Wrong side of history
More from the women in sport front:
All this energy – conferences! more conferences! yet more conferences! – expended on getting more men into women’s sports. Why? Trans rights could be a thing without that, after all. Why is there such an obsession with ruining sports for women? If you pause and step back and look at it, it seems just spiteful. Just done for the sake of ruining things for women. Just because that many men really hate women and want to expend a lot of money and energy just to trash their sports.
It’s not a pleasant thought.
The IOC, and many international sporting organisations, have not historically been friends of women’s sport. For a long time many sports banned women’s competition at certain levels or disciplines. Change has been grudging until very recently when some sports realised that there was good money to be made from TV rights because people did actually want to watch quality female competition. It doesn’t take much to backslide though.
@ #1: That is the reason that I prefer to watch womens’ tennis rather than mens.’ The latter has become predominantly a power game of short rallies. Womens’ is more a skill game, with longer rallies and therefore of more interest, IMHO.
So if I could be bothered, I would get onto Twitter and give Pike a complementary but uncomplimentary character assessment. But I studiously avoid Twitter, and leave it to twits like Trump.
And of course, the IOC’s version of women’s sports is… tainted, at best, by their insistence that women must present themselves sexily (see: women’s volleyball, and the uniform requirements thereof).
I think there are two reasons for this.
First, if they admit that trans women might not belong in womens sport, the whole house of cards will start to crumble. If they do not belong there, people may start to wonder if they do also not belong in other womens places, like on shortlists, womens festivals, womens prison, shelters etc.
The whole edifice of trans ideology requires that there is absolutely no meaningful difference between transwomen and “biological” women. Therefore we get told that feminists who insist that material reality might be important are reducing women to body parts etc. There must not be a single issue where the material reality behind being a trans women is relevant because as soon as there is, people might say “in this case, don’t we need a WORD for this group of women united by their material reality” and then they might realize that “woman” is the right word here.
That is also the reason for the totally mad idea of putting rapists who claim to be women in women’s prisons – if TRAs would admit that this might be wrong, it would be a wedge that cracks open the whole ideology.
Second reason why sports is chosen is due to the nature of sports, especially elite sports: first, only a few people are affected by this, so it does not hurt the general public if men are admitted there. OTOH, in amateur sports they can say that it is just amateur sports so it does not really matter etc.
And finally, in sports, especially when there are no very famous names involved, people like to root for the underdog, the outsider. So having trans women there allows them to hammer the message of “look at this poor marginalized outsider” and to get people to root for the trans women.
Omar @ 2 – Pike isn’t the enemy. He’s not on team Let’s Give Women’s Sports to Men. He’s a critic of that team.
That’s exactly right. I would only add that it’s not a new thing. Already 40–50 years ago when I used to watch Wimbledon I preferred women’s tennis, for that reason.
OB @ #5: My apologies to Pike then. (Aside: I find it all so confusing.!)
I think Sonderval nails it in #4. Any compromise anywhere which recognizes a critical distinction between actual women and men who believe they’re women shoots down the basic “it’s scientifically and socially impossible to define a woman in a way that excludes trans women” foundation the claims rest on. Sports also has an underdog-upsets-predictions drama that can work with the narrative of Most Marginalized.
Sports may be an attractive area for trans rights to focus on for yet another reason: it’s a hard case to win, ideologically speaking. Same with TIMs in women’s prison. But this may be their strategy. The idea seems to be if they DO succeed in these fringe-cases absolutely every other mainstream, day to day barrier will perforce tumble over.
Overcoming personal upset is hard. When males in women’s spaces suddenly directly affects people who haven’t been paying much attention till then, there’s going to be pushback. However, if Women’s Sports and Women’s Prisons have already fallen like dominoes, the rational arguments are gone. Nothing is too extreme.
Omar, that’s exactly the explanation my husband gives for preferring women’s volleyball; it’s a game of skill. If you watch men, it’s a game of power – who can hit it the hardest. Which is another reason why having men on women’s teams is problematic; men don’t play the same way women do. They play for power, and it’s a power women can’t match.
Sastra, same thing with lesbians and same-sex attraction. If they can topple the domino that says women have the right to choose freely who uses their bodies for sex, probably one of the biggest barriers has fallen. Men being lesbians? Most. Ridiculous. Idea. So if they can defeat that, then there is nothing left for women at all; everything belongs to transwomen.
‘male bodied athletes’
How about ‘fake women’ ?
Freemage @ 3, you’re spot on about that. Volleyball, beach volleyball, gymnastics (all forms), track and field, especially jumping, vaulting, running events. I recall a (male) officiating at women’s beach volleyball olympics a while back hur hurring about having the terrible job of measuring the uniforms to ensure they complied (while being worn). I. Did. Not. Laugh. It’s almost like when sports bodies lost the argument that women couldn’t compete, and then that they had to wear ridiculously restrictive and voluminous uniforms, they went “You want to wear less? We’ll give you much less. Enjoy your modesty now ladieees.”
What should “our hurting” be? Orating perhaps?
No, “our hurting” should be “hur hurring”. Dammit, I specially checked that because I knew autocorrect would have a field day.
Dammit autocorrect.