Athletics IAAF World Championships 2017

[heywoodu 16,458]

17 hours ago, thiago_simoes said:

 

The main problem to me was when people misgender women just because they feel like it. Someone (I guess it was a Polish user) even said the athlete from his country was the third among women. Bullshit. She was sixth among all women, like it or not. Five other women -- again: WOMEN -- be it African or not, were faster than the Polish girl.

 

 

Also, I remember someone writing that it is hard to differentiate Kenyan women because they have the same haircut. It might have been you who wrote this, I'm not sure. Not all African women look the same. This might not have been intended as racist, but as I said, it MIGHT come off as racist. It's not that it will, but it might.
 

 

I entirely agree with you on the first part of this quote. Semenya, Niyonsaba, Wambui, etc, are most definitely women. A complicated situation where it's not wrong to study possible unfair advantages, yes, but that doesn't mean they're all of a sudden men or should be called men. The advantages require study, the fact whether their male of female doesn't, because they're female, that's merely a fact.

 

Not all African women look the same, obviously. But it's not racist, at all, when one would say it can be difficult to see if a certain athlete (no matter their nationality) is athlete A or athlete B, because both of them have the same nationality (meaning the same colour of clothes), the same haircut, the same length, the same running style etc. In athletics most of these cases happen to be with Kenyan athletes, in cycling it's usually even Dutch athletes I can't tell apart on the TV cameras because with helmets on many of them look alike. If they were wearing the same clothes I couldn't keep Susan Kuijken and Lynsey Sharp apart, merely because they're both as white as snow, both have the same hair (in model, colour, length, everything) and even their faces are alike. In exactly the same way there are (mostly women's distance) races where I find it rather hard to tell apart one Kenyan from another.

 

Yes, racism and everything is a problem, entirely agreed. It's also a problem that (at least in my country) it's become nearly impossible to even talk about it, because a large majority is either on the 'everything is racist' side ("you don't agree with me? Oh you're a filthy racist!!") or on the 'nothing is racist' side ("Saying black people are stupid is not racist, it's normal!"), anything in between is sadly just ignored or put in one of the two sides anyway. Oh well, I guess that's part of today's world: everything is drawn into extremes more and more and even people you basically agree with will accuse you of all kinds of stuff because you're not going far enough. 

Edited August 15, 2017 by heywoodu

[heywoodu 16,458]

By the way, my biggest frustration when people go and spread hate towards Semenya is that, if the stories are to be believed, Semenya is one of the friendliest people in the world of athletics. Never a bad word about anyone, always goes to each and every competitor after every race (win or lose) for a little 'well done'. Small gestures, but I don't see anyone else doing this kind of thing after every race. Treated like this for 8 years and still not turning into an angry woman, one must have one hell of a good character to remain so friendly to all their competitors. 

[heywoodu 16,458]

2 hours ago, dcro said:

I think I've read somewhere an idea for introducing such event to the Paralympics program.

Talk about extremes...  

 

If we'd go this far, we might as well scrap categories entirely and only have open events for every human.

 

Spoiler

No, I'm not saying this is a good idea or even a remotely good one, it's not.