“One must respect the game”, but when is French Open going to respect Serena?!
All respect to Serena and Venus Williams. They put up with WAAAAY too much nonsense. I… words are failing me here. This makes me angry down to my toes.
“Until a male athlete plays at the highest level of their sport while pregnant and wins, there will be no other athlete better than Serena Williams. Period”
Things I’ve learnt as a skater that almost never make it to fanfiction
Because I’ve read enough fics to cringe when the figure skater throws their very expensive skates in their bag and run off somewhere because nobody ever treats their skates like that.
DRY OFF YOUR SKATES.
You dry off skates with a towel so that you protect the leather and so that the blades don’t rust
You put your blades in soakers (aka basically socks for your blades) so that the condensation gets absorbed somewhere and doesn’t rust the blade
AIR YOUR SKATES they smell when left in a closed bag
It takes like 10 minutes putting on skates and like 15 minutes getting them off because you need to wipe it down
YOUR SKATES NEED TO BE REALLY TIGHT SO THEY NEED 10 MINUTES TO PUT ON
Literally everyone falls
Everyone.
Falls.
From the board huggers to the pros doing jumps and spinseveryone falls and that’s natural
Just fall
TRIPPING ON TOE PICKS
The number 1 cause of falling
You can be talking to someone and then end up face down on the ice the next moment because toe pick
Stabbing yourself with a toe pick is not fun but extremely common to do so
Stabbing yourself in the boot is literally the most heartbreaking thing it’s like stabbing an expensive bag with a fork
Boots need to be replaced often if you’re skating at a high level cuz the support breaks down faster than you’ll see physical wear and tear outside of the boot
Blades need to be sharpened every 30-ish hours of usage (around once every two weeks-ish if you skate everyday)
Blades can sometimes cost as much as a boot
There is a break-in time for boots because they’re sooooo stiff
Some people wear their new skates around the house to quicken the break-in time
Boots have different stiffness ratings and you can’t get any random boot you like because you need to make sure it has sufficient padding for your foot
You can’t randomly get custom boots made for someone without their foot measurements
Boots need to fit on your feet like a damn glove
An exact fit
You can’t use anyone else’s skates unless you’re both the same size
Rental skates are pieces of shit
No matter how pro you are you’ll never be able to skate normally on rentals
WEAR GLOVES
The ice gets super cut-up and falling without gloves on can scrape your hands
It’s extremely painful when that happens
Wear gloves pls
PEOPLE WEAR PADDING
Especially if they’re learning something new
Pads for your butt, pads for your knees, heck even padded gloves
Padding protects your joints especially if you have joint problem
Like smashing your knees against the ice frequently causes you problems
A one-way ticket to old lady knees
Say goodbye to unblemished legs
Your knees will forever be bruised
Things people put in their skate bag:
Waterbottle, towels, band-aids, exercise tapes, extra socks, extra gloves, extra layers/clothes, hair-ties, skate guards, soakers, gels for blisters
You’ll notice that Olympic pros use luggages and that’s cuz they literally lug their entire house with them
“If we wanna talk about biology like using tha as a defense for being transphobic is actually a thing. Let’s look at something. I actually wrote a paper on trans athletes in sports and was direct to this article by my professor when i started writing it. But people don’t click on links that prove them wrong so here’s some excerpts:
“The public is by now used to the idea that sex is biological while gender is a social construct. But where in our biology does sex reside: in our genes, in our genitals, in our hormones? And is it even possible to separate biological sex from the environmental influence of gender?“
““It is very difficult to come up with an absolute line,” says Arthur Arnold, distinguished professor of integrative biology and physiology at the University of California Los Angeles“
“They found that other genetically male (XY) women had a double dose of a gene on the X chromosome, DAX1, that antagonizes male development, even if SRY is working. Then they found WNT4, another “anti-male” gene on the X chromosome that, if over-expressed, overwhelms the “pro-male” SRY. Rather than a singular bully that “imposed” masculinity, sex differentiation began to look more like a negotiation.“
“But the coroner actually found that Walsh’s cells were mismatched: some carried XY chromosomes, and some carried chromosomes with one X,“
“Walsh had mixed chromosomes, mixed internal sex organs and mixed external genitalia. As for her gender identity, the coroner, Samuel Gerber, offered his own assessment. “Socially, culturally and legally, Stella Walsh was accepted as a female for 69 years. She lived and died a female.”
“Martinez-Patino has androgen insensitivity syndrome. Her chromosomal sex is XY and she has male internal sex organs, but a genetic mutation means her androgen receptors don’t work….She developed as a typical female, and she and her family never doubted her gender..”
“But no study has ever shown that performance — say, finishing times in a race — correlates to athletes’ levels of testosterone. Testosterone is a complicated, dynamic substance: finishing a marathon causes it to plummet in men, while positive feedback from a coach can cause it to shoot up.“
“In one study of nearly 700 Olympians participating in 15 sports, 13.7 per cent of women had natural testosterone levels above the typical female range, 4.7 per cent were within the male range, and 16.5 per cent of men had levels below the typical male range…if hyperandrogenic women are overrepresented in elite sports, they themselves are still vastly outranked by female athletes who are winning with typical hormones.”
“there is little evidence that synthetic or “exogenous” testosterone behaves the same way as natural or “endogenous” testosterone“
I highly suggest reading the whole article but there’s your “biological sexes” analyzed by actual professionals who have studied this stuff. Because saying trans women have an unfair advantage is inherently transphobic. I don’t care what your reasoning is. If you see it as outsiders invading womens spaces you are transphobic.
Trans women are women! i know we say it a lot now but instead of wondering how they’r harming women, instead of arguing that it’s sexist to support trans women in womens sports, consider that they’re just fucking women who want to live their lives and have fulfilling careers. Instead of going “hmm they have an unfair advantage based on the fact i didn’t actually research this” consider that they are WOMEN just as woman as someone who identifies that way and has a uterus. It’s not unfair because they belong just like everyone else. If they are successful then they’re a successful female athlete done and done. end of story.
Cis women, there’s a lot of shit in the world out to get you, i feel that, but trans women are NOT one of them.
Detroit Piston Reggie Bullock has made LGBTQ equality a focal point of his life. Ever since his sister, Mia Henderson, was murdered in Baltimore in 2014, Bullock has struggled to make sense of the violence and understand the transgender community. Henderson was a trans woman.
Now Bullock is coming out of the shadows and making himself a champion of inclusion. He and the Pistons are working with national LGBTQ organization Glaad and other members of the community to build the conversation about inclusion in the NBA and beyond.
Steel Phoenix Studios 
