It's almost as if the Venn diagram of those people and the ones who mock the WNBA is a circle.

i don’t get it

I'm guessing they are referring to the people pushing to make women's sports exclusive to cis women. If they cared about women in sports, they would be angry about the president belittling the accomplishments of an Olympic gold medal team.

There are a few different things you need to know to get this, so it's hard to blame you.

The first is that there is a prominent and very loud transphobic community of people who cry about "women's sports", where what they really mean is "trans women aren't women and shouldn't be allowed to be in women's spaces", but they couch it in notions of fairness in sport. You know it's not legitimate concern because of how often they've gone after cis women who just happen to look a little too masculine for their misogynistic tastes.

You also need to know that Donald Trump, the US president, has been closely tied to these loud transphobes.

The third thing is that at this year's Winter Olympics, the US teams won both the men's and women's ice hockey competition.

Following that win, Donald Trump called the men's team and invited them to meet him at the White House, after the State of the Union. He derisively joked with them:

And we have to, I must tell you, we're going to have to bring the women's team, you do know that. I do believe I probably would be impeached [if the women's team was not invited].

We know this because one of the men recorded the call and posted the video online. Many of the men were heard laughing in response to Trump's sexist joke. One or two of the men posted after-the-fact that the men should not have reacted like that. Whether it's sincere or face-saving, I'll leave up to the reader.

So we've got Trump, a member of the "protect women's sports" movement, caught vocally deriding successful women athletes. Almost like the "protect women's sports" movement is actually just an "exclude trans women from society" movement.

They only like women in sports if they think they are fuckable

They know the women's hockey team are tougher than they could hope to be, and they hate what they fear

When it violates one's ideology to value WOMEN as equally-valid human-lives, then .. why would they violate their tribe's culture, & therefore their-own tribal-validity??

It isn't women's SPORTS they don't value,

it is WOMEN they don't value as equal-validity people.

Sports is just a subcategory of their non-valuing, not the basis of it.

( same as the condescension of the middle-class & upper-middle-class left contempt their inferiors, automatically, implacably: tribal-prejudice's tribal-prejudice, in all cases. It isn't something that only-some-tribes do, on only-1-side of the political-spectrum. )

_ /\ _

This is such low hanging fruit.

If you don't understand that by now, no messaging will get to you.

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Tbh, contact sports seem so much more disparate than non contact sports. Like, I’d expect Roger Federer to respect Steffi Graf (I’m old, okay?), but men’s hockey and rugby players seem less appreciative/respectful towards women’s hockey and rugby players.

I suspect it’s a combination of the relatively greater importance of strength/mass and the heightened aggression involved

There's probably some truth to this. Men's and women's hockey are functionally separate sports.

They did and they do. This story got blown up into something that never existed, at least as far as the men go. Wont speak for Trump...

Nah fuck that. Mohammad Ali threw his gold medal into the Ohio River.

These people are cowards.

What's funny about "There are a few different things you need to know to get this, so it’s hard to blame you."?

Being part of a minority really highlights how horrible some sport's cultures can be. If you are a gay or female fan of any sport you have to pick your social circles like navigating a minefield. Lest you end up in the homophobic “let's lynch the gay guy” or the “gang rape the only woman here” fan-club.

Sure, the vast majority of sport spaces are not that extreme, but it only takes one, and unfortunately they are a pretty much non-zero number. Sometimes just watching a game alone in you living room can expose you to casual homophobia and misogyny depending on the commenters.

A single sentence can be a paragraph, but you need to not be brain damaged to understand that, so I don't blame you.

That was the joke? The racist uncle at Thanksgiving bitching and moaning about a societal expectation to treat people with respect even if you don't agree with their choices, thinly veiled as a "joke?"

He didn't want to invite out the women's team, or any women's team for that matter, because they're not likely to be Trump supporters and he can't handle having his feelings hurt.

Holy transphobia, Batman.

Hahahahahahaha

Gross

They're also the "pro-lifers" who couldn't actually give a shit about the life of a child once it's born. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps kiddo, time to justify the existence that was forced upon you

Also bro just edit your fucking comments. No one want to get a bunch of notifications from your stupid ass.

Prides a bitch when it won’t let you admit you just got embarrassed on the Internet huh

Lol at that lack of self awareness.

You sound terrified

No you’re actually just disgusting.

What? You are aware that sentences make up paragraphs, right? Just as words make up sentences, and letters (or phonemes, if we're doing spoken word) make up words.

The first sentence of this comment is "What?" Yeah, it's also a word. That doesn't stop it being a sentence.

Spreading thoroughly debunked, hateful, anti-scientific right-wing lies like this might not make you MAGA, but it does make you an ignorant bigot and propagandist. Stop drinking MAGA Kool Aid and then handing it out to others.

https://www.them.us/story/new-study-trans-women-no-physical-advantage-over-cis-athletes

https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/58/11/586

You don't understand: it's important that only dainty trad women play women's sports because otherwise my favorite manly men (🥵) might be threatened. My whole identity is the patriarchy plz don't take this from me...

There is some merit to the idea in some highly competitive sports that trans women may retain some biological advantage over cis women.

However, the "protect women's sports" crowd isn't interested in having a good faith discussion about it. For starters, they'll cry against even the idea of preteen trans girls playing with cis girls. Or against trans women in a social women's sport club. Outside of elite sports, the argument is literally completely irrelevant because so many other factors are far, far more significant. When you have a league consisting of people who have been playing casually for a year or two in addition to people who were only a few spots away from going pro, the difference between the genders is an irrelevancy.

But there have also been studies that say the biological advantage is overstated. One study showed that 2 years after starting HRT, trans women retained none of the advantage they started with in push ups or sit ups, and that the advantage in a middle distance run halved. The study didn't say, but I'd hypothesise that after 5 years that, too, would be gone.

So at the elite levels, it's fair to say that each sport should be making its own decision based on the types of fitness and skills involved. And those decisions should be based on the weight of evidence, not—as is usually the case today—on the vibes or because of political lobbying. Some restrictions, especially pre-hormonal transition and shortly after, are likely warranted in many cases. Longer-term restrictions are less defensible.

And all of this assumes someone who went through a normal male puberty. It says nothing of the fact that the same crowd arguing against trans people in sport are the ones arguing against puberty blockers and allowing children to make decisions for themselves with the aid of their parents and doctors, without government intervening. If that were allowed, many of those biological advantages never would have been able to develop in the first place.

Thanks, didn't know all that jazz! What an absolute looser attitude (but maga got to maga I guess...).

They both won, kind of crazy too, congrats!

Coward isn't the word. They are excited and proud about winning the gold medal, and they have every right to be. Other people making it political in one form or the other isn't their problem.

Tbh, contact sports seem so much more disparate than non contact sports.

Does this also extend to combat sports (e.g. MMA), or is it more of a team sports thing?

Go be a fly on the wall in a right wing chat. They hate women. They scare them. If the have them, they hate their wives. They hate their lives. They hate anything that forces critical thinking. It is almost comical.

I don’t know enough mma people to say, honestly. I know jiu jitsu bros, and they tend to be extreme in either direction, but more commonly very cool with women who also do jiu jitsu.

My sister did a fuck ton of martial arts and some combat sports (no MMA), and is pretty thick skinned about sexism. According to her, the same is true for most martial artists and wrestlers, but boxers are more of an even mix.

Edit: maybe it scales with head trauma?

Brain damage is linked to more aggressive behavior, so it tracks.

They made it political when they accepted an invitation from a politician.

Just look at the crash out they had about the beach volleyball outfits in the summer Olympics.

On the flip side, Sylvester Stallone has a strongman competition show that had a trans man as a competitor and the dude was absolutely massive. He didn't win his challenge against a CIS male, but it was super close.

It's an invitation from the leader of the country they represented. It's very normal and is happening all over the world right now in different countries who are celebrating their accomplishments during the winter Olympics. Unfortunately now after the fact, there are a lot of people trying to use them for various political ideologies.

They had Kash Patel, a polarizing, politically appointed baffoon, in the locker room celebrating with them. They drank and put good medals on him while he misused US property and funds to be there. THEY made it political.

They just want women to have children because they hate women and children are awful. Starving children in need are even more awful.

I was a wrestler in hs. Can confirm I have very thick skin about sexism from the abuse I endured. Because it happens so much, you either quit or find a way to deal with it.

Those who stick it out survived the selective pressure to get them to quit. So is no wonder they tend to be more uniform than you’d otherwise expect.