Live data from Hacker News

Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place

insidethegames.biz

301–310 of 643 posts

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

#301
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your argument is that men are inherently superior to women in all physical aspects? Yea, no bias there...

All physical aspects? No probably not, the movements and motions that make up almost all sports? Yes, and that’s just reality. I am struggling to come up with any that women as a generalized block might be naturally better at. Maybe some fineness movements like some forms of dance or balance. Another user above nailed it, this is a newly self-inflicted problem.

I think women tend to be better than men at 200+ mile ultramarathons.

https://www.insider.com/women-are-faster-long-distance-runne...

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

#302

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.

Sex chromosome variants aren't separate sexes. You're male, and develop a male body producing male gametes, if you have a Y chromosome: * X – Female * XX – Female * XXY – Male * XY – Male * XYY – Male * XXXY – Male https://colinwright.substack.com/p/sex-chromosome-variants-a...

XY but defect on the SRY region: female

XX with SRY region on one of the X: Male

XY with androgen insensitivity: female

There's a lot more of a spectrum than you'd think.

Many of the cis female athletes currently winning in the olympics, e.g. caster semenya, have significantly higher testosterone levels than would be legal for trans female athletes.

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

#303
post #187
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eve…

OTOH very little of how our society bases its treatment of trans people based on science or medical prognosis. The best evidence there is is that dysphoria is real and gender affirming therapies including medical transition is an effective treatment. Yet access to that treatment varies extremely widely, being treated inherently as a second or third class citizen both by culture and in a lot of cases by law.

I do understand as well your reticence around the ideological space that a lot of online spaces take place in. To that I’d just say that this stuff is fairly new, and you have a lot of young people finding and differentiating their identities as they’re going through quite a process.

My opinion is frankly it’s a wonderful thing, to have it so people can prioritize their emotional well being enough to not have their natural individual differentiations beat out of them as so many cultures have done. In doing so, discovering how much of a thing gender dysphoria is for some, and allowing them to lead much much better lives.

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

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah see this is a great example as I have no clue what anybody’s position is there upon a quick skim, and I’ve never even heard the term Gender Critical

Being "gender critical" is the view that trans women are not women. Not to be confused with the "anti-gender" movement, which opposes anything other than traditional male/female roles, or with "postgenderism", which argues the complete opposite, namely that traditional gender is irrelevant. TL;DR is that Maya was (apparently) fired for the first opinion, lost a first court case over it because being gender critical i…

That just seems weird to me. Most people want to have kids later in life. Of course trans women are different wrt that life goal.

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

#306

Imagine a giant athlete the size of Arnold Schwarzenegger at his peak decides to transition and has to match a testosterone level to compete. Lol. It’s ridiculous.

My question would be what would happen? Would he retain all of his strength or would the transition render him the strength we expect of a woman who also trained like he did. It seems weird to me that we say such things as if we definitely know the outcome. I must have missed a Science class where this was taught or maybe it’s coming sense? Is there even a paper study these results?

There are many papers on this actually, and generally, within of 2 years, all the advantages testosterone had for the muscles is gone.

The only advantage that remains is muscle memory, but people who train on steroids, quit, wait a few years, and then train normally have the same advantage.

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

#307
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it doesn't change your skeletal structure, or the size of your lungs. Both of which dramatically affect your performance.

I think the core question is, does Hubbard have an advantage so she will win 95% of the time? If so, it’s not really a competition, especially if that result derives from her innate male physiology giving her an unfair advantage. We don’t allow doping either. If there is a way to level it out, that might be a solution, if it’s possible.

> does Hubbard have an advantage so she will win 95% of the time?

This graph would suggest she does:

https://i.redd.it/vv4ws1848t671.jpg

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

#308

I understand that anabolic steroids give a life long advantage in terms of muscle memory. Anyone who's done some semi serious lifting and then gone on a long break to return will know that progress is much faster the Nth time around. This explains why those who have taken steroids will have a life long advantage: Eg https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190125084106.h... I also understand that the male pubert…

I find both these points to be extremely reasonable, specifically aimed at weightlifting.

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

#309

This problem is made artificial difficult. It's simple: born as a man? Sport like a man. Born as a women? Sport like women. Gender in sport is not about identity, it's about biology. Also it creates a huge backdoor to Olympic gold medals. There's nothing that stops turning the female category into all transgender..

Trans women have been allowed to compete in the Olympics since the 80s with some stipulations around testosterone levels being maintained as very low. It would already have been a problem, if your simplistic theory were true.

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

#310
Let's consider getting rid of gendered sports entirely. Even women don't like women's sports as much as men's sports. Why would they? It's like watching the kids' league. Or like a bad B movie when you could be watching a Hollywood movie.

You might say, well then women will have no chance of ever being involved in those sports at that elite level, and you'd be right. But 99% of men have no chance of being involved in them either. We're talking about elite sports here. We don't care about the second-best percentile of men, why do we care about women?

What I'd really like to see is some kind of team sport or game where there is a strong advantage in having a "mixed" team. Surely someone can think of a game that won't be entirely dominated by men? If that existed then we could choose the team sports with women in them over the 100% male individual sports. But ultimately the choice will come down to which one is the most interesting, impressive and exciting.

Post reply on HN