this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2024
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To clarify, the pictured poster Caroline Kwan is an ally, not a TERF. The TERFs referred to in the title are the ones ‘protecting a very specific idea of what a woman is’

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (13 children)

I'm so stoked for the future of women rugby. Partially, because it's a very inclusive sport and it inherits a lot from its lore and ethos - with only a few years left until a woman will referee a high profile test game. And partially, because I want to see the same ferocious generic selection applied to female athletes.

Anyways, give it a go - some really good footy. If you're absolutely unaware of it, look up highlights of Portia Woodman.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Inclusive? World Rugby is famously transphobic and exclusionary when it comes to women's rugby...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

Not that it's necessarily a reflection on them today, but rugby union was also one of the last major sports to ban apartheid South Africa. Athletics banned them by '70, cricket tours were being called off from '70, soccer suspended them all the way back in '61, and they weren't allowed in the Olympics from '64. But they were still doing official international rugby union tours as late as '84.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (7 children)

I personally like to descirbe myself as tolerant. Not exactly progressive, but I very much see the struggle some people live with and so I decided that not being hostile to anyone is the least that I can do in case I don't just straight-up support some causes. I had to get this clear, because my opinion doesn't exactly match with the one detailed in the post or at the very least I find fault in it's reasoning.

The problem is that all the "genetic advantages" that make someone a good swimmer for example, are all unrelated traits, that are not really rare in people, it's just that it's quite rare for them to all be present in one person who then also goes off to be a swimmer. Testosterone on the other hand is a single hormone, exceptionally important in becoming an outstanding athlete and for that precise reason it's considered a performance-enhancing drug. If you look at it this way it's not that hard to see the problem.

Being more muscular certainly is an advantage. Being taller also is. Longer arms also are. Lower body-fat percentage also is. Better stamina also is. Better agility also is.

Any boxer you pick randomly should be expected to have one or more of these "genetic advantages", but all of them, resulting from a single condition is quite a different situation. Elevated testosterone levels are a single cause for developing some of the most important traits of a dominating boxer and so someone with such an advantage can't be considered a freak of nature in the same sense that someone like Phelps can be. There isn't a "swimmer hormone" that magically gives you all the advantages in swimming, but there is a "fighter hormone", that does in boxing. I personally don't think that Khelif could be anything other than a women. I just think that her body happens to overproduce a literal PED and that's a problem for anyone who wants to go up against her or those that want to see fights that are more or less determined by technique.

Now for solutions and as far as I see there's only one that doesn't involve excluding her from boxing. Simply put her and anyone with similar conditions in a weight class based on their muscle mass and not their actual body mass. Moving her one weight class up for example would at least mean that her opponents have trained with punches of similar force to her's, something that the lack of seemed to have been a problem for her foes in Paris. She would still have an advantage in terms of speed, but she would pay the price of having less fat for impact absorption. I think that would be a win-win scenario.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

i mean, yeah as far as test goes, it's a PED, but at the end of the day, does it really matter significantly? I'm not sure.

Sometimes people have test so high it's literally impossible to measure, there's no real reason women can't also experience high test either, though high test is also arguably bad.

Sure they might be physically bigger, but the hard to answer question here is if it's any more significant than your average olympic athlete. With how prevalent trans people are (not very) and how common it would be for those trans people to be athletes (even less likely) i'm not sure it's a huge concern or even a significant consideration.

At the end of the day, you're already sampling for the most unusual, and weirdly built people, that's why it's the olympics. Excluding trans people from that seems like it might be a bit more redundant than necessary.

If it's a real concern, proper class weighting would help, that's a valid strategy, but another strategy is to simply have multiple medal winning categories.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

An interesting rant! Cheers

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[–] yamanii 12 points 2 months ago

The Italian just got skill issue'd and conservatives were attracted to it like my cat to a nice steak.

[–] Nuke_the_whales 10 points 2 months ago

Is this even an issue with people? Even my conservative dad went "she was born a woman and is in a women's match, what's the issue" Don't even give the loud idiots a voice. Don't debate facts with them. Just call them idiots and move on.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What do you mean by "TERFs"? Caroline Kwan is a leftist, not a TERF.

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