Caitlyn Jenner dismisses criticism of trans athlete stance: I ‘had the balls to stand up for’ women in sports.”

"I don’t think biological boys should compete in women’s sports – we have to protect women’s sports," Jenner told The Daily Mail. "That’s the bottom line."

In the interview, Jenner specifically addressed controversial trans female swimmer Lia Thomas of the University of Pennsylvania, questioning how Thomas could enjoy winning against women.

"I don’t see how you can be happy beating other girls under these circumstances," Jenner said. "You have to have a sense of personal responsibility. You can still enjoy sports but not play at a competitive level, right?"

https://www.foxbangor.com/national-news/caitlyn-jenner-dismisses-criticism-of-trans-athlete-stance-i-had-the-balls-to-stand-up-for-women-in-sports/

"men will always be better than women at everything ~ including being women" ~ caitlyn jenner

I want to see Caitlin pose next to a bowl of Wheaties.

Do you think the NCAA losing its marbles is symptomatic of a wider trend?

Babylon Bee reports that am NCAA woman is being investigated for the use of performance-enhancing tentacles. Then there's this:

https://babylonbee.com/news/after-watching-lia-thomas-little-girl-adjusts-dreams-to-just-winning-second-place-at-olympics

Just have transgender sports. Problem solved. Unless that includes women who identify as male.

But how would you know? DNA checks on IDs? Then how do you know those are accurate? On the spot checks? What about intersex females who XY androgen intolerant and don't have a womb or cervix? This gets silly.

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/valentina-sampaio-sports-illustrated-first-transgender-model



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2022 06:12PM by anybody.

I agree, they already have the down syndrome Olympics, there should be the trans Olympics. It's the same dilemma.

you should look up the All-Steroids Olympics as 1 of the old SNL skits...pretty funny, but not very poignant point for today's athletes...who are very committed and determined in their sports...some just can't figure out which team to compete for..

Question...is there any biological woman who identifies AND has transitioned to being a man...competing on a Men's team of anything??

Just curious...things that make you go..."Hmmmm..."

...but very poignant point for today's athletes

Why not just eliminate separate gender sports? Have women compete with men, head to head? Do like golf and let women T off from the women’s T’s.
Or give the men a handicap, like golf.
If they’re racing, give the men a 3 handicap so if they don’t beat the women by 3 seconds or more, they don’t win.
Or in wrestling, if a man pins a girl, he has to be a class lighter than her and pin her for 6 seconds instead of 3.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2022 06:42PM by schrodingerscat.

War on Christmas v 3.1 (which is to say, a manufactured crisis)

See also CRT (WoC v 4.0], and the building renamers (WoC v 5.0, lib division)

V 3.0 was all the “bathroom bills” from 5 years ago. Remember when that was deemed Very Important?

Ukraine is a real crisis. This other stuff is just noise.

I remember when East Germany was a communist country, and the female athletes often had scary huge muscle development. If you took them off the juice for two years, would it be a level playing field? I tend to think not.

Because it can't possibly be that our historic concepts of sport are biased.

::applause::

Although you won't be seeing any trans women going into women's gymnastics. Being 4'11" is an advantage there. I've wondered whether mens and womens gymnastics events are different because head to head competition in the same event might damage male egos. I see no reason why women couldn't, for example, do parallel bars.

While this is not a trans issue, you will notice that nobody ever bothers to point out that statistically, women make better jet fighter pilots than men. Better fine motor control, faster reflexes, and smaller and lighter (handles high G forces better), all of which are pluses in a jet fighter.

Sidebar as long as I am on the subject - why smaller and lighter is better for many physical tasks: larger animals have stronger muscles than smaller ones, but muscle strength increases slower than weight. This is why a chipmunk can literally bound up a tree. An elephant is vastly stronger, but cannot simultaneously get all four feet in the air at once, even for a split second (short of lying down, or falling off a cliff).

While it is less obvious in humans, you will notice that it is the relatively short guards in the NBA that tend to be faster and can change direction on a dime. The centers, not so much. Big has its advantages, but so does small, one of which is a very high strength to weight ratio. Hence the 4'11" gymnasts. Even male gymnasts tend to be on the short side. Same reason.

We now return you to your regular recovery programming.

Female gymnasts used to be taller. They had an elegance of line that today's smaller gymnasts lack. But the emphasis on tricks won out. Probably the same thing has been happening in figure skating.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2022 01:28PM by summer.

BoJ, very interesting about women jet fighter pilots.

I would love to see chimps compete in college gymnastics.

Watch this little guy tackle the Ninja Warrior course: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JWFbDHaEGEg



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2022 09:02PM by bradley.

Why is handicapping used in some sports? Why not more sports?

"Handicap, in sports and games, method of offsetting the varying abilities or characteristics of competitors in order to equalize their chances of winning."



Would be nice if there was a level playing field in life. It is a myth. I like those who obtain their goals simply because they personally wanted to achieve and aren't interested in where they stack up comparatively.

Gold stars, Gold medals, and Gold statues, are for the needy. I am very very tired of the concept of "winners". But this is America and winning is everything. I suppose by the next olympics we will have iPhone texting competitions. Because we really really need to know who is the fastest. It's so important. Who will be the winner?

"Why is handicapping used in some sports? Why not more sports?"

--Tonya Harding

hahahahah you are evil

I just thought she deserved proper attribution.

We're talking about a very, very small subset of people for one thing -- less than two percent of the population -- and there are protocols in place for hormonal levels for competition.

Suppose you never knew their background? There's a reason why Venus and Serena Williams are the most drug-tested athletes on Earth. Do you question the background of everyone in the WNBA just because they super tall and are an even smaller subset of the female population? What about intersex athletes? Do you ban them too? It turns out that it's not so easy to draw a sharp line to determine just who is and who is not "female" for sport.

Another thing is that in the 21st Century, more and more parents are allowing their children to transition early before puberty, and they will be virtually indistinguishable from genetic females and in future decades, a person's genetic provenance will not matter to anyone except medical doctors.


Are you going to "ban" this girl too?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transgender-athletes-rights-rebekah-bruesehoff-14-year-old/



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2022 03:01PM by anybody.

>>There's a reason why Venus and Serena Williams are the most drug-tested athletes on Earth.

I doubt it. Any athlete in an Olympic sport is drug tested after any major national or international competition. They have to report for testing within a certain time frame after their race or event. I've watched some of them take that walk.

You are entitled to your opinion, but that doesn't mean others can't have a different opinion from you.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-anti-doping-agency-might-unfairly-targeting-serena-williams-220317183.html

Williams tested more than twice as often as other American women

No other American female player has been tested out of competition more than twice in 2018. Venus Williams has been tested twice; Coco Vandeweghe twice; Sloane Stephens once; Madison Keys once; Danielle Collins zero times; Alison Riske zero times; Bernarda Pera zero times; and Taylor Townsend zero times.

Williams has also been tested more than the top five male players.

Deadspin presented this information to Williams’ team and USADA. A spokeswoman for Williams confirmed that there is definite suspicion of targeting from her camp:

“Over her 23-year career in tennis, Serena Williams has never tested positive for any illegal substance despite being tested significantly more than other professional tennis players, both male and female – in fact, four times more frequently than her peers. She has vocally supported, respected and complied with USADA testing throughout her entire career. While she willingly continues to submit to testing, there is absolutely no reason for this kind of invasive and targeted treatment.”



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/2022 12:42AM by anybody.

I can't speak about tennis, but again, athletes in Olympic sports must be available for out-of-event testing as well. During their years competing they must file travel plans well in advance. They need to be able to report for testing within a certain time frame no matter where they are. It goes with the territory. It's not just Serena, it's all of them.

What a clown show.

I figure liberals excel at lawn signs and bumpetstickers. Conservatives' forte is memes.

"men will always be better than women at everything ~ including being women" ~ caitlyn jenner

What a load of crap.
Try a male gymnast on the Balance Beam.
Put a male and female with their back touching the wall and ask them to touch their toes.

Women win every time.

Men on the balance beam? The family jewels would get smashed…repeatedly! Not looking for a fight…just an observation.

If your minds and ears are closed, no use talking.

anybody Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If your minds and ears are closed, no use talking.

What misconception?
Mind and ears opened.
Instead of insults why not try explaining yourself?

and I've tried to explain the medical and scientific difficulties of gender determination in sport, not to mention just how impractical it would be to have "bathroom police."

I've also mentioned how biased and racist that this can be which is why I mentioned Serena Williams and intersex people like Caster Semenya.

I've also tried to explain the rarity of the situation (less than two percent of the population) and that very, very few of these people are athletes to begin with and that things will become even more complicated in the near future as there are more and more parents who have recognized their children and allowed them to transition at a young age,

I haven't mentioned the absurdity of forcing trans males to compete against girls just because they were assigned female at birth as happened in Texas and Oklahoma.

So, to sum up:

1. It's not Biblical
2. It's not just a matter of looking at parts
3. Even though there are medical standards, bias is still a factor



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/2022 08:20AM by anybody.

anybody Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> and I've tried to explain the medical and
> scientific difficulties of gender determination
> in sport, not to mention just how impractical it
> would be to have "bathroom police."

I don’t have a dog in this fight, even though I started this thread, mainly because I love irony and there’s nothing more ironic than Caitlyn Jenner claiming she had the balls to call out trans women competing in women’s sports, when she is the one who chose to have them surgically removed to become a trans woman and now she wants us all to discriminate against trans women and not allow them to dominate women’s sports?

> I've also mentioned how biased and racist that
> this can be which is why I mentioned Serena
> Williams and intersex people like Caster Semenya.

Biased against blacks? OK.
I thought that was a whole other topic, but I suppose there are overlapping intersections.
>
> I've also tried to explain the rarity of the
> situation (less than two percent of the
> population) and that very, very few of these
> people are athletes to begin with and that things
> will become even more complicated in the near
> future as there are more and more parents who have
> recognized their children and allowed them to
> transition at a young age,

Sure it’s rare, but in the one case of the NCAA Championship swimmer who is dominating at women's swimming, nobody cares about women’s swimming except women swimmers and bigots who are triggered by the thought of a trans woman beating women. I just think it poses a problem for liberals, who want equality, but not at the expense of women getting beat by biological men. It’s a tough problem for liberals to solve because there is no way to make everybody happy. Let trans women compete and Caitlyn Jenner’s not happy. Don’t let them compete and you’ve got yourself a lawsuit!
For conservatives it’s easy. Don’t let them compete. Change the law to ban them from competition.
>
> I haven't mentioned the absurdity of forcing trans
> males to compete against girls just because they
> were assigned female at birth as happened in Texas
> and Oklahoma.
>
> So, to sum up:
>
> 1. It's not Biblical

Who says it is?

> 2. It's not just a matter of looking at parts

Everybody knows that.

> 3. Even though there are medical standards, bias
> is still a factor

I don’t think anybody disagrees with that.

What I think it boils down to.

1. Trans women still maintain an obvious size/strength advantage over biological women, sometimes making it unfair in competitions.

2. Many parents of girls have a HUGE problem with allowing trans girls in the same locker room with their girls, understandably so.

3. Sure there are legitimate cases of trans women athletes wanting to compete in sports, but are their rights to compete more important than other girls rights to speak up about how unfair it is to have to compete against them?

I don’t have a stake in the outcome, I just think it’s an interesting social dilemma I expect to see settled by the courts.

Your misperceptions are patent, you have outmoded assumptions from thirty years ago, it's pointless to argue.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/arts-entertainment/mack-beggs-trans-wrestler-activist/


https://youtu.be/xl3yJyzyp3w


https://www.jamiebruesehoff.com/rebekah

In grammar, three. But you know me, the self-annointed grammar cop.

A man who is smaller than me is still stronger than me.

Kathleen Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> A man who is smaller than me is still stronger
> than me.


This is a good example of a seemingly innocuous statement which could or could not be regarded as biased or bigoted depending on context, so I've decided to respond to it.


Caitlyn Jenner has her own political agenda and makes self-deprecating statements. No need to go into that further.


Now back to Kathleen's statement.


In this context, her statement *could* be regarded as either ignorant or bigoted. Why would I say this?


This entire trans issue -- and it's only an issue in the minds of some cisgendered people -- is an issue of perception. It's very similar to race in America and other places.


Until just a few decades ago, many people viewed race as a binary concept via the hypodescent rule -- something Mormons should be very familiar with. You were regarded as "black" if you had any African ancestry -- no matter what you looked like. Being regarded as black (or Asian or Native for that matter) had so much social stigma that no thought was ever given about white people ever living as black (you might think that I'm talking about Rachel Doelzal, but I'm not -- many recorded cases long before hers in history). In the old South Africa, they actually tried to have legally binding "tests" to find a clear line between African and white European racial characteristics. Even with all that, there are well known examples of white parents giving birth to black children and vice-versa.


Most of the above comments in this thread are ignorant and based on the idea of people playing dress-up like Klinger from the old "MASH" TV show or fetish transvestitism. The reality is very different.


There's a good chance that many of you reading this have either sat next to or been with a trans person in a bathroom or locker room, etc. without knowing. When I say things like this, especially to older people, their first reaction is "impossible, you can always 'tell.'" Well, no, you can't -- not with today's medical treatment -- and there are tall women (I'm really tall, over six feet two) and there are short men (I dated a guy who was five feet four) so you can't just go by that either. It reminds me of stories from the days of segregation, when black girls used to "look" for perceived signs of African ancestry in all-white beauty pageants to see if any of the contestants might have "black" blood in them. You can't just tell, and the body changes enough after two or more years of treatment so you can't.


This is Janet Mock, a prominent author, director, and actress who just so happens to be trans:

https://pagesix.com/2019/02/21/pose-director-janet-mock-divorcing-husband-of-3-years/

How would you know her background if I hadn't mentioned it?


Here's a picture of Mack Beggs, a young trans man who was forced to wrestle girls because he was assigned female at birth and for no other reason:

https://www.outsports.com/2018/2/23/17042524/mack-beggs-wrestling-texas-trans-high-school

He doesn't look or act like a girl, so why would you force him to?


The conflict is in your mind and your perceptions of the world.


Trans girls and women are *female* and trans men and boys are *male* for all social and legal purposes. There are almost none, if not zero, cases on record of cisgendered women being attacked by trans women in intimate settings. It just doesn't happen. It is trans women who are much more likely to be killed or raped by cisgendered men. No hormonally-driven teen boy is going to go through months of psychological evaluation and medical treatment just to go in the girl's locker room. They are much more likely to get a small hidden camera and sneak it in so they can watch on their mobile phones if they wanted to do something like that.



Most people my age and younger don't have a problem with this, and for kids born in the 21st Century, gender fluidity is something they live with as part of their daily lives.


By the time I get to be retirement age, people will look back on this type of discrimination and wonder how could people have made such a big deal about what kind of parts someone was born with.


I'll close with this: You've probably seen or had an older relative call someone "coloured," tried to correct them, tell them that's not acceptable any longer, and they didn't understand why. That's why I'm saying a seemingly benign statement could be construed as offensive depending on the context.


Times change, so either you change with them or get left behind in the past.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/2022 04:55PM by anybody.

My comment was not biased against anyone.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/2022 05:59PM by Kathleen.

No worries. :)

However, you did not consider that my comment "could" be perfectly innocent, and perfectly true (since you have probably never sat next to me either.)

The oversensitivity here is what is amazing.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/2022 06:37PM by Kathleen.

Hope you get that -- not saying that at all :)

Who are you to inform and instruct? Seems a bit arrogant.

Dismissing Kathleen's comment from your soap box in a self important manner did not sit well with me.

so that's why I chose to respond.

I don't like bigotry, racism, bullying, etc, and I'd be the last person on Earth to do that to anyone else.


Most of the comments were so juvenile and crude it really didn't make any sense to try and respond, and when I did try with reason and science, it didn't get through :)


Here's the last thing I'm going to say on this.


Some people may feel lost in a 21st Century world where the sharp dividing lines from the 1950s society no longer have any meaning.


Some people grow up hearing racist or sexist jokes and don't know they are wrong if no one ever calls them on it. Well, that's all I'm trying to do -- just to be that little voice that says "think about what you are saying"...and that's hardly a soapbox.

So, when I see people saying crude LGBTQIA+ comments, yeah, I'm going to say something. I'm not pushy or rude, but I'm not perfect, and I make mistakes. If you want to label me as a SJW, well I guess that's what I am ;)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/21/2022 11:46AM by anybody.

Lia Thomas spent 19 years developing as a man before she started taking female hormones. She dwarfs her fellow high-performing competitors in nearly every way. I have no problem with her identifying as a woman, but IMO she should have been competing with the men, because the majority of her life was spent developing physically as a man.

I really don't care if you consider my attitude "ignorant." That's your opinion. Lia followed the NCAA rules, but that doesn't make those rules fair to the other swimmers. If a transition could begin years earlier, it might be a different story. But the fact remains that Lia spent 19 of her 22 years developing as a man.

Here is a picture of Lia standing next to the 2nd and 3rd place finishers:

https://twitter.com/ByronYork/status/1504780864588292100/photo/1

I used to be a competitive swimmer, and if I had to compete against Lia, I'd be pissed. The issue is of interest to athletes in other sports who may be faced with the same situation.

Did I mention that I don't care about your opinion of me?

You are hardly ignorant, Summer.

I was on the swim team, played volleyball, and they tried making me play basketball -- but I'm a total klutz and I never liked it :)

People think just being a tall girl gives you an unfair advantage -- especially when you are playing against people who are 5'2" or 5'6".

I don't really care about what you think of me either, so I'll just say this:

If someone were "forcing" a lot of male swimmers to become female, I'd be inclined to agree with your viewpoint. But that's not happening. Yeah, she's tall. So was I. But there are other tall female swimmers like me, and Lia has been beaten, so I don't think this is something like East Germany doping people back in the day.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/2022 07:17PM by anybody.

I rarely disagree with you, anybody, but on this one I do. Hormone treatment can neutralize much of the muscular advantage of being male, but the skeletal structure remains the same and leverage makes a difference in most sports and particularly in swimming.

I don't think the relevant issue is whether a country or team is intentionally creating a physical advantage relative to other countries or teams. What matters is the experience of individual athletes. There is nothing the second- and third-place finishers can possibly do to compensate for their sudden, medically-induced, handicap--for a handicap a woman's gender through puberty then becomes.

I've stayed out of the discussion until now because the problem is complex and I don't know what the answer should be. But from my vantage this is profoundly unfair to competitors whose only sin is having been born female.

and, although I could run faster than they could, there's no way I could beat them in boxing, wrestling, etc.


I'm a girl and I heard people mumble the same stuff, freakishly tall, not really fair, and so on. Joseph Goebbels said Jesse Owens won at the Olympics because he was more animal than human.

So what's fair? That's the big question. I only ask that it's done in an objective way that's not bigoted and discriminatory.

https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/12/04/theyre-chasing-us-away-sport/human-rights-violations-sex-testing-elite-women#



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/2022 08:01PM by anybody.

As I said, the problem is complex and I don't know what the answer is. I also understand your point here and in the Williams case: in short, it's not the ability to test as much as the discriminatory application of the tests that matters.

But as some judge once said, "hard cases make bad law," meaning that doing what is right in an exceptional case should not be allowed to ruin things for all the routine cases. In sports, I simply don't see why a six-sigma individual should be accommodated if the result is a rule that discriminates against the 95% of people who represent "normal."

Are there marginal adjustments that should be made to stop the harassment through excessive testing imposed on Williams? Absolutely. How about women (and men) whose bodies produce unusual levels of hormones? Yes. But those aren't really relevant in this instance, where the cost of accommodation is to discomfit the vast majority of athletes who have never done anything "wrong."

The answer can't be to penalize an entire gender for their genes.

Skeletal structure matters whether you like it or not, anybody. So do all the other parts of physiology that you are so willing to overlook as you promote your agenda.

Using yourself as the ultimate proof is very convenient and rather unscientific.

Wow you are so nice and tall. Can I have a couple of inches please? I am the shortest by far even in my extended family by at least three inches. I look like my cousins in Wales but even they are taller! Funny I grew an inch in my 30s making me a whopping 5'3". I am worried about getting older I might get even shorter :( I hate having to ask for help reaching things all the time and even the counters are too high. I am sure there are minuses being tall too. My kid is your height and complains about cars and beds a lot.

and shorter ladies always are asking me for help getting stuff from the top shelves :)

Jeans, long sleeves, shoes, and dealing with rude men are a bit of a problem though...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/21/2022 08:07AM by anybody.

Gee, I wonder why they separate bantamweight, featherweight, heavyweight, etc.? If they are all men, let them compete together, right? Why separate out handicapped men either?

Facetiousness aside, it's beyond me how they can figure out how to be fair for everyone and not offend anyone in so many sports.

"Most people my age and younger don't have a problem with this, and for kids born in the 21st Century, gender fluidity is something they live with as part of their daily lives."

Are people your age and younger for or against unisex locker rooms and showers? As a teenager, I would have loved showering with girls. It could be like in Starship Troopers. Might cure a lot of sexual hangups. Seeing the goods kinda kills the magic.

Now he's beating an Olympic silver medalist. In a previous race he "won," he bragged that he was "just cruising."

To get to this level of competition, an athlete devotes hours of training each day, getting to the pool, gym, rink, or field before sunrise, practicing and training. Often, academics and social life suffer. Families move to place their children in the most competitive leagues, and spend fortunes on specialty coaches, equipment, travel, sports doctors, etc.

And some jerk with both testicles and testosterone comes in and scoops up first place. Chromosomes don't lie. Political and social "scientists" do.

https://youtu.be/02IJ-JIcKNs

So they place an asterisk on his name and ranking? Disgusting.

What a freak show.

To anybody:

Thank you for your thoughts and feelings on this issue. It’s important that people like you do speak up loud and clear, *especially* when you face ignorance, bias and prejudice. I for one have much to learn on this topic, as do many of us. We can’t improve our position without voices like yours, so thank you.

I love sports. I celebrate agon in many of our endeavours as something fundamental to our humanity. Of course there is no such thing as a ‘level playing field’, but that is what we try to create, as close as possible, believing a fair contest is better than an unfair one, both for competitors and spectators alike.

The best thing that happened to sports was to open it up to females. Today it seems inconceivable that anyone once believed that women were physiologically unfit for the marathon distance. Now we are learning that women may be better equipped than men for longer ultras, 100 milers etc. A lot has happened in long distance running between Bobbi Gibb unofficially completing the Boston Marathon in 1966 and Courtney Dauwalter besting the entire field at the Moab 240. And along the way ignorance, bias and prejudice have been ameliorated.

I trust that we will find increasingly better ways of making contests fairer while including more who wish to compete. We get there by hearing voices like yours, so thank you. Try to be patient; try to be understanding; don’t give up on us.

In any event, things will change. I for one am chock-full of all kinds of biases and prejudices, and I am endlessly ignorant. But even I have come a long way on this issue, after being absolutely outraged when Semenya, Niyonsaba and Wambui beat Canada’s Melissa Bishop in the 800m at Rio ‘16. I am improved when people like you speak. Thank you.