Except it is not fair and never has been. These are arbitrary labels used capriciously by the unwashed masses who lack the capacity to be rigorously analytical. I have never pushed for transgenders in athletic competition but rather I expose how flimsy the argument for fairness is,…
You are not wrong. Fairness in all spheres of life has always been a social construct. There isn’t an absolute universal truth from which the finer details of our notions of fairness predictably emerge, including and especially in sports, a domain whose primary purposes are societal entertainment and economic value for those involved.
There isn’t an intellectually and morally honest argument for why Phelps or Bolt is fair but someone born intersex isn’t. For trans inclusivity, that argument is weaker, but then again, if the regulations are such that the fraction of transwomen athletes winning women’s competitions is comparable to their prevalence in the population, it’s hardly clear why it’s unfair to anyone.
Phelps and Bolt compete against other men, so in that regard it is fair. Intersex athletes that dominate female sports are most often men with developmental disorders that cause them to develop certain female sex characteristics (i.e. Caster Semenya). Sifan Hassan's abilities are not due to a developmental sex disorder and if I had to guess, (assuming she's not doping) she's just is an extreme outlier in the distribution regarding the physical traits related to running ability. She doesn't have special secondary sex traits that other women wouldn't have the chance to develop.
I'm super left-wing socially, but liberals need to get a grip with this "no advantage" nonsense. By all means we should fight anti-trans bigotry and work to create the most inclusive environment for these kids within reason. But come to one track meet or one track practice before you spout off with this nonsense. Boys have a significant biological advantage. I coach several "regionally elite" girls and they regularly get smoked in practice by my freshmen/sophomore JV boys, but my girls are far and away the better athletes. They deserve their own category and a level playing field.
Do you think trans girls who started medical transition before puberty still have unfair advantage?
I don't know enough about the science behind this. I'd imagine it's difficult to study because of the small number of individuals who undergo such treatment so early, but if it completely negates the male biological advantage then by all means they should compete as girls.
Do you think high school sports must have stricter eligibility requirement than the Olympics? (Should a teenager who would be eligible to compete in the Olympics be banned from high school competition?)
I know the rules at the high school level in my state. Just because the Olympics may have a different rule, doesn't make that rule inherently fair or correct. Again, spend 1 day at a track meet and then try to argue that allowing biological males into the female category is fair. It's inclusive, but it's not fair.
The fact is that 21 states have already banned such student athletes and the number is increasing. If the Republicans win the White House and both chambers of Congress, that ban will be extended to the entire country. In many ways when it comes to this debate, Republicans are right but for the wrong reasons and Liberals are wrong for the right reasons.
Why do we have to ban a high school athlete who would be eligible to compete in the World Athletics Championships? No one is being banned. We have a pre-existing restriction on the female sports category that's based on biological gender, not gender identity. We're currently having an argument about whether or not to remove that restriction.
Personally, I get the sense that many people on the left of this argument don't even like or understand sports. This is not band or the school play. Part of what makes sports so compelling is the spirit of fair and honest competition. If as a society we decide it's better for sports to be as "inclusive" as possible rather than as "fair" as possible then that's fine I guess. But let's not pretend we aren't sacrificing something in the process.
Yes there is: Phelps and Bolt are competing to see who's the best in the world, period, no restrictions. If we had "wingspan" categories, then Phelps might be in his own. But there's no category boundary that his long arms threaten. Phelps and Bolt get to compete with the other men, and we haven't tried to draw lines between them and their peers. If we did, that'd be another story.
Women's competitions exclude men because men are so much stronger that they make the competition profoundly unequal. We've drawn a line between men and women, and allowing DSD or trans athletes to cross the line we've decided on is unfair because their biology is from the other category.
This dumb "but Michael Phelps has long arms" argument is never followed to its conclusion. If it were, you'd be arguing against women's sports in general. Because gender, according to you, is just another unearned advantage. But if you believe in separating men and women, you have to believe in enforcing those rules.
So pick one: open competitions for all, with no restrictions, or separate men's and women's divisions that trans/DSD athletes can't cross.
Your first para implicitly seems to suggest that your notion of fairness is that whatever already exists is fair, to which I don’t subscribe simply because if everyone appears did that, we wouldn’t have the societal progress we’ve had including for women’s rights.
You are not wrong. Fairness in all spheres of life has always been a social construct. There isn’t an absolute universal truth from which the finer details of our notions of fairness predictably emerge, including and especially in sports, a domain whose primary purposes are societal entertainment and economic value for those involved.
There isn’t an intellectually and morally honest argument for why Phelps or Bolt is fair but someone born intersex isn’t. For trans inclusivity, that argument is weaker, but then again, if the regulations are such that the fraction of transwomen athletes winning women’s competitions is comparable to their prevalence in the population, it’s hardly clear why it’s unfair to anyone.
Phelps and Bolt compete against other men, so in that regard it is fair. Intersex athletes that dominate female sports are most often men with developmental disorders that cause them to develop certain female sex characteristics (i.e. Caster Semenya). Sifan Hassan's abilities are not due to a developmental sex disorder and if I had to guess, (assuming she's not doping) she's just is an extreme outlier in the distribution regarding the physical traits related to running ability. She doesn't have special secondary sex traits that other women wouldn't have the chance to develop.
Your language is based on the assumption of a sex binary, which intersex fundamentally challenges.
Do you think trans girls who started medical transition before puberty still have unfair advantage?
I don't know enough about the science behind this.
I guess the rest of your answer is based on this self-acknowledged ignorance. But thanks for at least trying to answer.
The World Athletics may or may not be correct. But if we are going to have more strict rules for high school sports, we need a good enough reason for that.
Do you support out of competition drug tests for high school athletes? Do you think every high school athlete should be required to report their whereabouts to USADA? Do you think more substances must be added to the banned list? After all, the health of teenagers needs to be protected more carefully than that of adults. Should high school students serve longer suspension for missing tests? If the answer to any of the above is no, why not? You want high school sports to be more exclusive than the World Athletics Championships, right?
The argument that trans athletes are not "banned" from high school sports is like the argument gays and lesbians have always been allowed to get married. Yes, they always have been, just not to the people they wanted.
Well, RunRagged, peer-reviewed articles actually show that when trans kids transition in early puberty, their pelvic bone geometry changes as well to reflect the sex that they transitioned into
I'm providing it so others here can see for themselves what the actual paper looked into and what it says in full.
That way, everyone can see from the text and the images the authors provided that this study did not look at "pelvic geometry" like you claim. It looked at a small, specific part of the upper femur in the non-dominant leg of the young participants as seen on images taken from bone scans. Moreover, it only looked at two aspects of their upper femurs, namely the "subperiosteal width and endocortical diameter."
In plain language, the "subperiosteal width" refers to the size of the thickness of the part of the bone known as the periosteum, which is the dense layer of vascularized connective tissue overlying the cortical surface of bones - it's the tissue that makes up the outer covering of bones. The "endocortical diameter" refers to the estimated size of a bone's major interior parts that make up its core based on external features.
Also, for the record, this study did not show that the trans-identified youth whose bone scans were looked at had upper femurs identical to persons of the opposite sex in the two aspects looked at or estimated.
Rather, the paper says that assessment of the trans-identified youth's upper femurs based on bone scan imagery and machine computations showed that these two aspects of their upper femurs "resembled" or had developed "in the direction of" those same aspects found in the femurs of the opposite sex.
Finally, I think it's important to point out that the purpose of this study was not to test any hypothesis regarding pelvis structure of trans-identified youth put on "puberty blockers" and exogenous hormones the way your wholly inaccurate and seemingly-intentionally misleading mischaracterization of its findings suggest.
The purpose of this study was simply to see if trans-identified youths put on "puberty blockers" at, before or shortly after the start of puberty of adolescence - followed by exogenous cross-sex hormones - developed bone problems beyond the worryingly diminished bone mineral density that the use of "gender affirming medicine" in vulnerable, confused young people has already been proven to cause.
The reason the researchers looked at the upper femur near where it joins the hip and thus connects to the pelvis is because the femur is the largest and thickest bone in the human body - thus it's especially easy to see and measure on imaging scans.
The main purpose of the article was not at all about studying bone density problems. The main purpose of the article is clearly stated in the title, described in the abstract, and discussed throughout the article. The purpose was to see if hip bone geometry of transgender people would resemble the gender into which they transitioned if implemented in early puberty. And, this study clearly stated that it did.
"In both trans women and trans men, participants resembled the reference curve for SPW and ED of the experienced gender but only when GnRHa was started during early puberty. Those who started during mid and late puberty remained within the reference curve of the gender assigned at birth. A possible explanation might be sought in the phenomenon of programming, which conceptualizes that stimuli during critical windows of development can have major consequences throughout one's life span."
"This study demonstrated that participants starting the GnRHa treatment in early puberty resemble the change in subperiosteal width and endocortical diameter of the experienced gender during GAH"
"Participants in our current study, starting in mid or late puberty, acquired bone geometry more closely resembling the reference curve of the gender assigned at birth. This illustrates that the main effect of testosterone and estrogen on periosteal and endocortical bone growth occurs during early puberty."
Before puberty, the female and male skeletal structures are very similar. Changes to the skeletal structures are a result of the sex hormones that are produced during puberty. This is not that complicated. If trans women are given estrogen during puberty, then their bone structure will be altered to resemble females. You can easily look at photos of Jazz Jennings and tell that she has a female skeletal structure
Except it is not fair and never has been. These are arbitrary labels used capriciously by the unwashed masses who lack the capacity to be rigorously analytical. I have never pushed for transgenders in athletic competition but rather I expose how flimsy the argument for fairness is, but again I have an advantage, fair or not, in that I can think at levels which apparently are challenging for most of you.
You think differences of ability are unfair. Obviously you have never played any serious sport or you were a dismal failure at it.
Or else I had an advantage and recognized it for what it was, and that it could be seen as unfair. You are uncanny in your ability to have the antithetical take of what is correct. One might say it is unfair that you are prone to assuming what is false. But the larger point is that there is nobody alive who can tell me what is a fair or unfair advantage. Some have tried in this thread and they are embarrassing themselves.
Phelps and Bolt compete against other men, so in that regard it is fair. Intersex athletes that dominate female sports are most often men with developmental disorders that cause them to develop certain female sex characteristics (i.e. Caster Semenya). Sifan Hassan's abilities are not due to a developmental sex disorder and if I had to guess, (assuming she's not doping) she's just is an extreme outlier in the distribution regarding the physical traits related to running ability. She doesn't have special secondary sex traits that other women wouldn't have the chance to develop.
Your language is based on the assumption of a sex binary, which intersex fundamentally challenges.
No it doesn't. Sexual DImorphism is based on the existence of TWO sex gametes. There are male gametes (sperm) and female gametes (eggs). Your genetics determine which one of these two gametes your body is designed to be able to produce. As soon as someone can provide evidence for the existence of a third gamete, then the sex binary can be challenged. Intersex people are males or females who, due to genetic or developmental defects, develop sex characteristics of the opposite sex, they are not members of a third sex. This whole "non-binary" bullsh!t is pure ideological pseudoscience and not based in fact, no matter how much the gender ideologues want to scream otherwise.
Your language is based on the assumption of a sex binary, which intersex fundamentally challenges.
No it doesn't. Sexual DImorphism is based on the existence of TWO sex gametes. There are male gametes (sperm) and female gametes (eggs). Your genetics determine which one of these two gametes your body is designed to be able to produce. As soon as someone can provide evidence for the existence of a third gamete, then the sex binary can be challenged. Intersex people are males or females who, due to genetic or developmental defects, develop sex characteristics of the opposite sex, they are not members of a third sex. This whole "non-binary" bullsh!t is pure ideological pseudoscience and not based in fact, no matter how much the gender ideologues want to scream otherwise.
Let us say we agree to keep transgenders out of athletics or women’s athletics. I am fine with that BUT please don’t tell the intelligent you are doing it in the name of fairness. If fairness is your god, why are you the same person who has not been troubled by black Americans not having the same opportunities as whites?
Except it is not fair and never has been. These are arbitrary labels used capriciously by the unwashed masses who lack the capacity to be rigorously analytical. I have never pushed for transgenders in athletic competition but rather I expose how flimsy the argument for fairness is,…
You are not wrong. Fairness in all spheres of life has always been a social construct. There isn’t an absolute universal truth from which the finer details of our notions of fairness predictably emerge, including and especially in sports, a domain whose primary purposes are societal entertainment and economic value for those involved.
There isn’t an intellectually and morally honest argument for why Phelps or Bolt is fair but someone born intersex isn’t. For trans inclusivity, that argument is weaker, but then again, if the regulations are such that the fraction of transwomen athletes winning women’s competitions is comparable to their prevalence in the population, it’s hardly clear why it’s unfair to anyone.
The size of the advantage is vastly bigger. (Or maybe you and Hanka think some Superfreak will bust out a 23:33 10,000m any day now.)
The source of the advantage is a fundamental biological difference, not being a little bit better overall at the same things.
I've been making the argument all along. Go on, keep ignoring it. That's all you need to say.
A leading Olympian has said it was “wrong and unfair” for Glenique Frank, a biological male identifying as a woman, to have been allowed to compete in the female category of the London Marathon, after the runner gave a live B...
Besides, most people regard it as fair for sports to have and enforce all sorts of divisions. Based on weight, boxing has divisions every five pounds or less from 100-140 pounds. Based on age, there are youth, juniors, and master's competitions -- often with divisions every 5 years in master's competition. Based on disability, there are a huge variety of Paralympic divisions.
Comparing to the weight and age categories, and many of the disability categories (don't know this area as well, and the forms of competition are sometimes different and hard to compare in order to accommodate disability), the gap between elite men and elite women is much larger than the gap between any two adjacent categories.
If most people regard something as unfair, and your first-principles derivation says that it's totally fair and they're totally irrational and you're very smart, consider the possibility that your principles or your derivation are mistaken.
Your first para implicitly seems to suggest that your notion of fairness is that whatever already exists is fair, to which I don’t subscribe simply because if everyone appears did that, we wouldn’t have the societal progress we’ve had including for women’s rights.
Did you fall and hit your head? That response is nonsense and, to the extent I can comprehend it, wildly misconstrued my point.
This post was edited 40 seconds after it was posted.
Your language is based on the assumption of a sex binary, which intersex fundamentally challenges.
No it doesn't. Sexual DImorphism is based on the existence of TWO sex gametes. There are male gametes (sperm) and female gametes (eggs). Your genetics determine which one of these two gametes your body is designed to be able to produce. As soon as someone can provide evidence for the existence of a third gamete, then the sex binary can be challenged. Intersex people are males or females who, due to genetic or developmental defects, develop sex characteristics of the opposite sex, they are not members of a third sex. This whole "non-binary" bullsh!t is pure ideological pseudoscience and not based in fact, no matter how much the gender ideologues want to scream otherwise.
A small fraction of them have both, which those who study this understand well.
You are not wrong. Fairness in all spheres of life has always been a social construct. There isn’t an absolute universal truth from which the finer details of our notions of fairness predictably emerge, including and especially in sports, a domain whose primary purposes are societal entertainment and economic value for those involved.
There isn’t an intellectually and morally honest argument for why Phelps or Bolt is fair but someone born intersex isn’t. For trans inclusivity, that argument is weaker, but then again, if the regulations are such that the fraction of transwomen athletes winning women’s competitions is comparable to their prevalence in the population, it’s hardly clear why it’s unfair to anyone.
The size of the advantage is vastly bigger. (Or maybe you and Hanka think some Superfreak will bust out a 23:33 10,000m any day now.)
The source of the advantage is a fundamental biological difference, not being a little bit better overall at the same things.
I've been making the argument all along. Go on, keep ignoring it. That's all you need to say.
Looks like you are not disagreeing with anything I actually said, or it’s not clear with what you are.
No it doesn't. Sexual DImorphism is based on the existence of TWO sex gametes. There are male gametes (sperm) and female gametes (eggs). Your genetics determine which one of these two gametes your body is designed to be able to produce. As soon as someone can provide evidence for the existence of a third gamete, then the sex binary can be challenged. Intersex people are males or females who, due to genetic or developmental defects, develop sex characteristics of the opposite sex, they are not members of a third sex. This whole "non-binary" bullsh!t is pure ideological pseudoscience and not based in fact, no matter how much the gender ideologues want to scream otherwise.
Let us say we agree to keep transgenders out of athletics or women’s athletics. I am fine with that BUT please don’t tell the intelligent you are doing it in the name of fairness. If fairness is your god, why are you the same person who has not been troubled by black Americans not having the same opportunities as whites?
What rights do black people have that whites don't? Just because the rules are fair doesn't mean the outcomes will be equal across the board.
Ross's tweet on the master's cycling champion, Veronica Ivy (who miraculously lost tenure at College of Charleston and has gone through two name changes), where he points out that she consistently claims that testosterone makes no difference in performance, is a better takedown. She doesn't distinguish that results within sexes may not matter, but the differences between the sexes matter. Stats shouldn't be that hard for someone with a doctorate.
The feed is still up.
It is like the NBA. Height doesn't predict performance in the NBA, but in a NBA/WNBA game it sure would matter.
In some cases, particulary Ms. Ivy's, the need to placate an underrepresented groups leads to some really bad scholarship.
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
No it doesn't. Sexual DImorphism is based on the existence of TWO sex gametes. There are male gametes (sperm) and female gametes (eggs). Your genetics determine which one of these two gametes your body is designed to be able to produce. As soon as someone can provide evidence for the existence of a third gamete, then the sex binary can be challenged. Intersex people are males or females who, due to genetic or developmental defects, develop sex characteristics of the opposite sex, they are not members of a third sex. This whole "non-binary" bullsh!t is pure ideological pseudoscience and not based in fact, no matter how much the gender ideologues want to scream otherwise.
A small fraction of them have both, which those who study this understand well.
Correct, I didn't mean that an intersex person only has sex characteristics of the opposite sex, some have both. Keyword BOTH, as in two.
A small fraction of them have both, which those who study this understand well.
Correct, I didn't mean that an intersex person only has sex characteristics of the opposite sex, some have both. Keyword BOTH, as in two.
If anyone is still confused about this in 2023, intersex people are still either genotypically male or female, depending on the presence of the SRY-gene. Scroll down to the "prevalence of various conditions that have been called intersex" to learn which conditions correspond to which sex. So yes, people with intersex conditions may exhibit sex characteristics of both sexes, but are still either male or female.
