Targets
World Athletics Council, the governing body for international track and field, will bar transgender women athletes from elite competitions for women.
The council’s policy, which will be in effect starting March 31, largely targets athletes who transitioned from male to female after going through puberty as a male. It will also tighten rules for athletes with disorders of sexual development, cutting in half the level of testosterone athletes can have in order to compete in women’s events.
The policy “targets” male athletes ffs – as if it were pure meaningless cruelty to keep men out of women’s sports. Also calling male athletes “athletes who transitioned from male to female” is ridiculous, because there is no such thing. You can’t “transition” from male to female any more than you can “transition” from human to chimpanzee.
The council said they ultimately decided to prioritize “fairness and the integrity” of the female competition over inclusion.
That too is a stupid and nudgy way to put it. Why would “inclusion” even be on the table? NPR doesn’t burble about “inclusion” of adults in children’s sports, so why does it burble about “inclusion” of men in women’s sports?
At the center of the issue is whether
transgender women[male athletes] have a physical advantage overotherfemale competitors, even after lowering their testosterone levels. But there is limited scientific research involving elite transgender athletes — which the council also acknowledged.
And we just don’t know, do we, we have no clue – who is stronger, women or men? Oh gosh I just have no idea, nobody does, it’s like asking what kind of flowers bloom on the far side of the moon.
Alarmist subhead:
The ban is part of a growing resistance against transgender women and girls in female sports
That is, a growing resistance to men destroying women’s sports.
Meanwhile in the U.S., 19 states have so far banned transgender athletes from playing on girls or women’s sports teams. In statehouses across the country this year, there are dozens of more new and proposed laws that further curb transgender rights.
Men don’t have a right to destroy women’s sports. That’s not a right.
NPR has become the audio version of Pink News. I’ve deprogrammed the local NPR station from my car radio, in favor of the other BBC station, which (soothingly) plays classical music when the beeb is not being rebroadcast, instead of this claptrap.
At the center of the issue is a red herring, because the actual criterion for participation in female sports is being female.
Transgender privileges. Perhaps we should stop faffing about with words like “right” and “privilege”. They’re rather important words, after all, much like “male”, “female”, “man”, and “woman”. Perhaps we should treat them as such.
“Transgender privileges” is an excellent phrase. Men who declare themselves transgender may be given the privilege of invading women’s spaces; other men are not granted that privilege.
Bravo, Nullius! I will be reminding people of that from now on whenever I see the phrase “transgender rights”.
…over other female competitors
Gosh, I’ve been told repeatedly that nobody’s claiming trans women are literally female.
In the paper by Jon Pike that I mentioned in another thread, he makes useful distinctions between “category advantage” and “competition advantage”. Competition advantages are the kind that we let play out, where the biggest, fastest, most skilled athletes are more likely to win, and possibly even dominate. Category advantages are those that are controlled by creating categories of competition; they don’t necessarily imply that those in one category would dominate against those in another. An example he gives is a woman who had an illicit electric motor on her bicycle; she didn’t do well, but it’s still the wrong category for the competition and disallowed.
A less formal (and shorter) discussion of the concepts is Pike’s post at Sex Matters here.
An excerpt from the latter: