Another prominent member of the LGBQT2S community speaks out

https://www.outkick.com/martina-navr...r-womens-race/

Wow, Martina Navratilova, possibly the most famous and most respected female athlete in history, misgendering someone! I wonder if she'll be canceled now.

Uke, I'm wondering what you think of this.

I'm not sure why you would think this would change my opinion that people shouldn't misgender people. (tehcnically it looks like Navratilova just quoted tweeted someone else who misgendered her). If you want to think the Belgian Waffle gravel race is the hill you want to die on, by all means tell us how horrible it is that a trans woman was allowed to race in it. But you can do so with the correct pronouns.

Indeed. The size and visibility of the anti-trans movement is now gargantuan. People have hated on trans people since there were trans people, but there is a cultural moment around rallying against it that is unique right now in my view.

Right, I think that is how they would like it to be portrayed. That there are maybe two narrow issues for which people think they are in the right about (blocking gender affirming care in under 18s and trans inclusion in women's sport), but that OTHER than these two issues they full accept and respect trans people. And maybe you are right about, maybe most people "started off" just thinking that and it is the fault of those trans people who disagree for saying they disagree. But I think in the last while the level of animosity, the tone of the disagreement, the way the debates are framed has reached a fervor not previously seen, that the opposition to trans visibility in society is much broader than a narrow policy disagreement over how health care should be regulated.

Many might say that's what you are doing.

Not really. Sure, some transphobes refuse to refer to trans people by the pronouns they identify with. However, they typically don’t refer to doing so as “misgendering”. That word fairly unambiguously refers to people who don’t use the pronouns the trans person identifies with. But regardless, I’m not sure why that would effect me, I’ve been pretty clear about what I think people should do and the mere fact that some people disagree me doesn’t dissuade me. I don’t know what you think it would have?

You're right, it was actually the other athlete who did the misgendering.
But MN did retweet and express agreement.

I forgot to mention she is also part of the LGBT community, and was one of the first celebrities who came out publicly as homosexual.

I wasn't thinking you would change your mind about misgendering, more wondering what you might think of MN now. Also, do you think people will try to 'cancel' her? Should they?

I get why you are downplaying the race but you're going to get a lot of legitimate pushback from those who participate in it and are a part of it when a biological man wafflecrushes the competition. I can't imagine asking someone who's actually affected by these competitions if it's a hill worth dying on while demanding proper pronouns is a welcoming play that doesn't lead to the increase in issues that you've been concerned about in the last year.

Has anyone considered just giving the females a head start in these sorts of races? Seems like a good compromise solution.

It would be better if all of these biological women were just a little less hysterical about biological men crushing them in sporting competitions.

Giving them a head start could help them to calm down.

It's almost like people might have watched it out of interest, or to hear the alternative side of the argument, or to laugh at the absurdity that is modern universities humanities' departments, and not just to signal their "hate" for trans people.

For example, I've read The Bell Curve. I disagree with the author's arguments around race, but I wanted to evaluate the arguments for myself.

Indeed. My worry isn’t that watching it unequivocally proves one is hating trans people, but that the popularity and spread of such work leads to entrenching and galvanizing the anti-trans movement we are seeing. Somewhere between musk spreading What Is A Woman and tanking of bud stock prices for having a trans person visible, I dunno I feel there is a level of more generalized anti-trans rhetoric than has been there before. Hopefully I’m wrong, and it’s nothing but totally great and accepting people merely objective on a couple policy issues. But I don’t think I’m wrong.

Well, sure. And FWIW, I don't think there's been anyone in this thread that has had objections to adult sports setting rules around how transgender athletes are allowed to compete. But given the scope of issues around transgender participation in sport, I think it's quite reasonable to suggest that the importance of this particular event is not the highest.

As an example of the problem here, I'll quote my own post from when lozen posted about this race yesterday:

And that got crickets. Which on its own, is fine - no one's obligated to respond to any given post. But it says a lot about where we are when a transgender person winning an adult amateur sporting event, posted about for a second time, is worthy of a bunch of replies, while a 9 year old girl accused of being a boy cheating because her hair was short gets...nothing. Oh, and then grandpa does a similar thing to another girl, and his wife calls the mother "a genital mutilator, a groomer, and a pedophile." This is the kind of complete and utter bullshit that is being created by this "ZOMG TRANS IS WINNING ALL THE REAL WOMENS RACES" outrage nonsense. Sadly, some in this thread seem to be buying it hook, line, and sinker. It's a religion, and transgender people are bullying everyone, and...maybe time to reflect a bit on what you're spending your time worrying about?

Getting people riled up drives online engagement and every social media platform is developing algorithms to make people constantly mad at **** that has absolutely no bearing on their lives. It's a feedback cycle that keeps ginning up hate until someone pops. We saw what it did to Cupee, Twitter constantly fed him horror stories about the trans menace because it knew he'd click on those stories and spread them everywhere.

For the people here who are fully supportive of trans people winning races for serious prize money: I'm curious-- what percentage of races won by trans people would be too much in your view?

Well lets be honest its not getting crickets. I saw this late last night on the news and had planned on posting it. What happened to this young girl weather she was a trans girl or just boyish looking girl should never happen . The parents and the grandparent were banned from attending any future sporting activities on campus or school grounds or elsewhere that berated her.

Ukes claims that the trans are being bullied and targeted yet this is the first incident reported by the news media that got national and international coverage. Were are the others. Some parents suck you see this at any sporting event were a teenage ref is subjected to abuse if a parent makes the wrong call. I saw it first hand playing soccer some of these parents were just disgusting .

Bob says of course we understand that anyone here thinks that trans athletes should be competing in adults sport setting yet we see more instances when athletes like Riley Gaines speaks up were they incur violence against them

Also the child handled it very well and was strong and resilient . Good on her

Lets just agree this was disgusting and hope they are rare

I'm sure those people might exist, but I don't think I've seen any in this thread.

I am being honest - I posted it the previous day, and it absolutely got crickets. Which is fine, but I think it was a bit instructive with regard to where the attention is going.

I, um, wait, what??? They're everywhere, dude. They were at our school board meeting last night. They've been showing up and making headlines at schools and board meetings for years now.

I think people that take it to that extreme are quite rare. As are incidents of violence from the trans community that you continue banging on about again and again.

My concern isn't this single incident, but where this is going. There's no way grandma and grandpa woke up one day and decided they needed to go to a school event and start bullying 9 year old girls with short hair. This isn't normal behaviour. Why would such an absurd notion even enter their brains? Can't imagine it's come from anywhere other than the right wing derposphere who's spending their time drumming up support for their base with their transphobia. Yeah, this grandpa and grandma are an extreme case and hopefully will remain so, but the people we saw at our board meeting with their signs about transgender kids basically not existing are becoming more and more commonplace, as are people getting up in arms about innocuous things like pride month now. These culture wars are starting to take us backwards in terms of inclusion and acceptance, and every time you spout off about this being a religion or an ideology and how the terrible trans people are bullying you, you're feeding into it.

I think Uke is one of them.

That's interesting.

I get that the bigots are going to morph into a bunch of passionate fans of women's swimming and track and field, and that these stories of trans winners are going to be sensationalized and the size and scope of these issues are going to be manipulated any way they can to attract views. But there "appears" to be, and I could be mis-gaging it, legitimate complaints that's mixed in with the click bait derposphere that seem to be hand waved away as such and something to ignore.

When I first popped into this thread, I thought it was a bit strange to see a poster saying that he was open to the idea of separating Olympic events but was hesitant on the idea because he stressed the importance of inclusivity for the trans community. I thought that was quite the shift of the Overton window and something that shouldn't have ever been discussed while being able to continue to hold the claim that inclusivity is important and healthy and should be done so in other areas such as most high school sports.

Maybe gravel racing and women's swimming along with similar sports and the money associated with it isn't worth bothering over - and I honestly mean that, from the argument standpoint that there aren't a lot of trans people out there to make a fuss about something that isn't going to happen very often.

But the suggestion that's been posited several times ITT that the inclusivity in sports even at higher levels is beneficial to the trans community has been monumentally wrong due to both the mixture of bigotry and a terrible set of guidelines. The argument that these cases are one offs and aren't worth fussing over is a reasonable one for reasons that I get. But my argument is that I do think we are undermining the repercussions of ignoring these small isolated issues and the side affects that its appears to be causing when both you and I agree that changes should be made.

I've mentioned many times that I'm happy restricting trans women from the most elite events. I'm also most agnostic about exactly where one draws the line and most certain way down lower like for kids playing local school sports.

Wow your Transphobic according to many in the Trans community or the vocal radical ones

Nope.

And you sure are focused on those vocal radical ones, aren't you?

Right wing derposphere talking points confirmed to be effective, unfortunately.

I should be forgiven in my mistakenness here, since whenever such an incident is posted about in this thread, the modus operandi is to minimize the event, consider it a one-off incident, etc etc. E.g. "if you want to make the Belgian waffle crush/Australian weightlifting/women's college swimming etc etc your hill to die on here then lol".

Now apparently we're being told that even one such occurrence of a female losing to a male in elite competition is too much. I think it would be best to get the story straight.

I, um, wait, what?