I would calibrate further in the direction of sympathy for Carini. Generally speaking, the internet in general and this message board in particular does not favor apologies: somebody always chimes to say that the apology and self-flagellation didn’t go far enough. We don’t know what Carini was going through. I don’t have enough information to pass judgment on her character.
Boxing is the only sport, “whose primary objective toward victory is to batter and damage an opponent into helplessness and the incapacity to continue”.[1] I think we should weigh considered remarks heavier than words blurted out at a time of high stress and cranial impact.
This goes double when we consider the corruption of boxing in general, the involvement of Russian intelligence services in particular, and the very reasonable possibility that organized crime influenced this match. Sure there’s no direct evidence for the latter, but Olympic bouts have been thrown in the past and will be thrown in the future.
[1] MMA victory can be secured via submission (joint locks). Also, MMA refs are instructed to dive in once the participant loses the ability to defend themselves. There’s nothing like the count of 10 to stand up and continue fighting. MMA matches tend to end earlier on the head damage continuum.
For the first part, I don’t claim to be an expert on gender and I (and I think @Sherrerd) are both suggesting a nuanced view, not the opposite.
In terms of the second, that’s the whole point: a lot here have focused on the potential problems if we’re saying that even someone assigned female at birth is potentially ineligible. But the opposite is also true; if we’re saying someone assigned female at birth is always automatically eligible that comes with problems too. And all this is separate to the criteria under which trans athletes can also compete.
I agree (and thank you for your earlier calm and well-reasoned posts).
I came into this thread to make the point that ‘gender assigned at birth’ is not a useful or practical criterion for making decisions about sporting events. Somehow in the minds of a few, that turned me into an anti-trans person—a feat of illogic that still amazes.
Okay, but I’d like to know more about these male “boxes” that can be “ticked.” Can anyone be more specific? I’m hoping there are enough I can put together a bingo card so me and my friends know where we stand.
The problem is that any other criteria* is invasive and an intrusion of privacy. And it almost exclusively affects women, and unless it’s required of all women, primarily affects BIPOC women because they are less likely to conform to what is basically white body and facial characteristics.
I do agree with you that gender assigned at birth is arbitrary, but if you aren’t going to follow up with “we should eliminate gender altogether from sports competition” you’re not really talking about equality in sports, just tying to “other” trans people
*with the important exception of “I am what I say I am”
…it isn’t. Transwomen should be able to compete in womens sports.
This isn’t what we are arguing.
Its the transphobes and terfs that have argued that " that gender assignment at birth is the obvious, fair and ONLY measure. But now that isn’t good enough.
What you are seeing is a pushback on the hypocrisy. Because now all of a sudden that isn’t good enough.
I don’t follow this logic at all. I am saying that gender is complex, there are many factors and it should be up to each sporting body. This is as pro-trans as it is possible to be, except for the position that anyone can identify as a woman and enter women’s events no rules or questions asked.
No, the most pro-trans position would be to recognize that the entire “fairness in sports” issue exists entirely as part of a broad right-wing attack on trans rights and queer rights in general. There is no “problem” here that needs to be addressed. Most major sports organizations already had policies in place to handle the infintessimally small number of athletes in question, and there were no examples of a trans athlete performing significantly better than cis women at the same skill level.
The reason Sherrerd’s post is getting pushback is entirely because, by coming into a thread explicitly about transphobes flailing to find an example of an athlete that justifies their fear mongering, and trying to “Well akshully…” us into acting like there’s a genuine underlying concern here that needs to be addressed. There is not. This is a fake issue. Sherrerd is a tool for bringing it up at all, regardless of how many other socially conscious caveats he includes in his post.
And to be clear, I don’t mean “tool” in the sense of “penis,” I mean it in the sense of “unwitting implement used to further a political agenda.” A liberal posting, “Of course I believe in trans rights, but we need to talk about hormone levels,” is just more fear-mongering over the issue, just like a conservative posting about a man competing in women’s boxing in the OIympics.
I think that, if we’re to decide exactly what attribute is necessary to qualify one to compete in women’s sporting events, we first need to decide why we have women’s sporting events in the first place.
Is it so that everyone can compete? Obviously not, because the vast majority of the population, of any gender, can’t compete in an Olympic sport.
Is it so that everyone can have someone they can identify with who’s competing? Now we’re getting into deciding on other peoples’ behalf whom they can and can’t identify with: I’m sure there are plenty of women who can identify with male athletes, or with trans athletes in either direction, and also plenty of women who can’t identify with particular cisfemale athletes for one reason or another.
Is it because the people with the most money and power like seeing attractive women engaging in physical activity? One would hope not… but that does in fact seem to be a large part of why women’s sporting events exist. Remember last Olympics, when the women’s beach volleyball team from some Islamic country (I can’t remember which one) was disqualified because their uniforms weren’t sexy enough.
Is there some problem of cisgender men claiming to be trans in order to compete in women’s sports? Specifically, are there any examples of it happening outside of bad direct-to-video comedies starring B-list former SNL cast members?
If no then this is a solution in search of a problem.
I think it should be up to the relevant sporting organizations to decide; I am neither a doctor nor an expert on any particular sport.
My own recommendation though would be neither that all trans should be eligible, nor that all trans should be ineligible.
I think the former because gender transitioning is not yet at a level where the advantage conferred by going through puberty with high testosterone can be erased.
I think the latter because “trans” is a very broad category and will include those who transitioned pre-puberty, or were just born with ambiguous genitalia but otherwise have the chromosomes, hormones etc of the group they want to join.
This is what anti-trans people claim that every trans woman in sports is doing, along with any woman they deem “too masculine so must be trans or intersex”
That is a real problem. I agree that it’s stupid to think that someone would go through transitioning just to get that advantage, you know, there are a lot of stupid people out there.
Thus, I would consider this a litmus test on what someone really thinks