Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place • Hacker News Board

Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place

#61

Post by wolfgang42 » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 1:19 AM UTC

kazinator wrote: post #20

I think sports categories should be chromosome strings. "XX division", "XY world record". "XXY 400 m finals", "XYY long jump trials", ... Gender identity doesn't factor into it at all; the words "man", "woman" should not be used. Problem solved; you don't get to wedge yourself into competition with XX persons if you're XY.

That seems like it introduces more problems than it solves; genetic essentialism as a solution to debates about gender tends to be an approach that nobody agrees with. Now you still have the same concerns about people using hormones, plus:

- intersex people whose phenotype and genotype don’t match (putting them in the “wrong” category)

- chimeric people who belong in different categories depending on which part of their body you sample

- probably other edge cases I’m not thinking of.

If your goal is just to put people into categories, it’s probably a lot less controversial to split them based on if their earlobe is attached and whether they can curl their tongue.

Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place

#62

Post by leephillips » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 1:20 AM UTC

slg wrote: post #53

kazinator wrote: post #20

I think sports categories should be chromosome strings. "XX division", "XY world record". "XXY 400 m finals", "XYY long jump trials", ... Gender identity doesn't factor into it at all; the words "man", "woman" should not be used. Problem solved; you don't get to wedge yourself into competition with XX persons if you're XY.

At what levels would this apply? Would we actually blood test 14 year olds? What about trans men who where assigned female at birth? Are they allowed to take testosterone and still compete against XX women?

I think if the 14 year olds are entering an olympic event they would be blood-tested as a matter of routine, no?

I don’t know what this “assigned female” phrase means, can you explain? And no, I’m pretty sure shooting up testosterone is a no-no in the Olympics.

Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place

#63

Post by seabird » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 1:24 AM UTC

Theory5 wrote: post #21

I don't know the history of all sports, but the few tidbits I know all point to sex/gender separation as being initially based on beliefs that women were inferior to men. From physical sports to mental ones like chess, sex separation was due to women not being seen as equal to men. I think its time to do away with separations on sex, and go with ones based on ability and size. Boxing does it with weight classes, why…

Women would be crushed. As far as physical sports at the highest levels of play are concerned, women are inferior to men. That's not to say that women are lesser because of it, but that's just how it goes.

Karsten Braasch (peaked out at around 40th worldwide) beat both of the Williams sisters (both rank 1 players) back-to-back. He was twice their age and known for smoking cigarettes during changeovers. Male weightlifting records are hundreds of pounds higher than women's records. There are thousands of male sprinters who have posted a better time than the _world record_ female sprinter. I don't think there's even any data to compare men vs. women in combat sports like boxing because anybody who has ever paid any attention to sports can tell you it's an awful idea.

Yeah, we could do away with the separations, as long as you can accept that women will almost always take the back-seat at high levels of play.

Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place

#64

Post by SV_BubbleTime » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 1:26 AM UTC

ape4 wrote: post #8

RobLach wrote: post #2

Physical sport competition shouldn’t be separated by n number of genders, but by weight class.

"Gender" is larger than biological sex - a distinction that normally doesn't matter. Wikipedia: Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, femininity and masculinity. Depending on the context, these characteristics may include biological sex, sex-based social structures (i.e., gender roles), or gender identity.

I don’t know if that’s true or not. I know a lot of what you are saying first came from John William Money who… has a actually pretty evil history that should make everyone reevaluate the concepts [0]. I think the simple answer is we don’t know. We don’t know if you are right, we don’t know lots. But one thing we definitely do know is XY humans have more muscle mass and bone density on average than XX humans.

It’s probably not fair to put them against each other because of internal identity claims.

What is the hurry here? Why must we change women’s sports right now? Am I not told to “believe in science”? Where is the hard science on gender identity?

[0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061120561/

Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place

#65

Post by brodouevencode » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 1:28 AM UTC

I’m curious as to what the biologically female competitors think about this.

Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place

#66

Post by wolfgang42 » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 1:31 AM UTC

leephillips wrote: post #62

slg wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At what levels would this apply? Would we actually blood test 14 year olds? What about trans men who where assigned female at birth? Are they allowed to take testosterone and still compete against XX women?

I think if the 14 year olds are entering an olympic event they would be blood-tested as a matter of routine, no? I don’t know what this “assigned female” phrase means, can you explain? And no, I’m pretty sure shooting up testosterone is a no-no in the Olympics.

“Assigned female”[0] just means that their original birth certificate has an ‘F’ in the sex field, normally assigned based on observed physical characteristics. It also generally implies that everyone assumed this was correct (with the associated gender roles etc) until the person began expressing a gender identity independently—in this case a different one, though for most people they tend to be the same. In this case 'slg is also using it to imply that the person’s natural physical characteristics also match their assigned sex.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_assignment

Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place

#67

Post by eric4smith » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 1:33 AM UTC

slg wrote: post #59

eric4smith wrote: post #52

Yup - finally this has reached the point where gender politics crashes into reality. I’m not against any gender doing what they wish. But really, the point is when you (by nature) have testosterone coursing through your bloodstream… even if you transitioned, by the very nature of things you have an advantage of strength, agility, speed and desire over your female peers. As much as we would love to believe it, men are…

>by the very nature of things you have an advantage of strength, agility, speed and desire over your female peers. By the very nature of things LeBron James has an advantage of strength, agility, and speed over me. (no clue why you included desire in your comment) Basically every elite athlete is born with a genetic predisposition to be better at their sport than the average person. It takes a lot of determination an…

Ummmmm - we are talking about the differences between men and women. Not Lebron and you.

Also it’s been very well proven that testosterone leads to more desire/ambition call it what you will.

Women who take testosterone generally report feeling more ambitious and have more sexual desire as a by product.

Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place

#68

Post by leephillips » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 1:35 AM UTC

wolfgang42 wrote: post #66

leephillips wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if the 14 year olds are entering an olympic event they would be blood-tested as a matter of routine, no? I don’t know what this “assigned female” phrase means, can you explain? And no, I’m pretty sure shooting up testosterone is a no-no in the Olympics.

“Assigned female”[0] just means that their original birth certificate has an ‘F’ in the sex field, normally assigned based on observed physical characteristics. It also generally implies that everyone assumed this was correct (with the associated gender roles etc) until the person began expressing a gender identity independently—in this case a different one, though for most people they tend to be the same. In this ca…

This doesn’t really make sense. The hospital personnel who record the sex of the baby aren‘t saying anything about “gender roles”. They’re simply recording the sex of the baby. It will only be incorrect in extremely rare circumstances of external anatomy not being indicative of sex. (And the field in the birth certificate is for sex, not gender. That would make no sense.)

EDIT: It’s rather underhanded to abuse the edit button to silently correct your comment, causing replies to not quite make sense. That’s why people here signal that they’ve edited a comment in cases like this.

Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place

#69

Post by SilverRed » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 1:36 AM UTC

slg wrote: post #59

eric4smith wrote: post #52

Yup - finally this has reached the point where gender politics crashes into reality. I’m not against any gender doing what they wish. But really, the point is when you (by nature) have testosterone coursing through your bloodstream… even if you transitioned, by the very nature of things you have an advantage of strength, agility, speed and desire over your female peers. As much as we would love to believe it, men are…

>by the very nature of things you have an advantage of strength, agility, speed and desire over your female peers. By the very nature of things LeBron James has an advantage of strength, agility, and speed over me. (no clue why you included desire in your comment) Basically every elite athlete is born with a genetic predisposition to be better at their sport than the average person. It takes a lot of determination an…

This is true but if we work with this line of logic, we should just remove the gender split in sports and make it purely a game for the best of the best.

What this means is that most females will be removed from sport since they can't compete with the average male athlete. Society has spoken already and decided they want to see female athletes which is why many male only sports have started their own female only sides.

This is a truly unfortunate edge case where trans people have an unfair advantage on one gender side and an unfair disadvantage on the other side. Perhaps the only fair way to do things would be to have trans only teams but the numbers probably don't work out. Or to have trans people pick sports where physical strength is not at play like motor racing, shooting, chess, etc.

Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place

#70

Post by SilverRed » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 1:40 AM UTC

devit wrote: post #42

Theory5 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't people support transgendered people able to be the gender they wish and being able to do so in all possible aspects? Be they transwomen wanting to play female sports, or transmen wanting to play male sports (which you oddly leave out of your question).

Because the fittest people with an expressed SRY gene (aka "biologically male") are generally 10-15% better at sports than those without it (aka "biologically female") so if you allow SRY-expressing MtF transgender people to compete in the female category against non-SRY cisgender female people (rather than only letting them competing in the male category), and there are enough of them at top levels, no cisgender wom…

>incentivizes male athletes that can't win medals but are close to take hormone replacement theory solely so they can compete

This might seem absurd but when you consider that they already go to extreme lengths to sneak in highly dangerous and life altering drugs just to win, I can see it happening.