The vast majority of people who will be impacted by trans bans in sports will be little girls with short hair or arms that are "too muscular."
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@futurebird yeah. This happened to a girl at my school growing up, constantly. She was white, but just looked too masculine. Parents on other teams complained at games and kept making accusations. I don't know how they handled it but I assume eventually they must have had something on file and ready because it was so consistent. I think about her so much now. It must be so much more common these days, like, have we learned nothing from the harms bullying has done?
@futurebird and now we are opening new avenues to allow *adults* to bully children en masse, not just other children. What on earth.
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People talking about "shoulders too square" and "elbows too pointy"
Why enable this? It's so sexist.
@futurebird i've long said that the root of transphobia is sexism! at the end of the day it's all about enforcing a strict definition of what a woman is and protecting the "sanctity" of masculinity
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I bring up Paula Radcliffe because she was targeted despite HAVING KIDS and being very conventional looking as if that should matter.
The only thing she did wrong was train better and be a total badass who could lay down sub fives til the end of time. Amazing runner. She was just ... good.
And we know girls can't be good, right?
@futurebird Just last night, heard an otherwise liberal old man talk about that swimmer who transitioned mtf, waited a year, and moved up in the ranking from 250 to 13 or something. The implication: men have a biological advantage in swimming fast, and mtf individuals competing is unfair. The alternative: *some people* have a biological advantage in swimming fast. Some women are faster than some men. Why consider being born AMAB as more important than being born with large feet?
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@futurebird Just last night, heard an otherwise liberal old man talk about that swimmer who transitioned mtf, waited a year, and moved up in the ranking from 250 to 13 or something. The implication: men have a biological advantage in swimming fast, and mtf individuals competing is unfair. The alternative: *some people* have a biological advantage in swimming fast. Some women are faster than some men. Why consider being born AMAB as more important than being born with large feet?
@futurebird The main problem I perceive is when the other competitors bristle at having to suddenly compete with someone new, and say it is unfair, because they want to remain the winners. But this happens for other reasons as well, like when people from unrepresented parts of the world start getting good (and often, get accused of being men or all kinds of other things).
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@futurebird Just last night, heard an otherwise liberal old man talk about that swimmer who transitioned mtf, waited a year, and moved up in the ranking from 250 to 13 or something. The implication: men have a biological advantage in swimming fast, and mtf individuals competing is unfair. The alternative: *some people* have a biological advantage in swimming fast. Some women are faster than some men. Why consider being born AMAB as more important than being born with large feet?
@semitones @futurebird He was lying by omission anyway. Thomas was a highly ranked swimmer before she started transitioning. The 250 rank came after beginning hormones but before she was allowed to compete as a woman.
"During her freshman year, Thomas recorded a time of eight minutes and 57.55 seconds in the 1,000-yard freestyle that ranked as the sixth-fastest national men's time..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_Thomas -
@futurebird yeah. This happened to a girl at my school growing up, constantly. She was white, but just looked too masculine. Parents on other teams complained at games and kept making accusations. I don't know how they handled it but I assume eventually they must have had something on file and ready because it was so consistent. I think about her so much now. It must be so much more common these days, like, have we learned nothing from the harms bullying has done?
@secretsloth @futurebird I have a friend whose daughter is over 6 feet (as are both her parents) who got it constantly. The school actually tried to make her use a different restroom to stop the complaints. It was awful.
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The vast majority of people who will be impacted by trans bans in sports will be little girls with short hair or arms that are "too muscular."
It will also mean that when a woman is good at her sport the disgusting grumbling and whispering about "may she is he" gets taken more seriously.
This happened with Paula Radcliffe for running marathons too fast. If it helps you to think of a white cis woman being the victim of this.
Of course little black girls will take the brunt of this. As ever.
@futurebird Fundamentally, it seems strange (and misguided) that sports is to be one of the very few areas that still tries to put people in just two boxes, while we now know that sex and gender is much more diverse than we would have guessed just a few decades ago.
Why not dump the whole concept of men/women sport and use other kinds of classes? In boxing, there are weight classes. Why not similar classes in other sports? For running, classes could be based on leg length, for example.
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@semitones @futurebird He was lying by omission anyway. Thomas was a highly ranked swimmer before she started transitioning. The 250 rank came after beginning hormones but before she was allowed to compete as a woman.
"During her freshman year, Thomas recorded a time of eight minutes and 57.55 seconds in the 1,000-yard freestyle that ranked as the sixth-fastest national men's time..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_Thomas@hydropsyche @futurebird Knowing this person, I don't think they knew this information and chose to admit it. They probably only heard the unfavorable part of the story to begin with.
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@futurebird Fundamentally, it seems strange (and misguided) that sports is to be one of the very few areas that still tries to put people in just two boxes, while we now know that sex and gender is much more diverse than we would have guessed just a few decades ago.
Why not dump the whole concept of men/women sport and use other kinds of classes? In boxing, there are weight classes. Why not similar classes in other sports? For running, classes could be based on leg length, for example.
@futurebird so, in running competitions, tall people with long legs compete against other people with long legs and short-legged people compete with other short-legged people, independent of sex and gender.
How these classes are defined exactly would need some research, this could include body features but also hormone levels or lung capacity or whatever.
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@secretsloth @futurebird I have a friend whose daughter is over 6 feet (as are both her parents) who got it constantly. The school actually tried to make her use a different restroom to stop the complaints. It was awful.
@hydropsyche @futurebird that's unforgivable. It shouldn't matter! If the answer is to make restrooms into non shared spaces, which maybe they should be, just, like, maybe we should all get a little more privacy in there? Then *that* should be the solution. Convert bathrooms into single occupancy spaces, period, end of. Nobody gets to be the genital police. Areas that bathing suits cover are private. One elementary school lesson that carries through to this day.
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@futurebird Fundamentally, it seems strange (and misguided) that sports is to be one of the very few areas that still tries to put people in just two boxes, while we now know that sex and gender is much more diverse than we would have guessed just a few decades ago.
Why not dump the whole concept of men/women sport and use other kinds of classes? In boxing, there are weight classes. Why not similar classes in other sports? For running, classes could be based on leg length, for example.
Women's sport clubs were created because men didn't want women playing with them. "No Girls Allowed" but it's grown men basically. So women made their own clubs. When you have these vast sexist barriers in access, in education, in cultural expectations just learning the rules of a sport and getting practice can become difficult.
And at some point why deal with people who are rude and don't want you around when you could be doing the sport with other women?
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@hydropsyche @futurebird Knowing this person, I don't think they knew this information and chose to admit it. They probably only heard the unfavorable part of the story to begin with.
@semitones @futurebird That's what social media and generative AI have done to people. Nobody bothers to actually research anything for themselves. They report as truth what somebody said on Facebook or what ChatGPT told them. It takes two minutes to read Lia Thomas's Wikipedia article, a few more minutes if you want to click through to the sources and learn even more.
It's not hard to be well informed. But it's so damn easy to just repeat easy lies that support your bigotry.
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@futurebird so, in running competitions, tall people with long legs compete against other people with long legs and short-legged people compete with other short-legged people, independent of sex and gender.
How these classes are defined exactly would need some research, this could include body features but also hormone levels or lung capacity or whatever.
@futurebird the point is, these should be classes that are based on body features that are relevant for the actual sports discipline, not just two classes (male/female) based on one genetic sex marker, which in general will not mean much for that particular sport.
In practically areas of life, we don't decide by gender if somebody is suited for a job or not, but by other criteria.
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@futurebird Fundamentally, it seems strange (and misguided) that sports is to be one of the very few areas that still tries to put people in just two boxes, while we now know that sex and gender is much more diverse than we would have guessed just a few decades ago.
Why not dump the whole concept of men/women sport and use other kinds of classes? In boxing, there are weight classes. Why not similar classes in other sports? For running, classes could be based on leg length, for example.
@StephanMatthiesen @futurebird
Men would never go for that. Can you imagine them losing to a woman in their top sport? -
Women's sport clubs were created because men didn't want women playing with them. "No Girls Allowed" but it's grown men basically. So women made their own clubs. When you have these vast sexist barriers in access, in education, in cultural expectations just learning the rules of a sport and getting practice can become difficult.
And at some point why deal with people who are rude and don't want you around when you could be doing the sport with other women?
I would like to see all "men's only" sports clubs allow women in if those women want to be there and if they meet the entry conditions. After several decades of that maybe we could decide if we still need "women's sports"
Every now and then some little midwestern girl wants to play football and so she joins the "boy's team" and then there are news articles worrying about it.
This keeps happening because girls are generally told flat out "no you can't do this"
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@StephanMatthiesen @futurebird
Men would never go for that. Can you imagine them losing to a woman in their top sport?As long as this is true we will have "women's spots" it's really that simple.
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Women's sport clubs were created because men didn't want women playing with them. "No Girls Allowed" but it's grown men basically. So women made their own clubs. When you have these vast sexist barriers in access, in education, in cultural expectations just learning the rules of a sport and getting practice can become difficult.
And at some point why deal with people who are rude and don't want you around when you could be doing the sport with other women?
@futurebird true, but that seems to me a whole other issue than the computational rules of professional sports competitions.
Related but separate issue. Of course one could still have safe spaces. And bullying and rude behavior should be banned no matter where it occurs.
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As long as this is true we will have "women's spots" it's really that simple.
@futurebird @StephanMatthiesen
Exactly. -
R relay@relay.publicsquare.global shared this topic
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@semitones @futurebird That's what social media and generative AI have done to people. Nobody bothers to actually research anything for themselves. They report as truth what somebody said on Facebook or what ChatGPT told them. It takes two minutes to read Lia Thomas's Wikipedia article, a few more minutes if you want to click through to the sources and learn even more.
It's not hard to be well informed. But it's so damn easy to just repeat easy lies that support your bigotry.
@hydropsyche @futurebird add to that that we are all overworked, busy, and addicted to social media. Who's going to fact check something that sounds plausible according to their worldview, and isn't that important to them personally?
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@futurebird true, but that seems to me a whole other issue than the computational rules of professional sports competitions.
Related but separate issue. Of course one could still have safe spaces. And bullying and rude behavior should be banned no matter where it occurs.
The vast gaps in the "professional" levels grow out of the segregation and exclusion of girls in amateur clubs and local ventures where it really shouldn't matter as much.
