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I am a graduate of the Royal Military College Duntroon. The RMC course in those years lasted four years and during that time regular progress reports were sent to our parents. Many years after I graduated, I returned with my classmates for a reunion. One of the treats on offer was to review the annual reports that had been sent home. I must have seen these reports at the time, but I didn’t remember them. However, one entry stood out: ‘Staff Cadet O’Brien played in the 2nd XVIII but was hampered by his size and lack of ability.’ No gilding the lily on the part of military instructors then. I wonder how these insensitive beasts would fare in today’s Army? Certainly, I was vertically challenged – so much so that a senior classman immediately christened me ‘Leprechaun’.
Now that I look back on it, I wonder if I wasn’t emotionally scarred by this crushing of my dream to be a star footballer. Of course, today I would simply identify as a pre-teen and sign up for the Duntroon Primary School Under 12s, where no doubt I would shine – well hopefully.
What brought this to mind was the vicissitudes of US swimmer Lia Thomas. Thomas is a transgender person who claims to be a woman, but from what I understand he still has male genitalia and still dates women – that would make him a lesbian. So, he can tick not one but two victim boxes.
Now Thomas claims it is his right to fulfil his dream of being a champion swimmer but, having been hampered in the men’s competition by a lack of ability, he is now carrying all before him in the women’s competition.
There are two possibilities here. Either Thomas is a main chancer, trying to have it both ways. Or he genuinely feels like a woman. In the first instance, it is beyond me how Thomas could take any pleasure or pride from his achievements against genuine women. Unless it’s just about the money – I imagine there are sponsorships to be had. If he is just trying it on, he should, of course, be kicked out of the women’s competition.
However, if he genuinely believes he is a woman, surely he has the right to pursue his dream? Well, sorry, no. His conflicted gender identity, if it is genuine, would seem to me to be a disability. Sorry about that – not politically correct, I know. It is not natural that a woman should have male genitalia, any more than that she should be born without a uterus. The latter does not make her any less of a woman, I hasten to add.
In most cases, a disability would be a disadvantage and we therefore have a separate category of sports for disabled people. In this case, Thomas’s disability gives him an advantage over genuine women in his chosen sport of swimming. It’s akin to a genuine woman taking performance enhancing drugs.
But not every disabled person or every non-disabled person can compete at the highest level, much as they might wish to. Not everyone achieves all they would wish. Not everyone can be CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Not everyone can record a string of hit singles. They are hampered by a lack of ability. That’s life.
Sorry, Lia, you just aren’t good enough.
Yes. And there are single-person changerooms for people with disabilities too. People like Lia should use them, not bring their male equipment into female view in our changerooms.
I recall looking at that photo of Lia with such girlie skin, eyebrows, lips and shadowless under-eyes, thinking that’s a female look, but stilll it seems wrong. And so it was; that excellent comparison pair of pics shown here is very telling. The second pic is clearly airbrushed to produce the neotenous baby-face look that most young females have but young males don’t. In the male, everything is slighter rougher, tougher, broader, firmer. In that second pic compared to the first, check the less prominent eyebrows, note they are further apart than in the male, see how the undereye area has been shaded into a baby-soft innocence, the nostrils have been slightly narrowed, the lips softened, and the skin in the lower face has no hint of a shadow of a beard. Lia’s facial structure, long and narrow, but in the pic it does seem to have been subtly narrowed some more.
Now, us girls all cheat a bit with our looks, especially as we age a bit, trying to keep that complexion flawless (yeay for foundation in a bottle), using eye make up to widen eyes, pluck our eyebrows, dismiss with special stuff the dark cirlces under eyes etc. But the basic bone structure of a female face differs to that of a male, regardless of the appurtenances of skin and flesh covering it. That’s why Giggle, a female only website, can admit only born females by selecting out the born male transexuals with a simple facial bone scan app. And faces are just the start of the differences, which really blossom elsewhere in the body.
Errata, that’ is.. “slightly rougher, tougher: etc, not “slighter rougher, tougher”. Apologies for the error.
Hopefully the context managed to suggest ‘slightly’ in that men are not ‘slighter’ in any way at all!
An infamous feminist once declared floppy ears and spots do not make you a cocker spaniel.
That aside, It is the feminist agenda that has us denying the reality of millions of years of evolution.
Once it is accepted that biological women can do anything the boys can it is a logical conclusion that the reverse applies. It is hilarious except for the women who ran 4th against this man (for a man he is when physical competition is in play) she deserves to be on the podium.
If a chap wishes to frock up I couldn’t care less but in doing so he shouldn’t harm others.
Yesterday Australia’s Secretary of the Department of Health, Dr Brendan Murphy, was unable to give a definition of the word “woman” when asked to do so by Liberal Senator Alex Antic during Senate Estimates. A qualified doctor and former Chief Medical Officer, able to tell us all about masks, social distancing, lockdowns and vaccines, but unable to say what a woman might be!
Ian, yes that session with Antic was astounding. Not even the Lt General could volunteer a definition.
Peter, today Ben Fordham asked Dom Perrottet the same question, to which the answer was “A female adult human being.” Seems like only some find this concept beyond them.
Easy definition of a woman: a person who can find something that isn’t there. (e.g. clothes, items in the fridge, etc).
“His conflicted gender identity, if it is genuine, would seem to me to be a disability.”
That’s the solution. Add transathletics as a division of the paraalympics, and in regional sport for those with disabilities. There are so few that whichever way they’re tranisitioning can all compete togther and the two or three in each race can all have podium places. If the numbers increase, split the categories into whatever genders have at least two participants.
“Not even the Lt General could volunteer a definition.” I thought about this and decided the right word is “would”, not “could”. Clearly the Lt General knows what a woman is. We all do. He (or she, or ze) therefore made a decision not to share that. Why? Only two possibilities present themselves to me, fear of offending some or fear of the repercussions. Note the common word in both those possibilities. It is truly remarkable that a senior member of our military could be afraid.
Still, the consequences of expressing what was until a few years ago the universally held definition of a woman can be severe. Just ask those who have lost their jobs or J. R. Rowling, ostracised and demonised by a mob on Twitter.
There is however some light at the end of the tunnel. In the top-down category some US States have brought in laws to restrict college woman’s sports to those who were female at birth. In the bottom-up category a transitioning cyclist in the UK was recently banned from riding in the female category at the British National Omnium Championships after a threatened boycott by actual women competitors. It has subsequently been announced that trans women are no longer able to compete in elite female events run by British Cycling after the organisation performed a significant U-turn and suspended its transgender policy. Which would be more powerful – a Twitter mob, noisy but numerically small, or the combined voice of united sportswomen threatening boycotts?
These developments may also address the possibilities canvassed above – is Thomas genuine about his transition or simply looking to win some easy accolades? Again and again, in a variety of different spheres we’ve seen the result of monetising choices. Mostly this has involved taxpayer money incentivising identity choices, but shiny medals and advertising dollars would do just as well. Take away the incentives and how many would bother?
“It’s akin to a genuine woman taking performance enhancing drugs.”
I’ve had the following comment and variants thereof rejected online in toto. Not sure why, but maybe too close to the truth?
I strongly suspect that a biological woman who dosed up on male steroids to bulk up like a biological man, then tapered down to a trans swimmer’s legal testosterone levels for competition, would be banned.
Adam Gilchrist goes Transgender to reclaim top spot on ICC Rankings.
Of course blokes competing in women’s sport is a nonsense. On the other hand it is also a nonsense to rank performance in women’s sport on the same table as men’s sport.
Let’s take cricket for example. The media (of all persuasions) has taken great delight in listing Alyssa Healy at the top of World Cup finals’ innings, topping Adam Gilchrist. Now don’t get me wrong. I enjoy watching Alyssa Healy bat and keep wickets, and some of the stroke-play in women’s cricket (thinks a Lanning Square Cut or a Perry Cover Drive for example )has the style and grace about it that the batsmen used to have before the great lumps of timber and dead pitches started rewarding top edges and mistimed slogs with boundaries.
However I reckon that any grade cricket batsman would look at the women’s bowling and think – “Geez I’d like a bit of that on a Saturday afternoon, on a small suburban oval”.
Women’s cricket has smaller balls (kookaburras), smaller boundaries and is played at a pace some 30km/hr slower than the men’s game.
So it’s a fair bet that if Adam Gilchrist continued on his apparent road to emasculation, and at 50 something the next time the Women’s World Cup came around, would set the mark that would mean something for gender-fluid comparisons. Of course if one of the girls made the boy’s team she could do the same.
Can we just enjoy the game ( and life) for what it is and respect the differences.
Class of 1970?
surely we need a special trans olympics
Extracted from the Australian Bureau of Statistics web site:
For the 2016 Census, special procedures were introduced for the first time to enable a respondent to complete an alternative online form containing three response options to the Sex question: Male, Female and Other (please specify).
Some 1,260 people were considered to have provided a valid and intentional sex/gender diverse response (sex/gender because many did not give enough information to determine which). This is a rate of 5.4 per hundred thousand people.
The 2016 data showed a mix of write in options by Australians who identified as sex and/or gender diverse, as follows:
35% – did not provide a more descriptive term (‘other, not further defined’)
18% – another gender
17% – non-binary
13% – trans male or trans female
13% – trans or transgender
3% – intersex or indeterminate sex
How are we turning ourselves inside out over such a small number of people, just 0.0054% of the population from these figures?
To address the question posed by sir tony, (a very good question), it seems that we are turning ourselves inside out over 0.0054% of the population (which would be an artificially inflated statistic as well because of fashion), because those in positions of authority are pushing it. The Government is accepting it and acceding to it, (hence the ridiculous scenario of a census – a mechanism designed to facilitate structural, medical and governmental policies, denying biological reality), heads of corporations are not only accepting it but imposing it upon people who have no means of redress (called bullying if other people do it); universities and schools are forced to pretend that there is merit in the ridiculous claims (otherwise they will hurt their feelings and thousands of people will commit suicide, and it will be their fault). It is from the top down and it has been decided by a group of people who have acted in unison – as a person who has had experience with groups of people, I am aware that there is no situation that is arrived at universally and with complete consensus, from installing a lavender garden to deciding on a menu. When there is consensus about fundamental and profound changes to the prevailing social structure and when this unanimity is right throughout the ruling elite (such as all politicians in the same sex marriage “debate”; all media), and now, when there is absolutely no divergence throughout the same politicians and media regarding biological men claiming to be women – I find it difficult to believe that every politician (of Islamic electorates?), every editor of every paper, suddenly agree with the change of the nature of marriage/ that a man is a woman, and that the terminology is immediately adopted and obediently applied. This is totalitarian, make no mistake and it is from the top. There is nothing organic in this. There is nothing genuine – these people have not suddenly revealed themselves after a lifetime agonising in a man’s body. The athletes are easily explained as opportunist cheats who exploit wokeness to get some ill-gotten wins, perhaps contracts, sponsorships and endorsements. But the trans movement and its imposition upon us, together with a repressive imposition of language, coupled with employment penalties and ostracism, are simply totalitarian. We are not in a situation where any of us can go along with this and remain silent – it is a very sinister development and articles such as this one are very important.
Just shows how mad they are in the US for tolerating this rubbish.
Mike Swan,
yes it’s me
Thank you, sirtony. I had a feeling that the numbers were tiny (5.4 per 100K – I wonder what the 0.4 identified as.) but I was too lazy to look it up. I reckon you should get a real gong and be Sir Tony.