The beginning of the end . . .

[Mr. Dazzle]

they are not choosing to be gay,

That's not a universally held belief.

Are you sure it's the same with trans people?

[Yambo]

@ Potter - I see you ducked the question about boxing. I'm sure you know that the male heavyweight division is for boxers over 200 lbs. The female heavyweight division is for boxers over 175 lbs (other weight measurements are available on request). Why is that?

Why have weight divisions at all if everyone is equal?

How do you think Hanna Gabriels would fare against Tyson Fury yanno, everyone being equal an' all. Should she even be given the opportunity?

We're not talking about regular 9 - 5 work here, we're talking about sport where inequalities are measured and bracketed because as you well know, a good big 'un will usually beat a good little 'un. So good little 'uns are given the opportuity to compete against other good little 'uns. And biological women are given equal opportunities to compete against other biological women because competing against biological men is usually going to end in failure for the biological woman.

Were you in competition with other people for your current job? Were you the equal of all those applying? If you were all equal, why did you succeed when someone else, your equal, fail? Tattoos? Bullshitting?

We're not all equal.

[Greenman]

they are not choosing to be gay,

That's not a universally held belief.

Are you sure it's the same with trans people?

Agreed, the difference is though that gay people are not choosing to change the anatomy of their body, they are just choosing to have a different sexual orientation to the normality.

[Mr. Dazzle]

My point is, they don't choose anything. Could you choose to stop fancying women and start fancying men?

I honestly don't know what it's like to be trans and to feel like you're the wrong gender. I also don't know what it's like to be gay. However I do know that within the lifetime of most of the posters on here attitudes have changed from "why are you choosing to be gay?" to "OK - so you're gay"....or, at least, they have in many parts of the world.

A lot of the attitudes on here strike me as basically fingers in the ears and "no no no not listening!".

[cheb]

Maybe we should start splitting based on metrics other than gender?

Pigeon chested little 11st snakes like me can compete in the "womens" events. Absolute units that are 125kg have to be in the "mens" events. Take chromosomes out of it.

I dunno what those metrics would actually be by the way.

Quoted so it doesn't get lost in the white noise.

What I'd like to see is the rights argument fragment again and again until there are enough separate categories to have one human in each. And then each human is considered on their own strengths and needs. Why do we need the male/female divide?

This is only sport we're talking about, and mostly commercialised sport at that. They can sort out their own rules as best suits their business interests.

[Cousin Jack]

Maybe we should start splitting based on metrics other than gender?

Pigeon chested little 11st snakes like me can compete in the "womens" events. Absolute units that are 125kg have to be in the "mens" events. Take chromosomes out of it.

I dunno what those metrics would actually be by the way.

We should increase the number of categories so that EVERYONE is in a class of one and can win a gold medal.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Yeah or you could just consider the issues sensibly...

I suppose it comes down to whether or not you think transgender people are "a real thing" or just some modern idea that's gonna disappear again. Like homosexuality. Just hoping it's all gonna go away probably won't help IMO.

[Yambo]

A simple question for you Dazzle.

Do you think that it is OK that a biological man, 43 years old and who went though puberty as a male, is going to be allowed to compete in a strength event at the Olympic Games against biological women?

[Greenman]

Maybe we should start splitting based on metrics other than gender?

Pigeon chested little 11st snakes like me can compete in the "womens" events. Absolute units that are 125kg have to be in the "mens" events. Take chromosomes out of it.

I dunno what those metrics would actually be by the way.

We should increase the number of categories so that EVERYONE is in a class of one and can win a gold medal.

Couldn't trans people just compete in the paralympics instead?

They could have a translympics!

[Mr. Dazzle]

A simple question for you Dazzle.

Do you think that it is OK that a biological man, 43 years old and who went though puberty as a male, is going to be allowed to compete in a strength event at the Olympic Games against biological women?

I don't know. It's not that simple, I think the fact that is isn't that simple is precisely what scares a lot of people.

I could train for the rest of my life and I probably still wouldn't be as fast as Laura Trott is on a bicycle for example. I remember all sorts of hoo haa from athletes saying it was unfair Oscar Pistorius got to compete with his carbon fibre legs, but IIRC when he actually raced against able bodied athletes he came plum last?

EDIT: She's Laura Kenny now isn't she? Taking her husband's surname isn't very woke.

[Mr Moofo]

I am looking forward to Lance Armstrong putting on a frock and winning women's cycling events ....
He will do anything to be a champ again ....

[DefTrap]

Loads, but men don't whine about it so much.

Yeah because there are relatively few sports (the sweaty ones anyway) where women can be competitive against men, literally a handful. So - F->M they can do what they like if it keeps them happy - the only folk who are going to object are the puritanical diehards that literally don't want to acknowledge the existence of transgenders or, presumably, the sporting diehards who don't want to see their sport turned into, what they might feel is, a bit of a circus.

Personally I'm in favour of letting them all crack on for a bit competitively, see if it becomes ridiculous or whether it's just one of those issues that just flares up every few years. Are we really likely to see a 100meters women's final with a strong field of transgenders?

[Mr. Dazzle]

Curling - now that feels like it could probably be mixed. And bowls. Is snooker split?

[Yambo]

I didn't duck anything, I just led you along enough for you to make my point for me.

There's a reason I've mentioned bullshitting twice in this thread . . .

Human beings are not all equal, but we pretend that they are to meet equality legislation, most of us do that because it's basically a fair concept - but you want to single out trans people, calling them mental, I don't know why you feel threatened enough to do that, but I'm happy to give them a break, life can't have been easy and I'm happy giving them the same chances as any other person of their gender.

Equality legislation recognises that we are not all equal but should be treated equally and given equal opportunities. Allowing transgender people to compete in athletic events where men have a distinct advantage over women is taking away the equal opportunity for (in the case I brought up in the OP) biological women. So much for equality legislation.

There are however, mental disorders that allow you to think you're something you're not.

I can see why you think that statement is calling transgender people 'mental'. It's because you didn't read it properly. However, maybe I should have used 'psychological' instead of 'mental' as the word 'mental' clearly means only one thing to some people. I'm not sure why you think I feel threatened. Maybe you just used the word . . . whatever.

[DefTrap]

Endurance cycling, apparently, was recently smashed by a lady (an actual lady) competitor in a field of (largely) men.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/06/worl ... index.html

[gremlin]

Veronica Ivy is a case in point as far as cycling is concerned. Transitioned aged 29 and then went on to smash records left, right and centre. Much as I really DGAS about cycling or weightlifting, it doesn't strike me as either fair or sporting.

Yeah, NY Post link. So shoot me.

https://nypost.com/2019/10/21/transgend ... questions/

[irie]

Are we really likely to see a 100meters women's final with a strong field of transgenders?

Probably, for the same reason that coaches only train black athletes for the sprints, because they'll win due to natural selection/advantage.

Some people only want to pick and choose the bits of equality that they think are ok, I genuinely think that they don't understand equality.
Like I said, if everything you do is important then nothing is important, if everyone has equal opportunities then as this demonstrates, no one is equal.

Singling trans people out as the backstop to it isn't fair, either let them be equal as well or stop pretending we're all equal and let nature sort it out.

The solution to this conundrum as you say is indeed to let equal compete against equal. In other words, let trans compete against trans. Sorted.

[Saga Lout]

The solution to this conundrum as you say is indeed to let equal compete against equal. In other words, let trans compete against trans. Sorted.

Then what? Trans against trans, black against black, white against white, gays against gays...

We're either going to pretend we're all equal or we aren't, singling one section out as not equal because it doesn't align with your pseudo-creationist viewpoint is not equality - unless you're an actual creationist and then everyone apart from you is going to hell anyway.

You're arguing against having women's sports at all. Is that what you want? Open competitions where women can only win where XX vs XY doesn't matter? Show jumping springs to mind, I can't think of any other.

The simplest solution would be to have two classes: XX and open.

[Yorick]

2 classes.

Born with bollox.
Born without bollox.

Simples

[Saga Lout]

I'm not arguing against anything, I'm arguing for equality, you're the one imposing rules and segregation, I'm just saying that if we're really pursuing equality then make it equal for everyone.

You're the one imposing equality where equality doesn't exist. Sometimes XX vs XY doesn't matter, sometimes it does. In most office jobs, for instance, it doesn't matter, in most sports it matters.