What's Worse? Women Or Transgenders In Sport?

Started by Innocent Smith, November 12, 2019, 02:41:41 AM

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Aeternitus

Quote from: dellery on November 13, 2019, 10:19:24 PM
By "sports" are we talking about professional sports or playing sports for recreation? It's hard to see why anybody should get payed to play a game without feeling shame or embarrassment. Females are intended to be at home with children and are generally happier when they are, this most of us can agree on.
The idea that a girl is going to start developing male traits and male virtues because she's playing a recreational sport with other girls seems to be a stretch.
What a girls gets out of playing a sport will not be the same as what a boy does.

Yes, Fr Leen makes a distinction when it comes to recreational games for girls:
Quote
A girl should aim, in play only at the acquisition of that strength and grace which becomes a woman. Games should be indulged in by her not for the fierce joy of overcoming a rival, but for the proper and harmonious development of her physique as woman.

Aeternitus

#61
Quote from: Arvinger on November 13, 2019, 02:58:41 PM
Quote from: bigbadtrad on November 13, 2019, 02:22:28 PM
You can't make a woman develop the mindset of a man without developing an aggressiveness that destroys a woman. If you don't believe me look at any pro athlete and tell me you would want to marry that person for their personality and as a partner for Our Lord into Heaven.

The point is that ideally women in professional sports (or any sort of full-time professional career) should make a choice: family or career, because the two can't go together (there is no way she can be a good Catholic wife and mother while constantly travelling around the world for living). If a woman makes such a choice, than the question how suitable she is for marriage or motherhood is sort of moot.

I found a quote from Bishop Sanborn which I mentioned before.

"For women I would say this. Are you going to get married or are you going to pursue a career? It's either/or. Being married and a worldly business career do not go together. If you don't agree with that, again I have nothing further to say. If you want to pursue some sort of elaborate career, decide you are not going to get married and then do whatever you want as far as career. If you want to become a nuclear scientist or something like that—sure, she can do that. I have no objection that she does that. It's just that I think that to say, "Well, I'm going to be a nuclear scientist and then I'll get married when I'm 35, and then have a child or two, and we'll give the child over to daycare, and my husband and I will work different jobs, or my husband will stay home to cook and clean and I will have my career." Then she has a completely twisted idea of what her role is."

https://www.truerestoration.org/interview-with-bishop-donald-sanborn-on-cultural-issues-march-2009/

So, His Excellency acknowledges that specific women (probably a small minority) can have gifts which they might legitimately pursue as a career for living, while giving up on family and children. In principle I don't see why it should not extend to sports if a woman has that sort of a gift.


I have two concerns with this argument.  First of all, in choosing a career, sportswomen (and men) only have a short career life to factor into their overall life-plan.  By early or mid-30s most are past their prime and younger, stronger, fitter and faster versions have replaced them. Consequently, they have another lifetime or more (35 years +) to plan for, so it is not the same as a woman who has chosen a profession/career, which can sustain her throughout her working life.  Of course some may not need to work, if they have been successful enough to fund the rest of their lives.  But they do have to do something with the rest of their lives...  Marriage may be one option - if they can find a suitable choice who has not been married before.  But they have certainly reduced their options in this area.       

Secondly, I believe Bp Sanborn and any of the traditional clergy would oppose a sports career for women on the issue of modesty alone, let alone any other potentially valid reason.  I've seen photos of women footballers in action shots that I would not permit a child or young man under my control to view.   And to equate Bp Sanborn's example of a woman who chooses nuclear science as a career with one who chooses a sports career, in my view, is an Olympian leap in itself.  I know he says: "then do whatever you want as a career", but it goes without saying that would not include anything that involves mortal sin. 

dellery

Quote from: Aeternitus on November 14, 2019, 06:06:15 AM
Quote from: dellery on November 13, 2019, 10:19:24 PM
By "sports" are we talking about professional sports or playing sports for recreation? It's hard to see why anybody should get payed to play a game without feeling shame or embarrassment. Females are intended to be at home with children and are generally happier when they are, this most of us can agree on.
The idea that a girl is going to start developing male traits and male virtues because she's playing a recreational sport with other girls seems to be a stretch.
What a girls gets out of playing a sport will not be the same as what a boy does.

Yes, Fr Leen makes a distinction when it comes to recreational games for girls:
Quote
A girl should aim, in play only at the acquisition of that strength and grace which becomes a woman. Games should be indulged in by her not for the fierce joy of overcoming a rival, but for the proper and harmonious development of her physique as woman.

Girls don't need to try not to indulge in the "fierce joy of overcoming a rival" because these are not feminine sentiments. Masculine behavior can indeed be taught to girls, but left on their own without the stimuli of contemporary sports-cucks, they generally use sports as a way to build teamwork, cohesion, emotional stability, and the establishment of a pecking order. Females are naturally highly competitive with other females and are often ruthless with one another, sports can actually dampen the female's hostility toward her peers by exposure to healthy competition, shared defeat, and personal failure.
Competition magnifies and strengthens certain intangible traits, but they don't always have to be masculine. If a girl is playing sports then the traits that will be amplified will be feminine.
Blessed are those who plant trees under whose shade they will never sit.

The closer you get to life the better death will be; the closer you get to death the better life will be.

Nous Defions
St. Phillip Neri, pray for us.

Nazianzen

I haven't read this thread, so I am not commenting on anything in it, except to add a fact, with my speculation as to what caused it.  My perception is that this may be relevant.  If it isn't, please ignore.

Fact.  Worldwide the percentage of cosmologists who are women is something like 15%, maybe 17%.  In the old Protestant countries it is lower.  In the Catholic countries it is much higher, including in Spain, and it is approaching 40% in Argentina. 

What would explain this?  It is the opposite of what one who holds a narrow view of Tradition might expect.

I suggest that what we Anglosphere people think of as "Victorian" ideas are crystallised, brittle, caricatures of Christian philosophy.  Such a position is unable to deal with new realities and must, if it isn't to collapse, hold fast to fixed traditions - not traditions of the faith, which are principles, but traditions of the application of principles to concrete situations, applications which cannot be modified precisely because the underlying principles have been lost.  Being dead, Protestantism hasn't the suppleness and subtlety of the living faith, the living vine, which always receives the living and life-giving sap from the trunk.

Catholics on the other hand, address new situations by applying age-old principles, and therefore don't have an issue with a female doctor, for example.  The first such graduate was Italian, actually, hundreds of years before the British were shocked to see women wanting tertiary education...

My point isn't to justify the contraceptive career hag, but to point out that if a woman isn't married or clearly about to be, there is no moral problem in her studying for a career.  I have six daughters, most of them adults, so I am aware of this situation in the concrete.  We ought to be careful that we do not create a blind alley for our ladies, by pretending that we live in a different era than we actually have been chosen by Providence to live our faith in.

Now, we may think it imprudent to spend large sums on education that may not be of use to a future mother.  It is certainly imprudent not to equip an adult to earn a good living.  There are considerations of many kinds each way.  But it isn't a sin to get an education, nor is it intrinsically unladylike, and for many it is plainly necessary.

Professional sport for women is usually horrible and immodest, but there are exceptions, such as some horse riding events.  Catholics will know how to apply the eternal principles so mercifully revealed to us to each possibility as it presents itself.

In the Immaculate,
Naz.

clau clau

Transgender is worse.  Although the history of feminism reminds me of this famous Grimms fairy tale.

The Fisherman and His Wife - Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

Once upon a time there were a fisherman and his wife who lived together in a filthy shack near the sea. Every day the fisherman went out fishing, and he fished, and he fished. Once he was sitting there fishing and looking into the clear water, and he sat, and he sat. Then his hook went to the bottom, deep down, and when he pulled it out, he had caught a large flounder.
Then the flounder said to him, "Listen, fisherman, I beg you to let me live. I am not an ordinary flounder, but an enchanted prince. How will it help you to kill me? I would not taste good to you. Put me back into the water, and let me swim."

"Well," said the man, "there's no need to say more. I can certainly let a fish swim away who knows how to talk."

With that he put it back into the clear water, and the flounder disappeared to the bottom, leaving a long trail of blood behind him.

Then the fisherman got up and went home to his wife in the filthy shack.

"Husband," said the woman, "didn't you catch anything today?"

"No," said the man. "I caught a flounder, but he told me that he was an enchanted prince, so I let him swim away."

"Didn't you ask for anything first?" said the woman.

"No," said the man. "What should I have asked for?"

"Oh," said the woman. "It is terrible living in this shack. It stinks and is filthy. You should have asked for a little cottage for us. Go back and call him. Tell him that we want to have a little cottage. He will surely give it to us."

"Oh," said the man. "Why should I go back there?"

"Look," said the woman, "you did catch him, and then you let him swim away. He will surely do this for us. Go right now."

The man did not want to go, but neither did he want to oppose his wife, so he went back to the sea.

When he arrived there it was no longer clear, but yellow and green. He stood there and said:

Mandje! Mandje! Timpe Te!
Flounder, flounder, in the sea!
My wife, my wife Ilsebill,
Wants not, wants not, what I will

The flounder swam up and said, "What does she want then?" ...

for more see:  https://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm019.html
Father time has an undefeated record.

But when he's dumb and no more here,
Nineteen hundred years or near,
Clau-Clau-Claudius shall speak clear.
(https://completeandunabridged.blogspot.com/2009/06/i-claudius.html)

awkwardcustomer

Quote from: dellery on November 14, 2019, 06:35:08 AM
Females are naturally highly competitive with other females and are often ruthless with one another.....

At last someone is prepared to acknowledge reality.

But you forgot to add spiteful and vicious to the list of not so pleasant female traits.

Does anyone ever wonder whether the shy, modest, retiring ideal woman being praised on this thread would last five minutes in a family kitchen?

Where have all those strong Catholic women gone, the one's you wouldn't dare mess with.  Criticise their husbands and you take your life into your hands.  But don't imagine for one minute that they bore any resemblance to the delicate flowers being idealised here.
And formerly the heretics were manifest; but now the Church is filled with heretics in disguise.  
St Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture 15, para 9.

And what rough beast, it's hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
WB Yeats, 'The Second Coming'.

Maximilian

Quote from: dellery on November 13, 2019, 10:19:24 PM

The idea that a girl is going to start developing male traits and male virtues because she's playing a recreational sport with other girls seems to be a stretch.

No, not a stretch at all. I see it all around. Teenage girls who tend to be:
1. Short
2. Muscular, especially in the thighs
3. Mannish

This is all due to exposure to testosterone through competitive athletics. Testosterone promotes muscle growth but stunts height because the body converts testosterone into estrogen which closes the growth plates.

These girls are going through the same growth trajectory as Italian boys who typically would mature faster, look like grown men in 8th grade, but then never grow any taller.

One tends to associate this type of girl with "softball players." This was a meme around the time that Elena Kagan was being appointed to the US Supreme Court.

https://www.politico.com/blogs/ben-smith/2010/05/softball-question-026935

A spokeswoman for the Wall Street Journal said today its cover art was not intended as innuendo about Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's sexual orientation after the paper's front-page use of an image of Kagan playing softball provoked a mixture of irritation and amusement from gay and lesbian advocates.

"It clearly is an allusion to her being gay. It's just too easy a punch line," said Cathy Renna, a former spokesperson for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation who is now a consultant. "The question from a journalistic perspective is whether it's a descriptive representation of who she might be as a judge. Have you ever seen a picture of Clarence Thomas bowling?"

The vintage of the image, released by the University of Chicago, was a particular source of questions in the context of persistent, public chatter about the nominee's sexual orientation. This isn't exactly a whispering campaign, as the question -- no longer particularly scandalous -- has made it to the Washington Post and widely-read websites. White House officials have denied, on background, that Kagan is a lesbian.




Maximilian

Quote from: diaduit on November 14, 2019, 01:32:07 AM

the female athletes wear knickers and a bra top while competing but the men wear loose shorts and vest top......so it can't be for aerodynamics or some other bs reason.

This has universally been the case for a while now. Go to any beach or pool and you will see men with loose, baggy bathing trunks down to their knees, while the girls are all competing to see who can be the most naked. Same with other sports, as you point out.

Here's men's beach volleyball at the Olympics (I can't post the equivalent photo for the women since it's NSFW):



Quote from: diaduit on November 14, 2019, 01:32:07 AM

And I don't need a doctorate research team to spot the dick van dykes in female sport.....its a collection of all that's ugly

Yes, ugly is the word. Going back to the eighties, I've never found these Olympic women attractive. It's so unfeminine. There's something gay about the whole project, besides the individual examples.


Maximilian

Quote from: dellery on November 14, 2019, 06:35:08 AM

If a girl is playing sports then the traits that will be amplified will be feminine.

Stated without a shred of evidence in the face of an overwhelming mountain of data surrounding us.

Feminine traits amplified?


Maximilian

Quote from: awkwardcustomer on November 14, 2019, 06:58:18 AM

Does anyone ever wonder whether the shy, modest, retiring ideal woman being praised on this thread would last five minutes in a family kitchen?

So traditional Catholic girls can't cook? Really, this is ridiculous.

You should have informed St. Peter of your concerns before he advised women to have a "meek and quiet spirit."

dymphnaw

Quote from: The Curt Jester on November 12, 2019, 08:21:21 AM
I find sports good when they are used means of instilling discipline and teamwork.  Unfortunately, that is no longer the focus for most, it seems.  The number of days a week that these kids (and their parents) are engaged in sports activities, it is insane.  They do it to the detriment of their own family time, actual work, and studies.  We definitely have a sports-first mentality.   

At my school:

1. A child missed mandatory school events because his coach told him that sports were more important that school.  Apparently his parents agreed.

To be honest most of what goes on at school is worthless....

Kreuzritter

Quote from: Maximilian on November 14, 2019, 08:38:59 AM
Quote from: dellery on November 14, 2019, 06:35:08 AM

If a girl is playing sports then the traits that will be amplified will be feminine.

Stated without a shred of evidence in the face of an overwhelming mountain of data surrounding us.

Feminine traits amplified?



I'm calling roids on Serena though.

bigbadtrad

Quote from: Nazianzen on November 14, 2019, 06:57:00 AM
What would explain this?  It is the opposite of what one who holds a narrow view of Tradition might expect....
I suggest that what we Anglosphere people think of as "Victorian" ideas are crystallised, brittle, caricatures of Christian philosophy....
Catholics on the other hand, address new situations by applying age-old principles, and therefore don't have an issue with a female doctor, for example... 
We ought to be careful that we do not create a blind alley for our ladies, by pretending that we live in a different era than we actually have been chosen by Providence to live our faith in.
But it isn't a sin to get an education, nor is it intrinsically unladylike, and for many it is plainly necessary.

I truncated your ideas to address the main ones.

You started with the argument of cosmologists and moved to the exigencies of our time saying our view of tradition isn't traditional because of women who perform certain tasks. No doubt there were female doctors, philosophers, etc.. through the growth of Catholic universities.

Still we can't use this as an argument of tradition. Because something is merely in the past doesn't make it traditional. If it broke with a previous norms you can't sprinkle time over it and pull the rabbit out and call it tradition. There is not a tradition of Catholic women who had careers absent family life that were pious. Sure there is the Aunt Betty type who never found the right guy and worked a job, but most career women are bitter and nasty with resentment. The phenomenon of the 40 yr old single woman who goes crazy to have a baby is proof of this fact.

Read the popes on this issue, the saints. Rerum Novarum comes to mind.

The idea of a woman in university could be considered from a Catholic perspective of an alma mater who truly cares for the soul could be granted.. There was a belief in the village to raise a child. The growth of career women which stemmed from this has been proven to be a disaster. Large cities historically were known not to be centers of piety, but impurity.

90% of world worked an agrarian lifestyle just 110 years ago. Obviously career women were anomalies.

There was a belief in practicing Christianity about purity. One can read it with St. Alphonsus, St. John Vianney, et al. but suffice it to say it is not considered moral for women and men to hang out separately and singularly without chaperones because of lust. This is absolutely true today and it is one of the reasons why so many people leave the faith, is through impurity. This would be true at a university and certainly on the job. The boundaries of female schools and female professions is not what I oppose. What I oppose is mixing society without the standard rules to protect chastity.

Your statement "We ought to be careful ... pretending that we live in a different era than we actually have been chosen by Providence to live our faith in." The truth is we do live in a different era. Most men have seen pornography before the age of 12 through smart phones, promiscuity is not what it was for my grandparents, and these are realities which transcend the career path we pick.

The purity of our youth should take precedent. The breaking of Catholic norms to safeguard purity should be our primary objective when looking to find paths for our children and even ourselves. For every story of a child who left the faith because of strictness I could find 1,000 more of allowing worldliness and the removal of barriers that safeguard purity.

I just don't believe we can upend social norms and barriers of purity without causing the problems we face today. I'm not opposed to a woman becoming a teacher, nurse, etc. what I'm opposed is if she works at a public school or hospital and begins to have modern dating practices. I'm against the break-up of families for better financial opportunity, and I'm certainly opposed to the notion of a career woman who will later regret it and then feels trapped.

While you might say you agree with that I don't know how it's possible to separate your ideas from boundaries of purity. I'm open to your ideas.
"God has proved his love to us by laying down his life for our sakes; we too must be ready to lay down our lives for the sake of our brethren." 1 John 3:16

awkwardcustomer

Quote from: Maximilian on November 14, 2019, 08:48:38 AM
Quote from: awkwardcustomer on November 14, 2019, 06:58:18 AM

Does anyone ever wonder whether the shy, modest, retiring ideal woman being praised on this thread would last five minutes in a family kitchen?

So traditional Catholic girls can't cook? Really, this is ridiculous.

You should have informed St. Peter of your concerns before he advised women to have a "meek and quiet spirit."

What?  When did I refer to trad Catholic girls and their cooking abilities?

I'm questioning whether the delicate flower type of woman being idealised so much on this thread is capable of enduring the rigours of running a household.  And I'm wondering if it is a fantasy which will only disappoint young men when they discover that reality does not always match up these ideals.

And why is having a "meek and quiet spirit" not compatible with being strong in one's traditional role?   
And formerly the heretics were manifest; but now the Church is filled with heretics in disguise.  
St Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture 15, para 9.

And what rough beast, it's hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
WB Yeats, 'The Second Coming'.

Maximilian

Quote from: awkwardcustomer on November 14, 2019, 11:26:43 AM

And why is having a "meek and quiet spirit" not compatible with being strong in one's traditional role?   

You were the one who created that dichotomy:

Quote from: awkwardcustomer on November 14, 2019, 11:26:43 AM

Where have all those strong Catholic women gone, the one's you wouldn't dare mess with.  Criticise their husbands and you take your life into your hands.  But don't imagine for one minute that they bore any resemblance to the delicate flowers being idealised here.

Clearly the ideal proposed by you cannot be described as "meek and quiet," just the opposite