this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2024
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To clarify, the pictured poster Caroline Kwan is an ally, not a TERF. The TERFs referred to in the title are the ones ‘protecting a very specific idea of what a woman is’

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[–] germanatlas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 113 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Reactionaries don’t want womens sports, they want beauty pageants with extra steps; something they can fap to. That’s why they go after somewhat brolic looking women, regardless if they’re cis or trans: they no make pp hard, therefore they shouldn’t be allowed

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 52 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Look at how they used to require the female athletes to dress in beach volleyball. Men get loose, comfortable shirts and shorts, while woman were allowed a maximum of 10cm of cloth on their bikini bottoms.

[–] Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world 35 points 1 year ago

And people were pissed when the new options weren't exposing almost their entire body. Got all angry about the woke giving athletes more options to choose from when performing their sport.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

And there were complaints when that was changed. Including the similar white knight shit going on right now- "how will they be able to perform at their best in shorts?! You're forcing women to have a disadvantage!" No, they're forcing your dick to have a disadvantage.

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[–] Yambu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 71 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Do women want to fight Imane? Probably not.

Do I want to fight Tyson in his prime? Probably also no lol

I'm not trying to make her look like Tyson but they are both outside the norm just like 99% of top athletes.

[–] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Anyone can become amazing at a sport if they work hard enough at it, but the top athletes are always going to be people who worked hard and have a genetic predisposition to it. Lots of sports are dominated by people who are taller than average. Where do we draw the line on a genetic trait giving someone too much of an advantage?

[–] averyminya@beehaw.org 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean, it's the Olympics. The best of the best. If we had a breath holding competition and that one tribe that developed extremely large lunge capacity entered, that's fair game IMO.

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[–] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

it reminds me of the recent volleyball injury case that went around. Trans student spiked a volley ball into the head of another student (not exactly intentionally) and it injured them quite significantly. Naturally her first reaction was to bitch and moan about it, but at the end of the day, nobody would want to be spiked in the face with a volleyball, from a man, women, child, anybody. That shit would at the very least concuss you, and might even kill you in all honesty.

the fact that the other student was trans is probably more inconsequential than you would think.

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[–] qevlarr@lemmy.world 69 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I'll repeat what I said elsewhere about this debate. You probably wonder "so what should the rules be to include an athlete for women's sports? Surely there must be some rule". This is understandable but please realize that the transphobes who are pushing this aren't concerned at all with the specifics. They're not even interested in women's sports. They want to remove trans women from public life altogether. Not just sports but everywhere. Intimidating trans athletes into obscurity is just their most recent tactic.

So please remember that there is no test that will satisfy the transphobes. There is no fair rule that can be agreed upon, because the transphobes will always keep moving the goalposts. This gets extremely complex. There is no use in debating these people. They will debate forever, because the actual deep down motivation is disgust with trans people.

Save your energy. Don't debate transphobes.

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[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 59 points 1 year ago (1 children)

When you're a gold medal winning man, you have overcome the obstacles of a normal man to become a superman.

When you're a gold medal winning woman, you have overcome the obstacles of a normal woman to become a man.

That's the logic at play.

[–] bane_killgrind@slrpnk.net 13 points 1 year ago

That's so gross, I like it

[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 51 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I looked her up again to get caught up on what kind of info wikipedia has updated on her.

I really admire her stance.

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[–] SSJMarx@lemm.ee 48 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (49 children)

Imane Khelif doesn't even have genetic differences! She's a cis woman who happens to currently be one of the best in the world at punching!

[–] JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee 16 points 1 year ago

I admire the hell out of her.
She didn't let the bullshit stop her from competing to the best of her ability.

Proves she's as strong in character as she is in the ring. Keep kicking ass Imane Khelif!

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[–] NickwithaC@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago

It's not about protecting women. It's about attacking women.

There I fixed your conclusion.

[–] WoahWoah@lemmy.world 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Genetically, he's been disqualified for swimming due to having a Z chromosome, meaning he's sexually a fish.

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[–] TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 34 points 1 year ago

Phelps needs to be investigated because I'm pretty sure he is a largely a dolphin

[–] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

i think we need a normie olympics, it'd be like the paralympics, but for people randomly selected from the average population.

[–] Perhapsjustsniffit@lemmy.ca 30 points 1 year ago (3 children)

My kid said just the other day. "they should have an average person do it first so we could see the difference."

[–] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Now I'm thinking which one would be the funniest. Hurdles are definitely up there

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[–] JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You should watch Takeshis Castle then. It's pretty close to normie olympics.

Sometimes athletes go on, but the obstacles are so fucky even they struggle with it.

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[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 26 points 1 year ago

This whole thing de-legitimatizes any point any TERF argument ever had, is what I'd say if there was any point they had to begin with.

[–] xilliah@beehaw.org 21 points 1 year ago
[–] Kalysta@lemm.ee 18 points 1 year ago (3 children)

She almost, ALMOST has it!

Just a little bit of mental extension and she’ll realize that this is the same reason trans women should be allowed to play women’s sports as well

[–] brotkel@programming.dev 26 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I was confused because despite the title suggesting she’s a TERF, this sounds on the face of it like a pretty trans-inclusive statement.

[–] Randomguy@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm pretty sure she isn't a TERF, Caroline is a left-wing pop culture/politics streamer.

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[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

Also, these TERFs (and other bigots) haven't seemed to have noticed that women who play sports at a high level like in the Olympics haven't asked for their protection.

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[–] halvar@lemm.ee 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I personally like to descirbe myself as tolerant. Not exactly progressive, but I very much see the struggle some people live with and so I decided that not being hostile to anyone is the least that I can do in case I don't just straight-up support some causes. I had to get this clear, because my opinion doesn't exactly match with the one detailed in the post or at the very least I find fault in it's reasoning.

The problem is that all the "genetic advantages" that make someone a good swimmer for example, are all unrelated traits, that are not really rare in people, it's just that it's quite rare for them to all be present in one person who then also goes off to be a swimmer. Testosterone on the other hand is a single hormone, exceptionally important in becoming an outstanding athlete and for that precise reason it's considered a performance-enhancing drug. If you look at it this way it's not that hard to see the problem.

Being more muscular certainly is an advantage. Being taller also is. Longer arms also are. Lower body-fat percentage also is. Better stamina also is. Better agility also is.

Any boxer you pick randomly should be expected to have one or more of these "genetic advantages", but all of them, resulting from a single condition is quite a different situation. Elevated testosterone levels are a single cause for developing some of the most important traits of a dominating boxer and so someone with such an advantage can't be considered a freak of nature in the same sense that someone like Phelps can be. There isn't a "swimmer hormone" that magically gives you all the advantages in swimming, but there is a "fighter hormone", that does in boxing. I personally don't think that Khelif could be anything other than a women. I just think that her body happens to overproduce a literal PED and that's a problem for anyone who wants to go up against her or those that want to see fights that are more or less determined by technique.

Now for solutions and as far as I see there's only one that doesn't involve excluding her from boxing. Simply put her and anyone with similar conditions in a weight class based on their muscle mass and not their actual body mass. Moving her one weight class up for example would at least mean that her opponents have trained with punches of similar force to her's, something that the lack of seemed to have been a problem for her foes in Paris. She would still have an advantage in terms of speed, but she would pay the price of having less fat for impact absorption. I think that would be a win-win scenario.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[–] Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I appreciate that you are at least kind about it.

In general I don’t think she’s considered a dominating boxer. Other opponents certainly haven’t said so. Even in her last fight, her opponent had a longer reach. I think it’s kind of crazy that people are taking comments from one opponent so seriously, instead of just seeing that opponent as someone who had not properly trained.

We also have no proof of anything to do with her hormone levels or anything else for that matter. In fact, even the disgraced governing body that excluded her has stated it was not a testosterone test that they used.

[–] snooggums@midwest.social 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Simply put her and anyone with similar conditions in a weight class based on their muscle mass and not their actual body mass.

Once you do that you will meed separate groups by height/arm length/anything else that is an advantage. Weight class already groups them in a way that avoids completely inbalanced fights based on muscle mass.

[–] HonkTonkWoman@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago

Not to mention the lack of volume of people who would fit the bill. Caster Semenya is the only other athlete I can think of, in recent memory, that might fall into this class & she was runner.

Fully acknowledging there could be other athletes, I haven’t necessarily looked, but I’d still wager the number is pretty low when it comes to this specific issue.

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[–] I_Clean_Here@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

How is that a TERFy statement as is? It's this post ragebait or brainrot?

[–] yamanii@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

The Italian just got skill issue'd and conservatives were attracted to it like my cat to a nice steak.

[–] Unpigged@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 year ago (13 children)

I'm so stoked for the future of women rugby. Partially, because it's a very inclusive sport and it inherits a lot from its lore and ethos - with only a few years left until a woman will referee a high profile test game. And partially, because I want to see the same ferocious generic selection applied to female athletes.

Anyways, give it a go - some really good footy. If you're absolutely unaware of it, look up highlights of Portia Woodman.

[–] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Inclusive? World Rugby is famously transphobic and exclusionary when it comes to women's rugby...

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