Would it be reasonable to compete in three categories: cismen, ciswomen, and others? The others category would have relaxed doping rules wrt hormones. Or is this too naive a solution?
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
#342I 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.
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Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place
#343Would it be reasonable to compete in three categories: cismen, ciswomen, and others? The others category would have relaxed doping rules wrt hormones. Or is this too naive a solution?
More categories is the only solution.
Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
>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 ... physiology giving her an unfair advantage. But this is true of lots of sports. Most recently, Simone Biles was punished by scoring judges for a gymnastic move that only she is able to perform, due to her height and musculature. "Gene…
While it's hard to draw a precise line, there's a clear difference between having some genetic features that give you an advantage, and having most genetic features that give you an advantage.
Growing up under the influence of male genetics and hormones gives an individual a massive advantage in such a sport, that simply cannot be compensated for or against with just training or medical solutions. There's nothing that will take that edge away from such an individual because human intervention later in life can't entirely undo the course nature took when building that body.
The evidence is in the performance which falls squarely in line with male performance [0].
And to everyone thinking of a parallel with motorsports and whatnot, there is none. Those sports rely on technology developed by humans so anything is entirely reproducible and reversible. Nature on the other hand still does things that we don't understand, can't reproduce, or can't fully compensate for. We have no way to change the gender with all the associated factors so we focus on the critical and obvious ones like physical look and hormonal balance, which get a person 95% there. But when it comes to peak performance the 5% makes a difference and it's clearly an unfair one to every other participant.
Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place
#345This 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..
Even though I largely agree with your conclusion, I strongly disagree that this problem is made artificially difficult. The fallout of a decision like this for professional athletes who are trans is huge. That fallout and the effects from that decision should not at all be taken lightly. Having an MTF proffesional athlete to compete in the male category is going to probably cause a lot of disphoria. It will also make…
> The impact this will have is huge and deserves significant consideration.
The impact of making women’s competitions an impossibility for non MTF persons seems far greater in comparison.
Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place
#346I 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…
It's more accurate to say for Homo Sapiens, biological sex is a bimodal distribution under which 95% of the human species falls into.
Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place
#347The idea that an athletic competition--conferring a first, second and third place, holds any substantial meaning at all is completely absurd. All other controversy simply flows from this fact.
Everyone knows that 99% of life is not under your control. But it can still be entertaining to design games around the (supposed) 1% that is under your control.
Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place
#348Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place
#349Earlier 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.
I agree, but unintended consequences abound. I wonder how this would apply in sports that don't typically have weight classes, like track & field. I imagine you'd start seeing athletes in pretty much every sport cutting weight like in boxing and wrestling, which I don't think is a healthy outcome. Are we at a level of biological science yet to create reliable divisions/classes on anything more sophisticated? And what…
The Paralympic movement does something like this, and it's hard, e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-57404811.
There's actually a campaign in wheelchair tennis to allow players who don't actually need a wheelchair to be allowed to compete. https://www.theaccessibleplanet.com/able-bodied-playing-whee...
Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place
#350I 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…
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...
If terminology is your hang up then how about BSA, birth sex assignment. Then it is only about biology and not about identity.