The hashtag #NoThankYou has been trending worldwide all day. Here’s why.
The Olympic Games have attracted a new kind of controversy this year as women faced what many of them saw as unfair competition from transgender athletes who were born male.
One of those athletes is New Zealand weightlifter, Laurel Hubbard, who at 43 years old, would normally be considered long past the peak of strength in competitive weightlifting. Hubbard was involved in competitive weightlifting as a male for years, but never won the elite titles now garnered while competing as a female athlete – winning silver at the 2017 world championships, for example.
The International Olympics Committee amended its rules in 2015 to allow any transgender athlete to compete as a woman without surgery provided their testosterone levels are below 10 nanomoles per litre for at least 12 months before their first competition. However, critics say the decision ignores recent research which has shown that people who undergo male puberty retain significant advantages in power and strength even if they take medication to suppress testosterone levels.
Today, footage went viral of the three medallists in the 87kg category of the women’s weightlifting at the Olympics. They were relaxed and happy until a reporter, no doubt expecting kudos for asking the most woke question possible, asked about Hubbard.
“It’s an historic night here, with Laurel Hubbard competing as the first openly transgender in an individual event, I was wondering, you know, what you felt about that, and what you felt that it took place in your sport,”he queried.
Nine long seconds of silence passed before the US athlete Sarah Robles leaned forward and said, “No thank you”.
A Tale Of Two Questions pic.twitter.com/BqSNn2niEV
— Admiral Invalidator (@Artofhunger75) August 3, 2021
Writing in the Spectator, Edie Wyatt said: “Pretending that a person with a receding hairline, hairy armpits and the bulge of a penis is a woman may give progressives a warm fuzzy feeling, but girls know this does not look like them, nor does it look like their mother. Little girls see a middle-aged powerful white man that the female athletes have to shut up about. I, for one, refuse to lie about this.”
Clearly, from the response on social media, women across the world agreed.
I love #NoThankYou because it's so simple and straightforward a denouncement of the gender ID madness and yet so absolutely devastating.
— Sonia Poulton (@SoniaPoulton) August 4, 2021