Oh fuck off. I hate being a feminist sometimes because it lumps me in with these assholes. How can you call yourself a feminist and still be like "Oh these women aren't real women" and also "Lol women don't do sport as good as men"?
(Also can we get a CW warning for Transphobia?)
We should add tags that can be filtered automatically, but I'd assume anything with TERF/Transphobe in the title is showing transphobia
"Marxist-feminist" is a good way of separating yourself IME
Mens bodies are better suited for certain sports. Women's bodies are better suited for some sports.
Women are actually catching up every year to mens records so it isn't as simple as that.
Plus you have to account that we have less women competing because women aren't encouraged to be physically strong as men, all of our exercises are designed to make us look 'feminine' and 'not bulky'.
It's a complicated subject and not as simple as 'lol women bad at sport'.
Same as black poverty isn't as simple as 'lol black people just bad at capitalism'.
"It's a simple fact that men's brains are just bigger than women's. Trust me sweaty, the source I'm using is only slightly terfy."
it is dumb to compare the genetic differences between men and women to racial discrimination lmao
There is in the way that they used the exact same kind of 'biotruth' argument to justify keeping black people 'in their place'. I'm only saying the tactics are similar, not comparing anything else obviously.
“It’s a simple fact that men’s brains are just bigger than women’s.
Actually, it is true that men's brains are bigger than women's, it's just that brain size doesn't correlate with intelligence contrary to popular belief.
Similarly, men have a big biological advantage in certain sports. In some sports there isn't so much of a difference or women have an advantage (gymnastics, very long distance sports etc).
I'm not saying that to justify exclusion of trans people from their preferred categories (which shouldn't happen) but some people think complete gender desegregation of sports would be preferable and I think that's a bad solution because it would remove incentives for women to enter competitive sports and would ruin their chances at them. I know a number of women in sports close to Olympic level (mostly swimming) and I know they would never accept complete desegregation.
Opening women's sports up for trans women does not not seriously harm cis women because it's not like trans women are so many and have such a huge advantage that they're just completely overcrowding women's sports to the point where they exclude everyone. Like, alright, a trans woman won something once. Why is that supposed to be scary? But complete desegregation would practically mean exclusion of women from many sports and would amplify the societal differences that contribute (on top of the biological factor) to women having a disadvantage.
There's a lot of variance between men at different weight classes as well. Two bantam weight boxers but if one is significantly taller they will have greater reach. We live in the age of algorithms and data sorting, I am sure we could create categories where there would be peerage between the competitors, regardless of gender identity. It'll take some effort to figure it out, but its not impossible, and damnit, we have the technology, there's no excuse not to try.
I guess there's no point in sports at all then. They should just measure upper body muscle mass and give the medal to the dude with the most muscles!
Glorious!
It's almost like we've had consideration for physical abilities prior to (edit: consideration of) transgender people!
God damnit people, read "The Power of One". We already sorted this out decades ago.
sexist 'bio troofs' and historic lack of women being allowed to hone their abilities in the same way men have.
No, because HRT reduces your strength and muscle mass to that of cis women.
Are you incapable of making the simplest google research? Why does this have to be explained every time it pops up
It would result in people being matched by weight and skill and not based solely on sex or gender.
Would women be fighting mostly in lightweight? Probably, for now, who knows. The point is that if a women could compete with men she would have the right to do so based on their ability and not her sex or gender.
The same thing that would happen if he dominated the men's lower weight division.
Tbh, should allow unrelated to strength thingies to be mixed, like shooting, back. last time women won in 90s olympic and cancelled mixed events, amazing really
i think historically it would be more accurate that sports are made to be suited to men's bodies but im just being pedantic
If you start from the premise that professional sports are kind of a fuck to begin with, it helps you to remember that this is just another avenue for transphobia, often using things that are a lot less older historically than trans people, to somehow delegitimize trans people. I don't care if baseball is 200 years old. Trans people were here before that. It's actually us cis people being fuckheads all this time that lead us to this "crisis." Can I invent a new word to describe this? Because it would be "phenomenalizing." They did the same thing when they started mixed race sports. They're acting like this is some new kind of problem, when in reality its an old problem that they tried to keep buried but now they can't ignore it anymore. Womp womp, egg on their face, etc. I ain't crying over spilled terfs. Reap the whirlwind, motherfuckers.
I fucking hate to see it. I thought people here were smarter than that. Thank you mods for dealing with the transphobes and sexists but fuck I hate it that you have to.
I'm hoping most of them are outside trolls but I won't be too surprised if there were some long time users from here.
either way, seeing shit like this is good because it lets us purge our ranks of transphobes. show em the fuckin door
Note how the piece of shit writes "transgender Canadian..." and "trans athlete" because they genuinely don't see trans women as women.
They don't even see transgender people as regular people, let alone their correct gender. "Transgender Canadian" is a derogatory in this context
If its such a problem why not just remove gender segregation of sports and have everyone compete by weight class or whatever idk
I don't think women athletes would ever accept that. Men still have a significant advantage over women in the same weight class in many sports, and in many sports weight isn't really very relevant. Entirely removing gender segregation wouldn't be good for women's sports at all.
I don't really know how to "solve" this tbh, but it really doesn't seem that big of a deal. Trans athletes exist and its not like they're solely winning all the medals over their cis counterparts.
Like just let them compete how they want who gives a fuck
Yes, I agree, I was just saying that removing gender segregation won't be good.
Ok I admit that I am lib who is trying to learn more from my trans comrades. Forgive me if I'm asking a dumb question.
Isn't there a huge competitive advantage for trans athletes that have transitioned from male to female? There are just certain genetic benefits when it comes to things like bone structure and muscle density that seem to make for an uneven playing field. I feel like that's a factual take. I'm prepared to accept public shaming so that I can understand this issue better from people who have a more personal experience.
Quoting @ultraviolet who made a comment about this earlier:
This “debate” is usually framed in the context of “biological advantage” because it is true that top male athletes have an advantage over top female athletes so they believe that trans women (who are assigned male at birth) will have an advantage over cis women. However most top competitive sports (like the Olympics) have rules requiring the trans person to be on hrt for some time. Trans women who have been on hrt for a few years really have no biological advantage over cis women. Now some might resort to arguing that hrt does nothing to bone length (which is mostly true for trans women who started hrt after puberty) but then you don’t see them complaining that a cis person is being unfair because they were born with longer legs or anything like that. Furthermore the concern trolls seem to only come out whenever a trans person wins any event and they forget the times that trans athletes finish in 4th, 5th, etc. so they seem to only think it’s “fair” when a trans person loses.
You can also ask them to name a top female athlete. Chances are they will be a cis woman (or they can’t do it because none of them give a shit about women’s sports unless they can use it to hate trans people.) If trans women really were dominating then they should have disproportionate representation which is not the case.
Outside the top competitive events it gets really silly, like are you going to foam at the mouth because some local recreational league lets people of all genders participate? While it is true that top male athletes outperform top female athletes, there is a lot more variation in an “average” person so it’s really dumb to assume that a trans woman always has a “biological” advantage over a cis woman.
At the end of the day, if you care about “biological advantage” so much, then you should be advocating for more resources for young trans people (like puberty blockers) so they never have to go through the wrong puberty to begin with (and suffer a lot less dysphoria) but these people who yell about biological advantage never cared about trans people to begin with.
Edit: There was a whole thread about this earlier peep on the deets there if you want more.
im legit smaller and weaker than the majority of women, if i have a competitive advantage, its mostly in the shitposting olympics
To add to what's already been said. This is what I remember reading about it from my endocrinology coursework.
Since this article is about transwomen I will be focusing on that.
First let's discuss HRT. While not every transperson undergoes HRT, (despite what the truscum say every transperson is valid), the effect of HRT on the body is relevant to this discussion.
- Bone density can be affected by HRT.
- If a transfemme is training while on HRT, it is harder for them to build muscle mass on account of the testosterone blockers that are used.
- If a transfemme has finished HRT, they will build muscle mass at a similar level to ciswomen.
- During HRT, transfolks must undergo regular tests for blood testosterone, cis athletes do not unless there is evidence of performance enhancing drugs. So there is scant data as far as I'm aware comparing the hormone levels of the two.
This confers no clear advantage to transfolks over cis.
Secondly hormone levels are not as cut and dry as gender essentialists will have you believe.
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while amabs typically have more testosterone than afabs this isn't necessarily the case. I'd wager most people haven't even checked. Why would you unless a doctor advised you to? Gender essentialists just assume that:
- man = big testosterone rawr
- women = small testosterone :(
Based on nothing but a child's understanding of biology.
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this poor view of endocrinology has led to afab women being punished by the rules transphobes campaigned for to restrict transwomen, (this has been mentioned in other users' comments on the Caster Semenya case so I'm not going to retread it here).
Formatting is a bit weird so apologies for that, I tried to use bullet points to space shit out so it wasn't just some big fucking wall of text.
cisgendered people with physical divergence would be banned too, like Michael Phelp’s giant feet.
They actually sometimes are, but only if the physical abnormality is TERF-bullshit-adjacent, like Caster Semenya
Oh, you edited to include her. Welp, now this comment is redundant.
NY Post, a huge ally to the feminist cause of course, not just scummy opportunists looking to leverage nominal support for "feminism" to make a low jab at trans people.
