A little is ok

Ash Sarkar thinks it’s all just fine.

Nobody says it’s “en masse.” So what? Any is too much. “It’s just one guy cheating” is not a powerful argument.

Again: not the issue. Women shouldn’t be made to give up any of their opportunities to men.

Fair and square? A man in a women’s competition? What’s fair or square about that?

Comments

23 responses to “A little is ok”

  1. Brian M Avatar

    This also completely ignores the sheer TRENDYNESS of the trans movement. While not unheard of in 2003, I really don’t recall trans identity DOMINATING lefty discussion and focus so much.

  2. Roj Blake Avatar

    It is not Laurel Hubbard, it is Gavin Hubbard. If we are to win, we must not concede the name change.

  3. Sackbut Avatar

    It’s just one person taking performance-enhancing drugs.

    It’s just a couple of pitchers who are doctoring the ball.

    He did blood doping, but he only moved up to third place he didn’t win.

    Only one player is past the Little League age limit, and only by a few years, less than a decade even.

    Yes, steroids are illegal, but these two guys are in a great race for the home run record, can’t we just look the other way and ignore the tainted records and results? The public is captivated, they love these guys.

  4. Blood Knight in Sour Armor Avatar
    Blood Knight in Sour Armor

    I dunno, I think using a name lets people know who you’re actually talking about; people are allowed to change their names. Kind of ambiguous name that, like Corey or Ashley.

  5. Roj Blake Avatar

    I think that saying “Gavin Hubbard is competing for NZ in the women’s weightlifting 87kg-plus category” is accurate, truthful, and defensible.

  6. Nullius in Verba Avatar
    Nullius in Verba

    The most honest and straightforward way to refute the argument from a lack of trans dominance is to never engage the performance fairness argument in the first place. Every transwoman/tim who gets a spot on a team, in a tournament, or in a league represents a female denied that spot, a spot that was set aside for a female.

  7. Rob Avatar

    As for the statement that Hubbard has lost to women, I can only go by the results of sanctioned competitions Hubbard has entered since 2017. They have won gold in eight out of 13 and a silver in one. There are three DNF’s, one of which was in 2018 when she broke an elbow while leading the contest. One of the other DNF’s looks like it was an event that didn’t actually take place due to Covid. There is a sixth place in the 2019 World Champs in Thailand in 2019.

    So, a bloke with testosterone suppressing drugs, in his 40’s, can pretty impressively (?) whip women in their 20’s, at a sport where people typically peak in their late 20’s.

    Being beaten in training or minor champs simply doesn’t count. Top athletes train in cycles that mean they’re often beaten at unimportant champs.

  8. Holms Avatar

    A thousand cheats is bad, but even if there was only one cheat, that’s a person that has still cheated all the same.

  9. maddog1129 Avatar

    Oh dear lord, they are not making the women accept him in the women’s locker room, are they?

  10. John the Drunkard Avatar
    John the Drunkard

    And, in the highest weight division, Hubbard’s size alone puts him ahead of almost any woman in the field.

    Notice we don’t see heroic trans-athletes competing at 49 kilos. And we have yet to see any trans MEN competing in any elite sport at all.

  11. What a Maroon Avatar
    What a Maroon

    And we have yet to see any trans MEN competing in any elite sport at all.

    Let’s not be hasty.

    Washington Spirit and Japan forward Kumi Yokoyama came out as a transgender man in a video posted to Yuki Nagasato’s YouTube channel on Sunday.

    “I’ve dated several women over the years but I had to stay closeted in Japan,” Yokoyama, who uses they/them pronouns, said in the 18-minute interview. “In Japan I’d always be asked if I had a boyfriend, but here [in the United States] I’m asked if I have a boyfriend or girlfriend.

    “When my girlfriend said there was no reason for me to stay closeted, it really hit me. Coming out wasn’t something I was enthusiastic about, but if I think about my life going forward, it would be harder to live closeted, so I found the courage to come out.”

    And a little further down:

    They said that seeing Canada and OL Reign midfielder Quinn tell their story and wear a “Protect Trans Kids” sweatshirt before a game also encouraged them to speak out.

    “[Quinn] wore a [sweatshirt] that said ‘Protect Trans Kids’ before a game, and I realised that it was what taking action looks like,” Yokoyama said. “To be able to accept people you have no relationship with, that’s the kind of person I would like to become and I hope we can create that society.”

    Quinn announced in September that they are transgender in an Instagram post and elaborated on their experience in a post on OL Reign’s website.

    (As far as I can tell, Quinn has just one name.)

    Now, if TWAW, then surely TMAM, and so these players should not be playing in a woman’s league, right?

  12. Athel Cornish-Bowden Avatar
    Athel Cornish-Bowden

    “It’s really difficult when you don’t see people like yourself in the media or even around you or in your profession. I was operating in the space of being a professional footballer and I wasn’t seeing people like me,” Quinn tells BBC Sport.

    Quinn, who has five goals and 59 caps for Canada, won Olympic bronze at Rio 2016 and played at the 2019 World Cup.

    The 25-year-old remains eligible to compete in women’s sport despite identifying as transgender because gender identity differs from a person’s sex – their physical biology.

    Most people, unless they’re non-binary, have a gender identity of male or female.

    Quinn was assigned female at birth but after many years of questioning themselves, realised their own gender identity did not match their sex.

    https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/54233946

    This seems a clear case of wanting to have your cake and eat it. When it suits her she wants to play in a women’s team; but she wants want to be considered a man when she wants that. Or maybe I’m not understanding her point of view.

  13. iknklast Avatar

    The 25-year-old remains eligible to compete in women’s sport despite identifying as transgender because gender identity differs from a person’s sex – their physical biology.

    This appears to directly contradict what the TWAW and let transgirls play girls sports crowd keep shouting about. They claims biology is wrong and bad and their physical reality doesn’t make them men.

    In short, more double standards…and, as always, they work in favor of men.

  14. Eava Avatar

    The reason Trans women haven’t competed in the Olympics before is because sex reassignment surgery was required, and very few trans women get SRS. This is the first olympics where SRS is not required.

  15. Sackbut Avatar

    And now there are two.

    NY Post: Transgender BMX rider for Team USA reportedly vowed to ‘burn’ US flag on medal podium

    “My goal is to win the Olympics so I can burn a US flag on the podium,” Wolfe reportedly wrote on March 25, 2020 alongside an online article about how trans girls should be treated as biological males in school sports. “This is what they focus on during a pandemic. Hurting trans children.”

  16. Bjarte Foshaug Avatar
    Bjarte Foshaug

    Athel Cornish-Bowden #12

    Most people, unless they’re non-binary, have a gender identity of male or female.

    Oh yeah? How do they know? Did someone do an actual scientific survey that distinguished clearly between “gender identity” and sex, started from a clearly defined set of criteria of what it means to think or feel like a “man” or “woman” respectively, and found that most people really do meet said criteria?

  17. Athel Cornish-Bowden Avatar
    Athel Cornish-Bowden

    It wren’t me wot said that: I just quoted the BBC’s sports writer.

  18. Bjarte Foshaug Avatar
    Bjarte Foshaug

    I know, it wasn’t meant as a retort to anything you said. Just a rhetorical question to point out an unjustified assumption by the writer :)

  19. ibbica Avatar

    Most people, unless they’re non-binary, have a gender identity of male or female.

    Imma dispute that…

    Oh yeah? How do they know? Did someone do an actual scientific survey that distinguished clearly between “gender identity” and sex, started from a clearly defined set of criteria of what it means to think or feel like a “man” or “woman” respectively, and found that most people really do meet said criteria?

    No, of course not, don’t be ridiculous. That’s the sort of question One Must Not Ask.

    It doesn’t help that the sort of question you are apparently Permitted To Ask reads more like “Which gender do you identify as? Male, Female, Nonbinary, Other?” or “What is your sex? Feminine, Masculine, Nonbinary, Other?” Phrasing questions in such a manipulative manner means that “most people” can’t give an accurate answer and any collection of responses is misleading. “Most people” are quite likely to try to answer a multiple choice question with the best of the bad choices presented… so, see? Everyone has a Gender Identity! Everyone agrees that your behaviour determines your sex! And the like :-/

  20. Bjarte Foshaug Avatar
    Bjarte Foshaug

    ibbica #19

    There is a way to interpret the quoted sentence to make it technically accurate, although I very much doubt that it’s the interpretation the writer had in mind. The key phrase here is “unless they’re non-binary”. Since the “binary” in Genderspeak doesn’t refer to biological sex but an alleged split into people who think or feel in “feminine” vs. “masculine” ways best left unspecified, anyone who fails to think or feel in any of these ways have to be considered “non-binary” pretty much by definition. That sure as hell includes me and, I strongly suspect, pretty much everyone else apart from TIMs and TIFs. It’s roughly analogous to saying:

    “Most people, unless they’re non-Muslims, have a religion of Sunni or Shia.”

    (Apart from the fact that there are almost certainly more Muslims that “binary” people in the Genderspeak sense).

    It doesn’t help that the sort of question you are apparently Permitted To Ask reads more like “Which gender do you identify as? Male, Female, Nonbinary, Other?” or “What is your sex? Feminine, Masculine, Nonbinary, Other?” Phrasing questions in such a manipulative manner means that “most people” can’t give an accurate answer and any collection of responses is misleading.

    I recently cancelled my monthly donation to a charity I had been supporting for years and unsubscribed from their mailing list after they did a survey (mostly about other topics) with exactly this kind of manipulative and misleading phrasing in it. In the excerpt quoted by Athel, though, I strongly suspect that the writer hasn’t even done that much work, shoddy as it is, but is simply taking for granted that anyone who doesn’t actively self-identify as “non-binary” is implicitly embracing a male or female “gender identity” with all it’s implicit claims about what’s going on inside their heads.

  21. Bjarte Foshaug Avatar
    Bjarte Foshaug

    (Apart from the fact that there are almost certainly more Muslims that “binary” people in the Generspeak sense).

    (And apart from the fact that most people do at the very least have a religion, while it’s far from clear that most people have a “gender identity”)

  22. Bjarte Foshaug Avatar
    Bjarte Foshaug

    *more Muslims than “binary” people

    Arrrgh!

  23. Sackbut Avatar

    anyone who fails to think or feel in any of these ways have to be considered “non-binary” pretty much by definition.

    Reminds me of:

    https://www.jesusandmo.net/comic/special/