Bethany Hamilton breaks silence on transgender furore engulfing discount wetsuit brand Rip Curl

“Male-bodied athletes should not be competing in female sports. Period.”

Who coulda picked it? The discount wetsuit brand Rip Curl dumps a disabled surfer for her trans-women-in-sports take, scoops up recently transitioned gal and celebrates the move on Instagram.

Shortly after, the hashtag @BoycottRipCurl goes viral.

A firestorm reminiscent of T-Girl Dylan Mulvaney’s takedown of Budweiser. 

(The story of how Mulvaney broke Budweiser, the beer of choice for those who can’t decide between water and alcohol, is legend. Bud sent Mulvaney a custom can with her face on it. This was part of a campaign to celebrate her “365 days of womanhood.” Conservatives took to social media to express their outrage. They were joined by a chorus of voices who felt that Bud Light had betrayed their duty to be as bland and inoffensive as possible.)

Ha, ha etc.

Anyway, as Chas wrote earlier the hashtag @BoycottRipCurl hashtag was trending at number one for a while there on X.

“Yes, #BoycottRipCurl has leaped past the numerical mark of roughly 7000 tweets required for ‘trending’ with over 18,000, and counting, the wetsuit and soft good manufacturer’s name in lights.”

It had started to back off a little, as things do in this fast-paced world, until Bethany Hamilton, the disabled girl dumped by Rip Curl for the T-shredder Sasha Jane Lowerson, made a short post on X rekindling the outrage.

“Male-bodied athletes should not be competing in female sports. Period,” wrote Bethany.

The tweet was viewed boy 400k users, liked 13k times, reposted 1.6k times and hit an astonishing 532, and growing, comments.

Male-bodied athletes should not be competing in female sports. Period.

— Bethany Hamilton (@bethanyhamilton) January 29, 2024

“Sad that this even has to be said. Thank you for speaking up for female athletes,” wrote the activist Taylor Silverman.

“Your voice is important in surfing. Thank you from me,” wrote the world champion surfer Ian Cairns, whose own fountain of testosterone shows no sign of abating even in his seventh decade. “But more importantly thank you from every little girl catching her first wave. Pressure needs to land on @ISAsurfing and @wsl to change their position on this issue. International Athletics is in the Olympics but has a biological woman policy only.”

From others:

When men & boys are allowed to compete against women & girls, it completely defeats the purpose of having female categories. It’s cheating

What Rip Curl did to you, and who they replaced you with, is despicable.

When a category was opened for people who identify as trans to swim in, no one registered. It is about validation for these men, it is about taking what is women’s. Human beings cannot change sex, so everyone can follow the same rules and compete against their sex. Men’s categories are usually open to all anyway, it is just that due to the male advantage women are not a threat to them in sports.

Interestingly, Bethany took a little heat herself for using the words “Male-bodied” to describe men.

Why are you participating in the doublespeak language takeover? Men should not be in womens sports. Women cannot become men no matter what surgery or medications they take.

What is “male-bodied athletes”?

“Male” is fine.

I appreciate you using your large presence to speak out. But What the hell is a “male-bodied” athlete? Don’t stutter. Just say it.

And, over on Riley Gaines’ initial tweet about Rip Curl word from a T-Girl who don’t buy into the trans-women-in-sport game.

TBH, the whole invasion into women sports does not make sense.

We, transwomen, spend a huge amount of efforts to become as close to biological women as we can. It is a very difficult path full of suffering. And then some of us attempt to grab a low hanging fruit of winning against women in sports using our advantage.
a) It is a part of our male body past. We were trying to get rid of it and now use it for benefits?
b) We have chosen extremely difficult path and suddenly chose to go an easy cheating way to victory?

Trans people should participate in either social sport events, open category or our own categories. Invading female category is the same as participating in a wrong weight category for an advantage.

Very interesting, yes?

More importantly, anyone else get ’emselves a new Flash Bomb at these wild new prices?