"My Stolen NCAA Championship" - Female Athlete Who Lost Women's National Title to Male Tells Her Side of Story

Why on Earth are there so many mouth-breathers on this thread? Some key points:

1. Trans women are NOT women - we as a society need to stop kidding ourselves with this one.

2. The division is irrelevant - Minna's frustration with the situation would have been just as valid if she was competing for the win at the D1 national championships or for a conference title at a NAIA program. This is unfair no matter where you place it.

3. Trans people do deserve respect just as much as anyone else - but not when they game a broken system so that they can rack up a bunch of cheap victories. The fact is, if Minna was born a biological man and went up against CeCé, Minna would absolutely wipe the floor with them.

I think you've intentionally misrepresented the actual position of most people on LRC and IRL.

The majority of the public aren't out "to make sure that no trans athlete 'steals' a title from a cis woman" like you claim.

For starters, most people wouldn't call women "cis women" because most people aren't on board with gender identity ideology and don't use its culty lingo.

Moreover, much of the general public seems aware that a great many women take offense at being referred to as "cis" or "cisgender."

But more to the the point: the position held by the vast majority of people today is that male athletes should not be allowed to compete in female sports competition whether or not the male athletes win.

Yes, people on social media and IRL tend to raise the loudest and most forceful hue and cry when male athletes competing in girls and women's sports steal titles that should go to female athletes.

But whether or not male athletes win in female sports is a secondary concern to most of us.

People who are against male athletes competing in female sports tend to be against it even when the male athletes don't take any titles away from female athletes.

In recent years, plenty of female athletes competing in girls and women’s sports have said they have a trans, nonbinary, genderqueer or other special gender identity different to their sex. So long as female athletes with special gender identities aren’t taking exogenous testosterone or other PEDs, no one objects to them competing in the female category.

For example, when Mack Beggs made headlines for winning state titles in girls’ HS wrestling in Texas circa 2017-18, people complained and took legal action because Beggs was allowed to compete in girls' HS sports whilst roided up on exogenous testosterone. The furor wasn’t over Beggs’ having adopted a trans gender identity. The furor was over the fact that Beggs was injecting testosterone, and had been doing so since the age of 14, giving Beggs an unfair advantage over all the other female HS athletes Beggs went up against in girls' wrestling.

Another example: in 2021-22 when Lia Thomas made waves by competing and cleaning up in women's intercollegiate swimming his senior year at Penn, another swimmer with a trans gender identity was racing and performing at a high level in women’s events in the same league and NCAA division that Thomas competed in. But no one objected to "transman" Izsac Hening of Yale competing in women’s swimming coz Hening is female and had decided to put off going on exogenous T until she gave up competing in the female category.

Although Nikki Hiltz gets stick, razzing and ridicule for the big to-do she makes about the gender identity labels she’s adopted and the pronouns she wants everyone else to use for her, no one that I’m aware of has seriously argued that Hiltz’s decision to assert that she has a trans non-binary gender identity means she shouldn’t be allowed to continue running in women’s events.

In other words, the position held by most people isn’t that “trans athletes” shouldn’t be competing in girls and women’s sports like you allege. It’s simply that male athletes shouldn’t be competing in girls’ and women’s sports.

Where is the evidence for this? Can you post a link to a reliable opinion poll to support this claim?

It seems most people who take offense at "cis" are MAGA bros, and not women.

What I find "weird" is your obsession with outdated gender stereotype that belongs to mid-20th century for before.

People used to think being gay was weird.

People also used to think it was "weird" that women competed in triple jump, pole vault, hammer throw, soccer, rugby, boxing, wrestling, weight lifting and so forth. There are still some people who think it is weird. But fortunately those are in the minority now.

RunRagged, if trans people would stay out of sports, do you still have a problem with them? You seem to spend much time on this subject. Is it really that big a deal? How do you feel about the trans people in general?

The problem with transgenderism isn’t primarily that it’s “weird,” it’s that is based on falsehood. It says that someone’s deeply-felt, entirely subjective, inner “sense” is determinative of gender, but there is no reason why we should think so, (other than of course, a vague sense of “being nice,” which doesn’t mean anything other than “shut up and don’t ask questions or think any deeper about it.”)

A tomboy girl who dresses and behaves like a boy is still a girl. Same with a boy who likes to play piano and is into fashion or whatever. (Ironically, it’s the pro-trans movement in this case that seems to rely heavily on stereotypes as determinative).

Even the examples you gave (female hammer throwers, people who are attracted to the same sex), are BASED on stable categories of men and women.

Nope. 1st, 60th, or 160th, if that runner was born male then that runner should not be allowed to run in the women's category. You're not wrong to note that fake women and girls who win are going to attract the most attention, but people who actually care about the issue don't care where someone places, they care whether she is a woman/girl or if he is pretending to be one. There is no point in even separating the sexes into categories if you can change which one you are eligible for. Just run a single marathon Trials and may the best human win.

Are categories of men and women are stable?

Let me ask you this. What are the biological markers that separate men and women? If chromosome, gonads, genitalia, phenotype and hormonal levels do not align in conventional way, which factors do you think is the most important and why?

A boy who likes to dress up as a Disney princess is still a boy. A boy who likes to play with barbie dolls is still a boy. Any psychiatrist who diagnoses trans children knows that. Being trans is something much deeper than that.

For example, this guy is a performance artist, not a transgender woman.

mymodernmet.com

Makeup Artist Expertly Transforms Himself Into Real-Life Disney Princesses

@mymodernmet

Makeup artist Richard Schaefer transforms himself into Disney princesses so authentic that you’ll do a double take. The 22-year-old has an impressive

Open link

As cis people, we don't fully understand what is going on inside trans people's brains. That does not mean what is going on inside brains is not real.

Experience is not the same as reality. Someone experiencing a panic attack may genuinely feel like they are dying, but if we were to affirm that belief instead of helping them recognize the truth, that they are not in danger, we would only be reinforcing their distress rather than alleviating it. Similarly, if a person believes the world would be better off without them and wants to commit suicide, agreeing with their perspective would be harmful. Instead, we intervene, offering support and guiding them toward a healthier understanding of their value.

By the same principle, when someone experiences gender dysphoria, their perception of themselves does not necessarily align with biological reality. Affirming this perception rather than helping them reconcile it is more harmful than beneficial. Our goal should be to help individuals find stability and well-being, rather than reinforcing distressing beliefs, just as we would with other deeply distressing experiences.

Good questions. I would say that what makes a woman a woman is the potential to get pregnant. Mind you, this potential is not always actualized—factors such as age, disease, or simply not the time of the month, etc can prevent this potential from becoming actualized.

Conversely, men have no potential of getting pregnant. This is not the same as a chronically infertile woman whose potential is there, but never actualized. The potential is not even there at all in men. This is why I think it’s accurate to say that women are fertile or infertile, whereas men are virile or sterile. (Sometimes men are referred to as being infertile, but this is not technically true, given the mechanics of the sexual act that actually leads to pregnancy).

As for your second point—yes, it’s true that we don’t have any way of knowing precisely what’s going on inside a trans-identifying person’s brain, but that’s because we don’t have any way of knowing precisely what’s going on in anybody’s brain, “trans,” or “cis,” or not. Even for matters not related at all to gender or the self-experience thereof. The lack of personal experience on the part of the “cis”person does not therefore make the transgender claim true. Even if a person truly, sincerely “experiences” himself or herself as the opposite sex/gender (i.e., he or she is not technically lying, rather, going off of the experience they genuinely have), that still does not a real truth make. Private experiences may be deeply felt by the experiencer (like when I dream that I’m flying , and really do in the moment think I am flying), but it is not true, in fact, that I am flying.

I appreciate your civility in your post.

You are assuming that being transgender (having gender incongruence) is deeply distressing. It is not. What is deeply distressing is not being accepted as the gender they identify with.

So what helps individuals find "stability and well-being" is making it easier for them to be accepted as the gender they identify with. A trans person often continues to have serious distress after medically transitioning because they are not accepted as the gender they identify with.

And the #1 reason a trans person is not accepted is because they cannot pass. A passing trans woman is far more likely to be accepted as a woman even if she does not go stealth. This is indictment on our society as a whole, not on trans people. We are so superficial that we decide whether to accept someone as a woman based on how she looks and sounds.

In a way, it gets worse after medical transition. You have hope that your physical appearance will change after medical transition and you will finally be accepted as a woman. When that does not happen, what else can you do?

So the best way to treat them is to identify the issue early and start medical transition as minors. That significantly improve their chances of passing, and their chances of acceptance. Unless we stop being so shallow to think how someone looks and sounds is so important.

16 Democrats who downvoted the OP hate women.

If we go by this, we should accept that there are three categories of sex with the third being people who cannot become pregnant and cannot impregnate other people. That is closer to reality, and I prefer this as long as intersex people are treated as equal. They could have male, female or nonbinary gender expression, but biologically they all belong to the third sex. I really hope that one day intersex people will not try to pass as endosex. But we (endosex people) have to change our attitude first before they can safely come out.

As for your second point, it is true that not being able to understand what is going inside trans people's brains does not make it "true." But it does not make it "false" either. We simply don't know whether it is true or false. And when we don't know something, I think we should fault on the side of giving the benefit of the doubt to people who are most directly affected. In this case, that's trans people.

I wrote "most directly affected" because other people are also affected. The issue regarding sports is the most obvious case, but there are other situations.

One of the problems with this issue is that trans people do not agree among themselves on what their end goal is. If the end goal is to be respected as trans people as a separate category, then they can define their "transness" in any way they want and who belongs to the group. But if the goal of trans women is to be treated as if they are cis women (or at least as closely as possible to cis women), then we need a clear boundary and that should be set by cis women. (i.e., who should be treated as women and in what situations they should be accepted as women.) You cannot have it both ways. (Self ID as a sufficient condition for acceptance as women under all circumstances is a non-starter.) I reckon this is less of a problem with trans men.

I think part of the problem is that "trans people" are a very heterogeneous group of people. Many of them are simply interested in gender expression of the opposite gender, and they are probably better called gender fluid or gender nonconforming. Other people fit the very narrow clinical definition, and are better off by living as the opposite gender. I think the latter group is actually a small minority among the self-identified trans people.

She lost to a biological male.

Why do you hate women?

Elon Musk is an African American.

So I copied and pasted a comment directly from Minna Svard's Instagram account and identified the person who posted it.

Then my post was deleted for "factually incorrect."

What is factually incorrect? If you go to the IG post I linked and go through the comment section, you can find the comment I copied as pasted with her account. Do you think that account is fake and someone is impersonating her with an IG account with 100k+ followers?

I guess this post will also be deleted as "factually incorrect."

Gays are weird.

So are Ts.

On Lipstick Alley (a US-based site for black women) and Mumsnet (a UK-based site used predominantly by women from Anglophone countries around the world), there are scores of threads going back a number of years where women discuss their feelings about being referred to as "cisgender."

Whilst the women who've shared their views on these threads have a diversity of thoughts and feelings - and some wholeheartedly agree with your own take - the majority of women who've posted have said in no uncertain terms that they find the term "cisgender" very insulting, oppressive, othering and unwelcome for a host of reasons and they very much resent it when adherents of gender identity ideology like you insist on imposing it on them.

I'll come back later and give a list of specific thread LA and MN titles with links.

In the meantime, an unscientific poll about whether women dislike or don't mind being called "cis" was done in the AIBU (Am I Being Unreasonable?) board on Mumsnet back in November of 2021 (thread start date: 07/11/2021).

The opening post said:

AIBU To despise being called ‘cis’?

I’m not ‘cis’. I’m not ‘cisgendered’. I’m literally a woman. I’ve just read a guardian article that calls women seeking IVF cisgendered.
Why????

The thread ended up being full, meaning it went on for 40 pages and 1000 posts, at which point it ended (all Mumnset threads end when they reach 1000 posts).

Of those who answered the poll, 8% said the OP was being unreasonable to despise being called "cis." 92% said she was NOT being unreasonable.

Some of the comments on the first page:

Yanbu. I don't know why everyone bends backwards not to not offend and then go on to offend a huge percentage of women.

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There is a word that means “not trans woman”. That word is “woman”.

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Funny how everyone is asked to respect pronouns/TWAW ["trans women are women"] but the same respect isn’t given to stopping using the word "cis"

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YANBU. It’s offensive nonsense designed to “other” us from our own sex class.
It also implies we embrace our “gender identity” (there’s no such thing) because we’re not trans. It’s crap, and insulting.

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I also find it quite offensive. I'm not sure why, if a trans-woman or man wants to be known as that, fine, but don't change our terminology, too.

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There's woman and transwoman. Cis is not required.

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Nope I hate it and will refuse to acknowledge anyone who addresses me as such or attempts to define me in that way.
I am a woman. It's a clearly understood term requiring no modification.

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I agree - can't stand it and I won't ever use that term for myself or another woman.
You can be trans, I'm happy if you are happy... but if you want to change how you're identified you shouldn't also need to alter what others choose to identify as. It's disrespectful.
On another note I'm not a 'birthing person' or a 'person who menstruates' either

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I find being called cis incredibly offensive, It enrages me and I’m not 100% sure why yet.
It’s just so unnecessary. The only word needed for my sex is woman.

I’m happy to call anyone whatever they want or need. But why am I suddenly gaining a new term for my sex without my consent?

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mumsnet.com

To despise being called ‘cis’? | Mumsnet

I’m not ‘cis’. I’m not ‘cisgendered’. I’m literally a woman. I’ve just read a guardian article that calls women seeking IVF cisgendered. Why????

Open link

Even if medical transition feels affirming to the person undergoing it right after, or even years after, it still is not a justification for the process at all. “Gender affirming” transition, despite the euphemism is in fact doing harm, regardless of whether or not the person wants it done or not. To deliberately maim a healthy, natural process like puberty and the sexual capacities that result from it (regardless of how difficult that time can be for most young people), no matter how loudly it is insisted that such a intervention is necessary, is doing harm.

That’s not even counting the fact that many do later want to “detransition,” recognizing their trans identity as just as phase. Sadly, many of them can’t actually just return to normal.

“Unless we stop being so shallow to think how someone looks and sounds is so important.” If that’s the case, if “how someone looks and sounds” is indeed so superficial as to be unimportant, what’s the point in medical transition anyway? If someone “assigned male at birth,” to use the lingo, does indeed know and feel with every fiber of his being that he is indeed a woman, why the necessity to to through the risky, painful and expensive process of just “looking” and “sounding” like a woman, given that such things are so superficial?