caster semenya sends her regards

i know your heart’s in the right place, but suggesting we do away with competition in sports and everyone goes home with a blue ribbon instead so athletes like myself don’t feel left out is one of the most patronizing and infantilizing ideas I hear constantly. all it would accomplish is pissing everyone off (including me) and make me feel even more isolated, like my presence is the only reason no one can compete and have fun anymore. i play smash these days, and if someone suggested we include items and stop counting stocks and everyone just have fun, we’d all last ten minutes before walking away to never to play the game again.

I’ve been thinking about this, specifically the comments that point out that the whole reason women’s leagues exist is because women were banned from the traditional leagues (which reminds me of the Negro Leagues, and we got rid of those. Which, I bet there was the exact same sort of rhetoric about letting black people into white-controlled spaces that we see about letting trans people into cis-controlled spaces) and also the comments about how sports should just be about having a good time with your buds and not vicious competition.

Now that last point is dead wrong. We all know the real point of sports: finding the first superfit person who will be our champion against the Dark Lord who rules over us all.

And I see a lot of comments about science, and I’m sure I don’t need to spell out the point of science: building the weapon our champion will use to kill the Dark Lord. (which I don’t want to wade into the whole “why don’t we just get wizards to enchant a sword” debate. Obviously this would be ideal, but if we still had magic then the Dark Lord could never rule over us. Magic has died out, and wizards with it, so we have to use science instead, that’s just the way it is.)

You’re asking: Comrade, why have you spelled out these very obvious points that everyone knows?

Well, in short, I am calling for an immediate end to segregation along any lines in athletic competition. Only if all people, regardless of who they are, or how old they are, or how fit they are, are entered into the great challenge can we find our champion. They could be anyone, after all, who knows what form a superfit person might take? Perhaps a two-month old will be our savior, wielding the double-H bomb against our Enemy. Perhaps an 87 year old.

Seriously though, it is silly to keep trans people out of women’s leagues (though I guess I am legitimately opposed to the existence of women’s and men’s leagues if integration is possible. Unless there’s good arguments in favor of them? I guess I haven’t heard any but outside of reading a few articles I don’t really know that much about these issues. I just wanted to say something silly about wizards). So many people just cannot accept that gender is a social construct.

And also I’d legitimately disagree with the comments calling for a total end to competition. While competition doesn’t need to be cutthroat, friendly competition or even rivalry can be good. Plus, some people like doing sports, and some people like watching sports, and I don’t see why that should end. Change it’s shape, sure, the world organized under communism would look very different, but surely it’d still exist in some form.

fuck it make doping legal as well, i wanna see how wild humans can get

i would also like to see someone run the 100 metres in 5 seconds flat

Female former professional athlete here, let trans people compete.