This is what will happen to female sport
This is Laurel Hubbard NZ. Who twenty years after retiring (at his prime) from weightlifting as a male came back as a trans woman athlete & lifted (age 40!!) just 30kg less!! This is what will happen to female sport if gender not sex is used to classify sport #fairplayforfemales pic.twitter.com/hNh2lG3Plx
— Sharron Davies MBE (@sharrond62) March 11, 2019
Oh noes are we denying her right to exist?
No, actually, we’re denying a man’s “right” to compete against women who will thereby be unable to win anything ever.
New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard went into the women’s +90kg finals at the Commonwealth Games as favourite, expected not only to win but also perhaps break records.
She finished the first half 7kg ahead of Samoa’s Feagaiga Stowers, but her efforts ended after she injured her elbow striving for a lift of 132kg.
But the eyes the Gold Coast’s Carrara Sport and Leisure Centre were also on Hubbard for another reason, after public challenges to her eligibility because she is a transgender woman who had competed in men’s weightlifting prior to transitioning.
Although no country lodged an official objection, many said they felt it was unfair for Hubbard to be going up against their athletes.
Because it is.
[Hubbard] said the support inside the arena spurred her on, even if her afternoon ended in disappointment.
“The Australian crowd was magnificent,” she said. “It felt like just a big embrace. They really made me try to lift my best. I gave it everything and I regret I wasn’t able to make the lift today.
“The Commonwealth Games here are a model for what sport can, and should, be. It’s an incredible environment and an amazing atmosphere. Without any doubt, they have lived up to the mantra of humanity, equality and decency.”
I’m not seeing the humanity, equality and decency in cheering on a person with a male body and a history of weightlifting as a male who is competing against women. What about Feagaiga Stowers? What about humanity, equality and decency for her?
A male who is competing against women and being shielded from having to compete against other males. Because pronouns. Just once I want to hear a transperson explain how the second part makes sense.
Okay, wouldn’t it be claimed, in one school of trans thought, that Hubbard has ALWAYS BEEN female and NEVER WAS a male? If that is so then shouldn’t it be the case that either a) Hubbard’s women’s record should be recognized using the higher weight acheived when she was competing against men, or b) Hubbard’s earlier competition should be removed from the records because of her being in the wrong group/class/division/whatever in the first place?
YNNB I predict your questions will produce sputtering gibberish followed by “Die TERF!” or vice versa, or simultaneously. In another bold prediction the sun will rise tomorrow.
In horse racing, which is driven by gambling interests and big money is involved, the better a horse is, the more weight it is forced to carry in every race. That is called its ‘handicap’. Otherwise a champion horse like the legendary Phar Lap or Sea Biscuit would win every race it was entered into, and the bookmakers would all go broke.
So human sport could get very dreary, where everyone has a ‘handicap’: which need not be weights. In track events, it could be a mathematical formula that took account of androgen/estrogen ratio, height, body mass, some sort of skeletal index, x etc x etc x etc.
“Stand by while we wait for the supercomputer to tell us who won that last race.”
Believe me, if the Samoan competitor had been knocked off what would normally be expected to be a gold medal podium Samoa was going to put in a complaint.
Not only would a woman have lost their win, but a tiny island nation would have been cheated of one of very few opportunities of a win.
The authorities in NZ are adhering very close to the line of IOC rules, but there has also been a male athlete compete in mountain biking as a male until late one year, then early the next compete as a female one. They only narrowly lost because with mountain biking one little thing going wrong can lose a fraction of a second. Of course the males in the ruling body for that sport claimed it was AOK there too.
This is the destruction of women’s sport forever, I’m seeing claims that it’s been allowed for years but they only put the cheaters code in place 2016 with only needing to identify as a woman for four years for sporting purposes which means they think being female is nothing worth anything, and testosterone levels way in excess of even the top of the female normal range. Disgusting, and of course predictably there are more and more men finding their way in and often despite being decades older than the athletes they are competing against they are still walking away with wins.
It needs to stop.
But…didn’t you say the mountain biker was competing as a male one year, and a female the next? How could you be identifying as a female and competing as a male? Isn’t that a contradiction?
But, I suppose, they would say it is unfair to make someone sit out from sport for four years just because they have an enormous edge, so they compete with the men (and I would suspect they are not taking testosterone blockers if they compete against men because, if they are to be believed, that would remove all advantages and they would be like women competing against men).
Now I’m confused.