Happy Trans Visibility Day to all trans people around the world! 🎊🎉🎊 🎉You all deserve a warm hug to say we see you, we hear you!🤗💗💙🙂
There's more than one type of trans identity and I think many people who are not trans themselves or do not yet feel informed or knowledgeable enough about the trans experience can become quite confused. This is exacerbated by the rhetoric of those who argue against trans inclusion.
The essential meaning of being trans is that you do not identify with the sex you were assigned at birth, in any way. How does this feel? Well, you psychologically and emotionally feel that your gender identity does not match the body you are in. So, you will that feel your true gender identity is either the opposite of your assigned sex (male not female or female not male). Or they feel neither male nor female and so often identify as trans non-binary. This is distinct from being non-binary because a solely non-binary person is not trans as they want to stay in the same body they were born in and identify, to a greater or lesser extent, with the gender they were assigned at birth. A trans non-binary person could have a sense of being a third gender; or being genderfree; or gender neutral; or androgynous. In some people, this can cause distress whereas in others it is less pronounced. This is traditionally referred to as gender dysphoria. This is not a psychological condition, just merely a strong indication that someone could be trans if it is consistent, strong, and persistent over a period of time. This is not some vague idea or anything to do with social concepts or movements. It's something that is innate and occurs irrespective of society or the level of trans acceptance of those around them. Someone can become aware of feeling trans from as young as 4 years old.
Today I shall focus on transwomen in sport, and the debate around the swimmer Lia Thomas's excellent win. So let's step back from the hysteria, crunch some numbers and look at the stats!
Firstly, Lia isn't 6'5" she's shorter than Sharapova and Davenport who are 6 '2" and nearly 6 '2.4" respectively! Secondly, her amazing female body is no broader than Sharapova's. If you're tall you have a wider chest! Thirdly, she's fully transitioned into a woman, according to some sources. However this is not relevant to this competition because she more than fulfils the requirement of 1 year of hormone therapy. Trans women are women! Fourthly, she may have won this race but she's lost other races and doesn't have the fastest time when compared with some past female swimmers. Fifthly, she wasn't a useless male swimmer! She was among the elite. It's wrong to suggest she was down in the 400s overall when competing as a man. That was true when competing in the 500 race but not true over longer distances in the pool. She was 29th in the 1650 yard freestyle and 9th in the 1,000.
As for technique, Lia clearly has better technique than the other women. On entering the pool she engages her core and keeps her body straight in a plank position (pilates) and then dives in like an arrow. The other women are not at the same level of technique because they are bending too much as they enter the pool. Women are perfectly capable of the 'plank' and do so all the time in general training for core strength e.g. in pilates. Hence, Lia has a head start on them. That's not her fault. It's theirs for not improving their technique. And this is only college level, amateur competition swimming, not athlete level.
Frankly, it's of concern that educated female students at university are capable of such bigotry and ignorance. Perhaps they need to learn to compete properly and fairly themselves by focusing on how to improve their own performance rather than plotting how to hold back their competitors (e.g. through pressuring for rule changes or trying to negatively impact on transwomen psychologically) so they can win more easily! Stats show that the top female swimmers at these types of competitions are swimming slower than a few years ago - so women are clearly capable of swimming faster than Lia so why are they not doing so? 🤔
For more on Lia Thomas and stats, see:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/lia-thomas-trans-swimmer-data-b2044949.html
Comments
Post a Comment