First transgender athlete June Eastwood to compete in women’s DI XC this fall, has pbs of 1:55/3:50/14:38

SDSU Aztec wrote:

BergLaufer wrote:

Sounds like you have no experience in fighting. Size does matter. That's why they have weight classes.

Your point is irrelevant as a guy weighing 200 pounds claiming to be a welterweight has nothing to do with a transgender female competing in women's sports. It's a moranic analogy. It's as ridiculous as that poster who wanted to identify as a horse so he could compete in equestrian events.

If what you believe what you are is what matters. Why stop at what you are as far as biological sex? Why can't a heavyweight identify as a lightweight? Why can't someone become a cow. Which is a actual disorder.

Kevin Hadsell wrote:

BergLaufer wrote:

So while we get rid of women sports, should we get rid of weight classes too?

Are you a real human? Please tell me that nobody on this planet relies on your ability to reason.

Absolute waste of time. Might as well debate a child....maybe I am.

So a yes or a no?

BergLaufer wrote:

SDSU Aztec wrote:

Your point is irrelevant as a guy weighing 200 pounds claiming to be a welterweight has nothing to do with a transgender female competing in women's sports. It's a moranic analogy. It's as ridiculous as that poster who wanted to identify as a horse so he could compete in equestrian events.

If what you believe what you are is what matters. Why stop at what you are as far as biological sex? Why can't a heavyweight identify as a lightweight? Why can't someone become a cow. Which is a actual disorder.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boanthropy

OK, there are millions of transgender males and females. Name one guy that identifies as a cow or wants everyone to accept that he is 60lbs less than he actually weighs. They can't be disorders if they don't exist.

Son....

I hate to do this to you because you are clearly getting your ass kicked left and right by pretty much anybody responding to you at this point.

However, if you are trying to argue that anything that is bigger and naturally stronger than something else because of genetics is reason enough to give up and assume that it should not be in the same category, then you better start praying to God that the first woman that you run into that you don’t have to pay to see you naked doesn’t follow that same rule. I’ll let you cuddle up with your body pillow at your mom’s couch and think about that tonight.

I’m. Here all weekend. Tip your waitress.

SDSU Aztec wrote:

BergLaufer wrote:

If what you believe what you are is what matters. Why stop at what you are as far as biological sex? Why can't a heavyweight identify as a lightweight? Why can't someone become a cow. Which is a actual disorder.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boanthropy

OK, there are millions of transgender males and females. Name one guy that identifies as a cow or wants everyone to accept that he is 60lbs less than he actually weighs. They can't be disorders if they don't exist.

Not sure how common it is, but people believing they are a different animal is common enough or else it wouldn't have a clinical name. Here's the umbrella term for such condition:

You never answer simple questions. You just beat around the bush, say a whole lot of nothing and end up saying nothing. Than when people use the same logic as you when it comes to other areas i.e. if identification is what matters in gender why not weight?. You get mad.

It is a simple yes or no. Do you want to get rid of weight classes in sports like boxing and wrestling?

BergLaufer wrote:

You never answer simple questions. You just beat around the bush, say a whole lot of nothing and end up saying nothing. Than when people use the same logic as you when it comes to other areas i.e. if identification is what matters in gender why not weight?. You get mad.

It is a simple yes or no. Do you want to get rid of weight classes in sports like boxing and wrestling?

I did answer it as far as it can be answered in the context of your ignorant logic. As entertaining as it is to continue to destroy you in verbal battle, your ignorance is boring me.

I will tell you what: I will up this to $1000. I’m not joking. Put up your real name and prove it though Instagram and by using the same computer so the boys can track your IP address. You are so certain in your clearly infantile logic then let’s really debate this.

Show the world who you are! $1000 to continue the debate. If you’re not willing to donut then kiss your mommy good night for me. You’re wasting our time.

BergLaufer wrote:

You never answer simple questions. You just beat around the bush, say a whole lot of nothing and end up saying nothing. Than when people use the same logic as you when it comes to other areas i.e. if identification is what matters in gender why not weight?. You get mad.

It is a simple yes or no. Do you want to get rid of weight classes in sports like boxing and wrestling?

Put me down for no. If the heavyweight wants to chop off a leg or two make welterweight that would be OK.

SDSU Aztec wrote:

BergLaufer wrote:

You never answer simple questions. You just beat around the bush, say a whole lot of nothing and end up saying nothing. Than when people use the same logic as you when it comes to other areas i.e. if identification is what matters in gender why not weight?. You get mad.

It is a simple yes or no. Do you want to get rid of weight classes in sports like boxing and wrestling?

Put me down for no. If the heavyweight wants to chop off a leg or two make welterweight that would be OK.

Thank you for answering the question clearly. Ok, one more time for Kevin. Do you want to get rid of weight classes in sports like wrestling and boxing. I just want a yes or no.

Also, there is a condition in which people identify as disable. Do you support these people too?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_integrity_dysphoria

According to the wiki article above, some get, "surgery to amputate the undesired limb". Do you support this too?

BergLaufer wrote:

Also, there is a condition in which people identify as disable. Do you support these people too?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_integrity_dysphoria

According to the wiki article above, some get, "surgery to amputate the undesired limb". Do you support this too?

You’re a joke. $1000 and you won’t do it....I don’t blame you. Having your life opened up to the world so any slap Dick can anonymously post anything they want about you (tire or not) isn’t something you want to dive into.

You don’t want us starting a thread with your real name. And opening it up for anonymous discussion. Have us secretly scour your social media and contact hundreds of your acquaintances and tell them they can say anything they want to about you because it’s anonymous.

Judging from the fact you are avoiding the entire offer tells me you don’t have the stones to survive it.

You see, that’s my take and my reading for even engaging in these discussions. I’ve already been through it. Nothing else to be said. Lost everything. Survived. Thrived. But I will not stand by and watch people try and destroy other people with their hate and ignorance.

You guys come on here and bash other coaches and coaching hires. Bash the transgendered. Bash other runners. Bash other programs. Bash anyone you can because you can hide like a coward. The racist posts on minority hires. The sexist posts on female hires. Jesus. It’s ridiculous.

What’s your personal freedoms and life worth to you ? $1000? I wouldn’t take it either son. That $1000 won’t cover the losses by being honest and putting your name to your ignorance and hate.

Let’s dig into your life like you dog into others. True or half true or false? Doesn’t matter. Once it is said it is said.

Grow up. Be a better person. Let June be. She’s not hurting you. If you’re so tough, let’s put your life on display. I’ve got the coin to pay you.

You’re better than this. We all are. Stop the BS. Let her be. It will all sort itself out despite your bigotry and ignorance and hate.

Here's a woman who identifies as black. Do you support her?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Dolezal

If gender is based on what one identifies as. Why not everything else?

this is on the right track in that the type of content that we should actually be talking about in this thread, rather than repeating the same disproven objections over and over in a shouting contest as exclusionists have done.

the phrase "limb morphology" is used only once in the study, but they define "Leg morphology" as "Mass distributed closer to the hip joint". interestingly, this seems to favor the female form, where "child bearing hips" tend to favor mass in those areas, and is partially replicated by HRT, "Estrogen treatment results generally in more fat around the hips". (note that even if HRT had no effects on hips, it would be an even greater disadvantage for trans women, so this is more as just a point of trivia.) this is further evidence that many aspects of the female form are optimal for distance running which strengthens the case for June's inclusion.

as for tendon length, it seems not to vary much between sexes but there is evidence that females might have "better" tendons: "Males Have Inferior Achilles Tendon Material Properties Compared To Females in a Rodent Model". males do have a longer tendon length on average than females, but the difference is small (5.00 to 4.87 average). most importantly, for estrogen treatment like June is taking "However, unlike bone and muscle where estrogen improves function, in tendons and ligaments estrogen decreases stiffness, and this directly affects performance and injury rates." which again shows another disadvantage on this topic.

the Saunders study says that only a "certain degree" of muscle stiffness is optimal in distance running -- not too little, not too much. appropriately this seems to be the variable that's the least dimorphic of the three, so i don't think this is really a relevant factor when considering sexed differences. nonetheless a cursory view shows that high estrogen is linked to low muscle stiffness (not just sex, but the actual amount of estrogen makes it vary).

the question of "how would june have developed if she had been born XX" is, in my opinion, too abstract to ponder and even if we had an answer to it, it might not be all that meaningful. training strategy tends to differ between men and women, so i don't think you can really say "if june had trained the same amount as she did only being born female what would her times be?" because the training she did pre-transition wouldn't carry over cleanly.

the biggest problem with using Semenya as a point of reference is that she was known to not take her T suppression pills often in defiance of the IAAF rule, and we don't know when exactly those periods were. it's possible that for some seasons she took it on and off, but i don't believe there was ever a season when she took it as much as someone like June who actually reduced her T levels to female. in fact i don't think semenya has ever gone on the record admitting her T suppression regimen, meanwhile June happily reveals the details to local news.

this is a reasonable review of what's trying to be proven, but i disagree with your goal of "effective proof of that is they will be of a similar standard" -- in fact, the science as we've reviewed it so far indicates that trans women have significant disadvantages compared to born women, not just "similar". i would use the criteria "below or equal to female performance" instead.

yes, there is a principled argument, and as i said it's based on skill ceiling rather than baseline or current performance. in this way reducing testosterone is not redundant in your hypothetical example of a slow male, because that slow male would still have a higher ceiling on account of his high T levels and thus he would still need a testosterone reduction. and when you say "we let males compete in women's events" it's important to note that they can't just choose willy nilly -- the body changes undergone by HRT would at least disqualify a trans women from ever being competitive in men's events for years, if not much longer. so the decision is effectively permanent.

[/quote]

under the current rules, identity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for participation in women's races, you need both identity and a year of HRT (which as i said should be more specific, but i digress as i believe june would meet those more specific rules anyways). i don't think any male would ever make your unfairness argument -- mainly because, for that person to actually go through HRT without identifying as female, he would have to think that he's getting a competitive advantage from the process, but as we've proven over and over again all the science shows that person would have a severe disadvantage as June has now so he would be better off competing against males. i don't see how this leads to open sports -- in fact, it emphasizes the sexual dimorphism of testosterone greater than ever and strengthens the divide between performances. with these rules, the average male performance should be even father apart from the average female performance.

thanks, i look forward to pleasing you both and your friends who have contributed absolutely nothing to the discussion so far.

this is a total misunderstanding of the situation. try rephrasing it as "imagine all the high school boys who can run 14:38 for 5K (not many), try transitioning to female and then you can run a significantly slower gender graded time of 18:30ish!" not exactly an appealing pitch -- in fact, the hypothetical male would be much better off competing against men in terms of national rank. it goes to show that June isn't doing this for an athletic advantage, but instead because she is simply competing in the category she can most fairly compete against given her hormone therapy body changes.

again Armstronglivs opens and closes with the insults instead of any substantive commentary on the topic at hand. see my points above that i do try my best to charitably interpret opponents, and my goal is not to push any particular viewpoint but merely to inform and shut down misconceptions.

more like a fat chance, as the disinformation and brainwashing attack levels seem to be nearing all-time high levels in this thread again. when RunRagged doesn't have any argumentative legs to stand on, he reaches for the shill card -- one that's easily disproven looking at my posts on this site going back years. i've said it before and i'll say it again: Dijon Gebremustard is never bought or sold.

this is an interesting tangent and i'd tend to agree with you here. it's further complicated by the fact that old men tend to be prescribed medical testosterone more often for health reasons, which carries over into performance. at the world masters level and for world records perhaps one day it would be worth noting T levels beside the performance, as if the T prescriptions are as common as it seems i don't think it would be practical to exclude all those athletes from ever competing. there probably just isn't enough money or hype in masters athletics as it stands to make these changes right now though.

you're right male and female time equivalences can't be constructed biologically, but they can be constructed based on history, and that's exactly what the USATF age-grading calculator does. june's age grades as a male approach 90 percent while her age grades as a woman are closer to 60 percent, proving that she has received a significant disadvantage (remember that for an "equal" comparison they should also be at 90% for women, and if nothing changed at all then they should be at near 100% for women).

your first example here is actually a perfect one: yes, a 60kg boxer is really an 80kg boxer minus his size! and guess what: if the 80kg boxer loses 20kg of weight, then he too can compete equitably in the 60kg class! it's analogous to the fact that high-T athletes can lower their T to compete in the low-T category -- i couldn't think of a better example argument for trans inclusion in this way. the concept extends to your other examples as well, but alas we haven't invented time travel yet though we have invented consistent high mileage training which might help the hobby jogger you mention.

yes, the current NCAA rule mandates one year of hormone therapy. the available evidence and interviews with june show that she likely has T levels within the female range and she has been taking estrogen pills as well. now you're right that it should absolutely be more specific, and i've always argued that the NCAA rules should be amended to include specific T and E limits (around 2-3 nmol/L for T) as well as verification. i don't know of any serious people in this debate who would disagree with that, and i expect the rules to actually be changed some time in the next year now that they're being put into practice.

by the way, Ryan Hall's "low testosterone" was still likely higher than that of female athletes, but his enormous performance drop still goes to show how much of a factor testosterone is in elite performance. if i remember correctly one of his last marathons was a 2:18 in Boston, 3 minutes slower than the women's WR and 14 minutes (!) off his PB. presumably after that he was in even worse shape as he continued to drop out of races a bunch before his retirement (did he even finish any?). i wouldn't call that "competing at the highest level" at all.

no, Armstronglivs is wrong. nobody here -- not me, not June, not her coaching staff, not the NCAA -- is arguing for a purely identification-based categorization. in fact, my argument is the most biological of all, it's based on the significan changes that a body goes through following hormone replacement therapy that June has already undergone. so your boxing analogy simply doesn't make sense, a better analogy would be if an 80kg boxer lost weight to compete in the 60kg class, a phenomenon which is rightly legal and fair.

BergLaufer, not at all, in fact weight classes are a strong argument for trans inclusion in distance running because they acknowledge that categories are based upon causal performance variables (in our case, testosterone, in their case, weight) rather than identification or sex organs. the NCAA transgender rules (once amended to include specific T+E limits & verification) will strengthen women's sport, not eliminate it by any means.

they can't identify that way because they wouldn't be changing their causal performance variables -- a heavyweight identifying as a lightweight wouldn't be changing his weight (the causal variable in boxing), i don't know where you're going with the cow example as being a cow would not be useful in any sport to my knowledge. the current rules aren't based upon identification (wholly) and the argument for trans inclusion isn't predicated upon identification, it's instead predicated upon having reduced testosterone levels for one year as well as the body changes that follow that from a domino effect.

no, we shouldn't get rid of weight classes because they're based on a causal performance variable, like how the gender designations in cross country are based on the causal performance variable of testosterone.

again, totally irrelevant as the trans inclusion argument isn't predicated upon identification. i'll humor you by saying that if being a cow were physically possible, what gender that person would compete as would depend upon the cow's testosterone levels. have fun saving women's sport by reading about people who identify as cows though.

no, i don't want to and neither does the mainstream trans inclusion movement, including Joanna Harper, an expert who has spoken at length about these issues. i don't see how i could be more clear than that. the case for June's inclusion doesn't depend upon identification.

i know this wasn't directed at me, but i still want to emphasize the answer is "no" and also emphasize not to group all inclusionist arguments under one umbrella as there are many varied opinions -- instead, what you should do for every debate is take what you consider to be the strongest arguments on both sides and compare their merits and relevant rebuttals.

if we split cross country divisions by race, then this would be a relevant question to ask. fortunately for us both, racial segregation ended in the united states a few decades ago, and for good reason: race isn't a primary causal performance variable, or at least it isn't enough of a game-changer that black men can't compete against white men for example (yes there are biological differences like more slow twitch muscle fibers in East African athletes, but they don't add up to enough a difference to split categories at the highest levels of sport).

so, quite frankly, the question needs to be more specific. i don't think the person you linked is looking to get into professional sport, and i can't remember the last time that knowing someone's race was actually important to my day-to-day business. if i was describing her on a police report, i would probably say light-skinned based on the one wiki photo. however i would also describe Michael Jackson as "white" post-skin-lightening, and in both cases it's an assumption i make based on appearance. in the same way, almost all trans women have long hair and wear dresses or feminine clothing, including June, so it's easy for me to categorize them as female.

Since you insist on trying to condescend to someone who is likely quite a bit older than you - it's not often as someone in their sixties that I get called "son" - it is rather surprising that the differences between males and females seem to have escaped you; your social life must be rather interesting if not perplexing - not least to the women you meet. (Perhaps the only difference between the people you date and those you don't is their levels of testosterone, since that appears to be the only thing that distinguishes male from female for you. )

If you had read a little further than you did you might have seen that I said women cannot produce male levels of testosterone - which is not to say that women don't produce any testosterone - as I have said previously men have 15 times as much on average - and the amounts of oestrogen that men produce is utterly insignificant compared to women. But these are merely broad-brush explanations for explaining the differences between men and women, which none but those captive to a misguided ideology need persuading of.

BTW, I, too, have been a boxer in my youth, but as we see from your comments generally you easily make presumptive assertions without knowledge. It seems, that, unlike you, I didn't take too many blows to the head in the ring.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Are there any rules currently in place to ensure they take such treatment? Not only that, we don't know if this was just a tempo effort by her to get the sport light off of her. After all didn't Ryan Hall have low testosterone competing at the highest level as a man?

That is not my comment. Wrongly attributed.

BergLaufer wrote:

If what you believe what you are is what matters. Why stop at what you are as far as biological sex? Why can't a heavyweight identify as a lightweight? Why can't someone become a cow. Which is a actual disorder.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boanthropy

OK, there are millions of transgender males and females. Name one guy that identifies as a cow or wants everyone to accept that he is 60lbs less than he actually weighs. They can't be disorders if they don't exist.[/quote]

Not sure how common it is, but people believing they are a different animal is common enough or else it wouldn't have a clinical name. Here's the umbrella term for such condition:

]

Round up 30-70 million people who think they are cows and get back to us, ok?

Any chance we can get the Cliff Notes to those posts on the last page? Or maybe just some pictures?

Kevin,

How badly do I need to annoy you to get the $1000 offer??? ;)

Seriously, I haven't had a chance to read every detail of this ridiculous thread, but I'd like to point out a few things.

1. There is another "in between" space for the argument. That is the idea that it is perfectly acceptable for Jonathan to transition to June and live her life as a female, with the exclusion of competing against non transgender woman.

2. Do not confuse your online experience with June's. You made a few mistakes, and the corresponding public outing was probably an awful experience. To some extent June has asked for the publicity. Further, the discussion regarding the policy and how it will affect NCAA track/cross country is completely message board appropriate.

3. Many americans, and many young people, do not understand the idea of tradeoffs. It may be reasonable to expect that in the tradeoff of transitioning is competing at the NCAA level. We all make choices, and they have consequences, which in some ways are not "fair." As someone who teaches policy, I often tell students the pursuit of fairness is a fools errand.

l

One of the points I think is trying to be made is that making the field "equal" is very difficult. A trans basketball/volleyball player would certainly have bigger advantages than June. REcently a transgender cycling athlete dominated the velodrome, and her stature (5'11" and 195) certainly allowed some advantage.

Gender and Sexuality are not Binary, and these cases bring up some very interesting/serious discussions.