Transgender man wins women's 100 yd and 400 yd freestyle races.

In case it got missed in the new page.

How many NCAA Division 1 Championship Finals did Will Thomas compete in?

Interesting move by DeSantis

Fair play for the measured response, credit where it’s due 😁 It’s an interesting point you raise about equestrian sports because there’s an ongoing debate over whether or not they will continue to be recognised by the IOC as an Olympic sport, given they are accessible only by a tiny minority of people who have the resources to be able to participate in the sport in the first place, and it truly is an horrendously expensive sport - my son recently has taken to it like a duck to water after years of me trying to steer him in the direction of rugby, hurling, swimming, etc. I don’t mind supporting him, I’m in the fortunate position that I can, but I just wish he’d developed a passion for a less expensive hobby! 😂

I think this boils down to a battle of ideas over "identity". You want to define the category of woman in sport to include anyone who identifies as a woman. I'm not a woman myself, so this is not my battle primarily. But, if women want to maintain their space in sport for themselves, then they are going to have to fight for it, because that's really all it is, a fight over definitions and the meaning of words.

From an outside perspective, outside of collegiate level sports in the US that is, I can understand why it might look like it boils down to a battle over definitions and meanings of words. But that’s not the reality of it, that’s simply the way it’s being portrayed by some people who are keen to maintain the status quo. Why do they want to maintain the status quo? Well, collegiate sports in the US is a $19 Billion dollar industry, annually. That’s right - BILLION, and the athletes themselves see very little of that money (until a recent case which determined that athletes may receive an income from their likeness being used) -

https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/25236/ncaa-athletic-department-revenue/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Collegiate_Athletic_Association_v._Alston

And in spite of having lost the case, the NCAA still manages to make themselves look like they give a shyte about the athletes and fairness and all the rest of it in sports -

https://www.ncaa.org/news/2021/6/30/ncaa-adopts-interim-name-image-and-likeness-policy.aspx

The sponsorships and so on are not an income for the athletes as such, they are an investment, and that sponsorship is only available to an elite few. It wouldn’t make any sense for sponsors to associate themselves with losers, in the same way as the IOC income from broadcasting rights is in the region of four billion (there’s that word again) dollars from American broadcasters like NBC, and an additional $7.5 billion from NBC in 2014, and again the athletes see very little of that income, and only the elite of the elite, are sponsored by brands who don’t wish for their brand to be associated with losers, never mind athletes who will never be seen by an audience of three billion people.

I’m trying to put it in context for you because this isn’t just about dictionary definitions or ‘science says this’ or any of the rest of it. It’s not even about laws and organisations arbitrary rules which individual States, sports organisations and even at the level of the President of the US who can issue Executive Orders on a whim (Obama included protection from gender and sex discrimination in Title 7, Trump issued an EO to reverse it, Biden issued an EO to reverse Trumps EO… you can see how it flip flops depending upon who’s in Office), it’s about maintaining the status quo which it’s greatest beneficiaries regard as entirely fair, to them at least… vs a mounting challenge to the status quo from the people who are benefiting very little from it, being joined by people who are being completely excluded from benefiting from it at all.

It’s about people who were never represented gaining equal respect and recognition and status as the tiny minority of people who are benefiting the most from the current status quo. Naturally, the people who are benefiting the most will play the victim and portray themselves as being under attack, but arguing to be regarded as being of equal status, to put an end to the flip-flopping fcukwittery over their legal status is not attacking anyone. That’s why the policies and laws needs to change, even if they’re forced to do it through gritted teeth, because they really, really don’t want to!

The dissent is gaining momentum, and it’s not just people who are transgender are arguing for recognition and representation, it’s a growing number of people who has ever known how it felt to be unfairly treated and discriminated against in order to uphold and maintain the status quo which was founded by a minority of people based upon some fairly shìtty beliefs about their own superiority over other people - beliefs that were never supported by science, beliefs that still aren’t supported by science, and trying to maintain that science supports their beliefs is doing nothing more than promoting pseudoscientific nonsense, because the “scientific evidence” to support their theories just doesn’t stand up to critical examination. It has as much legitimacy as Lisa Littman’s “scientific research”, which has been widely condemned for it’s perpetuating pseudoscientific nonsense -

https://aninjusticemag.com/what-parents-dont-know-study-reveals-fatal-flaw-of-rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria-c7cd95030c24

Here is a link to the swimming section in the Sports forum on Boards: https://www.boards.ie/categories/swimming

i could be missing something but a brief look at the first few pages of that sub forum had nothing about female swimming. Why the page after page here regarding a race won by a transgender woman?

the only real argument these days when it comes to transgender these days is competitive sport. So if it’s nothing to do with sport and you have no interest in sport…then what is it that you don’t like about aparticular human being?

im curious to know if transgender people were banned from competitive sport (that you admit that you have no interest in) what else would you want them excluded from that you have no interest in?

Sure I know you disagree and wish to apply your own standards as if they’re worth anything, when Irish and international law says otherwise. I know lots of people like that who wish to apply their own standards to other people and pretend there’s any conflict of rights when in reality, there really isn’t - the same standards of protection from discrimination and prohibition from practicing discrimination apply to everyone regardless of their sex, gender or their own personal beliefs about either concept.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion and that should be respected. But at the end of the day the data regarding the impact of transgender athletes on sport is inconclusive https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.verifythis.com/amp/article/news/verify/sports-verify/trans-woman-athlete-advantage-inconclusive-bans-harmful/536-49343f8d-12e2-4c90-84aa-271491ac4dce

Where female sports is used as a stick to isolate and discriminate against a minority group, and let’s face it is the main way to do so based on unfounded opinion then it is unfair and unwarranted.

There is a side to this debate I don't think has been touched on before and that is...the fans.

Pro sport isn't something that exists in isolation. Pro sport wouldn't exist without the spectators, the fans, whether in swimming they be armature or casual swimmers themselves, or, like many pro sports, they are armchair viewers, and have never participated in the sport they enjoy to watch on the telly in their lives themselves.

So, when ppl say, oh your not motivated by 'caring' for women's sport, rather trans-phobia, they are ignoring the fact there are those who do care from their own personal interest. Literally that means, if a fan thinks a competitor has an advantage, then that affects their enjoyment of the sport, as a spectator, even an armchair viewer.

So, it's not so much they 'care' or need to care about women's sport, it's more they care about what they are observing from their own perspective. 

Of course it's desperately hard to make a completely level playing field when it comes to any sport. Say in Snooker a taller person has an advantage because they don't have to use the rest as often which makes a pot much more difficult. Or a Left handed Tennis player who has an advantage because the right handed players don't usually play against a left hander, and the Left hander almost always plays a right hander. The fact one is left handed per se has nothing to do with making them a better player than anyone else. It's not so much the lefter has an an advantage, but the right hander has a disadvantage when they play a left hander.

But the thing is, all these kinds of physical differences are accepted. By and large noone complains about these differences. Neither the competitors nor the spectators. 

A person born male playing with women is a different thing altogether, and I can't see spectators ever accepting it, from their own selfish view you could say. But it's still not trans-phobia.

which pro sport are you referring to and is there any evidence that transgender competitors have an edge in that sport that is not levelled by the hormone count eligibility requirements?

and with regards to fans, why is there literally no posts about this in the female athletics/swimming thread from fans but pages of it from posters who literally say that they have no interest in female sport?

A person born a man playing with women is a different thing altogether, and I can't see spectators ever accepting it, from their own selfish view you could say. But it's still not trans-phobia.

It’s not any different from anything else that’s different. It’s not any different from any other accusations made by both fans and rival competitors that their opponent has an unfair advantage.

It’s entirely from a persons own selfish view, and when they try to distance themselves from their bigotry by claiming that not only do they get to define what constitutes womanhood, they also get to define what constitutes transphobia, that too is entirely from their own selfish view. If a person is motivated to exclude participants because they are transgender, and introduce measures which are intended to disproportionately apply to people who are transgender, then people are going to see it for what it is and make their own determinations of what is motivating that person’s behaviour.

Apart from any of that, it’s not the fans who determine anyone’s right to participate in sports. Fans of any sport are fans of the sport, not just the players. Plenty of people support players for one reason or another, and there is no shortage of support for people who are transgender who wish to participate in sports in accordance with their gender.

It’s one of the reasons why Lia Thomas did what they did, in spite of knowing the backlash of public outrage they would receive for doing so, because they wanted children who are transgender and younger transgender athletes to know they’re not alone -

“I just want to show trans kids and younger trans athletes that they’re not alone,” she says at the coffeehouse. “They don’t have to choose between who they are and the sport they love.”

https://www.si.com/.amp/college/2022/03/03/lia-thomas-penn-swimmer-transgender-woman-daily-cover

Similar sentiments were expressed by Tom Daley when he made it known to the world that he was gay -

“When I was young, I always felt like the one that was alone and different and didn’t fit in, and there was something about me that was always never going to be as good as what society wanted me to be,” he said.

https://olympics.com/en/news/tom-daley-sends-rallying-cry-to-lgbtq-youth-you-are-not-alone

For some people these things aren’t important, for other people they are, and it can lead to the gathering of support of a whole new legion of fans of not just the athletes in question, but an interest in the sport where they know there is a place where they fit in.