Transgender athletes back on the agenda

[Wokko]

I'm well aware of all their arguments and lame rhetorical tactics on this topic. They're trash.

The trans activists or feminists? Two sides of the same intersectional coin. No surprise to anyone paying attention that the prog left are starting to eat each other.

[David]

[Wokko]

Fair enough, I'll defer to you as obviously I don't exactly move in RadFem circles

I have noticed a bit of 'strange bedfellows' type thing going on with RadFems and traditionalist conservatives. A bit Churchill/Stalin enemy of my enemy, but still weird.

[David]

[thesoretoothsayer]

[David]

^ Yep, precisely, and I understand that critique. I do think there's a fundamental disjuncture between the concept of gender transition and the second-wave feminist idea of a post-gender society. But it goes without saying that that utopian goal (one that postmodern and third-wave feminists pretty much dispensed with thirty years ago anyway) is a long way from being realised, and it seems to me to be missing the forest for the trees to attack transgender people (many of whom may not subscribe to the same concept of feminism) for buying into the same gender binary that nearly everyone else does. To quote my favourite YouTuber, ContraPoints:

You don't see gender-critical feminists in Kim Kardashian's Instagram comments, like, "Why are you wearing a dress, Kim, you creepy misogynist? You should be abolishing gender, not reinforcing stereotypes designed to oppress women." No, they don't attack the gender expression of people with power and influence; they're all on Twitter harassing some poor, newly out trans women with 200 followers and calling her a "creepy man" and mocking her for being feminine ineptly ... it's almost, like when they say "abolish gender", what they really mean is "abolish trans people".

I think that's my biggest problem with TERFs: they should feel free to make broader structural criticisms about gender by all means and work towards gender abolition, but once they start harassing members of a disadvantaged group and supporting laws that make their lives worse, the only thing they're achieving is a weaponisation of their own utopian project for oppressive ends.

[think positive]

why on earth would you want to abolish gender? thats damn stupid. One in all in?? so no woman on earth every gets a chance of winning anything? not even the kitchen olympics these days!

and i for one hate shared toilets, urinals stink! i have a sensitive nose! not to mention i dont need to be walking past naked dicks - or their penises! yuk

[David]

[stui magpie]

^

I worked for years in a building that only had unisex toilets. They were each set up as a small home bathroom with a dunny and handbasin, total privacy, no urinals, no issues.

That principle would work fine for a restaurant or an office area of 50-60 people, after that it gets a bit space hungry

To scale it up isn't hard, it's just planning and how you use space. Urinals take up less space per user than cubicles, so if you were building a sporting arena you just create 1 room for cubicles and one for the urinal and design them so they'll take the same amount of people at any time.

Mind you, I've also seen women go into the mens toilet at Fishermans warf in San Fran when the womens was out of action, they just walked straight to the cubicle without a sideways glance at the urinals and the blokes didn't fuss about them either

Having said all that, I'll repeat the question I asked earlier as I really don't get all this gender stuff, if someone identifies as non binary and wants to play competitive sport, who do they play against? What competition do they join?

[Pies4shaw]

One of the other 439 or so competitions that will be available.

[David]

Having said all that, I'll repeat the question I asked earlier as I really don't get all this gender stuff, if someone identifies as non binary and wants to play competitive sport, who do they play against? What competition do they join?

It’s a tough question and one I was discussing with a friend myself the other day. I suppose it’s something you’d have to ask individual non-binary people about (I certainly can’t speak for them), but my guess is that they’d either settle for competing with their birth gender, push for a separate competition (which probably isn’t really viable), seek to have women’s sports extended to non-binary participants (there’s some precedent for this happening in other women-only spaces), just sit out gender-segregated competitive sport altogether or seek to abolish gender segregation in sport altogether. I’m guessing different people will give you different answers.

If anyone’s genuinely interested in this topic, here’s an article I found on it:
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mvk3 ... -in-sports

[stui magpie]

OK, second question. Why do we need all these Genders?

I get basic male/female transgender thing, but why can't people just behave the way they want without having to pin a label on it because they don't behave like a stereotypical male/female or follow a defined role?

[David]

I guess it depends what you’re asking. If it’s "why are there people who don’t identify as either male or female", that’s pretty easy to answer: not everybody feels comfortable with the gender binary and some just don’t feel like they identify in any way as male or female. And some, of course, are born literally neither male nor female (i.e. intersex people). I can’t say that I totally understand the desire to go by a "they" pronoun by choice, and do sometimes wonder if it’s just a trend, but I also don’t think it hurts anyone and am happy to respect such people’s preference.

There’s a good (relatively short) video on this question here:

https://youtu.be/36egVNVBqZU

If your question, on the other hand, is why are there supposedly 42 (or however many) genders, then all I can say is ... forget it Jake, it's Tumblr. I don’t take that stuff ("cloudgender", "demigender", etc.) very seriously, and suspect that, at this point, it’s more of a right-wing meme than anything that anyone much in the non-binary community actually believes in.

[stui magpie]

I don't get the problem with the gender binary.

People who think they're the wrong sex I get, people born with mixed bits I get. i don't get people born clearly biologically one sex or the other identifying as something else. Forget role playing, you can be an effeminate male or a masculine female without it being linked to sexual preference , so why do we need all these different boxes for people to put themselves into?

Sexuality should be irrelevant from gender or sex, you're attracted to what you're attracted to

[think positive]

^

I worked for years in a building that only had unisex toilets. They were each set up as a small home bathroom with a dunny and handbasin, total privacy, no urinals, no issues.

That principle would work fine for a restaurant or an office area of 50-60 people, after that it gets a bit space hungry

To scale it up isn't hard, it's just planning and how you use space. Urinals take up less space per user than cubicles, so if you were building a sporting arena you just create 1 room for cubicles and one for the urinal and design them so they'll take the same amount of people at any time.

Mind you, I've also seen women go into the mens toilet at Fishermans warf in San Fran when the womens was out of action, they just walked straight to the cubicle without a sideways glance at the urinals and the blokes didn't fuss about them either

Having said all that, I'll repeat the question I asked earlier as I really don't get all this gender stuff, if someone identifies as non binary and wants to play competitive sport, who do they play against? What competition do they join?

Seriously? your gunna use San fran in his argument!! man im not even sure which way the seals bat!!

yeah ive sneaked into mens too in dire situations, but oh my god the stink! no thanks!