Braasch competed in a "Battle of the Sexes" contest against the Williams sisters (Venus and Serena) at the 1998 Australian Open when he was ranked 203. Braasch was described by one journalist as "a man whose training regime centred around a pack of cigarettes and more than a couple bottles of ice cold lager".4 He nonetheless defeated both sisters, playing a single set against each, beating Serena 6–1 and Venus 6–2.5 Braasch was thirty years old at the time, while Venus and Serena were seventeen and sixteen, respectively.

Good

Protect women's sports

You're probably thinking of the female Lia Thomas beat in the NCAA finals who was an Olympic Silver Medalist

EDIT: Her name is Erica Sullivan

He was also playing them off of a round of golf and 2 beers. Said he played like someone ranked 600th in order to keep the match "fun. There’s just physical things men can do that women can’t handle, that’s just reality nothing against their skills/talents

But I'm saying I could've sworn Lia lost some races after she transitioned. i remember seeing that

I can't recall if she did back then but I remember she lost another race after winning the NCAA

She most likely threw the match on purpose during the height of the controversy and wanted to prove a point to everyone that she doesn't have a biological advantage swimming against cisgender females

How can you support the trans community if you don’t support trans athletes

A lot. Statistically proven that males can lift up 60% more than females. So strength training for whatever sport it may be male bodies are going to go further than female.

Agreed. That league gonna be wild though. Excited for that and excited for future sports

She literally only won one thing nationally

I support trans athletes

I’m just not convinced it’s fair to cis women to let MTF compete with them

Your title is wrong @op

I highly doubt FINA is being ran by radical feminists

I think this is a dumbass decision but let’s stop using terms incorrectly

These committees are disingenuous because they pick and choose what they want to see as an advantage all in the name of “fairness”.

We just forgot the part where people don’t want to let people below 18 get hormone replacement so they will always go through maturity first but that’s okay

Gotta talk to congress about that, FINA is dealing with the rest of the world, not just the western world.

The answer is separate trans leagues if people wouldnt allow the concept of “segregating” them make their heads explode and that also goes against the zeitgeist considering them fully women with no asterisks to not need to be separated

On top of it probably not even being enough trans athletes to fulfill a league or multiple leagues

Lol this is gonna go in circles forever

Then where can they compete if there wouldn’t even be enough for a league

Glad to see some people itt can look past the dogma around this subject

We set the parameters of competition, they're not fixed. We don't separate every sport by every biological advantage you could have. We don't separate basketball by height categories. But we just decided that biological males must compete against biological males, and biological females against biological females. We agree that this is fair and act like it's scientific, but it's not scientific at all. It erases intersex and gender diverse people, and it isn't even applied consistently.

When Caster Semenya was deemed 'too manly' she was harassed, had her privacy violated and was ostracized, even though she was assigned female at birth and her high testosterone levels occurred naturally. Meanwhile we celebrated Phelps when his body naturally created less lactic acid and handed him a competitive advantage.

Shows that gender categories are subjectively drawn and influenced by unscientific and dogmatic societal perceptions of masculinity and femininity. They're not divine rules that we have to uncritically worship.

There will be a set of parameters that make it 'fair' for trans athletes to compete, we just need to find and agree upon them. Issue is extremely overblown by a RW machine that has found the perfect culture war target.

Fax

Like basketball is a great example

A tall ass mf short for professional standards, is height now an "unfair biological advantage"?

It's all arbitrary and the only reason to focus on this relatively small advantage that trans women would have ultimately just comes down to transphobia

Exactly why people wouldn’t view that as an acceptable solution until a few decades from now where there would be enough people