There’s a reason
Mara Yamauchi in The Guardian a few days ago:
Why does the female category in sport exist? It exists so that those born female – women and girls – can participate, compete and excel in sport that is fair and safe. Without the female category, women and girls would be nowhere in sport because of the massive physical advantages that those born male enjoy.
…
The fact of you reading this article right now is due to the female category existing. Without it, I would be a complete nobody. When I set my personal best, 2:23:12 in 2009, I was ranked second in the world in women’s road running. But 2:23:12 is, being frank, nothing special by male standards. In 2009, at least 1,300 men ran faster. If I had been told to suffer unfair competition against male-born athletes, I would never have become the UK’s joint most successful female marathon runner in the Olympics ever, and a Commonwealth Games medallist. I would have been excluded from things of value such as places on teams, prize money and podium places. That is if I’d persevered in sport at all – probably, I would have quit sport altogether. Why would anyone want to compete in an event that is unfair?
To make the sacrifice for the sake of the men who call themselves women! What greater devotion can there be?
The debate about trans inclusion in sport has focused mostly on the elite level. But the crisis facing women’s sport is just as serious at grassroots level. Male-born people are competing in women’s sport all over the UK. Officials and event organisers, many of them volunteers, are powerless to turn away requests from people born male to compete in the female category. I know, because I hear about examples of this happening frequently.
Well it’s such a good wheeze. Just claim to be trans for a few years, scoop up all the prizes, and then “detransition” when you’ve scooped enough.
I’m prepared to assume that the TW who enter women’s sports are, with a few exceptions, people who honestly believe they’re transgender. Surrounded as they are by reassurance and encouragement, they sincerely believe they’re not being unfair, and that they’re “challenging” themselves. Most won’t set records; some will be poor or mediocre athletes.
It doesn’t matter. Women’s sports are for female bodies, not men who believe they’re having the inner experience of being a woman and need this validated.
To me it’s one of those situations where you have no right to believe X.
Adding: that is, where one has no right to believe. Meaning male athletes who say they are trans.
And absent other evidence we have no right to believe the TIMs are insincere. We’ve already seen and accepted how seductive and convincing the Gender Identity narrative is, even to feminists and people on the secular left. Gloria F-ing Steinem believes Trans Women Are Women. The trans-identified fit the profile of being excellent candidates to buy into The Explanation for their discomfort with their bodies and lives. Social support is through the roof.
I may argue that there’s no way to keep posers out, but wouldn’t and couldn’t say or imply that transwomen athletes are deliberately faking being trans for the easy awards and victories. It’s more plausible that “trans” is fake but the trans ppl are in the role of the True Believer, rationalizing the hell out of what’s all too obvious from the outside and buying every crappy apologetic argument with the dewy-eyed innocence of the fanatic.
Ah that’s where we differ. I haven’t at all accepted how seductive and convincing the Gender Identity narrative is; quite the contrary. I never ever ever can understand how people can swallow it, and not only swallow it but proceed to demonize other people for not swallowing it. I don’t think the narrative is one bit seductive or convincing, let alone both. It’s a permanent mystery to me.
@Ophelia #4;
Ah, then, the transgender narrative may be like “God.”
One school of thought is that supernatural belief is the human default. We’re natural-born dualists who easily find God a familiar and plausible concept, consistent with Common Sense and the way we think. Scientific thinking, on the other hand, is difficult. We learn science. Atheism takes effort to override our intuition, and dependence on it.
The other view is that Science and the natural world is common sense, and supernaturalism has to be carefully taught against our natural proclivities. God is a bizarre and implausible concept, adopted for social and cultural reasons and used as a method of control. Atheism is intuitive. Belief takes twisting.
There are prominent atheists on both sides of the divide. I’m convinced it’s mostly the first. Perhaps that’s why I’m more likely to think the religious either believe what they say, or believe they believe it. And the same holds true for the TRAs. It’s easy to conflate being trans with being gay, there are enough similarities that our tendency to think in analogies kicks in. I reasoned my way out.
Is there a position that’s a little of one and a little of the other? I kind of see it both ways on the god question.
Sure.
#Break the Binary.
‘Sacrifice’ starts thoughts of religion.We have perhaps come to a fork in the road. One side leads us to a picturesque valley dotted about with what appear to be churches, but turn out on closer inspection to be shrines where the devotees of the Trans Cult can congregate and sing hymns of praise to themselves and to the victory of their beliefs. And the other side just leads on to more of the same and to the conservative world that the Transcultists have been in reaction against.
As in past religious and ideological battles, each side will likely attempt to minimise the damage that the other side can do to it.
The dogs will then bark, and the caravan will move on.