Their performance would not be good enough
Now in case you’re wondering why men would want to identify as women in order to cheat at sport, Fair Play for Women provides a hint:
The IOC decided in 2015 that, for their purpose, a female is anyone who says they are, as long as their testosterone, the primary male hormone, has been below 10 nanomoles per litre (nmol/L) for the past 12 months. The typical testosterone level in females is less than 1 nmol/L.
These Games are the first since these new rules applied. We know of at least three competitors, Stephanie Barrett of Canada, Chelsea Wolfe of the USA and Laurel Hubbard of New Zealand, whose performance would not be good enough for qualification in the male category, but who have taken a place in a category reserved for female athletes.
That’s why.
They’re not good enough for the Olympics. They’re way closer than I am, for one, but that’s beside the point. The point is that they’re not good enough, and they know it, so they decided to cheat.
I don’t believe for a second that Hubbard genuinely “feels like” a woman or thinks he is one or thinks he has a brain that doesn’t match his body or anything like that. I think he’s just cheating, with no illusions about it. I’m less absolute about the other two, but in Hubbard’s case it’s painfully infuriatingly obvious.
Don’t let anyone tell you that it costs nothing to allow male athletes who identify as women into a female sports category. That if they don’t win a medal they haven’t taken anything away from anyone else. There are at least three women who should be Olympians this year but got bumped off the list to make room for athletes born male.
Heads they win tails we lose.
There should be a ditty competition. My entry would be: If you gotta a donger / You donta belonga / Not witha da ladies. / So on your Lambretta / And into the sunsetta / Cheats go to Hades.
(The critics may jeer, but I think it’s good.)
The debate over whether transwomen in women’s sports are just in it for the fame and fortune — all of them, or this one but not that one — seems to me to carry some implicit assumptions. First, that a sincere trans person is “really trans” and belongs in a way that a deliberate cheater does not. They’re the default, and the cheater is taking advantage.
The second assumption is that women ought to care. If the transwoman really, truly thinks of themselves as a woman then the female athletes who object are just being mean. They’re thinking of their own fame and fortune instead of good sportsmanship and now they’re the heartless “cheaters.” Women be nice.
I generally don’t make a distinction between trans people who wholeheartedly believe and those who are opportunists unless I’m trying to convince someone who leans in the TRA direction that the lack of “gatekeeping” is an insurmountable problem. Whether they’re trying to fool others or have successfullky managed to convince themselves may be a significant difference when dealing with the person as a person, but not as an athlete.
That’s an excellent question, how many of these athletes would “transition” if they were not allowed to participate in the women’s competition. I suspect it’s few. Renee Richards, probably, but not many of the other high-profile ones.
Re Hubbard, I see that weightlifting, a sport in the Olympics from the beginning, may be dropped. So the woman who lost her chance this year may have no other chances.
Omar, witty ditty, nice job.
Another aspect of Hubbard’s cheating is that, if he were competing in the men’s division, he would be having to compete two or three weight classes above the one that exists on the women’s competition. In the men’s side, he wouldn’t be in the 87 kg class. He wouldn’t be in the 96 kg class. He would be in the over 96 kg class, the top class. The over 87 kg class is the top class in the women’s sport. Why? Because if the women had a 96 kg class and an over 96 kg class, there wouldn’t be anyone in them. Men are bigger. Duh. It’s like Hubbard moving from the heavyweight boxing class, down through the light heavyweight class, to box against middleweights. That’s cheating too. “Punching down,” I think they call it.
I wish I had something insightful to contribute, but I’m feeling exhausted by all of this at the moment. But since Omar started us off, someone posted this on Twitter the other day and it’s been playing in my head ever since. To the tune of “if you’re happy and you know it”
If a person has a penis he’s a man,
If a person has a penis he’s a man,
If the chromosome is Y, then it always is a guy,
If a person has a penis it’s a man.
And now it’s playing in your head, too, so my work here is done.
Hahaha I looked away from it precisely to avoid the earworm effect.
No I am convinced that the Trans activists are correct; and it is the lifting of the weight of oppression of being misgendered that has transformed these people from mediocre male athletes into world class female ones.
Actually Sastra’s comment did set me thinking. Probably because I’m a bloke my objection to transwomen in sport is practical rather than ethical. No difference now since all the transwomen athletes were men and I agree that your motives don’t matter compared to the biological facts. The way things are going, though, there will come a time when someone will have transitioned as a child. The question of if somebody never becomes a man. can they compete as a woman might prove tricky on purely biological grounds.
Still, fortunately, nobody is likely to ask me, or care what I think. By then, with every year seeming to supply new reports on the terrible danger of tiddly winker’s thumb and the like, it might all be virtual anyway.
Thereby leading to carpel tunnel! Especially since I have noted that my students do not do the correct ergonomic thing. They keep their adjustable height chairs at a really bad height for working on the computer or doing any repetitive work, thereby increasing their risks of problems.
Olympic Carpel Tunnel Syndrome.