So, my uni women's rowing club decided to restrict membership to cis women only. In response, a new "open" division was created that anyone can compete in.
Lots of women left to join the open division instead, and now the women's club are complaining about losing their best rowers.
Be transphobic, lose support.
That's the conses of your quences, folks.
Jun 30, 2026, 2:32 PM@therivercrow GOOD.
Sucks to be a terf I guess oh well who cares. Fuck them all the way to last place and also hell 🖕
@therivercrow You love to see it.
Jun 30, 2026, 2:52 PM@therivercrow sucks for them i guess. anyway grats on the new team
i wonder what the Latin version of "they fucked around, they found out" is.
@burnitdown @therivercrow Google Translate says it's "ludificaverunt, invenerunt". Which reversing comes out to "they played, they found" (which is pretty close, I think?)
@therivercrow up shit creek without a paddler
Jun 30, 2026, 3:34 PM@therivercrow good for those women who left.
@LunaDragofelis that's basically what a quote from one of the women involved said - no "male sports and female sports, just sports".
Jun 30, 2026, 4:05 PM
I'm being drawn to the conclusion that exactly this is the correct response to the transphobic people in sports. OK, so trans people can't take part in <sport>? Fine; make a new 'open' class for anyone. Everything, from Formula 1 driving to bloody tiddlywinks and back again.
@therivercrow need a new rhyme that's the opposite of go woke, go broke. Act with hate, lose yer mates?
@ASprinkleofSage @therivercrow go terf, get nerfed?
@stefanie @ASprinkleofSage @therivercrow
They already think they're nerfed, though.
@ASprinkleofSage @therivercrow
I always just add one word to that: go woke or go broke.
(added: ...because, in actual fact, it does tend to work out that way: the majority are not having again with all the bigoted shenans.)
@ASprinkleofSage @therivercrow it's really always been Go Woke Or Go Broke people just think they can forget that.
@ASprinkleofSage @therivercrow for a while "go fash, lose cash" was the retort to that one.
Jun 30, 2026, 4:09 PM@therivercrow
Quence around?
Conse out.
@therivercrow Great! 😀
@therivercrow I have to say, I absolutely love the "conses of those quences." It's beautiful to see.
@floofpaldi @therivercrow I love it too.
@DavidBridger @floofpaldi not mine, stolen from tumblr linguistic culture!
@therivercrow @DavidBridger And it's amazing, no matter who said it first. I'm gonna steal that one for my vocab as well.
@floofpaldi @therivercrow agreed.
I love this outcome 😊
@therivercrow To that rowing club that decided to act with hate and prejudice: Get fucked
@therivercrow I am reminded that a college friend, male, rowed on the men's lightweight four and coxswained one of the women's boats.
Nobody complained.
It might make sense, at least in some sports, to have age, weight and/or height classes, rather than sex restricted teams. I am not sure it would work for all sports--but I'm not sure it wouldn't.
But it's worth a try. At the very least it would be interesting. It might even answer some questions about how sex matters in sport.
It's been tried repeatedly. Men get REALLY ANGRY about being beaten by a woman, even if she didn't win, fucking losers.
@NinjaDebugger @Karen5Lund @therivercrow Yes, it all pivots around the idea that women are poor feeble creatures who can't compete with anyone with Y chromasomes.
@anne_twain @NinjaDebugger @Karen5Lund @therivercrow
Yup. Sports like tennis and shooting that intentionally have different formats for different genders (e.g. 3 games per set vs 5) so you can't compare athletes, should be shamed out of it. And an "open" class is imvho often a good way forward from status quo.
@jaystephens @anne_twain @NinjaDebugger @Karen5Lund @therivercrow also: the people complaining about how mixed-gender competition might result in absolutely toxic levels of sexual harassment (seems likely in a lot of contexts) never seem to care about either homophobic harassment within single-gender teams, nor about sexual harassment of non-team-members by single-gender teams.
The fact is: it might indeed bring out more openly a lot of stuff that happens around the margins or in socially-ignored contexts right now, but avoiding it in order to shove those problems deeper under the rug isn't actually a good thing.
"Open" classes could offer chances for much-needed culture resets as well.
@Karen5Lund @therivercrow As far as I know, there have never been gender rules about coxes, only rowers. My friend (male) used to cox the ladies team, and there are female coxes of men's teams.
@therivercrow i’m a trans masters rower and the rowing community is generally very good with gender stuff!
over the winter there was a scare that trans women would be banned from rowing entirely, but us rowing essentially said that they will never check or respond to any reports that a rower is trans and should be disqualified. also pretty much all of the regattas have rejected that policy entirely. also my team and coaches said that they would openly defy the ban if it came to it.
also the coxswains (the people who steer the boat and give instructions and who dont contribute with their muscles but absolutely contribute to the boats speed) dont have to be the same gender as the rowers. so cis men have won medals in women’s events at the olympics ever since 2020, and cis women have won medals in men’s events.
@echosystemname @therivercrow may you hold fast to that for as long as it is necessary.
@echosystemname thats all very good to know! I rowed as an undergraduate, but that was before transition.
So in the case of the "coxswains", do they try and find the lightest person they can?
@cbleslie @therivercrow there is a weight limit (120lbs for men, 110 for women), so if the coxswain weighs less than that they have to carry ballast to equal that weight. that keeps things from getting too unhealthy with people wanting to be super light, but lightness is a slight advantage. but it's mainly about their skills and how they integrate with the rowers and such.
@cbleslie @therivercrow and those weight limits are for the olympic and world rowing events. they're technically a thing for masters rowing too, but most regattas don't do weigh-ins, and most masters coxswains are also rowers in the same club, so often are way above the weight limit.
That’s great to hear that somebody who competed in college.
@therivercrow Lmao
@therivercrow I love rowing. It's the only exercise machine I've considered buying because the old folks center where I work out doesn't have one, or room for one.
Were I in college, and rowing, I would have joined the walkout. Good for them.
@therivercrow Haha, get fucked! :QueerCat_Trans:
Jun 30, 2026, 6:07 PM@therivercrow that's heartening!
Go CHUD, be a dud.
@therivercrow lol, lmao.
@therivercrow I am wilted by the heat and sad, but at least there are good things happening in the world.
It's a wonder that the Uni code of conduct would even allow that to happen.
@therivercrow I'm glad the open division is doing well.
@therivercrow Quickly moving from FA to FO, I see. Good.
The terves really can't understand that most people don't consider trans women the enemy, and they're going to pick their friends over the bigots.
Jun 30, 2026, 9:08 PM@therivercrow welp...
@therivercrow I hope this happens EVERYWHERE. Please and thank you.
@therivercrow Love to hear it :D
@therivercrow
Apparently this is also happening on a national level with US women's rugby, so it's part of a broader trend that is awesome to see.
@therivercrow Now the ones that remained are the Rowling club.
I'll see myself out.