Community Rules
You must post before you leave
Be nice. Assume others have good intent (within reason).
Block or ignore posts, comments, and users that irritate you in some way rather than engaging. Report if they are actually breaking community rules.
Use content warnings and/or mark as NSFW when appropriate. Most posts with content warnings likely need to be marked NSFW.
Most 196 posts are memes, shitposts, cute images, or even just recent things that happened, etc. There is no real theme, but try to avoid posts that are very inflammatory, offensive, very low quality, or very "off topic".
Bigotry is not allowed, this includes (but is not limited to): Homophobia, Transphobia, Racism, Sexism, Abelism, Classism, or discrimination based on things like Ethnicity, Nationality, Language, or Religion.
Avoid shilling for corporations, posting advertisements, or promoting exploitation of workers.
Proselytization, support, or defense of authoritarianism is not welcome. This includes but is not limited to: imperialism, nationalism, genocide denial, ethnic or racial supremacy, fascism, Nazism, Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, etc.
Avoid AI generated content.
Avoid misinformation.
Avoid incomprehensible posts.
No threats or personal attacks.
No spam.
Moderator Guidelines
Trans women athletes rule
This community is not a place to debate the participation of trans women in sports.
Here's a digestible video on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flSS1tjoxf0
Long story short the entire subject is being pushed by right wing lobby organizations to get people riled up about trans people and secure votes for the right. That's it. Do not fall for their bullshit.
I haven't watched John Oliver's video on the subject yet but if I recall correctly, trans athletes don't even tend to place first in their own divisions. So the whole idea of them being "roided up naturally" is just plain silly. It's all just a right wing fantasy built to divide the left and supercharge conservatives on election days.
They've been allowed to participate in the Olympics for over 20 years, and no Trans athlete has ever won a medal.
Yeah, its called 'hiding your power level' and obviously a conspiracy to keep our precious sweet girls out of sports and stop creepy dudes from raping them! Its all a pedophile conspiracy!
Im not projecting! No projection! No projection! You're projection!
So anyway I'm the new genital inspector for this school district, to keep your kids safe from playing with any trans people. No I can't always be sure with just a visual check, 'unfortunately'. Yes we have to check before and after every game, in case of gay changelings.
Don't worry, you can trust me; im church certified.
Ayup. Pretty famously there's a swimmer that became a conservative activist named Riley Gaines. She was radicalised because she tied for fifth place with a trans woman named Lia Thomas in the NCAA. I think she was mainly just salty because she had to hold the sixth place trophy while Lia held the fifth place one during the photoshoot afterwards. Lia did go on to come first in a different event at the same meet (Edit: that Riley didn't even compete in), but that just goes to show that she had a favoured event that she was best at, like almost all swimmers.
For what it's worth, Riley said that the reason she was radicalised was, and I quote from wikipedia:
In 2023, Gaines said that Thomas shared locker room space with her while still intact with "male genitalia".
Which is just inane. It's not like someone with a vagina can't sexually assault someone else with a vagina, having a penis doesn't make that easier.
Yeah, it's pretty fucked up rhetoric that feels like it's making people less safe in two ways: it builds the impression that people with vaginas don't assault people, and it treats penises (and the people who have them) as inherently dangerous. Bioessentialism is gross on so many levels
Not to mention if these fuckers weren't making it so goddamn difficult to get GA surgery, then maybe she wouldn't have had to have been hanging dong in the locker room. I am quite confident that's not something she does because she wants to.
Eh, some of us do choose not to get surgeries. Dilation is hard work!
Do trans athletes even exist in a statistically significant number to even warrant the conversation in the first place? I think I've only ever even heard of a trans athlete in SNL skits and shit like that. Granted, I don't pay attention to sports in general.
Hit the nail on the head right there. Tempest in a teacup. That's their bread and butter. Hyper focus on something.. then, piss and moan about it non stop. I honestly don't understand how anyone listens to these professional whiners. What a waste of oxygen.
Yeah the motive is revealed in the methods. Conservatives never propose legislation that specifically addresses any advantage trans women have, instead opting for blanket bans. The science shows that trans women have very little if any advantage in sports, and in my sports we're actually at a competitive disadvantage. Hell, even the chuddiest of chuds could realize that trans women certainly can't have an advantage in all sports. Do trans women have an advantage in women's gymnastics? Have you seen the type of bodies that excel in that sport?
I would be open to conversations of sports fairness if they came from a place of honest good faith, but they don't. The default stance should be equality first, with restrictions only introduced when absolutely necessary. Is it possible there's some sport that trans women have some massive advantage in? Well trans women should quickly dominate that sport's upper echelons. If you find such a sport, then maybe we can have the conversation about fairness. But even then, it should be limited to just what is absolutely necessary to ensure fairness, nothing more. For example, maybe some handicap system would be appropriate for an individual sport. But even then, such intervention should only be done if there is some enormous unfair advantage that trans women are systematically demonstrating.
Instead, we just get bigots that talk about a trans girl "stealing" their spot in a sports competition, as if she doesn't have the exact same right to compete as any other girl. It's fundamentally about devaluing the humanity of trans people all together. Trans identities aren't to be respected, they're to be tolerated and humored at best, persecuted at worst. It's no different than the same instincts that kept sports racially segregated for generations.
Considering roller derby has been fully inclusive for years and hasn't seen any sort of advantage play out, I find it unlikely it'll show up anywhere
And they are under represented. I don't recall the numbers but the percentage of trans people in the overall population is much higher than among athletes
Good to know. If I choose to change instances I’ll go to this one.
Transfemmes have every right to participate in sports that match their gender.
Sports divisions kinda need to be overhauled anyway. Would be nice to have it based on the actual physical factors that affect a human's performance in a specific sport, instead of just 2 groups for everything with blurry definitions and a massive overlap in terms of said performance.
Yeah, just stick with weight classes.
Weight, or muscle mass %, or reaction speed, or stamina, or whatever makes sense in the context of a specific competition. I'm neither a sports person nor an expert on human anatomy, but surely there are better ways to do it than what we have now.
Or something analogous depending on the thing. Weight classes in shooting or long jump seems off.
More weight obviously means that you can push the bullet faster
Did not consider, am not a sports doer.
Paralympics has such a system kinda. We could extend that system to the point where it includes people nowadays forced into "Olympic Games" or what ever they are called
Trans mascs too
"the only sport i have an unfair advantage in over you is sumo wrestling, Bethany."
Sumo is really the ultimate fair sport. There are no weight classes. Very few rules (setting aside the unwritten Japanese cultural traditions).
Watching sumo, you quickly learn why every other fighting sport has weight classes.
does that make it a fair sport or a really unfair sport? also I saw a YouTube video something along the lines of "where's the glory" in the thumbnail, it was REALLY interesting
It's the difference between equality and equity.
https://thestandard.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/equality-equity-fence.png
Would that not make it a fairly rich person's game? Their calorie intake is like 20,000 calories. Throw in the ability to train and eat while being able to afford that, Id find it hard for most people
I think many high level competitive sports are a rich man's game.
Behind a lot of athletes (from automotive to sports combat), are a sponsor or "team" that handles a lot of the talents needs and training.
Still, the only way I could afford 20k calories daily would be gas station grub and cheap sugary booze.
I was saddened to learn that professional long distance runners have a team who sign up for the race with them and run in front of them in formation to reduce drag. Marathon running seemed like the very purest form of sport where it was about nothing beyond your ability to run fast for a long time, but money found a way to make it this complicated team game where solo runners now have something like a 3'30" disadvantage at the top level.
at that point we should just actually realize Dark Olympics, just allow every assistance you can get, go wild.
Joke's on you: All sports at basically all levels are a rich person's game.
Luck is just the culmination of one's self-compounding privilege.
Written by The Chaser?
It's like the Australian equivalent of The Onion.
Earth is stupid.
