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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[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 156 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Yep, heard someone complain about Khelif and I asked them if we should have disqualified Phelps considering his genetics give him all the advantages and if they believed we would have complained about Khelif 20 years ago and if they believed that men who's testosterone is under a certain level should fight in the women's category. That was the end of them complaining.

[–] flerp@lemm.ee 81 points 1 month ago (1 children)

50 bucks says they didn't listen to a word you said and are still complaining about it, just in online echo chambers instead of to you

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 28 points 1 month ago

Well, if that at least shut them up for the time I was hanging around them then good!

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 17 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I keep bringing up Brittney Griner and ask if she should be forced to play in the NBA and suddenly it's, "no, she couldn't even come close to beating the worst NBA player."

So if you're a woman with masculine features and want to be an athlete, you can't compete with anyone apparently.

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[–] germanatlas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 126 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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 59 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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 37 points 1 month 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 21 points 1 month 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 87 points 1 month ago (7 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.

[–] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 66 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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

Do I want to fight Tyson right now at almost 60, also no lol

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[–] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 36 points 1 month 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 18 points 1 month 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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[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 month ago

I don't want to fight her, and I'm a dude with martial arts training twice her size. The lady has skill.

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[–] qevlarr@lemmy.world 75 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 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 63 points 1 month 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.

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[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 57 points 1 month ago (2 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.

[–] prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works 31 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Honestly I can’t believe she is so brave to face the world with a stance like that.

Courage.

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[–] SSJMarx@lemm.ee 52 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (51 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 20 points 1 month 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 40 points 1 month ago

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

There I fixed your conclusion.

[–] TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 40 points 1 month ago

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

[–] WoahWoah@lemmy.world 39 points 1 month ago (5 children)

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

[–] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 33 points 1 month 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 33 points 1 month ago (11 children)

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

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[–] JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee 17 points 1 month 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 29 points 1 month 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.

[–] Kalysta@lemm.ee 22 points 1 month ago (5 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 31 points 1 month 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 17 points 1 month 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 18 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (7 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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[–] xilliah@beehaw.org 21 points 1 month ago
[–] I_Clean_Here@lemmy.world 19 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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

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[–] halvar@lemm.ee 17 points 1 month ago (5 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 30 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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.

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 29 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Phelp's unfair genetic advantage is no different! His mutation gives him advantages at pretty much all endurance sports, not just swimming, and that's unfair. That's a problem for anyone that wanted to go up against him. You can't handwave this.

The Olympics is actually just a competition for which country has the most athletic mutants.

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[–] snooggums@midwest.social 25 points 1 month 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.

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