I was very aware of the fact that these are social constructionist authors. That was intentional. I would assume that Rojo has never read something like that, so I thought it might be useful for him to read the direct opposite of his world view.
The idea that science is just a discourse does have serious backing in philosophy by the way. I'm sure your familiar with Thomas Kuhn and the idea of paradigmatic science.
Re 1) I literally acknowledged that in my post. Most elite athletes would probably consent to such surveillance. I said that. And maybe the fact that women are subjected to "invasive" testing for medical care and usually hate it implies that it should be avoided when possible when the stakes are lower, as in sports.
2) This point demonstrates that you think that trans women are men. The idea that the existence of trans women is misogynistic and erases cis women is one of the oldest transphobic arguments in the book. We could have a debate about this point, but you can't simply take that as a given and a starting point in your counter-argument.
3) I was not aware of who Lynn Conway was, but I still would've used that source if I had, because she has simply copy-pasted the text of a scholarly article.
Argue against the points I've made, mate. Focusing on the personality and posting style of the person you disagree with is puerile and a waste of time. Also, harrumphing like that comes off as "tone policing."
Also, what happened to the importance of giving credence to the "lived experience" of people from marginalized, discriminated-against groups? Seems like more of the same-old, same-old double standards that come up on these threads: guys like you think it's your god-given right to tell women who post what we are allowed to say to and how we're allowed to say it. If women disagree, you tell us our posting style is all wrong. Might as well call me "shrill" and "hysterical" while you're at it.
I don't agree with some of what you post (although I do agree with some parts of it as well!) but I just wanted to say I share the same experience of you re posting as a woman.
There is a massive difference between the responses I get when I post under any name indicating that I'm female, or under some random name. I find that sad. I do think that rojo and wejo genuinely want to change that but they're up against it. There are a lot of quality male posters who don't behave like that at all so it's just sad. The moment there's any hint of disagreement you're 'emotional' or some other disparaging thing that descends into insults. They can't have a normal discussion. There's an element in it that's quite disturbing.
"Testosterone is the key determinant in performance."
If this is true, then transgender athletes whose hormone levels are in the female range should be allowed to compete. Especially if they took puberty blockers as a child and never went through male puberty.
"Testosterone is the key determinant in performance."
If this is true, then transgender athletes whose hormone levels are in the female range should be allowed to compete. Especially if they took puberty blockers as a child and never went through male puberty.
What you propose is what I have seen proposed by some sport governing bodies regarding transgender women athletes.
The history of sex testing in elite sports is long, and even a cursory review of this history would demonstrate the erroneousness of statements like Lord Coe's and Rojo's. There has never been and will never be an easy answer to questions regarding the categories based on sex and gender in sport. Every attempt to find one has failed.
In the early twentieth century, female athletes were subjected to "naked parades" in which they had their genitals inspected by doctors to verify that they were in, fact, biologically female. How humiliating and degrading this was for the athletes needs no further explanation.
Chromosomal and hormonal tests are certainly less crude, but they have proved ineffective as well. Using these tests, athletes who have never once questioned their own femininity nor had it questioned by others were barred from competing. See Maria Patino for a famous example of an athlete who failed one of these "sex tests" and was later reinstated. Situations like this appear multiple times in the history of sex testing in sport, and this is because no single sex test could provide a complete picture of one's biological sex, let alone one's gender identity. For one's biological sex to be of any use in sport, we would need a complete picture of all the biological parameters that determine performance. Without this, any lines drawn are bound to be arbitrary and wrongfully exclude at some people.
As other posters have pointed out, Bolt did not run 9.58 simply because he has higher testosterone than any other male sprinter. Similarly, the only reason that I (a man who has never identified as anything but a man) cannot run 12:59 for 5000m is not because I have less testosterone than an elite runner. Certainly, testosterone plays a large role in performance, but it alone cannot explain why one person is faster than another, and why there is overlap between the running ability of the grand majority of men and women in the world. We would also need a complete picture of each athlete's full biological makeup, likely including physical inspection of their genitals as part of sex verification. Such surveillance would need to be consistent and long-term, as it already is with the rules for transgender athletes who wish to compete in the NCAA. Admittedly, most elite athletes would probably consent to such extensive monitoring and surveillance as they do with drug testing.
Perhaps these are the necessary evils to make elite-level sports entirely "fair." However, I think Lord Coe, Rojo, and others who think similarly should stop and think about what sort of sporting world they would create were they to apply the principles of their rigid, biologically-determined sex worldview consistently, thoroughly, and non-arbitrarily. It would be a sporting world in which the details of athletes' hormonal makeup--including fluctuations that occur with sex, pregnancy, and periods--are monitored and charted to ensure that no one with too much of the wrong thing is allowed to compete with other women. Of course, consistent application would also mean that the men are subjected to the same surveillance. I imagine many of you who might disagree with what I say in this post consider yourselves advocates of small government. You should keep in mind that the maintenance of a rigid gender binary, in sport and in society at large, requires rather intrusive measures on the part of governing bodies to ensure that there are no deviants.
If I were to talk about gender-identity and its social construction in this post, it'd be even longer than it already is, and it would become a conflict about fundamental world views. I can only say that I hope the history of sex testing in sports illuminates the fluidity and ambiguity of what makes a man a man and a woman a woman. I can also say, in regards to a related issue, that you should really stop and ask if these sorts of sex verification tests are the sort of thing we should subject young people who wish to compete in high school or college sports purely for the joy of it. It MAY be the case that it is "unfair" for young trans women to compete with cis women, but is that the most important thing about sports? Is excluding trans, intersex, and others who fit outside of the rigid gender binary worth what it may cost to their self-esteem and place in society?
-OklahomaGuy
P.S. some sources below. Rojo, as LetsRun is one of the most prominent voices in track and field, I think the responsible thing would be for you to read some of this history and other scholarly literature on the topic. I even think reading some social scientific and feminist critiques of the sex testing and the gender binary would be useful, even if only to help you develop your own viewpoint and counterarguments further
Determining and understanding human sex is only confusing and complex to gender theorists with an ideological axe to grind and a poor understanding of biology. Given that the literature you posted was out of gender studies and activist journals, not biology journals, I'm guessing you fall into both of the above categories.
What makes a man a man and a woman a woman is not ambiguous, fluid or arbitrary - at least it shouldn't seem that way when you understand (or are not willfully ignorant of in favor of gender ideology) what "sex" is and the function of sexual characteristics. Every human develops as either a man or a woman with typical sex characteristics (both on the physiologi and genetic level) of a given sex. We do this for reproduction purposes, as sexual reproduction allows for greater genetic diversity and so we don't end up as clones of a single parent. Then there are those with certain disorders due to malfunctions during the process of physical development that causes that person to have unusually developed sex characteristics, be lacking in certain sex characteristics or be born as one sex (per their chromosomes) but also have sex organ tissue of the opposite sex.
None of the literature on intersex suggests the existence of a third sex, or a "spectrum" of sexes either. So sorry to tell you that sex is binary, it's just for some it's more difficult to determine if they're male or female. Until a third gamete is found, that will always be the case.
I don't think we may agree on motivations of all the athletes in question here, because I doubt they all have the same kind of history as Semenya, but ultimately, I think we agree on what should be done within our sport.
I don't think the guy who is coaching Mboma and Maslingi is "gaming the system." If he were, he would have never entered the two athletes in 400m, because it's already well known they would be ineligible without lowering their t level. Instead, he would enter those two in only 100m and 200m and pretend there is nothing unusual about them. The fact that they have been exposed by running 400m indicates that it was not a calculated scheme.
Maybe you're right. But I think Mboma and Masilingi stand out as different in the sprints as much as they did in the 400, and that they were bound to be "exposed" as soon as they starting competing on the world stage in elite women's events and came under the governance of WA and were brought to the attention of the international press and sports fans.
I tend to think that Henk Botha and the honchos high up in Namibian national sports are as calculated and arrogant in their promotion of Mboma and Masilingi as the authorities who have backed Semenya in South Africa next door.
I think they have bigger goals in sight that go far beyond sports. I believe they are using Mboma, Masilingi and Semenya to challenge the authority of WA/IAAF as part of a larger geopolitical struggle in which the historically oppressed peoples of the "the Global South" are finally getting a chance to stand up to, and to stick it to, the white supremacist powers of "Global North." And the clever and hilarious thing is, they're using a creation of the elites in the Global North - gender identity ideology/queer theory - to hoist the Global North by its own petard.
As these threads on LRC demonstrate, there are many, many men in sports and who follow sports today who genuinely believe that all XY DSD athletes who want in on women's sports belong there. They claim, as you have done, that human sex is not binary. They use XY DSDs in a weaponized way to undermine women's and girls's hard-won right to fairness and parity in sports, telling us that because some males have DSDs that cause them to be born without penises, or they have very small penises - and because they and other males say they "identify as women" - this means that it's no longer permissible to define women/girls as a distinct biological group that does not include any males, and it's no longer acceptable for females to have any sports, spaces or services that don't include males.
Moreover, those who argue on behalf of XY DSD and (and trans-identified) male inclusion in women's sports, spaces and services say it's bigoted, hatefully exclusionary, reactionary, right wing, racist, fascist all the rest for anyone to say that the female sex category and the word woman do not include males. They contend that the human sex binary is an oppressive, cockamamie, wholly unsupported social construct that racist white Europeans invented out of thin air and cruelly imposed on the rest of the world in order to establish and maintain colonialism and white supremacy.
To me, this intrusivity masquerading as inclusivity is just misogyny repackaged as a fauxgressive civil rights movement. But I understand that some people genuinely think it is progressive and a genuine civil rights movement.
One topic that those who demand the inclusion of XY DSD males in women's sports never bring up is the plight of individuals with disorders of female sex development. Seems to me that the same people who shower sympathy on XY DSD athletes like Semenya don't show any similar concern for females with disorders of female sex development like Turner's, classical CAH and MRKH. In fact, they don't seem to be aware that females with disorders affecting female sex development even exist.
Also, to my mind, the lives of athletes like Semenya, Niyonsaba, Wambui, Seyni et al seem to have been much easier and far more privileged than the lives of most black African girls and women of their same ages who also grew up poor and provincial in SA, Burundi, Kenya, Niger, etc. If you want to see people who are downtrodden, check out the lives of poor rural black girls and women in those countries. In Niger, poor black girls in rural areas are routinely married off in their teens, and many become mothers before they reach the age of majority. Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, the single leading cause of death and disability in females age 15-19 is pregnancy-childbirth.
Also, contrast Semenya's life with the lives of Semenya's own sisters. Semenya's sisters never got a chance to become sports stars and big celebrities. They never got a chance to do sports at all. Funny that.
"Testosterone is the key determinant in performance."
If this is true, then transgender athletes whose hormone levels are in the female range should be allowed to compete. Especially if they took puberty blockers as a child and never went through male puberty.
The key is not just the current testosterone level, but the cumulative effects of testosterone since puberty. Once a person goes through male puberty, the effects cannot be entirely reversed by any medical intervention currently available.
That's why the new FINA rules requires that a trans person starts hormon suppression before the onset of puberty (Tanner stage 2) to be eligible in the women's division.
What if a 17 year old 4:40/mile HS junior guy declared to his parents, doctors and priest that he didn’t ever feel like he belonged in the world that he grew up in and since about age 9 or 10, he identified with the kids in his neighborhood who were about 4 years older for many reasons.
And, therefore, it’s the duty of the school, coach, district and national track federation to acknowledge this guy’s identity and allow him to compete in the 14 and under and junior high school level meets and competitions on the local, regional, national and international level.
And, should the young man declare that he’s a girl, would he be allowed to compete in the World Junior Women’s Championships?
What if another young man was born into a very difficult situation, possibly during a civil war, and his family was killed and he was raised in a refugee camp. And the administrator assigned this kid to a Date of Birth two years younger than his actual birth year because the lad was small, likely the result of malnutrition.
And if this young man begin competing in track meets against similarly aged kids, and blew away the competition and broke records the majority of the time he competed. And in his new home, under the guidance of a coach and nutritionist, his growth accelerated to the point that he looked a few years older than his competitors…
Would it be fair to ignore the questions and complaints which certainly would arise? And if his real age was discovered, would it be insensitive or cruel to notify the kid that he would have to run against kids his age?
"Testosterone is the key determinant in performance."
If this is true, then transgender athletes whose hormone levels are in the female range should be allowed to compete. Especially if they took puberty blockers as a child and never went through male puberty.
But it's not currently circulating T that is the key determinant of the enormous performance gap between males and females. Males have a huge advantage because of the accumulated legacy effects that male levels of T and male T response have had on their bodies at crucial stages over the whole course of their lives, starting with development in utero and continuing through the male mini puberty of infancy and the longer and better known male puberty of adolescence.
The only reason current levels of T have been the focus of the regulations and convos regarding XY DSD athletes is because there's nothing anyone can do about what's happened in the past. None of these athletes can go back and undo the physical impact of testosterone fueled male fetal development, male mini puberty of infancy, male puberty of adolescence and male early adulthood. The only thing these athletes can control now is their levels of T going forward.
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The truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth
He meant sex/gender. 90% of people use the terms interchangeably.
But that is the same as denying trans people their identity, irrespective of your opinion on the nature of their participation in sport.
The identity of a trans person is a delusion crafted in the mind of a disturbed individual, and given legitimacy by a truly corrupt and politically driven media empire who knows exactly how to keep making money on drama in a fringe community.
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We have enough Youth, What we need is a Fountain of Smart.
This is a simple one for me. There are only Two chromosomes. Say it with me: X and Y.
Therefore, there should only be two categories: one where the athletes have a Y chromosome and one where they do not.
I do not care if you are XXY, XXXY or have a hundred Xs and a Y. If you have a Y chromosome, you run in the Y category.
Otherwise, there is nothing compelling about the women's category.
But it isn't that simple. You're completely unaware of the SRY gene, the androgen receptor gene, and the 5-alpha reductase gene, all of which must be fully functional to generate the phenotype that we recognize as typical male. Read back through the thread for more...
Also, there are XX people who have active SRY genes who are male. This occurs due to chromosomal exchange, or crossover. Can they join the female competitions since they are XX? Of course not.
We all recognize there is a problem. But it is not as simple as you make it out to be.
Have there been studies on this, specific to distance running? I agree there would be residual effects regarding height, shoulder width, etc, but I haven't seen evidence yet that those effects would allow someone to retain a competitive advantage after several years at female-range hormone levels.
The big problem has been that when you start testing all the women athletes, you start finding athletes who on the surface appear to be cis gender,
cis An improperly used latin prefix, used as the "opposite" of "trans." Almost exclusively used in the compound phrase "cisgender" to refer to people whose biological s3x matches their mental gender -- i.e., normal people. Can also be shortened to "cishets" to refer to people who are both normal and straight. Near universally used in a derogatory fashion as a slur by people who think being normal is somehow oppressing them.
Have there been studies on this, specific to distance running? I agree there would be residual effects regarding height, shoulder width, etc, but I haven't seen evidence yet that those effects would allow someone to retain a competitive advantage after several years at female-range hormone levels.
Adolescent and adult males have hearts that are 25-38% larger and more powerful, and lungs that are 10-12% bigger and more powerful, than females of the same size and weight. Males build muscle faster and with less effort, retain muscle with less work, and have an easier time getting back in shape after time not training. None of that is affected when males use medications to lower their T.
Also, males who used medication to suppress their T do not ever have "female-range hormone levels." The only way males can get their T as low as females is to have their testes removed.
Moreover, even if they take exogenous estradiol as many males who say they "identify as" women do, males don't achieve "female-range hormone levels." Because T and estrogen are not the only sex hormones in females, and our sex hormones change both over the course of the ovulation-menstruation cycle and over the course of our lives.
Someone like Caitlyn Jenner does not have the hormone levels of a woman Jenner's age. Because women in their 70s are long past menopause and make hardly any estrogen.
Also, even when they reduce their obvious advantages, males do not take on any of the disadvantages that go along with being female. They don't have periods, PMS, PMDD, pregnancy, childbirth injuries, miscarriages and so on.
If Caster Semenya had been pregnant with and given birth to Semenya's two young children rather than leaving all the physical burdens of reproduction for Semenya's wife to shoulder on her own, then Semenya's performance in the 5K this week would have been far poorer than it was. In fact, if Semenya had gone through two pregnancies and births since 2019 like Violet Raseboya has, I doubt Semenya would have made this year's World Championships at all.
This is a simple one for me. There are only Two chromosomes. Say it with me: X and Y.
Therefore, there should only be two categories: one where the athletes have a Y chromosome and one where they do not.
I do not care if you are XXY, XXXY or have a hundred Xs and a Y. If you have a Y chromosome, you run in the Y category.
Otherwise, there is nothing compelling about the women's category.
But it isn't that simple. You're completely unaware of the SRY gene, the androgen receptor gene, and the 5-alpha reductase gene, all of which must be fully functional to generate the phenotype that we recognize as typical male. Read back through the thread for more...
Also, there are XX people who have active SRY genes who are male. This occurs due to chromosomal exchange, or crossover. Can they join the female competitions since they are XX? Of course not.
We all recognize there is a problem. But it is not as simple as you make it out to be.
But the SRY gene is very easy to test for. When athletes seeking eligibility in women's sports competition test positive for the SRY, more investigation is called for - and with today's diagnostics and state of knowledge, it's pretty easy to find out why.
Before mandatory sex testing for all athletes seeking to compete in women's elite international sports was discontinued in the 1990s, the test was specific for the SRY gene. Thousand of athletes in women's events had their DNA tested at the 1996 Atlanta Games - and only 8 tested positive for SRY gene. All were XY with DSDs. All were cleared to compete. Since 6 of the 8 had undergone surgical removal of their testes, they presumably were already well aware that they were XY with DSDs.
Ajee Wilson isn't from "Northern Europe" and I doubt the slight amount of Northern European ancestry she possibly has would have her identify as Northern European but she lost out to Caster and other DSD athletes at world level meets.
Seeing the 2016 800m final was the saddest sights I have ever seen in my life. And don't bring up a Jarmila type as she would eventually be caught in a retest with new technology and the rightful winners would get their medals down the road.