Weightlifting Qualification to Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games

[OlympicIRL 5,532]

I see a very important debate ongoing but can we all focus on the important issue here.... will Ireland get a weightlifting quota? That is what I want to know

[mpjmcevoy 362]

1 hour ago, Vektor said:

The main issue with all of this is that we don't have enough trans athletes to create more categories besides "Men" and "Women". 

 

There's a similar solution to this, but I am afraid trans people would see it as degrading: having them compete at the Paralympics where we have many different categories anyway. The issue with this is that Paralympics is officially for disabled people and being trans isn't a disability. If IOC can rebrand the Paralympics to be for "special" athletes who fall outside of the norm what's considered eligible for the normal Games, maybe it wouldn't be hurtful for trans people to compete there in their own category.

 

Or maybe crate a queer Olympics where trans people can have their own events. That might actually be more fun for them. 

The Paralympic route is the fairest. It would have the advantage of being 'gender affirming' - there would be no objection to calling the event say Women's sprint cycling TS1, where TS1 is the transgender categorisation, and I don't see how we can have an s14 category in swimming for intellectual disability that doesn't imply a learning difficulty, but we can't have a category that acknowledges gender dysphoria. and as for numbers there are significantly more people with a transgender identitiy than there are blind people, or people of short statutre, or people with double, above the knee amputations.

 

As for a 'queer olympics' (shudder at word queer), there are both the Gay Games and the OutGames already.

[mpjmcevoy 362]

1 hour ago, OlympicIRL said:

I see a very important debate ongoing but can we all focus on the important issue here.... will Ireland get a weightlifting quota? That is what I want to know

Touch and go, I understand....fingers crossed.

[Vektor 3,326]

8 hours ago, mpjmcevoy said:

The Paralympic route is the fairest. It would have the advantage of being 'gender affirming' - there would be no objection to calling the event say Women's sprint cycling TS1, where TS1 is the transgender categorisation, and I don't see how we can have an s14 category in swimming for intellectual disability that doesn't imply a learning difficulty, but we can't have a category that acknowledges gender dysphoria. and as for numbers there are significantly more people with a transgender identitiy than there are blind people, or people of short statutre, or people with double, above the knee amputations.

 

As for a 'queer olympics' (shudder at word queer), there are both the Gay Games and the OutGames already.

"shudder at word queer"

 

Hm, I thought that "queer" is now an accepted term to the describe non-heterosexual and trans people and has lost its derogatory meaning, which made sense to me because I don't really like using an acronym to name a group of people, plus "LGBT" isn't inclusive enough as there are other kind of people inside this community who none of these 4 letters apply to. 

[szy123 79]

12 hours ago, Vektor said:

The main issue with all of this is that we don't have enough trans athletes to create more categories besides "Men" and "Women". 

 

There's a similar solution to this, but I am afraid trans people would see it as degrading: having them compete at the Paralympics where we have many different categories anyway. The issue with this is that Paralympics is officially for disabled people and being trans isn't a disability. If IOC can rebrand the Paralympics to be for "special" athletes who fall outside of the norm what's considered eligible for the normal Games, maybe it wouldn't be hurtful for trans people to compete there in their own category.

 

Or maybe crate a queer Olympics where trans people can have their own events. That might actually be more fun for them. 

Some kind of 'development' events for trans people might be a nice idea. Even just to promote sport among them and make the field strong and big enough to continue the debate on making specific rules for each discipline to make it possible for them to start in main categories. Because still, they should have a right to compete within the strongest field if they meet certain criteria.

 

Also maybe a change in understanding the categories would help, so trans people competing won't be that kind of a taboo. I mean, change "men" and "women" categories to something more inclusive. Like "male-leaning"/" female-leaning". I'm not sure how to call it suitably, but I hope you get the idea. I suppose that would be welcomed by non-binary athletes like Leo Baker. 

[dodge 1,024]

Maybe suggest moving the transgender talk out to a new thread and leave the qualification talk to this one? 

[Nickyc707 382]

14 hours ago, OlympicIRL said:

I see a very important debate ongoing but can we all focus on the important issue here.... will Ireland get a weightlifting quota? That is what I want to know

I think it's the tension surrounding the question of the Irish weightlifting quota that has driven the debate on to a slightly less contentious issue. ?

[hckošice 14,822]

So banned ?

[Dragon 1,844]

Just now, hckošice said:

So banned ?

No, they've just withdrawn to help Ireland qualify a place 

[Dolby 735]

4 minutes ago, Dragon said:

No, they've just withdrawn to help Ireland qualify a place 

But there is no  in 81kg