down hard! I can’t believe Twitter is not banning them.
This sarcastic reply to the initial tweet is excellent: https://mobile.twitter.com/diane_airbus/status/1194260558737862657/photo/1 It is well worth a look.
Also, the wording was slightly different on the first tweet, mentioning ‘opportunities for cisgender and non-binary women’. The second amended that to ‘cis women and non-binary athletes’, because WTF is a ‘non-binary woman’?
*gasp* What a question! A non-binary woman is a woman who identifies as non-binary! Obviously!
“For decades, women’s sports have existed to create opportunities for cis women and non-binary athletes.”
Well, that’s just false. Women’s sports exist for women, period.
It’s tricky, not to say sly. It’s true if the meaning is “women who think of themselves as non-binary,” which is a possible but not mandatory meaning. The broader meaning is there but if anyone objects you can just shout about the narrow one as if it’s outrageous to think you meant anything else.
And the whole damn movement is like this, because it’s so riddled with lies and nonsense that it can’t be straightforward. Might as well be Trump.
This. THIS. This is why it’s so difficult to have any sort of meaningful conversation. The whole movement relies on this motte & bailey, bait-and-switch rhetorical tactic. Most of the time, I don’t think people are even aware that they’re doing it, and trying to point it out is all but universally futile. Most people simply are not equipped (for whatever reason) to examine an argument’s structure on that level. My brother has enough trouble just explaining to people how his reductio ad absurdum isn’t claiming that the other person actually holds an absurd belief—and that’s not even accusing the other person of unintentional dishonesty.
What we really need is some means of getting people (even if only observers) to see the bait-and-switch.
So, once again, we have one definition whereby people with physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers are “women” while people with physical traits more representative of fathers than mothers are not, regardless of anything that goes on inside their heads. And we have one definition (or would have if it not for the fact that the Genderspeak definitions of “women” are all circular) whereby people with physical traits more representative of fathers than mothers who think or feel a certain way are “women”, regardless of physical traits, while some…? most…? all…? of the people with physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers are not (As I have previously written, I seriously doubt that many of the latter would say they fit the Genderspeak definition of “women” if they knew how that requires them to think or feel). What we decidedly don’t have is a definition whereby people with physical traits more representative of fathers than mothers who think or feel a certain way are people with physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers, or vice versa.
As I have previously written, it’s unclear to say the least why people who think or feel a certain way would need separate sporting events from people who think or feel some other way (After all, an argument could be made that there are as many ways of thinking and feeling as there are people on the planet), and even if some reason could be conjured up, it is no longer automatically the case that people with physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers are qualified to compete, and we would need some kind of screening process to ensure that only people who really do think/feel the required way get to participate. This is, of course, once again complicated by the fact that the “certain way” that people are supposed to think or feel in order to qualify as “women” are never specified. However, since the Genderspeak definition of “women” pretty much boils down to “whatever it is that angry trans activists happen to be”, I think we can safely conclude that the “certain way” of thinking and feeling includes extreme entitlement, narcissism, aggression, boorishness and misogyny.
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