To clarify, the pictured poster Caroline Kwan is an ally, not a TERF. The TERFs referred to in the title are the ones ‘protecting a very specific idea of what a woman is’

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    5 months ago

    I keep bringing up Brittney Griner and ask if she should be forced to play in the NBA and suddenly it’s, “no, she couldn’t even come close to beating the worst NBA player.”

    So if you’re a woman with masculine features and want to be an athlete, you can’t compete with anyone apparently.

    • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      5 months ago

      Realistically she had a choice - she could have either become the first woman in the NBA and been essentially an also-ran beyond that or do what she did - join the WNBA and set a single game record and tie a career record in her first game. Just going to point that out again, she tied a career record in the WNBA in a single game, the first one she played under them.

      Now she’s better known for being arrested and thrown in a Russian prison for trying to bring a weed vape into Russia when that’s illegal there. Pretty sure that’s technically international drug smuggling, albeit in the smallest and most innocuous possible way.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        5 months ago

        Ah yes, the Air Bud rule. “Nothing says women can’t play in the NBA.”

        And, of course, it was her choice on which league to play in. Because players get to choose such things.

        • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          5 months ago

          It was her choice which leagues to try to join. She didn’t try for the NBA and fail - she didn’t try for the NBA. There were even some commentators far deeper into the sport than I considering the possibility that she might do so before she joined the WNBA instead.

          As far as it being the Air Bud rule, one woman has officially been drafted by the NBA in 1977. She decided not to try out because she got pregnant. Mark Cuban talked about considering Britney Griner back in 2013, and there’s currently some chatter about possibly drafting Caitlin Clark though she’d be one of the smallest dozen or so players at only 6’ tall.

          But yeah, there is no professional sports league in the US that bans women from participating if they can compete at the relevant level. There’s even the occasional woman that tries out for the NFL, the last of which got injured early on in the process and bowed out. High contact sports are a hard sell for women to compete with men just because of size, weight and strength differences and professional sports athletes being more than a standard deviation from the mean.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            5 months ago

            Or maybe most women who think they have a shot get scared off by a bunch of asshole misogynists- the same asshole misogynists who think that they also can’t compete with women.