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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

#251

Post by ben_w »

ffggvv wrote: post #148
makeworld wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking hormone therapy dramatically changes your body, making using just your sex also problematic. It's a complex subject. Here's the best article I've found on it: https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog/shades-of-gray-sex-gend...

yeah but it doesn’t make your body exactly like someone with different chromosomes than you that lived with that hormone set their entire life through puberty etc, and with a different bone structure and musculature

I believe this is one reason why some trans people are very keen for their hormonal therapy to begin before puberty.

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

#252

Post by totetsu »

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…

I found the idea of a "cluster concept" of biological sex, as opposed to a essentialist binary, to be a useful addition for thinking about this issue. We can all point to the binary and say where do you draw the line, because of all kinds of exceptional cases. But if you say, here is a cluster of characteristics that are common to amongst the groups, you don't need to have them all, but most people have a majority of one or the other, then there becomes a more objective way to think about it.. And maybe the cluster that is important to weight lifting is different from something else.. Not saying that I aggrege with Kathleen Stock's conclusions. Just find this useful.

I heard about it in this podcast (about 7:25) https://philosophybites.com/2019/05/kathleen-stock-on-what-i...

https://quillette.com/2019/04/11/ignoring-differences-betwee...

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

#253

Post by uniqueid »

raffraffraff wrote: post #243
uniqueid wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://mobile.twitter.com/Scienceofsport/status/14070200037... Sports scientists do not agree

That tweet addresses solely weight, but I'm not arguing for categories based solely on weight.

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

#254

Post by syngrog66 »

yerwhat01010 wrote: post #245
syngrog66 wrote: post #172

the most elegant and fair solution to problems like this is to eliminate all gender distinctions in sports and collapse all leagues, competitions and record categories into a unified human category. let the best human win, regardless of their birth gender, sex preference, or sex organs at moment. yes, there will be certain sports or events that will tend to favor male. but there will be some that favor female. let th…

> there will be some that favor female. Which sports are these? In which physical sports do women have an advantage over men? Can you name one?

honestly, offhand I do not know.

I'd guess anything where hip area strength is critical. male bodies are at an advantage in terms of overall muscular and bone structure.

the larger point is its wiser to treat it as a competition between individuals. because. anytime we exclude someone based on non-individual traits then it means we are discriminating against them. and "discrimination is bad", no matter what.

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

#255

Post by soco »

vidarh wrote: post #166
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #16

I feel like with this issue at some point we are bound to reach a breaking point. It's just a question of how far along things will go before we get there. People are more and more open about being transgender and there is more and more support for transgender individuals having the chance to live life as their correct gender. This is a great thing! However, it presents a huge problem for women's athletics, particula…

All it is really doing is expose how much of current results are down to genetics and hormone levels anyway . This has always been a problem, but one where all but the sports most extremely affected, like e.g. weightlifting with weight classes, have pretended it is not. In powerlifting there additionally are "tested" and "untested" federations, where it's an open secret that the untested federations are full of stero…

In most sports performance-enhancing therapies are banned. Entire federations and countries were banned from participating at major competitions. By allowing hormone therapies we are basically discriminating against hematocrit therapies and so on. It's a Pandora's box and it's open already so we better be handling it rather sooner than later.

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

#256

Post by uniqueid »

yerwhat01010 wrote: post #239
uniqueid wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Olympic weightlifting is already divided into weight categories. What you're advocating is the abolition of women's sports.

Not that I made an argument for using weight alone, but it depends on the sport in any event. To avoid injuries, the physical attributes that matter to billiards differ from those that matter to rugby.

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

#257

Post by secondcoming »

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.

'Feel'. My confusion comes from the fact that these people were not born female and so can have no idea what it is to 'feel' like a woman any more than I can 'feel' like a wolf.

This then reduces womanhood to a state of mind, rather than any physical and/or chemical criteria, which I think is wrong. Why should natural born women have their identity diluted?

It also seemingly reinforces the 'two genders' claim by categorising trans people as one or the other.

Like I said at the top, I am a bit confused by it all.

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

#258

Post by raffraffraff »

uniqueid wrote: post #253
raffraffraff wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://mobile.twitter.com/Scienceofsport/status/14070200037... Sports scientists do not agree

That tweet addresses solely weight, but I'm not arguing for categories based solely on weight.

https://mobile.twitter.com/Scienceofsport/status/12979157895...

Tweets are a dreadful way to read something like this, which would be easier to suggest in a blog post or paper. But I suppose Twitter gives people the right to respond, so swings-and-roundabouts.

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

#259

Post by yerwhat01010 »

syngrog66 wrote: post #254
yerwhat01010 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there will be some that favor female. Which sports are these? In which physical sports do women have an advantage over men? Can you name one?

honestly, offhand I do not know. I'd guess anything where hip area strength is critical. male bodies are at an advantage in terms of overall muscular and bone structure. the larger point is its wiser to treat it as a competition between individuals. because. anytime we exclude someone based on non-individual traits then it means we are discriminating against them. and "discrimination is bad", no matter what.

> "discrimination is bad", no matter what.

Really? The most basic definition of "discrimination" is "to note or distinguish as different." Are you saying we should never be allowed to observe that, in reality, sometimes two things really are different from each other?

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