I know right? It’ll finally make pagents worth watching.
We should also get drag queen bodybuilding competitions. If everything is going to be reality TV for a while (support the strike, by the way) I’d at least want them to be entertaining.
I would love to see drag queen strong person competitions. Imagine log rolling in heels and an evening gown?
Ooh, or maybe like that next ninja whatever show. I can’t remember what it’s called. The one with all the crazy acrobatics and stuff. Imagine having to do that obstacle course where you hang from the bar and “jump” while holding the bar to the next slot, but you have to sing And I Am Telling You while you do it!
American TV could get real fucking good, real fucking fast.
Holy crapoli, I’ve tried other peoples heels briefly a few times. I have no idea how people even walk in them let alone log roll in them! That sounds like some great entertainment tbh.
Or imagine one of those lumberjack competitions where they scale the trees and top them.
YES. This is EXACTLY what I’ve been saying!!! Like honestly, as a cis woman from Italy I’m so embarrassed by this nonsense. Like, cutting trans women out of the competition at this moment just means people are recognizing that trans women are “unfairly” more good looking than cis women. Which, personally, is true in my case but you don’t see me bitching about it. Fuck yeah trans dudes, trans chicks and non-binary buddies.
I’m trans and I actually agree with you. I don’t know the solution to make things fair, but I wouldn’t want to use a strong biological advantage over someone else.
I see it like if I’d been born with some identifiable and categorised physical advantage then I shouldn’t be competing against people without that advantage.
It’s debatable how big the difference is, however, and whether it’s a gap easily closed or not. My thoughts are that there could be an open category where anyone could compete on the understanding that there may be severe biological differences. There’s no easy solution :(
Edit: thinking about it, sporting competitions are more sex-catagorised than gender-categorised. I don’t think someone identifying as female with no physical/medical alterations from a biological male form should compete with biological females and I don’t think that should be controversial since the gender isn’t what people care about there. It’s the physical characteristics. In some sports that might provide an advantage, in some a disadvantage, but I do this it’s important to discuss! At that point, however, you’d be better ignoring gender and sex entirely and only categorising sports like ‘feather weight’ or ‘strong muscular development’ or something
I think this is where it makes sense to go. Like wrestling, right? Just make every sport competition divided on gender if it’s that important, and then divided on the basis of body mass. Although frankly I think that would make every sport ten times more boring than it needs to be. Like smaller athletes usually need to figure out a way to still compete, and that’s where part of the fun is, both in competing and watching. If an athlete feels disadvantaged, they’re just lazy and not training well or enough.
Then again, I do think sports should be less owned by massive corporations and media companies, and move more to their dimension of play, admiration for each other and self-improvement. Not saying sports shouldn’t be jobs and not have money go in and out, but they should center that dimension a lot less.
I mean… some cis women are born thicker and taller than others which might be an advantage over other women, biologically. Yet, nobody disqualifies those women from competing. It just means everyone else has to be twice as competitive and work around their physical limits. Sports are largely about overcoming one’s performance limits. Like, a shorter basketball player can still play basketball and be really good at it, it’s all about how they train, what they focus on and how they play. And it’s about how good they are at dealing with the space around them and controlling their body. This was always the case, always in the history of sports. Being a stronger athlete was never a problem before, and now suddenly it is? It doesn’t make any sense, and it’s just an excuse for bad athletes who don’t wanna git gud to demand special treatment. I’m speaking as a cis woman who’s bigger than most other women around me. Not my fault that I can accidentally throw other chicks to the bleachers without even being aware of them, and I’m still a woman no matter how other people see me. So yeah, this whole discourse affects me too, because trans people being targeted also targets any person who was born intersex or just different.
What’s your idea of what a trans woman’s body looks like, exactly? Like, do you think a trans woman is just “a man in a dress”? Because that’s just straight up inaccurate in every way. HRT changes trans people’s bodies and how those bodies work. That’s why we say “trans women are women and trans men are men”. Like, would you think making someone with the body of Buck Angel compete in women’s competitions would be fair? Google Buck Angel, look at him and then come back at me.
Given a long enough time on the right hormones, and most (not all) of that advantage disappears. “While absolute lean mass remains higher in trans women, relative percentage lean mass and fat mass (and muscle strength corrected for lean mass), hemoglobin, and VO2 peak corrected for weight was no different to cisgender women. After 2 years of GAHT, no advantage was observed for physical performance measured by running time or in trans women. By 4 years, there was no advantage in sit-ups. While push-up performance declined in trans women, a statistical advantage remained relative to cisgender women.”
There’s also a large band of ability within people. Michael Phelps has a genetic advantage, but his accomplishments are still celebrated.
Here is my question though, and if you have any info I’d love to see it. Do performance enhancing drugs interact in men and women the same way? I ask since not all enhancing drugs are banned.
If yes, how do these interact with tans people? Would a trans woman be able to get more positive effects from the drugs?
Ok, hold on, why would you forbid trans women from competing? Because of “unfair advantages”? First off, trans women who completed their transition don’t have a male body. They have a female body. And some athletes are naturally better at some sports than others. Like, shorter basketball players are naturally disadvantaged at basket, which is why they need to train twice as hard as taller players or switch to another sport. Also, every whiny white woman complaining about trans women doing better than them always forgets to mention the athletes winning are still the cis ones, which destroys the idea that trans women have an advantage.
The point never held up either in sports nor anywhere else. And it was never about sports anyway.
From experience, female clothes aren’t proportioned to fit trans women as well as cis women. While in your other comment you make a good point about some cis women also being outside the ‘conventional’ physical expectations for women in western society, that doesn’t also mean that trans people don’t face the same issues. We talk about these problems from a trans perspective because trans people are often targeted with legislation and rules from people who don’t understand, and are blocked from being treated as their preferred gender. A bulky cis woman might share physical characteristics with a trans woman, but their existence is also significantly less opposed.
Oh yeah, for sure, I’m not saying gnc cis woman face the same amount of oppression as trans women. What I’m saying is, by shoving people into very restrictive, hyper-specific boxes, we end up excluding people who by definition shouldn’t be excluded. Like the cis athlete who was excluded from competing because she naturally produces more testosterone than the others. While being cis, again. Or like, all the cis gnc women who get attacked or murdered because transphobes think they’re trans when they’re not.
My point is, women aren’t all the same. Also, women who are naturally prone to packing muscles can and sometimes do go toe to toe with men in terms of height and strength. But they’re still cis women, and should compete as cis women.
But all of this is pointless anyway: this is a BEAUTY contest, and excluding trans women in this historical period is basically like saying trans women have “unfair advantages in the field of beauty” which I mean, could be, but it’s very much a self-report. There’s also the objection that “trans women do surgeries to look the way they look” which yeah, true, but cis women who participate in Miss Italia also very much do get surgery to look the way they look. Matter of fact, there have been multiple scandals about Miss Italy winners having gone through plastic surgery to win. So I mean, everything goes.
Because excluding trans women from sports was never actually about fairness. It’s about normalizing excluding trans people from aspects of public life.
I actually think a lot of people are confused because they didn’t read the article or know what community they’re in, so I’ll take the downvotes in stride.
Trans people are people too no matter which arrow you hit.
I think the issue is that there is no such thing as a “biological woman”. Manhood/womanhood is an issue of gender, not sex, and gender is something that we collectively made up whose meaning varies from person to person and from culture to culture. The only person who is capable of saying “Person McFaceface is/is not a woman” is Person McFaceface.
Even if we were to interpret their comment to mean “sex”, that isn’t a simple binary yes/no kind of question. There is no single trait that determines maleness or femaleness, and lots of people have traits indicative of both sexes or of neither sex (or they were born that way then surgically altered shortly after birth), and sometimes those traits are so hidden and so internal that the person themself doesn’t know about it.
Yes, I do. This is a space where trans rights and trans people are respected. That means that their existence is accepted as fact, not debated in the comment section.
There are numerous places and resources available for that person to educate themself, if they had chosen to do so before commenting. Instead, they chose to comment from a place of ignorance. We have no obligation to offer them that education here.
I’m just enforcing the rules of this instance. Specifically hate towards any specific group (which includes rhetoric designed to oppress) is against the rules.
Sorry, not sorry. In fact, I took great joy in removing the transphobes from this comment section. I only removed egregious errors.
In a way you could say I’m maliciously complying with the instance rules.
They were banned for transphobia. Finish that comment. Don’t cherry pick their words. Transphobia and bigotry are against the rules here. As a cis person, I don’t get to decide what is transphobic; trans people do.
Trans women were born a woman. I’m not trans so I don’t get to decide what is or isn’t transphobia just like I don’t get to decide what’s racist towards black people because I’m not black. I don’t get a vote because it doesn’t affect me.
Men women aren’t a social construct. Society structures around the biological facts of there being men and women or male and female, and what makes them different. Which is something that should be celebrated, not demonized.
I think In society men and women formed a structure based on strengths and weaknesses. This is neither dominated by men or women, not the way you want to see it. Which is why I made an earlier comment to go to places where men DO dominate society on every level and treat women like 2nd rate humans. If you truly believe we here in the west live in that way as well, we got nothing left to talk about.
Does that matter? I said the west, the west in general is fairly well balanced in terms of rights or equality. Maybe it’s different in Italy specifically but considering trans men can sign up for miss universe contests, apparently it’s not so bad.
You probably missed my edit. You didn’t give evidence for your position so I’ve asked you to refute evidence for mine, just to make it nice and simple for you.
How the f would I go about proving that? You come with an article speaking about a serious outdated law nobody lived by to begin with. Changed decades ago to reflect that fact.
So, you think when bad laws go away, the attitudes behind them disappear as if by magic?
The article gives up-to-date statistics as well as the dates of various laws. If you think those statistics are wrong, or don’t demonstrate what the authors say they do, you can explain. Or admit that your opinion is rooted in abject ignorance of the world you live in. Either will do.
That’s cool, except if only certain people with certain body configurations have the uncontrolled freedom to be themselves, that’s still a problem.
Or, as long as people who do not identify with the body they were given are ostricized, there are problems. As long as there are people who are groped because their body is different, lynched because their skin is different, or kept out of certain rooms just because of growths on their bodies they have no control over, there are problems.
Just because you remove a label doesn’t mean there isnt a problem any more.
In that case, is “patriarchy” the right label? Most men (racial minorities, non-cis, etc) face systematic oppression, so it doesn’t seem like gender is the problem. Seems like oppression follows class lines, not gender, race, orientation, etc.
I don’t care if you call it The Wibbly Fuck Problem. Stop worrying about what it’s called and just do something about it. Damn. Everyone always worry about the unimportant shit.
Oppression follows ALL those lines. Oppression and privilege are intersections. That’s why a woman can be black but also be rich and live a better life than a dude who’s poor.
Maybe Kyriarchy works better for you? It describes a multi layered and interactive web of stacked series of oppressive factors that encompasses race, class, gender, sexual orientation, ablism issues etc.
Though under the definitions of patriarchy men are still oppressed. Young men and the poor are held in sway and looked at as disposable pawns and labor by the patriarchs - powerful men in the lead positions, like male heads of the family, but in this instance the ‘family’ is government, military, businesses and corperations, guilds, unions and bosses. The the buy in for those men at the bottom is that even a lowly man gets to feel like they are better at least than women. The act of being a woman is an automatic sort of failure state. Hence why men behaving in a feminine fashion are a threat. It subverts the hierarchy when someone willing chooses to behave as “lesser” of their own volition and seem happier for it.
The the buy in for those men at the bottom is that even a lowly man gets to feel like they are better at least than women.
This hasn’t been my experience, most authorities in my life have been women (teachers, bosses, etc). Even upper leadership in the company I currently work for has slightly more women than men. Obviously not everyone has the same experience, but I don’t think the picture you tried to paint is a universal truth.
Read the whole thing just for you. I think you need to read the whole thing yourself. But I’ll boil it down for you, it’s 1 psychologist opinion that you could word (leaves that even optional) to differentiate between sex and gender. However also points out, most psychologists, don’t see it that way.
I know plenty, nobody agrees with such views and in several hearings in the USA it’s been properly handled and answered. No need for me to do that. This isn’t debate club.
No, there still is. Trans men suffer from all of the same patriarchal oppression that cis men suffer from. The loneliness, the isolation, the expectation that they have no emotion. If you somehow watch trans people TikTok, The men’s biggest complaint is that they now have no friends.
So yes, the patriarchy exists even if gender is a construct. Because one of those constructed genders oppresses the others, and themselves.
“Patriarchy.” You use the word but you dont know what it means. We’re not talking about heads of households, we’re talking about the halls of power; which are controlled by cis men. Gender Equality advocates are not making claims that “men don’t exist,” just that gender its a highly varied spectrum. My guess is you already know this, and willfully ignore nuance so you can push a counter ideological stance. That makes you a lame-o. Sorry.
I think it would have been fair to have a rule saying “no surgical modifications”… because doing things like facelift, nose-job, breast/buttox implants, cheek lifts, wrinkle removal, etc, are obviously unfair advantages (in a beauty contest) for those who have the money pay for it; and having a generic blanket rule like that would have accomplished the same thing they were trying to accomplish without being so blatantly transphobic… so a rule like what they have only proves that they are both despicable AND dumb. The entire notion of beauty pageants is outdated and stupid if you ask me.
You have a lot of learning to do about enlightenment. Gutei cut off a motherfucker’s finger to get him a little closer to enlightenment. Violence is inherent to true enlightenment. When the enlightened meet the buddha, they will kill the buddha.
Friend, I’m going to try to be gentle, and honest, and I hope you will listen with an open heart and mind.
I came out to myself, and my wife and kids about a week ago. I was born with the mind, the spirit, the personally, the essence, whatever, of a woman 37 years ago. I have been living as a man, conforming to society’s rules for 37 years. It took me four days, two hours at a time, to feel 40% of the way you do, just by waking up.
Note: I don’t know what gender you are. I don’t actually give a flying fuck. The point is, if you want to go sit in a sauna with your peers, you can. I can’t. All the normal experiences you had, weather you was born as a girl, and was annoyed that your mom made you sit still so she could fix your hair, or as a boy playing catch with your dad or working on the family car, you got that. You got to go to prom wearing what you want. Hell, you can go take a shit at the mall without people giving you dirty looks.
I can’t.
Trans people don’t want to insert themselves anywhere. Society wants to exclude them from everywhere. It may seem pointless that it’s just some beauty pageant, but imagine you have this beautiful car you built, by hand. You even had to so much custom shaping and fabrication, but goddamn is she pretty. Let’s take her to a car show, shall we? Wait… You can’t show off the car you’ve literally spent years on? After all this time, after you spent all this money, all this time, hiding away. You are scared. This isn’t a mass manufactured car, what if you get made fun of? It’s fine, it still has the shape of a car, and it’s so pretty, and you are so proud!
What… it isn’t allowed? It is a gorgeous car though… They say it isn’t actually a car, just a bunch of shit someone slapped together. You can’t just take a Ford, strip it down to it’s frame, rebuild it peice by peice, and still call it a car. You cheated, and it’s wrong. Hell, for good measure, they tell you you can’t even register to drive it. It now sits in your garage. Collecting dust.
If you don’t understand my allegory, you are you, the car is your true sense of self, your “transgenderism” if you must call it that, the car show was gonna be the pageant but I spaced out and it became representative of society as a whole for a minute…
You are absolutely right that we want to be accepted. You’re accepted. Why can’t I be like you? Why do I have to be scared my step brother is going to beat the shit out of me just because I have to take a piss? You can go to the store and just… Grab a gallon of milk without having to worry about some bigot stalking you and hurting you just because you wore yoga pants because you think you have a nice ass. I’m nervous to step into my own backyard to have a cigarette without an entire man-costume on. You can literally put on whatever the hell you want, step outside, and and shout at the top of your lungs “I’m here!” And nobody will bat an eye.
If I put on whatever I wanted, stepped outside, and met you for the first time, pleasant as can be, your preconceived notions would be that I’m some weird bundle-of-sticks-word that need to go inside and has no place in society.
Okay, I’ll make it simple since your reading comprehension leaves something to be desired: your bias is keeping you from allowing people to be themselves. The fact you don’t see a problem with an entire subsect of people being excluded from an event shows that you are a disgusting person that shouldn’t be allowed in public.
Yet you feel the need to tell them how they should act?
If they wish to participate, it’s their right to attempt to join. I just think it’s wonderful that the pagents clear policy of hate is backfiring so publicly.
Is that it that “activists want to insert themselves and their cause into every possible area of society“ or is it maybe that trans people are actual living breathing humans who are a part of every possible area of society, and they have the right to exist and live their lives in peace, same as you?
The only people in the story that are “forcing” anyone are the bigots who are actively attempting to ban trans people from competing, but they’re doing it poorly. Not surprising, since most bigots lack critical thinking skills.
Like any kind of contest, finding rules violations is hard and not foolproof. It’s like sports that forbid using steroids - competitors do regularly take those substances while training, then quit taking them for competition and go uncaught. Competitors who are discovered later to have been violating rules are stripped of titles.
That said, I don’t think it’s a very controversial concept that a beauty pageant shouldn’t be a contest about who could afford the best surgeons. Well - as I said earlier I think beauty pageants are absurd to begin with, but if they have to exist I don’t think it should be a contest between surgeons.
They are absurd and it’ll probably be a good thing when we’ve got past their existence. But the problem here is that proving surgery is essentially impossible. It’s quite unlike drugs that you can test for. Maybe implants you could test for but that’s just one thing, and I’m not sure that beauty pageants even have the kind of budget required for advanced tests.
One of the contest’s rules says you can’t participate if you willingly had a nude photo took in your lifetime. Good luck proving that (not even considering how it’s a honeypot for revenge porn to surface)
Though I would watch one that was a contest between surgeons. I imagine it’d start pretty tame, but the first time a girl with cat ears wins, were only like 5 years from the really crazy shit
Lol, you implement that and basically all beauty pageants stop existing. Which would be a good thing, mind you. But I’ve never met a pageant contestant in my life that isn’t … let’s say … heavily enhanced by medical procedures.
For context, Miss Italia is no longer broadcasted on important tv channels and almost no one watches or care about who wins now. Years ago (10?) it was a big thing and winners would make commercials and do movies/series and be remembered for life. But it’s too an old school concept now
I just googled it, apparently it might come back to the first national tv channel for 2023, we’ll see, anyway it was streamed on the official website before that and for the last 4 years
I think they totally can reject who they want… usually competitors are the winners of local beauty contest, so there’s a lot of ways to be excluded before even reaching the last decision stage. But not sure, I never really cared for it
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