History and headlines
Laurel Hubbard is on the team.
The New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard is set to make history and headlines, plus an enormous amount of controversy, after being confirmed as the first transgender athlete to ever compete at the Olympic Games.
He’s “set to make history and headlines” by stealing a place from a woman. How about thinking of her for one fucking second, Guardian? How about imagining what that feels like?
“I am grateful and humbled by the kindness and support that has been given to me by so many New Zealanders,” Hubbard said in a statement.
Of course he’s not humbled. If he were humble he wouldn’t be doing it! It’s a shit thing to do to another person, and it takes colossal ego and selfishness to insist on doing it. There’s your making history and headlines.
“The last eighteen months has shown us all that there is strength in kinship, in community, and in working together towards a common purpose,” Hubbard added.
Just stop. If it were anything to do with kinship and community and working together toward a common purpose he wouldn’t be cheating a woman out of her place. OBVIOUSLY.
The New Zealand Olympic Committee chief executive, Kereyn Smith, said Hubbard would be welcomed to the New Zealand team.
“As well as being among the world’s best for her event, Laurel has met the IWF eligibility criteria including those based on IOC guidelines for transgender athletes,” she said. “We acknowledge that gender identity in sport is a highly sensitive and complex issue requiring a balance between human rights and fairness on the field of play.
He’s among the world’s best women for his event, but he’s not a woman, so he’s not among the world’s best. He’s also a cheater and a selfish piece of crap.
“As the New Zealand team, we have a strong culture of ‘manaaki’ [respect] and inclusion and respect for all. We are committed to supporting all eligible New Zealand athletes and ensuring their mental and physical wellbeing, along with their high-performance needs, while preparing for and competing at the Olympic Games are met.”
But what Hubbard is doing is the opposite of respect and inclusion. He’s excluding the woman who should be in his place. It’s cheating and it’s cruel and a decent human being wouldn’t do it.
I hate that misuse of “humbled” to mean “honored” or something similar. It means “humiliated”. It would indeed be good if he were loudly shamed for even trying to do what he has done, and laughed out of the tournament; would he be humbled enough, then?
I was looking to see if any of the other trans-identifying-male athletes we’ve discussed were vying for the Olympics this year. I see that CeCe Telfer is seeking a spot in the 400m hurdles, which begin on Friday at the Trials.
Somewhere on Facebook I saw a collection of photographs of trans-identifying-male athletes who have had success competing against women, but I can’t find it at the moment. It was quite long.
Maybe in a year or two there will be a requirement for every women’s athletic team to include at least one TiM, for diversity.
Welp, there’s a gold medal or two for New Zealand sewn up, so from the home country’s perspective I suppose it’s WIN WIN WIN…
It seems like a lot of these male athletes don’t “transition” until their careers as a male are through. Even then, they are stil very obviously male bodied people. Long hair and lipstick don’t do much to disguise that. I detest cheaters, so these males playing female sports is infuriating. What people like Chasio don’t understand, is that even if there are very few trans people successfully competing against women, which is her ‘what’s the big deal’ argument, is that if it continues, there will eventually be no women’s sports. Nothing recognizable anyway. Also, making a joke of women’s sports is bad for business; people don’t watch women’s sports to see men in lipstick cheating them, at least I sure don’t.
BK @4 Maybe when this situation resolves they will strip them of whatever medals they won. I hope so anyway, there is precedence for stripping awards from cheaters.
My first thought was that this is obviously one of those instances where fawning over “the first trans women to…” cancels out the rule that you can’t tell a person’s gender from looking at them. Previous Olympics might have been crawling with closeted trans people, but nobody ever knew because it was the bad old days and they couldn’t be their authentic selves. Then I remembered that there is in fact a transgender athlete we all know about who competed at the the Olympics. How rude of the Guardian to deny Bruce Jenner’s existence! But he competed in the appropriate class for his sex, and did it without wearing lipstick, so it doesn’t count, I guess.
I would really like to know the names of the women finalists who were not selected. “Say their names” works for women cheated out of their life’s work, as much as for other victims of the dominant culture.
@Sackbut #2, are these the con artists you are looking for? From twitter.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1400344909182345216.html
Don’t joke about it, it may be true. Selectors of women’s teams may be attacked for transphobia if they don’t select some pretend women.
What a depressing list. I knew it was bad, but that bad?
Well, I for one don’t support our Olympic Committee allowing this, for the obvious reason that it denies a woman her rightful place. It’s sill, but nations pour so much financial support into athletes because for some reason that I’ve never got, winning medals, and gold especially, really matters. As BKiSA notes, it’s likely an easy win for NZ. Not going to be erased after the fact either, despite twiliter’s hopes, because Hubbard is eligible and therefore not a cheater, technically, even if the rules are changed in the future. Even if the weightlifting federation or NZOC briefly contemplated turning Hubbard away, which I have no evidence they did, the Courts would almost certainly force a change in selection because under the rules as they stand, Hubbard has done nothing wrong. The whole system is bent out of shape and I really feel for the poor woman who lost out on the chance to compete and the poor woman who will likely miss out on a medal.
Clearly the way out of this swamp of bullshit is for women athletes to insist on competing in a ‘born females only’ category, with no transwhatevers allowed in. Also for ALL competitors to compee according to their assigned sex an birth.
@#5:
I agree. Womens’ tennis is far more intesting than mens’ IMHO, because mens’ is far more a power game, whereas womens’ is more a game of skill and long rallies.
And in 2024 perhaps there will be a requirement for one natal woman to be included.
Cat @7 I don’t know what kind of physical condition Bruce is in currently, but if he decided to now (at 71) compete in a senior, women’s only competition in his new chosen gender, he would still have the advantage. Even with his male bits chopped off and whatever concoction of trans dope he’s on. Men who call themselves women don’t belong in women only competitions. He himself apparently knows this given his comments on trans people in women’s sports. If you read down the list Roj posted @9, most of these men transitioned when they discovered they could use their male advantage to unfairly beat the female competition. Not everyone can compete at the highest levels, some of us weren’t born with the physical potential. The vast majority of us learn this at a young age, and are forced to accept that we are not talented or physically gifted enough to pursue whatever sport to a professional or olympic level. That’s life. There’s something very repulsive about these transitioners, who don’t respect fairness, who selfishly have no regard for their competitors or anyone but themselves, and are now being given a foot in the door to bully their way in to these competitions. It’s not limited to sports either, which is also a huge problem.
@Roj #9
Yes, exactly. Thanks.
Depressing list indeed.
Jenner did that? Somehow I thought he hadn’t done that, just makeup and maybe hormones.
I bet there are some TiMs that seriously, sincerely believe that the fact that they do so poorly in male competitions and so well in female competitions is proof that they are female. It makes a kind of warped sense, after all, though anyone that gives it good rational thought will obviously see how wrong this argument is.
WaPo refers to Hubbard as the “first openly transgender athlete selected to compete at the Olympics”. I suppose that means that the athlete has, one, claimed to be the opposite sex before the selection process, and two, made that claim known to others. (I remain unconvinced that many of these athletes had long-standing dysphoria; more and more evidence indicates opportunism.)
But also, the headline is missing the information that this “openly transgender” athlete is being allowed to compete in the incorrect sex category. It would be interesting for a “transgender” athlete to compete in the correct sex category, deliberately or under duress, with the “transgender” part made public before or perhaps shortly after the competition. (The “under duress” version has happened, in the case of Mack Beggs, the high school girl wrestler who claimed to be a boy but was not allowed to wrestle in the boys competition; she had been receiving hormone treatments for “transition” that might otherwise have been considered performance-enhancing drugs.)
@17 Reportedly in 2017, but don’t ask me to verify because, yuck.
Daily Mail, 2017: Caitlyn Jenner reveals she HAS now undergone gender reassignment surgery because she was ‘tired of tucking the damn thing in all the time’
Twiliter @#15, you’re preaching to the choir. I’ve never been accused of not being sarcastic enough, so I’m mortified that you have somehow got the impression that I’m taking these cheaters’ side.
Anyway. That Daily Mail piece is… “interesting”. Far more surgical diagrams than I thought were necessary, especially if you’re reading it at bedtime. Also, I don’t know what the DM thinks makes for a “functioning vagina” – do they just mean “it’s a hole that a penis might fit in”?
Well that won’t do if for instance it won’t fit back out after fitting in.
Omar:
But no such category exists, so how could women insist on competing in it?
Besides, it shouldn’t be up to women to do that. It should be up to men to stop competing in the women’s category.
Cat @22 I didn’t get that impression at all, your post was clear on that, I was just adding to your point (preaching to the choir as you said).
Ah, my bad. I thought you were trying to convince me. This is why I don’t do Twitter – far too difficult to work out what people really mean in those short bursts. I can never tell if people are serious.
So, aside from Laurel Hubbard and Chelsea Wolfe (mentioned here, an alternate on the BMX Freestyle team for the US), I only know of CeCe Telfer competing in the 400m Hurdles at the US trials on Friday. Elsewhere I saw a note about “as many as three transwomen” at the Olympics, but no details. Are there any others that anyone else can find?
Wolfe is unlikely to compete, let alone win, but he’s on the team. Telfer is likely to make the team.