Starmer had previously refused to state whether trans women like Lia Thomas should be allowed to compete in women’s sport amid accusations from Harry Potter author JK Rowling that his party could “no longer be counted on to defend women’s rights”.

Ah, so this is what the Labour party is designed to do: make billionaire feel better about imaginary threats from minority groups.

  • Simmy@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    9 months ago

    Can someone explain to me how, cis women are able to compete fairly with trans women?

    • odmroz [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      I think it's not a big enough problem to care abt. It's literally just a conservative wedge issue so people get up in arms about trans women.

      Besides, sports governing bodies already have criteria about what biology is allowed to compete. There have been many times that even masculine cis women have fallen under their scrutiny for having hormone profiles that give them too much of an advantage. I don't know why this topic gets dragged out onto the public square. (Except I do, and it's GOP strategy.) It's like if the entire country started panicking about swimmers having suits that are too high-tech. Who gives a fuck.

    • shitholeislander [none/use name]
      ·
      9 months ago

      it doesn't really matter when we are being murdered by the state and by fascists in the street, is the point. politicians jumping on the bandwagon to shit on us like this is cruel opportunism that helps get more of us killed.

    • porcupine@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      Can someone explain to me how, cis women are able to compete fairly with trans women?

      cis women can compete fairly by not cheating to have their opponents disqualified

    • KurtVonnegut [comrade/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      9 months ago

      No sport is fair. Literally NO sport is fair.

      People under six feet can't play in the NFL. Is it fair? No. It's sports.

      There have been cis-gendered women (usually black) who have been disqualified on suspicion of being transgender because their bodies naturally produce high levels of testosterone. Should black women be banned from sports to make competitions more "fair" for white women? Should they do a DNA test before every race and apply handicaps based on individual genes? Sports are not fair. Never have been.

    • Chump [he/him]
      ·
      9 months ago

      https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/55/11/577 Here you go. Tl/dr after two years of hormone therapy it appears to be a wash. Trans women were still faster on average than cis women, but trans men could now do more sit ups on average than cis men.

      • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]
        ·
        9 months ago

        I wonder if those additional sit-ups on average can be attributed to trans men being much shorter than cis-men on average. They can probably do more pushups as well because of that same attribute.

    • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]
      ·
      9 months ago

      A lot of it depends on the sport. Track and Field is a hotbed for this issue and the IAAF gave out their criteria for trans athletes that I think is reasonable. Trans athletes haven’t ever dominated the sport at the top levels and I don’t think they will be anytime soon. There’s hundreds of trans athletes that don’t get past the high school level for every single trans athlete that finds success at the elite level.

      The sport has historically had issues with intersex athletes from Africa and the Soviet Union that have led to controversial decisions.