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Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place

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

#181

Post by leephillips »

vore wrote: post #176
leephillips wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to suggest that you resist the urge to police other’s use of language, especially when their use of terms is well established and reasonable. Whether you intend it or not, this is quite disrespectful.

How is calling transgender women "not women" "well established and reasonable"? Whether you intended to parrot what I said to be so snide, this is quite disrespectful.

Well established: a woman is an adult human female. Try a dictionary, biology textbook, etc. You might not like it, but you can’t reasonably say that it’s not well established. I hope you agree that a “transgender woman”, or, to use more neutral language, a trans identified man, is not female. That’s the entire issue here.

Reasonable: see the above. Also, implied by the users of the term itself. If a T.W. is a W., why do they say T.W.?

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

#182

Post by jl6 »

acituan wrote: post #104
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #50

I thought Anna Vanbellinghen was very well said. It's not about questioning someone's identity, or their right to live openly. But this is about acknowledging physical reality. One thing I'd like to add is that this is, by definition, a hard problem . The fact is sex and gender exists on a continuum, even if 99% of the time it seems binary. Anyone who says that the "other side" in this situation (regardless of which…

> The fact is sex and gender exists on a continuum, even if 99% of the time it seems binary. I was with you until this statement. Sex is a millions-of-years-old discrete variable; it depends on whether you could produce the bigger gamete (called egg) or the smaller one (sperm). Gender is a continuous variable with a strongly bimodal distribution.

This debate butts up against the limitations of language and it is necessary to take care to define terms. This definition will be more or less useful depending on what you are trying to communicate.

“Sex” could be interpreted to mean a statement about chromosomes, in which case there are more than two variants.

Or it could be interpreted to be a statement about reproductive potential, in which case the “two sexes” model is a better fit, because there’s no intermediate gamete between sperm and egg. Do intersex conditions break this model? Almost always not: the variations of sex development are variations on the male pattern and the female pattern. Are there exceptionally rare individuals that defy categorisation? Surely there are, but the existence of extreme, rare outliers doesn’t invalidate the model.

Which definition is most useful? In the context of women’s rights, it’s clearly the latter. Women suffer discrimination based on their reproductive biology, not based on their chromosomes. It’s also the model that the vast majority of people use as their everyday working definition of sex.

So I think anyone who wants to claim there are more than two sexes must accept the responsibility to qualify their terminology.

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

#183

Post by mssundaram »

vore wrote: post #157
chitowneats wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't go without saying. Which is why you said it. The pro-trans movement starts from the assumption that any disagreement with their ideology is "harm". They've bullied everyone into accepting what is transparently a ridiculous situation; often by alleging bad faith. I'm very happy to see someone from professional women's weightlifting refer to this as a "bad joke".

"Ideology"? Is it unfathomable to you that people would reasonably be able to feel that they have a different biological gender to how they feel in their mind? And that people cavalierly dismissing their acceptance in society is somehow not harmful? If you want to talk respectfully about the implications of transgender athletes in sport, that's one thing. But what you are doing is not that. You're trying to dismiss t…

I've been curious if anyone has studied why there are more and more transgender people lately. I don't believe it is only due to awareness and perception - it seems to be occuring more and more frequently. Do other animals with similar levels of consciousness experience gender dysmorphia?

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

#184

Post by uniqueid »

nimbleal wrote: post #126

I may be a few years behind on terminology (?) but surely sports has everything to do with sex and nothing to do with gender? No one cares what pronouns an athlete uses, how they dress, what roles and behaviours society traditionally assigns/expects of them and how they respond to those traditions. They care entirely about biological advantages and disadvantages. So the division is based on — again unsure of the term…

  sports has everything to do with sex and nothing 
  to do with gender
Dividing by sex is a substitute for dividing by the things that really matter: height, weight, strength, bone density, etc. If sports grouped competitors by a combination of those attributes, it would solve a lot of issues, including debate over transgender athletes.

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

#185

Post by babesh »

acituan wrote: post #97
babesh wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many disadvantages/advantages that various groups face/possess. It is ideological which ones we choose to elevate. Genes for height, genes for fast twitch muscles, testosterone, etc… aren’t the same for different groups. Some of these disadvantages are just as insurmountable. Many sports are closed to poor people. Equestrian, sailing, etc… aren’t sports for the poor. Richer countries often have better techn…

> There are many disadvantages/advantages that various groups face/possess. It is ideological which ones we choose to elevate. Is basketball a conspiracy against short people? Weightlifting for tall people? Are combat sports full of weight-ist people who won't allow a heavyweight pound a welterweight? Is football the least ideological sport because it allows a greater variety for BMI and height? Let us not bury the g…

You said conspiracy. I said advantage.

Height is a huge advantage in basketball. The average height of an NBA player is over 6’5”. Height is mostly genetic except for malnutrition. Different populations have different average heights.

The optimal build for a weightlifter is to have short arms and legs and to have the two parts be of equal length. That is mostly genetic. Of course different population groups have differences here as well.

Weight is an advantage in combat sports both because you can dish out more and because you can absorb more punishment. I suspect that high bone density is advantageous and is mostly genetic. Different populations have different bone densities.

No one is denying that sex has explanatory power. The point is that many other things have explanatory power as well and that choosing which categories to consider is ideological.

Why have separate sports for sex? Why have separate weight classes? Why have a minimum age requirement for gymnasts? Why not allow professionals until 1992?

Why not have separate height classes for basketball? Why not have separate weight classes for football?

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

#186

Post by Zababa »

ALittleLight wrote: post #162
Zababa wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In what way is Vanbellinghen not questioning Hubbard's identity? Not all women are allowed to participate in powerlifting competitions. For example, people not qualified couldn't. People that are known steroids abusers couldn't. That doesn't make them less women.

Sure, but Vanbellinghen is not claiming Hubbard should be disqualified on those grounds. The issue is that Hubbard is a biological male and has an innate advantage when it comes to lifting things.

> Vanbellinghen, 27, whose qualifying efforts were disrupted by injury, pointed out that the retained benefit of taking steroids, even years earlier, is widely known.

> "So why is it still a question whether two decades, from puberty to the age of 35, with the hormonal system of a man also would give an advantage [in competing against women]?

The issue would be the same with a long term steroid user consider how it was worded.

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

#187

Post by junon »

vore wrote: post #170
chitowneats wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no issue with how they choose to self identify. I accept trans-identifying individuals and I will use whichever pronouns they ask of me. What I have an issue with is this type of behavior where they turn things upside down without any care for others. In this case, they're stealing glory from and seriously hampering the careers of lifelong female athletes. Imagine lifting since you were a teenage girl, and som…

I apologize for misunderstanding your initial point: couching the pro-trans movement as an "ideology" had read to me as a dismissal of the pro-trans movement at large and if that is not your intent then I retract my initial comment. That said, I don't really agree with this clarification either: no trans woman is setting out to have gender reassignment to bully their way into competing against women who were lifting…

> pro-trans movement as an "ideology" had read to me as a dismissal of the pro-trans movement at large

This is the problem. There's no difference to people. Arguing any nuanced part of the conversation is often met with exaggerated reactions of "you're anti-trans" or "you're dismissing transexualism as a whole", which is not the case.

So yes, the pro-trans movement on many online spaces is very ideological - they even claim it themselves (transmedicalism vs. gender identity, etc). Very little of it these days is based on science or medical prognosis.

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

#188

Post by mssundaram »

vore wrote: post #149
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is common to hear a transwoman claim (indeed, even occasionally here on HN) that anything other than recognizing them as equal to ciswomen is an act of violence and prejudice against them, and at worst, they utter some invective about “TERFs”. So, suggesting the recognition of a new gender is unlikely to satisfy at least those strident individuals.

From first principles, transwomen feel like they should be just as much of a woman born biologically female, but they just happened to be born biologically male. This dysphoria causes a great deal of angst and I don't think the benefits of othering them as any kind of second-class woman can outweigh that.

I think you've quantified it as second class when it isn't actually so for kathoey or hijra

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

#189

Post by exporectomy »

chitowneats wrote: post #164
vore wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Ideology"? Is it unfathomable to you that people would reasonably be able to feel that they have a different biological gender to how they feel in their mind? And that people cavalierly dismissing their acceptance in society is somehow not harmful? If you want to talk respectfully about the implications of transgender athletes in sport, that's one thing. But what you are doing is not that. You're trying to dismiss t…

I have no issue with how they choose to self identify. I accept trans-identifying individuals and I will use whichever pronouns they ask of me. What I have an issue with is this type of behavior where they turn things upside down without any care for others. In this case, they're stealing glory from and seriously hampering the careers of lifelong female athletes. Imagine lifting since you were a teenage girl, and som…

Maybe those natural females were never the best women and the trans are just taking their rightful place after having been excluded.

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

#190

Post by crooked-v »

beerandt wrote: post #127
crooked-v wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered the effects of androgen insensitivity syndrome? Chromosomes don't always neatly map to physical traits.

Have you considered that forcing the abnormal to be included with the normal renders both terms meaningless?

This categorization scheme would specifically include the 'abnormal' and the 'normal' together based entirely on chromosomes.
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