Set to make history
Yes, that’s right, frame it as “first for transgender athlete!!” as opposed to “man hopes to qualify for women’s Olympics.” Make it sound like an exciting innovation as opposed to a man cheating a woman out of a place at the Olympics.
On Dec. 8, 2019, 28-year-old Megan Youngren became one of 63 women at the California International Marathon to officially qualify for the 2020 U.S. Olympic marathon trials, the race that will determine the team for Tokyo. Her 40th-place finish in 2:43:52 came as both a relief and a reward, after four months of intense training. But it also marked another significant moment: With her qualification, Youngren is set to make history on Feb. 29 as the first openly transgender athlete to compete at the U.S. Olympic marathon trials.
In other words Youngren is a man.
In 2013, Youngren started running to lose weight and boost her health after transitioning, and now she primarily races on trails and runs up and down mountains for fun. Youngren says that running helped alleviate any lingering symptoms from a case of shingles. By 2014, she was running consistently, but with little structure to her training. An Alaska native, Youngren ran her first marathon at the 2017 Equinox Marathon in Fairbanks in 4:48, on a course with an unforgiving 3,285 feet of elevation gain and loss. Despite the difficulty and cramping, she credits that race as the one that got her hooked on the 26.2-mile distance. …
“I thought that if I worked incredibly hard and took some huge risks that I could run a 2:45,” Youngren says. “People will try to put it down by saying, ‘That’s too easy because you’re trans.’ But what about the 500 other women who will qualify? There’s probably someone with the exact same story. I trained hard. I got lucky. I dodged injuries. I raced a lot, and it worked out for me. That’s the story for a lot of other people, too.”
Not because he’s trans; because he’s male. And it’s not that it’s too easy, it’s that it’s an unfair advantage.
“Megan Youngren became one of 63 women at the California International Marathon to officially qualify for the 2020 U.S. Olympic marathon trials”.
Except he wasn’t one of 63 women, he is a man and should be disqualified. How does this even happen? The “officials” who put on these events are exceedingly stupid.
The only ways out IMHO from this swamp of transwhatever bullshit is for 1. women to set up a new trans-free organisation and competition AND/OR to insist that times, distances etc recorded by trans athletes be recorded in a separate category from womens’ events, and for them to insist that those born male, no matter what their subsequent sex-change or related history may be, may not compete in womens’ events.
Full bloody stop.
Articles like this always gloss over the huge differences in standards.
Youngren just barely qualified, recording a 2:43:52 time to meet the “B” standard of 2:45:00 for women.
If Youngren had tried to qualify as a man, she wouldn’t be even close — the B standard there is 2:19:00
Source.
39 women ran faster times at the California marathon than Youngren; 409 men did.
I wonder how many cisgendered marathon runners are able to start running serious at age 23 and qualify for the Olympic trials in six years?
I wouldn’t think 40th place in anything is going to lead to Olympic glory. In this case, I sure hope not.
When will the cis-abled start competing in the Paralympics?
This possibility is really how I found your blog. I saw what was happening with Boston Marathon qualification, specifically with one individual who went from ‘not going to happen’ status (could have, but the training intensity wasn’t there) to easy qualification, all through the miracle of self-identification. A whole marathon class was outwardly congratulatory, but I could tell several of the women had misgivings – in a closed field, that spot comes from someone. Started googling to understand, and found the ongoing discussion here.
It was only a matter of time before it reached the Olympics.
Also of note, a standard marathon training program, even for a first-timer, is 18 weeks – longer than 4 months. Most of the women who placed ahead of Youngren probably had a program that was 6 months long, with 18-20 weeks aimed at peaking.
Echoing Screechy Monkey: This runner started to run 6 years ago at age 23 to lose weight. This runner ran their first marathon in 2017. This runner buckled down & with intense training managed to barely hit the women’s standard for Olympic trial qualification. This is, actually, a very impressive achievement. This runner should take great satisfaction in their improvement.
But is this a trajectory that a woman (cis-gendered) could realistically accomplish? I assume (citation?) that most/all women competing in the Olympic trials have been devoting themselves to running for most of their post-adolescent lives. A woman who starts running at age 23 can do great things, but is an Olympic future likely or even realistic? Examples, please.
In this case, qualification seems to be based on a time cutoff, rather than a placement – so no women are being bumped from qualifying at this level. But this is yet another example that males identifying as female have an inherent advantage in certain capacities (strength, stamina, etc). And the bumping will certainly occur at the later levels (cf. the Connecticut sprinters).
#4
Probably not, but there is also the point that by taking up one of the qualification slots at a later stage, Youngren may displace an actual woman from the chance of a lifetime.
Helicam
Qualification is directly based on a time cut off, but as you say indirectly someone will be bumped as a result. Much like Boston qualification, it is a standard that adjusts over time. In this case, the effect is not that great, perhaps a few seconds faster next time around unless they actually want a field of ~40.
But for Boston qualification, the numbers are under a steady downward pressure – the ‘qualifying time’ has come down again in 2020, because the ‘cut off time’ (not all qualifying times are good enough to be accepted, there is a margin each year you must beat the qualifying time by to be placed in the limited field).
There are paralympics, why not transalympics? IMHO Trans really should be competing among themselves.
TRAs often pretend that the major “transphobic” argument here is that trans athletes are faking being trans just so they can win in women’s sports. It’s a clever strategy on their part, in that it sidesteps several more significant problems (Are transwomen men? Is there an unfair physical advantage?) and frames skeptics as simply making personal attacks on the honesty and integrity of trans athletes. Even though it’s quite possible that at least some men have come out as trans for that very purpose (consciously or not), it’s a misdirection.
It wouldn’t matter if every single transwoman athlete believed with absolute conviction that they were a woman, and had every intention of living as their ‘authentic self’ forever and ever. They still don’t belong in women’s sports.
It’s interesting. If a trans identified male is indeed wrapped up in their identity as a woman, then also being an athlete should be less important to them than that. And if they had been socialized as a woman, they’d be more likely to be very concerned about the concerns and sensitive to the feelings of the other women, and bow out.
It will be interesting to see what happens if at some Olymic event a TIM athlete from another country beats out an American woman to gold medal. How will a largely unprepared public respond to that? Outside the hothouse environment of woke ploitics, such a turn of events might not be well received. I don’t think they would take kindly to Laurel Hubbard, for example, beating an American lifter who is actually a woman. Now if an American trans athlete wins a medal, that would probably be rather different, as “American loves a winner.”
I can only guess that coaches who go along with rules that allow them to insert TIMs into women’s teams and events must be okay with essentially cheating. “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.”
And how much say do the women who suddenly have a man on their team really have? They could quit in protest (as could those opposing teams suddenly facing a male opponent on the field), but that would mean sacrificing their one (?) chance at athletic competition in order to respond to a mediocre male having a second go in womanface. This should have been sorted out at higher levels so that the athletes themselves aren’t forced to sacrifice their careers to deal with this.
I don’t know how much scope there is for protests and demonstrations by fans and spectators. Media portrayal of this sort of activity, if it follows the ACLU playbook, could easily make it out to be racist, bigotted, etc., in order to mask its true intent.
It’s odd that trans athletes themselves, if they really had the interests of the trans community as a whole in mind, would take this tainted path to victory. In their heart of hearts, their innermost feelings, do they not know that they have cheated? Are they that selfish and blinded by the prospect of “making history” that they can honestly accept these dubious wins as legitimate? I guess raging narcissism can be found anywhere and everywhere. These opportunists do the cause of recognition and acceptance of trans identified people no good, and perhaps cause it actual harm and animosity. They are not advancing “justice”or “inclusion” or “diversity”. They are Champions of Cheating. Cheating debases competition and turns fair play into a joke, and a painful one at that for the women and girls who are robbed of their chances to advance their lives through sport.
But the reality mirrors the reality most of us live as women. We are currently undergoing several (many?) misogyny and sexism issues at my work, and the response of the men is to basically shrug, acknowledge that women have been treated badly, bemoan that fact, and then…leave it to the woman to do what needs to be done, even though it will likely be at the cost of her career, and/or her mental or physical wellbeing. These are the allies; the ones that are not allies are much, much worse. This week my boss essentially told me, in all sympathy and solidarity, of course that I should dumb myself down for the comfort of one of the males who has reached a high level in the administration through the sheer force of his incompetence (that seems to be required in our administration – you don’t show up the other unqualified administrators, most of whom got there through cronyism). His word was “accommodate”, not “dumb down”, but the meaning is the same. I am prepping myself for the moment next week when I must confront him with this, and other issues, and suggest it’s time for some of the men to actually become advocates for the women instead of shrugging allies.
So they leave it to the women to do the heavy lifting, sacrificing themselves either to allow the transwomen to enter the field with a distinct advantage, or to protest against it and lose their position through a barrage of hate and a cancel campaign. Always for the comfort of men.
Men sure seem to have a way of passively accepting male privilege (the shrug), including the ones trying to be women. Maybe TRA’s in particular, they don’t seem to be very passive about being entitletards.
The unknown woman who lost her chance to try out for the Olympics should be noted in some way. Maybe somebody run behind him the whole way with a sign apologizing to that woman who got cheated out of her rightful spot?