I try to have some degree of sympathy for trans people, I’ve met enough of them and heard enough from them to understand that having a body dysphoric disorder like this is mentally challenging. Some people managed to push past their feelings with counselling and become reconciled with their natal bodies but for a tiny minority of people they believe that there is no other course of action that they can take then they go down the sometimes dangerous, not always successful path of gender reassignment.
However I have little sympathy for the increasingly aggressive and too often violent trans activists and neither do I have any sympathy for those who use their trans status to displace women from hard won women’s spaces. In sport in particular the inclusion of transwomen in sports competitions specifically designated for natal females has decimated both the sports, the confidence in the records of those sports and the ability of natal females to win in these sports.
In an article on the CapX site by Nicole Lampert that discusses the recent incident of the transwoman Lia Thomas who smashed female swimming records to such an extent that no natural born woman would be able to beat them, Ms Lampert asks a very important question. That question is ‘where are the adults in the room when it comes to the transgender debate’?
Ms Lampert said:
Last month the International Olympic Committee got rid of its already minimal rules on biological males competing in sports against biological females. Incredibly, it said it was going to presume trans women did not necessarily have an advantage over natal women. Where are the grown ups? Why aren’t more people speaking up against this?
The problem is this is a new fundamentalist religion as stringent as any cult. It even has its own mantra – ‘trans women are women’ – and when they say that, they mean any man who says he identifies as a woman.
Trans rights aren’t aided one bit by marginalising women, but it feels like no leader of an international body or politician is willing to fully get to grips with this.
In Scotland, a country where the government’s maternity literature took out all mentions of the word ‘mother’, Nicola Sturgeon is planning to reform the process to identify as another gender. In principle this is a good idea; it is hard being trans and more help should be given for those who feel discriminated against. But there are equally legitimate fears that safeguards for women will disappear if anyone can call themselves a woman – and those fears are being drowned out as bigotry.
It’s not in my view ‘bigotry’ to want to see fairness whether in sports or the justice system or trade or anything else, it’s the normal response of most normal human beings.
Ms Lampert is correct. There are very few common sense adults speaking up about this. Some of this reticence might in my view be down to people keeping quiet in order to keep their jobs whilst others may fear, quite justifiably in my opinion, the violence and aggression of trans activists.
Ms Lampert is right to describe the transgender movement not as a political one but more a religious cult with its own mantras, its own theology, its own irrationality and many of the intolerances we see from some religious groups. There is indeed a need for a fact based debate on the trans issue but it is one in which those who push ideological irrationalities or empty mantras such as ‘trans women are women’ should play no part. On the subject of sport I’ve long said that the way to deal with the issue of transwomen unfairly outclassing natal females is to have separate competitions for transwomen and transmen. Everyone should have the right to take part in competitive sport but nobody whether they are trans or not trans should be able to compete against other competitors in such a blatantly unfair manner. We’ve seen such unfair competitions not just in the Lia Thomas case, but in many other similar cases where natal females have been relegated to much lower places in sporting achievement than they would be were they not competing with those who have all the physical advantages of growing up male.
I feel bad for those women athletes who have devoted themselves to training to become the best in the world, only to be beaten by what is obviously some 3rd rate man who can’t compete with the men who decides this is the way to go for glory, most of them aren’t even trying to be women it’s a joke.
The thing is in the main there aren’t many women’s sports where it matters to huge numbers of people when this happens. Swimming, weightlifting etc are all pretty minor sports.
This is only gonna be fixed when it affects a big tournament, think Tennis and Ladies Singles at Wimbledon or the US Open. It will also allow John McEnroe to go HAHAHA after all the grief he got saying that although Serena was the greatest female player of all time she couldn’t beat someone in the top 700? in the mens game. All the women claimed he was spouting rubbish using the same bull***t argument the trans activists do, that there is no difference. “Well let’s all just play together he said” errrrr ummmmm errrrrr but errrrr ummmmm said the critics.
I reckon that you might be correct that this silliness might only be addressed if it effects a big tournament or more darkly, if a trans player accidentally kills a genuine female player in a contact sport like Rugby.
Labeling women as ‘natal women’ is giving in to the trans lobby. Women do not need and should not accept a new label – it’s demeaning. An acceptable new term for ‘men who wish to be seen as women’ is required – might I suggest wumen or wymen?
It is indeed a horrible phrase but descriptive and makes the distinction between a genuine woman and a transwoman.
Try substituting psychopath in there. Mental issues that people don’t understand. We should give them some leniency at sentencing. Maybe not even prosecute the poor souls because they can’t control it.
Most people have mental issues of some sort ranging from an OCD to actually believing politicians are doing their best. We should not have to adapt our society to cater for them all. It’s bad enough adapting to those 600+ dickheads in parliament. We should provide help where appropriate but I don’t believe I should be forced to pay for someone elses gender reassignment at the barrel of a gun..
There’s probably less people who are genuinely trans than there are psychopath. Some figures I’ve seen from the USA estimate that 1% of the US population have some form of psychopathic tendencies whereas there are about 0.3-0.6% who are genuinely trans as in transsexual.
As a possible ‘adult in ths room’, quite elderly, here is my tuppence worth. Not transphobic, but….
I’d first like to ask the question, ‘what percentage of trans women actually take part in competitive women’s sports’? And them what percentage of womens’ sports actually includes trans women? The reality may be a lot lower than currently presented by the media and bloggers. This may be important to give a perspective. Also do trans women necessarily always have the advantage? Presumably the trans women athletes are on oestrogen which reduces their testoterone hormone levels? If the argument is that they are bodily larger at the outset this doesn’t always apply as female athletes and all competitive sports players have a variety of sizes and body types also?
Genuine concern, a few highly publicised cases cannot always be taken to represent the reality?
There are enough to skew results and to make records that are almost completely unachievable by genuine women especially in sports where muscle mass and body mass are important. It’s less a factor in more sedentary sports such as shooting or chess or similar things but with physical power or endurance sports it is an issue. There are a growing number of cases where mediocre male sportsmen transition and wipe the floor when pitted against genuine female competitors. As well as the recent swimming case there have also been cases in the US where college sportswomen have been out competed by males identifying as women as well as the case of the weightlifter Laurel Hubbard and several instances in mixed martial arts where transitioned males have beaten the crap out of genuine women.
Even if trans competitors have reduced testosterone levels when competing they still have all the benefits that pubertal testosterone gives a male body with regards muscle mass, bone strength and endurance which makes the idea of trans women competing against genuine women very much an unfair competition.
It’s noteworthy that there seem to be very few trans men who want to compete against genuine men maybe because they know that they would be completely outclassed. It’s only men who transition to women who seem to be keen on colonising women’s sports and that may be because they know they can exceed what a genuine woman can achieve, even when the woman engages in a serious and punishing training regime.
We would not put someone like Usain Bolt up against a disabled competitor with a limb issue in a sprint race as that would permanently put the disabled competitor at a disadvantage and maybe the time has come to treat trans competitors in a similar way with their own competitions for trans women and trans men. That way the playing field would be leveled and women’s sports would be protected.
*then
Yes, but you have not answered my question about what proof we actually have that trans athletes are infiltrating women’s sports in a significant number? One media report a day can create an inpression, but if we really want ro undererstand what is going on in the world we need to question so much?
For proof we can look at the records achieved by MTF’s when they enter women’s sport. The current scandal over the trans swimmer relates to how they managed to not just break a female swimming record but broke it in such a way that few if any natural born females will ever be able to match or break that record.
Allowing males who transition to female to compete in women’s sports is unfair to natal females. I’d much rather see separate competitions for natal females and trans females as that would bring back fairness.