Ok I tried to watch it but can't. He just sits there when "she" tells him she's a biological woman. SHe says, "I'm a biological female as well" and he does nothing. Imagine if I went on that show and put on blackface and said, "I'm a black man." How would that go over?
I listened to the first 96 seconds and then stopped as I answered the question she led with. “It all boils down to, do you actually think that trans women and intersex women are real women and are really female, or not? "
Of course not. A trans woman isn't female. A transwoman is a transwoman. An intersex women is an intersex woman. Biologically, they are either male or intersex - certainly not female.
Next.
What do they talk about for the next 12 minutes? She's right about what it boils down to. The rest of it is nonsense.
That's actually the precise moment I closed the video as well.
I kind of feel like the progressives' roots in eugenics is still a major driving ideology, although expressed a bit differently now. The liberal ideology seems to be that once a person exists, no matter how mentally ill, deluded, or criminal they are, we need to respect them and make a place for them in society. But we'd rather not have them exist in the first place. So we make a place for everyone, but also highly encourage behaviors that would result in producing fewer people. Abortion, acceptance and celebration of homosexuality, narcissism, incelism, obesity, general physical and mental weakness.
The conservatives' ideology isn't as clear to me, although it seems to have something to do with personal responsibility. Since pro-life/anti-abortion is a major part of the conservative platform I would say the attitude is that everyone should at least get a fighting chance in life, although some may be highly disadvantaged. Then, in adulthood, those that don't make the cut can't be tolerated at all. The conservatives aren't really clear at this point about what their solution is. What I see in practice is that the conservative solution is to just get rid of the undesireables as adults, by putting them in jails or making conditions so bad for them that they have no choice but to flee to liberal cities where they'll be accepted. In a way I kind of see this as violating the personal responsibility part of conservatism. If your family or culture has produced people you don't like, it's your collective responsibility to deal with them, not just ship them off somewhere else for others to deal with.
The 'natural testosterone' comment in fact strengthens the argument against including biological males from women's sport; as Ivy pointed out that 0.5% of male Olympians had extremely low testosterone at the Olympics and competed against men with 80x higher T levels and had 'no competitive disadvantage'! Surely that is the ultimate example of retained male advantage after testosterone suppression?
Not quite. Testosterone suppression is known to affect performance, as is supplementation, just not the natural levels, so her argument is that natural T disparity shouldn’t be used as an argument to exclude trans women from women sports. I agree it doesn’t immediately lead to the inclusive conclusion that trans women have no advantage over women.
(Just to clarify, I found most of her other arguments disingenuous.)
Her claim is hogwash, bad interpretation.
The research she is quoting is saying natural T levels don't separate performances at a high level. For example, for all elite sprinters at the world level. T levels can't distinguish between a 10.5 100m women and a 10.9. No one would expect it would. Nothing we could test would distinguish between that small of a performance gap.
That is an entirely different finding then the claim "natural T levels don't matter for performance."
One of the reasons is this is tricky to study. We can't just artificaially change natural T levels in an experiment. So we have to look at surrogate markers.
For example, boys get a massive jump in performance when natural T levels surge at puberty.
Or, when natural T levels are suppressed, there's a significant decline in performance.
levels
Ivy is taking advantage of the fact that regular people don't understand the science.
No, it is not complicated at all. There are two sexes. And the idea of removing male advantage by manipulating testosterone levels makes the "conservative" side as foolish and presumptuous as the transexual side. We don't know enough to manipulate hormones.
GG
Trans people have a right to compete in sports, just like anyone else. The question is what level is appropriate. They should have their own league, but there aren’t enough trans athletes to form local leagues. We shouldn’t force them onto mens teams, that also wouldn’t be fair. So we need to provide opportunities for them, but we don’t have the leagues to do it.
I listened to the first 96 seconds and then stopped as I answered the question she led with. “It all boils down to, do you actually think that trans women and intersex women are real women and are really female, or not? "
Of course not. A trans woman isn't female. A transwoman is a transwoman. An intersex women is an intersex woman. Biologically, they are either male or intersex - certainly not female.
Next.
What do they talk about for the next 12 minutes? She's right about what it boils down to. The rest of it is nonsense.
Simple, to the point and true...one of your best posts!
Ok I tried to watch it but can't. He just sits there when "she" tells him she's a biological woman. SHe says, "I'm a biological female as well" and he does nothing. Imagine if I went on that show and put on blackface and said, "I'm a black man." How would that go over?
As evidence that there's no correlation between natural T levels and athletic performance, Veronica Ivy (the athlete formerly known as Rachel "cis people should all die in a grease fire" McKinnon) said that 0.5% of male Olympians had extremely low [natural] testosterone [for males] when they competed at the Olympics, yet they nevertheless were able to compete against men with 80x higher T levels with "no competitive disadvantage."
This is totally beside the point. The fact that there's no clear correlation between the natural T levels of male athletes at or near the time they engage in sports competition and how well they do in that competition against other males doesn't justify males using gender identity claims and T reduction schemes to horn in on women's sports so they can compete against females. These are two entirely separate topics that have nothing to do with one another at all.
The reason that males have such huge advantages over females in most sports is not because they have high levels of natural T at or near the time of any given competition - it's because of the accumulated legacy effects of what happened to their bodies previously due to the high natural T levels they had during crucial stages of development in the past.
Males acquire a host of physical characteristics that make them much better suited to nearly all sports than females due to the massive amounts of natural T their male gonads, the testes, pump out over the course of three distinct formative stages in life - during gestation in utero starting from the 7-8th week when the testes first form and start producing natural T; during the male mini-puberty of infancy that occurs in the first year after birth, a 4-7 months-long period when baby boys' natural T levels are high as in male adolescence; and during the years-long transformation from boy to fully-grown man that begins when puberty of adolescence starts, usually around age 11-12, through the rest of the teen years.
It doesn't matter whether males have low natural T later on in life. Once they've acquired, or start acquiring, any of the many distinctly male physical features males obtain going through male puberty of infancy and adolescence, males will always have a big leg up over females in nearly all sports.
From age 12 on, the male physical advantage in sports becomes so huge as to be glaringly obvious and undeniable. But even long before 12, males have physical features - such as a hearts with a 6-8% larger and more powerful left ventricle than female hearts of the same size and age - that put nearly all male children at a distinct advantage over nearly all female children in the vast majority of sports.
One of the many reasons Ivy's blather about natural levels of T is so maddening is that the high levels of natural T which males have and benefit from during development are only a boon athletically to males. In girls and women, natural T elevated above the normal female range during any stage of life is sign of a serious endocrine disorder such as CAH or PCOS, a life-threatening tumor, or pregnancy - none of which are conditions that are associated with peak physical fitness and top-tier sports performance.
her argument is that natural T disparity shouldn’t be used as an argument to exclude trans women from women sports.
But Ivy's evidence to prove this point was that of male Olympians with critically low testosterone. As I mentioned, this is meaningless because in this case it *is* suppressed (either by overtraining or steroid use). Therefore you can't glean any meaningful data about 'natural testosterone' from that particular data set as there is absolutely no way that those males made it to the Olympics with 'natural' lifetime T levels below that of the average woman, any sports scientist with 15 minutes of experience will tell you that, and I suspect even Ivy knows that but chose not to mention it.
I still don't get Ivy's reasoning here. At all. Ivy's claim is that some male Olympians were found to have unusually low natural T for males at/near the time of the Olympics, yet they were still able to hold their own competing against other male Olympians.
Whether or not this is true, and I don't really care either way, what the hell does it have to do with males horning in on women's sports?
Does Ivy think that that because some elite male athletes remain competitive with other elite male athletes even when they currently have much lower natural T than most other guys, it somehow means that males have no physical advantage over females?
I find it telling that Ivy's PhD thesis is a justification of BSing, bluffing and bamboozling that details some ways to BS , bluff and bamboozle so effectively that you get away with it. The title is Reasonable Assertions: On Norms of Assertion and Why You Don’t Need to Know What You’re Talking About
The substantial number of studies (eleven at last count?) that prove retained male advantage after transition versus the zero studies that disprove it *cannot* be unknown to Ivy. And let's be honest, anyone with a functioning brain didn't need the studies in the first place, but they're nice to have. Therefore, knowing that there is no relevant science that supports this position, Ivy is forced to use obfuscation to a spectacularly silly degree. When "I call myself female and I'm made of biological stuff so I'm a biological female am I not?!" is one of your key arguments, it's time to let a genuine expert in on the debate. I would LOVE to have seen Ross Tucker take over from Noah for that segment.
As a man I applaud her efforts to allow equal opportunities to men. I am too slow to race against men, so I would like to race against women instead. She is trying to make this happen. Thank you, Veronica.
Whether or not this is true, and I don't really care either way, what the hell does it have to do with males horning in on women's sports?
Does Ivy think that that because some elite male athletes remain competitive with other elite male athletes even when they currently have much lower natural T than most other guys, it somehow means that males have no physical advantage over females?
It’s true. I checked the papers and they are by clinical researchers and she just cites their findings. She herself doesn’t have a science background. She also doesn’t appear to be twisting what’s actually in those papers.
Her argument is that natural T disparity shouldn’t be used as an argument to exclude transwomen because that doesn’t provide competitive advantage. To her credit, natural T is overemphasized by media and WA and other athletic bodies as a difference between men and women, to the extent that they have set limits for what is permitted in the women’s category.
If I were Ivy and you told me that natural T is hardly the only factor and there’s a whole host of other physiological features that T and other factors help develop in boys at puberty, here’s what I’d presumably force you to do:
1) Either identify every one of those factors or at least the dozen or so most significant ones, and place exclusion limits on them. This would be a losing proposition and you’d end up excluding some women from women sports and allowing some men into women sports (if they so chose).
2) Accept that we don’t know really understand what all matters for performance and therefore err on the side of inclusion.
(Just the messenger and playing devil’s advocate here.)
If I were Ivy and you told me that natural T is hardly the only factor and there’s a whole host of other physiological features that T and other factors help develop in boys at puberty, here’s what I’d presumably force you to do:
1) Either identify every one of those factors or at least the dozen or so most significant ones, and place exclusion limits on them. This would be a losing proposition and you’d end up excluding some women from women sports and allowing some men into women sports (if they so chose).
It's an interesting thought experiment and often people who side with Ivy call for measures like this, e.g. categorise based on performance level rather than sex. The problem is that if you begin to flesh out the idea even in its most basic form, you soon realise how utterly uncontrollable and non-scalable it would be. To pick just two random issues of perhaps hundreds:
1) Athletes would sandbag their performance in qualifying to ensure they could medal in the level below their real potential.
2) I understand there are perhaps 1000-2000 athletes between the fastest 400m male and the fastest 400m female in any given year. How would you begin to create categories that adequately capture every performance level without turning the 'female' event into some sort of Z list category?
As for the physiological factors, again, it's just too unrealistic to imagine you could stay on top of an ever-changing athlete to ensure they were competing in the correct group. Things like weight, height (for younger athletes), muscle mass, vo2 max, hormone levels, etc. are very fluctuating, some of them changing on a daily basis. Who is going to pay to regularly test these athletes on every recognised variable and then administrate who goes where and deal with the constant appeals that they've been placed in an unfair category?
If I were Ivy and you told me that natural T is hardly the only factor and there’s a whole host of other physiological features that T and other factors help develop in boys at puberty, here’s what I’d presumably force you to do:
1) Either identify every one of those factors or at least the dozen or so most significant ones, and place exclusion limits on them. This would be a losing proposition and you’d end up excluding some women from women sports and allowing some men into women sports (if they so chose).
It's an interesting thought experiment and often people who side with Ivy call for measures like this, e.g. categorise based on performance level rather than sex. The problem is that if you begin to flesh out the idea even in its most basic form, you soon realise how utterly uncontrollable and non-scalable it would be. To pick just two random issues of perhaps hundreds:
1) Athletes would sandbag their performance in qualifying to ensure they could medal in the level below their real potential.
2) I understand there are perhaps 1000-2000 athletes between the fastest 400m male and the fastest 400m female in any given year. How would you begin to create categories that adequately capture every performance level without turning the 'female' event into some sort of Z list category?
As for the physiological factors, again, it's just too unrealistic to imagine you could stay on top of an ever-changing athlete to ensure they were competing in the correct group. Things like weight, height (for younger athletes), muscle mass, vo2 max, hormone levels, etc. are very fluctuating, some of them changing on a daily basis. Who is going to pay to regularly test these athletes on every recognised variable and then administrate who goes where and deal with the constant appeals that they've been placed in an unfair category?
Agree it’s a ridiculously complex problem to do PCA on performance, so I (wearing my fervent trans activist role playing hat) could leverage that to argue that neither of us nor state-of-the-art science understands what all factors matter for performance, so it’s simply your favorite philosophical position against mine:
You: A woman is biological based on organs at birth.
Me: I’m a woman because my body and mind says so. Doctors agree I’m genuine and the DMV and the government agree I’m a woman, so I have women’s human rights.
For me one of the most telling aspects of this discussion is that there has never, ever, not once, been a trans man fighting to be placed in the men's category. Every single conversation we have around this, including Ivy, is about trans women competing again cis women. If someone born male really has no physical advantage over someone born female, why wouldn't there be a proportionate amount of trans men competing in mens fields? Why is it only trans women that feel the need to compete against their cisgendered counterparts? I would earnestly like to ask Ivy this to see if it is something I am missing
I would only be able to take this as a quasi-religious belief that I could pretend to believe, but ultimately I'd just be pretending. The most I can do is believe that they believe it, like any religion. I certainly can't realistically expect to debate anyone with that mindset. Imagine the furore if Noah had said to Ivy: "No, I don't believe you're a biological female" even though that would be 100% factual.
The bigger picture being that the category is there to protect 'females' not 'people who feel feminine'.
Whether or not this is true, and I don't really care either way, what the hell does it have to do with males horning in on women's sports?
Does Ivy think that that because some elite male athletes remain competitive with other elite male athletes even when they currently have much lower natural T than most other guys, it somehow means that males have no physical advantage over females?
Her argument is that natural T disparity shouldn’t be used as an argument to exclude transwomen because that doesn’t provide competitive advantage. To her credit, natural T is overemphasized by media and WA and other athletic bodies as a difference between men and women, to the extent that they have set limits for what is permitted in the women’s category.
If I were Ivy and you told me that natural T is hardly the only factor and there’s a whole host of other physiological features that T and other factors help develop in boys at puberty, here’s what I’d presumably force you to do:
1) Either identify every one of those factors or at least the dozen or so most significant ones, and place exclusion limits on them. This would be a losing proposition and you’d end up excluding some women from women sports and allowing some men into women sports (if they so chose).
2) Accept that we don’t know really understand what all matters for performance and therefore err on the side of inclusion.
(Just the messenger and playing devil’s advocate here.)
I agree that there's been an overemphasis on natural T as the main or sole explanation for the physical differences between men and women that matter so much in sports.
But the reason WA and other athletic bodies, and the media in their wake, ended up focusing so heavily on natural T in sports - and in women's sports specifically - is because in response to complaints and legal challenges from XY DSD athletes who wanted to compete in women's sports, the IAAF/ WA and IOC decided in the 1990s to stop requiring athletes seeking eligibility for women's competition to undergo mandatory genetic testing to establish that they were XX and/or lacked the male-determining SRY gene that's normally on the Y chromosome in males.
When the IAAF/WA stopped basing eligibility for women's competition on athletes being genetically female, the IAAF/WA and IOC came up with cockamamie new criteria that was all about testosterone levels. The new criteria were designed to serve the interests of XY DSD athletes who wanted in on women's sports - not to protect fairness and safety for female athletes with only X chromosomes who thought and think women's sports should be for female athletes only.
Making eligibility for women's sports all about testosterone levels has always struck me as totally nuts. (Yes that little joke was intentional, hardy har har.) Because whilst testosterone is the predominant natural sex hormone in males, and it's the sex hormone that drives male development and many aspects of male physiology and behavior (such as male libido), testosterone is a hormone that females make in very small amounts most of the time. Moreover, the natural, endogenous T that female humans make in relatively tiny amounts seems to have no or very little bearing on female development and female sports performance.
As for the claim that the IAAF/WA and other sports governing organizations "have set limits for what is permitted [in terms of natural testosterone levels] in the women’s category" - sorry, this is not true.
There are only limits on the natural T of male athletes with DSDs and male athletes claiming trans identities in the women's category. There is no upper limit set for the amount of natural T of female athletes in women's sports. Athletes with female genetics born with ovaries whose natural testosterone is above the normal female range (0.2-1.68 nmol/L) for any reason - CAH, PCOS, pregnancy, endocrine tumors - are subject to no restrictions or special rules in women's sports. A female athlete cannot be disqualified from women's sports for having "naturally high testosterone " or "unusually high levels of natural T" - only male athletes can.
The 5 nmol/L upper limit that the WA has set for middle-distance women's events applies exclusively to XY DSD and male trans-identified athletes in women's competition.
The 2.5 nmol/L upper limit that FINA and UCI have recently announced they are putting in place also apply solely to male athletes with DSDs and male athletes with trans identities who seek eligibility in girls' and women's competition - not to any female athletes.