This is exactly correct. "Trapped in the wrong body" is a completely new idea. People can feel uncomfortable or "dysphoric" about their gender. This doesn’t mean their innthe wrong body. As if there is some supernatural "true gender" separate from the body.
It certainly doesn't mean the treatment for feeding uncomfortable with your body is to take drastic, permanent measures to take away the dysphoria.
It's not a new idea to be fair. Trans people have always existed, and have even been written into ancient literature.
But I do wonder how much of gender dysphoria today is A) tied to other mental health issues and mental illnesses and B) over diagnosed.
With that being said, I am a huge proponent of taking people at face value. There are issues with sports and fairness, and cis women's need for their own spaces. But other than that, trans people deserve to live lives with dignity, privacy, and opportunity like everyone else. And I think this means believing them when they say they are trans. I don't have all the answers of the universe, ya know?
So I'm not a big fan of interfering in someone's medical choices, just as I am not one to interfere in someone's right to plastic surgery, birth control pills, an abortion etc.
I don't criticize what clothes they wear, or what pronouns they use, and I also don't have a heart attack every time I see pronouns in a bio.
Debating the reality of trans people devolves quickly into bigotry. But fairness in sports is a legitimate argument to make.
Right to an abortion? At least here in the USA, one of the founding documents explicitly mentions an unalienable right to life. Somehow it has been alienated for the living unborn who, though innocent, are executed, sometimes torturously. What good is a government that fails to protect innocent human life from deliberate destruction? That should be the first duty of government.
Thomas Jefferson, though he often failed to abide by his own ideals, thought so: While president he wrote that "the care of human life & happiness, & not their destruction, is the first & only legitimate object of good government."
John Stuart Mill was a big influence on the Founding Fathers of the USA. He wrote: "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."
France's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) stated: "Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else."
Nobody has unlimited bodily autonomy. People ordinarily are prohibited from taking heroin, from taking cocaine, from driving down a quiet residential street at 120 mph, from punching another without agreement or intent to defend, etc. These acts are prohibited because they are dangerous to those who commit them and because they are dangerous to others.
But now one of my US Senators, Kirsten Gillibrand, insists there is a Constitutional right to bodily autonomy. This is reminiscent of a so-called right to an abortion in the "penumbras" and "emanations" of the US Constitution.
Trans folk have been around and documented for millenia in cultures around the world in spoken mythology as well as written history. Their social ostracism throughout history would be a heavy price to pay just for the sake of a kinky performance.
What part of a “man trapped in a woman’s body” or the other way round lacks stability or meaning? You just don’t believe in their legitimacy.
How does a human being get trapped into the wrong body, besides being eaten by a whale, bear, lion, etc.?
It seems far more parsimonious (in the scientific or Occam's razor sense and not the sense of stinginess (of compassion)) to believe that someone is thinking wrongly rather than to believe that he or she was, somehow, born into the wrong body. Far, far, far, more parsimonious.
But nobody cares about your personal research on this matter. Come back when you have written even a single peer reviewed scientific paper.
I might be getting a little off track here because this thread was started to discuss PEDs for a trans athlete, but it has made me consider the idea that everyone has a chance to participate, but not everyone has the chance to win.
To give more people the opportunity to win, we separated males and females and recognize age group categories. On a systems level, high school athletics have divisions to prevent small schools from competing against big schools which attempts to make the competition more fair (and more fun). We have the best athletes in the world competing at the Olympics and the Paralympics give top disabled athletes the chance to win in a more level playing field.
So to what extent is it necessary to separate and categorize sports to create a more fair playing field? Who can have the opportunity to compete against a field with an equal-ish chance of winning? I'd assume these questions have different answers at the professional and amateur levels. For example, the Paralympics offer a chance for visually impaired (T11-13) athletes to compete against other athletes with the same impairment, but most marathons don't recognize this category when giving out awards (although Boston does).
To me, claiming unfairness for the lack of an equal prize purse in the nonbinary category is disingenuous. As seen by the Paralympics example, not everyone with a disability gets to compete in their own category all the time. At the Chicago marathon, parathletes are competing against able-bodied people. If an athlete shows up to an event with a different sex or gender identity, does that really mean they should have an equal prize to those who compete in the categories of the two primary biological sexes?
I appreciate your well-expressed post, but you just don't quite reach the obvious conclusion that your arguments support.
You agree that everyone should welcome all to participate, but that not everyone can finish first, and extra divisions are unnecessary. You point out that we even have additional events, like the Paralympics, for provide a level playing field for those who would not normally win. Yet, you dismiss the solution of having one race, where everyone has opportunity and is valued equally as people and participants. Despite your arguments for it, you reject having a race where the winner actually earns the victory objectively based on their performance rather than some extra qualifier, and your reasoning is because that's the way we've been doing it?
Not that I am into bombastic language... earlier I was called a "male supremacist" for wanting inclusion and fairness for all, but when I read your post, that seems full of well-reasoned thought and expression, however then concludes that the female category should be kept pure and as is, and everyone else should be lumped into "open" category, that sounds very "female-supremacist".
My overall position is that unnecessary division - setting up "us" and "them" groups where "winners" and "losers" are based on some distinction other than merit is not good for society.
It's not a new idea to be fair. Trans people have always existed, and have even been written into ancient literature.
But I do wonder how much of gender dysphoria today is A) tied to other mental health issues and mental illnesses and B) over diagnosed.
With that being said, I am a huge proponent of taking people at face value. There are issues with sports and fairness, and cis women's need for their own spaces. But other than that, trans people deserve to live lives with dignity, privacy, and opportunity like everyone else. And I think this means believing them when they say they are trans. I don't have all the answers of the universe, ya know?
So I'm not a big fan of interfering in someone's medical choices, just as I am not one to interfere in someone's right to plastic surgery, birth control pills, an abortion etc.
I don't criticize what clothes they wear, or what pronouns they use, and I also don't have a heart attack every time I see pronouns in a bio.
Debating the reality of trans people devolves quickly into bigotry. But fairness in sports is a legitimate argument to make.
This is actually not true. There's a world of difference between acknowledging sex nonconformity and even people trying to pass as the other sex across history, but the reasons people do this change over time, as do the cultural explanations for this behavior. In some cultures, males present as women because they're gay, not because they feel like they have a woman trapped inside. Cultures with rigid sex stereotypes sometimes create third sexes, usually for males, because they don't tolerate feminine behavior among men. It's a mistake to lump all of these examples together as pretend that they conform to American ideas about trans in 2023.
In fact, the idea that we all have some sort of gendered soul, and that this soul is a transcendent thing that overrides our mundane bodies, is likely an offshoot of the Christian and philosophically liberal roots of Western culture.
Your ignorance is astonishing. Rich that you like to call others ethnocentric.
I might be getting a little off track here because this thread was started to discuss PEDs for a trans athlete, but it has made me consider the idea that everyone has a chance to participate, but not everyone has the chance to win.
To give more people the opportunity to win, we separated males and females and recognize age group categories. On a systems level, high school athletics have divisions to prevent small schools from competing against big schools which attempts to make the competition more fair (and more fun). We have the best athletes in the world competing at the Olympics and the Paralympics give top disabled athletes the chance to win in a more level playing field.
So to what extent is it necessary to separate and categorize sports to create a more fair playing field? Who can have the opportunity to compete against a field with an equal-ish chance of winning? I'd assume these questions have different answers at the professional and amateur levels. For example, the Paralympics offer a chance for visually impaired (T11-13) athletes to compete against other athletes with the same impairment, but most marathons don't recognize this category when giving out awards (although Boston does).
To me, claiming unfairness for the lack of an equal prize purse in the nonbinary category is disingenuous. As seen by the Paralympics example, not everyone with a disability gets to compete in their own category all the time. At the Chicago marathon, parathletes are competing against able-bodied people. If an athlete shows up to an event with a different sex or gender identity, does that really mean they should have an equal prize to those who compete in the categories of the two primary biological sexes?
You're really misrepresenting what actually happened, and why, during the course of history when you say that "to give more people the opportunity to win, we separated males and females" in sport.
The main purpose of separating the sexes in regards to sport originally was to exclude girls and women from participating in sports at all.
Women and girls had to fight long and hard for the opportunity to participate in sports and exercise activities for any reason, even just for recreation and fitness. The right of female people to do sports recreationally and just because we wanted to had to be won before we obtained the additional right to partake in competitive sport and thus began to have opportunities to win sports events and be awarded sports plaudits, laurels, prizes, scholarships, sponsorships, etc.
Before and after women and girls finally began obtaining a right to participate and compete in sports, women's rights advocates, the sports world and the wider society as a whole generally agreed that the marked physical differences between human males and females meant that in most sports in most settings and under most circumstances, female people should have our own separate divisions - and separate sets of honors and prizes - as well as our own separate locker rooms (or at least places to change our clothes/kit, gear up and use the toilet out of view of the opposite sex).
In many sports like tennis, croquet, figure skating, bowling, softball, volleyball, touch football, surfing, skiing, running, swimming, etc, it makes sense to have participation, practice and play where the sexes are mixed together or side-by-side at least some of the time - especially in recreational settings but sometimes in competition too, so long as it's done under rules made to account for physical sex differences.
In most sports, however, ever since girls and women were first began to be allowed to participate, women's rights advocates, most people who do sports, the courts and the general public have always reasoned that having separate divisions, separate awards and separate locker rooms for males and females suits and benefits both sexes - boys and men as much as girls and women. Moreover, most people who have a basic awareness of human physical sex differences and other relevant factors - such as the long history of girls and women being treated as second-class in society, and the propensity of many human males to be sexually prurient, aggressive and predatory towards human females - have long held the view that having separate divisions, prizes, records and locker rooms for girls and women is the best way to insure fairness, safety and hospitable conditions for female participants.
Since female people make up 51% of the world's human population, most people with common sense can see that making sports fair, safe and hospitable for girls and women is the best way to insure sports is as genuinely "inclusive" as possible. This is why a majority of people today also are also to see that allowing males with disorders or differences of male sex development and males with gender identity issues into the female category under the guise that certain males have a moral "right" to be included in female sports inevitably makes sports unfair, unsafe and inhospitable to the people for whom the female categoroy was created to begin with, and whose inclusion the female category was/is meant to make possible and to maximize.
Still, none of this means that "to give more people the opportunity to win" was the reason why "we separated males and females" in the first place.
This post was edited 22 minutes after it was posted.
I might be getting a little off track here because this thread was started to discuss PEDs for a trans athlete, but it has made me consider the idea that everyone has a chance to participate, but not everyone has the chance to win.
To give more people the opportunity to win, we separated males and females and recognize age group categories. On a systems level, high school athletics have divisions to prevent small schools from competing against big schools which attempts to make the competition more fair (and more fun). We have the best athletes in the world competing at the Olympics and the Paralympics give top disabled athletes the chance to win in a more level playing field.
So to what extent is it necessary to separate and categorize sports to create a more fair playing field? Who can have the opportunity to compete against a field with an equal-ish chance of winning? I'd assume these questions have different answers at the professional and amateur levels. For example, the Paralympics offer a chance for visually impaired (T11-13) athletes to compete against other athletes with the same impairment, but most marathons don't recognize this category when giving out awards (although Boston does).
To me, claiming unfairness for the lack of an equal prize purse in the nonbinary category is disingenuous. As seen by the Paralympics example, not everyone with a disability gets to compete in their own category all the time. At the Chicago marathon, parathletes are competing against able-bodied people. If an athlete shows up to an event with a different sex or gender identity, does that really mean they should have an equal prize to those who compete in the categories of the two primary biological sexes?
You're really misrepresenting what actually happened, and why, during the course of history when you say that "to give more people the opportunity to win, we separated males and females" in sport.
The main purpose of separating the sexes in regards to sport originally was to exclude girls and women from participating in sports at all.
Women and girls had to fight long and hard for the opportunity to participate in sports and exercise activities for any reason, even just for recreation and fitness. The right of female people to do sports recreationally and just because we wanted to had to be won before we obtained the additional right to partake in competitive sport and thus began to have opportunities to win sports events and be awarded sports plaudits, laurels, prizes, scholarships, sponsorships, etc.
Before and after women and girls finally began obtaining a right to participate and compete in sports, women's rights advocates, the sports world generally and the wider society took it as a given that the marked physical differences between human males and females meant that in most sports in most settings and under most circumstances, female people should have our own separate divisions - and separate sets of honors and prizes - as well as our own separate locker rooms (or at least places to change our clothes/kit, gear up and use the toilet out of view of the opposite sex).
In many sports like tennis, croquet, figure skating, bowling, softball, volleyball, touch football, surfing, skiing, running, swimming, etc, it makes sense to have participation, practice and play where the sexes are mixed together or side-by-side at least some of the time - especially in recreational settings but sometimes in competition too, so long as it's done under rules made to account for physical sex differences.
In most sports, however, ever since girls and women were first began to be allowed to participate, it's always been taken as a given that having separate divisions, separate awards and separate locker rooms for males and females suits and benefits boys and men as much much as girls and women. Moreover, most people who have a basic awareness of human physical sex differences and other relevant factors - such as the long history of girls and women being treated as second-class by boys and men, and the propensity of many human males to be sexually prurient, aggressive and predatory towards human females - are of the view that having separate divisions, prizes, records and locker rooms for girls and women is the best way to insure fairness, safety and hospitable conditions for female participants.
Since female people make up 51% of the world's population, most people with common sense can see that making sports fair, safe and hospitable for girls and women is the best way to insure sports is as genuinely "inclusive" as possible. This is why a majority of people today also get why gender identity ideologues' insistence that male individuals with disorders/differences of male sex development and males with gender identity issues be shoehorned into the female category makes sports unfair, unsafe and inhospitable to the people for whom the female categoroy was created to begin with, and whose inclusion the female category was/is meant to make possible and maximize.
Still, none of this means that "to give more people the opportunity to win" was the reason why "we separated males and females" in the first place.
Thank you for pointing this out and giving the context behind the need for women's sport. I appreciate that you are sharing more of the history around women's sport.
You're right, I phrased this much too simply to try to make a point about categorization. At the end of the day, creating the categories has the result of creating more winners, but that's not the primary reason to do so. Thanks for making that distinction.
I 100% agree with the need to have a separate female category in sport. What I intended to question in my post is whether Open/Female is a better categorization or Male/Female/Nonbinary.
This dude is another annoying wannabe influencer who doesn't deserve attention on a serious running forum. Let him run his 2:51s, he can buy the Tracksmith BQ singlet now!!!
I might be getting a little off track here because this thread was started to discuss PEDs for a trans athlete, but it has made me consider the idea that everyone has a chance to participate, but not everyone has the chance to win.
To give more people the opportunity to win, we separated males and females and recognize age group categories. On a systems level, high school athletics have divisions to prevent small schools from competing against big schools which attempts to make the competition more fair (and more fun). We have the best athletes in the world competing at the Olympics and the Paralympics give top disabled athletes the chance to win in a more level playing field.
So to what extent is it necessary to separate and categorize sports to create a more fair playing field? Who can have the opportunity to compete against a field with an equal-ish chance of winning? I'd assume these questions have different answers at the professional and amateur levels. For example, the Paralympics offer a chance for visually impaired (T11-13) athletes to compete against other athletes with the same impairment, but most marathons don't recognize this category when giving out awards (although Boston does).
To me, claiming unfairness for the lack of an equal prize purse in the nonbinary category is disingenuous. As seen by the Paralympics example, not everyone with a disability gets to compete in their own category all the time. At the Chicago marathon, parathletes are competing against able-bodied people. If an athlete shows up to an event with a different sex or gender identity, does that really mean they should have an equal prize to those who compete in the categories of the two primary biological sexes?
You're really misrepresenting what actually happened, and why, during the course of history when you say that "to give more people the opportunity to win, we separated males and females" in sport.
The main purpose of separating the sexes in regards to sport originally was to exclude girls and women from participating in sports at all.
Women and girls had to fight long and hard for the opportunity to participate in sports and exercise activities for any reason, even just for recreation and fitness. The right of female people to do sports recreationally and just because we wanted to had to be won before we obtained the additional right to partake in competitive sport and thus began to have opportunities to win sports events and be awarded sports plaudits, laurels, prizes, scholarships, sponsorships, etc.
Before and after women and girls finally began obtaining a right to participate and compete in sports, women's rights advocates, the sports world and the wider society as a whole generally agreed that the marked physical differences between human males and females meant that in most sports in most settings and under most circumstances, female people should have our own separate divisions - and separate sets of honors and prizes - as well as our own separate locker rooms (or at least places to change our clothes/kit, gear up and use the toilet out of view of the opposite sex).
In many sports like tennis, croquet, figure skating, bowling, softball, volleyball, touch football, surfing, skiing, running, swimming, etc, it makes sense to have participation, practice and play where the sexes are mixed together or side-by-side at least some of the time - especially in recreational settings but sometimes in competition too, so long as it's done under rules made to account for physical sex differences.
In most sports, however, ever since girls and women were first began to be allowed to participate, women's rights advocates, most people who do sports, the courts and the general public have always reasoned that having separate divisions, separate awards and separate locker rooms for males and females suits and benefits both sexes - boys and men as much as girls and women. Moreover, most people who have a basic awareness of human physical sex differences and other relevant factors - such as the long history of girls and women being treated as second-class in society, and the propensity of many human males to be sexually prurient, aggressive and predatory towards human females - have long held the view that having separate divisions, prizes, records and locker rooms for girls and women is the best way to insure fairness, safety and hospitable conditions for female participants.
Since female people make up 51% of the world's human population, most people with common sense can see that making sports fair, safe and hospitable for girls and women is the best way to insure sports is as genuinely "inclusive" as possible. This is why a majority of people today also are also to see that allowing males with disorders or differences of male sex development and males with gender identity issues into the female category under the guise that certain males have a moral "right" to be included in female sports inevitably makes sports unfair, unsafe and inhospitable to the people for whom the female categoroy was created to begin with, and whose inclusion the female category was/is meant to make possible and to maximize.
Still, none of this means that "to give more people the opportunity to win" was the reason why "we separated males and females" in the first place.
So much blatherocopia just to make a peripheral distinction from which the thumping conclusion doesn’t even follow.
This is a laughable theory and isn’t even internally consistent with the rest of the Verbosa stream of consciousness above: “The main purpose of separating the sexes in regards to sport originally was to exclude girls and women from participating in sports at all.”
So to what extent is it necessary to separate and categorize sports to create a more fair playing field? Who can have the opportunity to compete against a field with an equal-ish chance of winning? I'd assume these questions have different answers at the professional and amateur levels. For example, the Paralympics offer a chance for visually impaired (T11-13) athletes to compete against other athletes with the same impairment, but most marathons don't recognize this category when giving out awards (although Boston does).
To me, claiming unfairness for the lack of an equal prize purse in the nonbinary category is disingenuous. As seen by the Paralympics example, not everyone with a disability gets to compete in their own category all the time. At the Chicago marathon, parathletes are competing against able-bodied people. If an athlete shows up to an event with a different sex or gender identity, does that really mean they should have an equal prize to those who compete in the categories of the two primary biological sexes?
But just to be clear: the Paralympics separate athletes by sex as well as by the type and degree of physical impairment they have. Visually impared athletes are supposed to compete against athletes of their same sex whose eyesight is similarly impaired. Because the fact that men and women might have the same level of visual impairment - or other kind of physical disability - doesn't make all the other physical differences between them magically go away, or make them matter less.
In fact, in the "disability world" and parasports specifically, there's wide recognition that when members of the two sexes share the same disability, girls and women are actually more disadavantaged by the disability and face far more barriers to participation in sports than boys and men who have the same exact level of impairment
This is why over the past several years, there's been furor over Valentina Petrillo being allowed to compete and win in the women's T-12 division. Petrillo, a 49-year-old father who was a men's national para running champion in Italy and winner in some men's international para events prior to "starting gender transition in 2018," won a bronze in the women's T-12 category 400 meters at the 2023 World Para Athletics Championships in Paris in July.
I don't think the fact that "at the Chicago marthon, parathletes are completing against able-bodied people," means male parathletes are allowed to register and compete in the female category. Or does it?
Despite uncertainty over rules and anti-trans hysteria, Italy’s Petrillo starts her first run on the world stage and ends up with her first world championship medal
There is truth in what both of you were saying. In the early stages of females being allowed, accepted, and encouraged to join in there absolutely needed to be investment for locker rooms, etc so that females could have appropriate space. There likely was unfortunate resistance from men to allow women and men to compete together, so there was the advent of the different division. It was a foot-in-the-door to compete (which, of course, is not needed now)
To empathy's point, the awards certainly were used as an incentive and an opportunity to win. In the local competitions for kids, nearly all of them get various ribbons, and they all love it! The awards are undeniably an incentive to get them going!
While actions may be justified and initiated to effect positive change, there is such a thing as going too far... The whole guardrail to guardrail phenomena. Now that women are fully embraced and encouraged to join in athletics to whatever extent they want, these special concessions are no longer needed. Moreover, they are actually becoming an overall negative. Proof of that is the discussion we're having where now other people are seeking and finding ways to differentiate themselves and fighting for their right to be included. Ironically, those liking their established position (like you both) are using their "valid arguments" to exclude them, just like men used against females when females were seeking to join in the fun, to be seen as equal people, and all the rest of it. While base human nature is understandable, it is often not a good look, and in time, your holding onto your position of power over others will not succeed. It's unfortunate, given the obstacles that women overcame, that you're unable to see this clearly.
Trans folk have been around and documented for millenia in cultures around the world in spoken mythology as well as written history. Their social ostracism throughout history would be a heavy price to pay just for the sake of a kinky performance.
What part of a “man trapped in a woman’s body” or the other way round lacks stability or meaning? You just don’t believe in their legitimacy.
Trans people have been in mythological stories! Wow! Centaurs also exist then and who are we to tell someone they can't identify as a horse-human hybrid?
Re: "You just don't believe in their legitimacy" . . . Yes.
Trans folk have been around and documented for millenia in cultures around the world in spoken mythology as well as written history. Their social ostracism throughout history would be a heavy price to pay just for the sake of a kinky performance.
What part of a “man trapped in a woman’s body” or the other way round lacks stability or meaning? You just don’t believe in their legitimacy.
Trans people have been in mythological stories! Wow! Centaurs also exist then and who are we to tell someone they can't identify as a horse-human hybrid?
Re: "You just don't believe in their legitimacy" . . . Yes.
Good for you that you believe centaurs exist. Run with it.
I appreciate your well-expressed post, but you just don't quite reach the obvious conclusion that your arguments support.
You agree that everyone should welcome all to participate, but that not everyone can finish first, and extra divisions are unnecessary. You point out that we even have additional events, like the Paralympics, for provide a level playing field for those who would not normally win. Yet, you dismiss the solution of having one race, where everyone has opportunity and is valued equally as people and participants. Despite your arguments for it, you reject having a race where the winner actually earns the victory objectively based on their performance rather than some extra qualifier, and your reasoning is because that's the way we've been doing it?
Not that I am into bombastic language... earlier I was called a "male supremacist" for wanting inclusion and fairness for all, but when I read your post, that seems full of well-reasoned thought and expression, however then concludes that the female category should be kept pure and as is, and everyone else should be lumped into "open" category, that sounds very "female-supremacist".
My overall position is that unnecessary division - setting up "us" and "them" groups where "winners" and "losers" are based on some distinction other than merit is not good for society.
Oh I laughed a little bit as I was writing my post because I knew that you and I had some similar arguments but reach quite different conclusions. I think the main difference is that I do think some categorization is good, especially when we consider sports that are more physical. Specifically, I'm questioning is what is appropriate to categorize and in what context.
There are plenty of other posters on this thread that have shared several reasons why having a female category is important (especially Run Ragged), and I don't think there's much I can add to change your opinion on that. I'll just say that as a female, I disagree that we are "fully embraced and encouraged to join athletics to whatever extent." That hasn't been my experience or those I know.
Where I do agree with you again is your cautionary statement from another post, (paraphrasing) to be careful not to exclude trans people as women were once excluded, and not to hold too tightly onto a position of power. Thanks for making that statement. I think you highlight the need for empathy in this conversation and openness to hear other people's perspectives, especially those who have a different experience.
But just to be clear: the Paralympics separate athletes by sex as well as by the type and degree of physical impairment they have. Visually impared athletes are supposed to compete against athletes of their same sex whose eyesight is similarly impaired. Because the fact that men and women might have the same level of visual impairment - or other kind of physical disability - doesn't make all the other physical differences between them magically go away, or make them matter less.
In fact, in the "disability world" and parasports specifically, there's wide recognition that when members of the two sexes share the same disability, girls and women are actually more disadavantaged by the disability and face far more barriers to participation in sports than boys and men who have the same exact level of impairment
This is why over the past several years, there's been furor over Valentina Petrillo being allowed to compete and win in the women's T-12 division. Petrillo, a 49-year-old father who was a men's national para running champion in Italy and winner in some men's international para events prior to "starting gender transition in 2018," won a bronze in the women's T-12 category 400 meters at the 2023 World Para Athletics Championships in Paris in July.
I don't think the fact that "at the Chicago marthon, parathletes are completing against able-bodied people," means male parathletes are allowed to register and compete in the female category. Or does it?
I wonder if you have misinterpreted my post. I've been questioning if Open/Female is a better division system than Male/Female. This post wasn't advocating for MtF Trans parathletes to compete in the women's parathlete category. (And yes, I am aware that parathletes are separated by both sex and impairment, but glad you point it out so all can be on the same page.)
Rather, the point was that in some instances, parathletes are competing against able-bodied people and in other cases they are competing against others with the same impairment. I have been considering if the parathletics categories can teach us anything about how we may or may not create sex (and gender) categories in sport.
I might be getting a little off track here because this thread was started to discuss PEDs for a trans athlete, but it has made me consider the idea that everyone has a chance to participate, but not everyone has the chance to win.
To give more people the opportunity to win, we separated males and females and recognize age group categories. On a systems level, high school athletics have divisions to prevent small schools from competing against big schools which attempts to make the competition more fair (and more fun). We have the best athletes in the world competing at the Olympics and the Paralympics give top disabled athletes the chance to win in a more level playing field.
So to what extent is it necessary to separate and categorize sports to create a more fair playing field? Who can have the opportunity to compete against a field with an equal-ish chance of winning? I'd assume these questions have different answers at the professional and amateur levels. For example, the Paralympics offer a chance for visually impaired (T11-13) athletes to compete against other athletes with the same impairment, but most marathons don't recognize this category when giving out awards (although Boston does).
To me, claiming unfairness for the lack of an equal prize purse in the nonbinary category is disingenuous. As seen by the Paralympics example, not everyone with a disability gets to compete in their own category all the time. At the Chicago marathon, parathletes are competing against able-bodied people. If an athlete shows up to an event with a different sex or gender identity, does that really mean they should have an equal prize to those who compete in the categories of the two primary biological sexes?
I appreciate your well-expressed post, but you just don't quite reach the obvious conclusion that your arguments support.
You agree that everyone should welcome all to participate, but that not everyone can finish first, and extra divisions are unnecessary. You point out that we even have additional events, like the Paralympics, for provide a level playing field for those who would not normally win. Yet, you dismiss the solution of having one race, where everyone has opportunity and is valued equally as people and participants. Despite your arguments for it, you reject having a race where the winner actually earns the victory objectively based on their performance rather than some extra qualifier, and your reasoning is because that's the way we've been doing it?
Not that I am into bombastic language... earlier I was called a "male supremacist" for wanting inclusion and fairness for all, but when I read your post, that seems full of well-reasoned thought and expression, however then concludes that the female category should be kept pure and as is, and everyone else should be lumped into "open" category, that sounds very "female-supremacist".
My overall position is that unnecessary division - setting up "us" and "them" groups where "winners" and "losers" are based on some distinction other than merit is not good for society.
I'll be honest, mate -- if you start arguing for a single division in sports, you'll find you have a lot of right wing trolls suddenly allied to your cause. Their arguments will be hilarious, like when they join lefties in arguing for abortion rights "so that women of color have access to abortion" and you have to sit back and think... wait a minute...
IMO, you're a very pleasant commenter that makes it difficult to disagree with. You're very even, being able to listen to other arguments while avoiding getting defensive. Thoughtful. Kudos, seriously! I am very glad when we can disagree and laugh. :)
I know that the position I have taken is quite out of the mainstream, and obvi with half the population being women, that's noteworthy group (lol). I think there is logical merit to my stance, and I personally would prefer to see more weight and appreciation for gender differences, rather than trying to manufacture "separate but equal" in everything (though women in sport and running are great!), but I am not about to lose sleep waiting for things to change. It will be interesting to see how all this plays out... lotsa different opinions!
Not that you need to go into it, but I am very surprised that your experience (as well as others you know) has fallen short of "fully embraced and encouraged", and that does hold significant weight with me. Particularly as it relates to running, it seems to me that females today have many advantages. There seems to be more general interest (esp for HS and collegiate females), more resources provided (title ix), and imo just more kind / empathetic support overall (though maybe that's just a relational style thing). I guess I can come up with some disadvantages too, however (such as concerns with training solo) and certainly for females coming up "back in the day", I empathize with a lot of what RR says.
Regarding your Female and Open division suggestion, from a fairness perspective (assuming the all-in-one category is a no go, as well as the many-divisions approach), then I think that is about as good as it's going to get. However, I believe a lot of people are going to bristle at that. No one likes being called "other" and that is how many people will likely see "open", regardless of intention.
Crascrenbon, I know you likely won't see this as it is so far down, but thank you for the warning. The warning, however, should be flipped onto anyone that finds me agreeing with them! One day here I am far-right, and then the next day I am far-left. In either case, I do get labeled a troll a lot. IMO, we're all trolls to a certain extent.
In fact, in the "disability world" and parasports specifically, there's wide recognition that when members of the two sexes share the same disability, girls and women are actually more disadavantaged by the disability and face far more barriers to participation in sports than boys and men who have the same exact level of impairment
Is this an effect of participation numbers, where more boys do a sport so the impaired boys can merge in easier?
But just to be clear: the Paralympics separate athletes by sex as well as by the type and degree of physical impairment they have. Visually impared athletes are supposed to compete against athletes of their same sex whose eyesight is similarly impaired. Because the fact that men and women might have the same level of visual impairment - or other kind of physical disability - doesn't make all the other physical differences between them magically go away, or make them matter less.
In fact, in the "disability world" and parasports specifically, there's wide recognition that when members of the two sexes share the same disability, girls and women are actually more disadavantaged by the disability and face far more barriers to participation in sports than boys and men who have the same exact level of impairment
This is why over the past several years, there's been furor over Valentina Petrillo being allowed to compete and win in the women's T-12 division. Petrillo, a 49-year-old father who was a men's national para running champion in Italy and winner in some men's international para events prior to "starting gender transition in 2018," won a bronze in the women's T-12 category 400 meters at the 2023 World Para Athletics Championships in Paris in July.
I don't think the fact that "at the Chicago marthon, parathletes are completing against able-bodied people," means male parathletes are allowed to register and compete in the female category. Or does it?
I wonder if you have misinterpreted my post. I've been questioning if Open/Female is a better division system than Male/Female. This post wasn't advocating for MtF Trans parathletes to compete in the women's parathlete category. (And yes, I am aware that parathletes are separated by both sex and impairment, but glad you point it out so all can be on the same page.)
Rather, the point was that in some instances, parathletes are competing against able-bodied people and in other cases they are competing against others with the same impairment. I have been considering if the parathletics categories can teach us anything about how we may or may not create sex (and gender) categories in sport.
Sorry if I misinterpreted what you said, or came across that way. I just wanted to make it crystal clear that in para sports - and in the "disability world" generally - people are still categorized by sex, and the distinctions and physical differences between male and female people are still recognized, taken into account and considered to matter. Indeed, they're seen as mattering a great deal.
Since you brought up Paralympic categories as models to learn from - a point I agree with, BTW - but you did so without mentioning that these categories are overlaid on top of the conventional male/female sports division, I thought it could be possible that you were suggesting that sports categorization based on sex be replaced by categorizion based on other physical factors.
After all, some people on this thread and a great many people in the big world beyond LRC today (including Neil DeGrasse Tyson) are arguing that the lonstanding sex divisions in sport should be done away with and replaced by new systems that divvy people up, sort them and match them with opponents based on characteristics other than sex. Such as height, weight, gender identity, gender expression, sex hormone levels, self-perceptions, sex shown on legal documents like passports and driver's licenses, personal choice and/or whether male participants have been through all or part of male puberty of adolescence.
In light of this, I thought it best to make it clear that the fine-tuned, sliced and diced categories used in the Paralympics are applied within each of the two sex categories - they don't supplant them.
Now that you've clarified what you meant, my apologies for not getting it right off the bat.
Since you brought up Paralympic categories as models to learn from - a point I agree with, BTW - but you did so without mentioning that these categories are overlaid on top of the conventional male/female sports division, I thought it could be possible that you were suggesting that sports categorization based on sex be replaced by categorizion based on other physical factors.
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Now that you've clarified what you meant, my apologies for not getting it right off the bat.
Yes, we are very well aware that TV is a write-only bot that lacks basic human reading comprehension, but an apology is a shocking new tweak in its AI.
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