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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

#351

Post by pjc50 »

vmception wrote: post #192
Erwin wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current UK situation seems to be that being "Gender Critical" is a protected belief, based on the ruling case of a case where a tax expert lost her job for tweeting about how men cannot just change into women: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Forstater_v_Centre_for_Gl...

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

"Gender critical" is the anti-trans movement. The reason you can't tell their true position is the usual one: they daren't say "we want to eradicate trans people" in public, so they take the "just asking questions" route.

I feel that the trans community has largely been forced into defending "trans women are women" (TWAW), even if it has holes as a philosophical argument, because they need to fight the transphobic "trans women are men" rhetoric and downstream policy decisions. How can someone live as a woman without constant risk of being outed? They need an "F" on their passport and to use the women's toilets, etc. without having a constant risk of being "caught", because that ends badly.

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

#352

Post by acituan »

cosmojg wrote: post #141
acituan wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Your definition fails to account for intersex and infertile people.

My definition says "could produce gametes", not "can have offsprings".

Re intersex; congenital anomalies do not define a category (if the term congenital anomaly offends you, I am using the WHO definition). Just like if we would say "humans have one head" we would be excluding congenital twins, or with "five fingers" we would be excluding polydactyly.

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

#353

Post by hutzlibu »

Supermancho wrote: post #313
anaisbetts wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would having the same muscle but heavier bones as your competitors be an advantage in almost any sport?

Increased bone density means less prone to injury and more momentum in pivots and swings/punches.

If it would be as simple as "having the same muscle but heavier bones" - then there would be advantages in climbing for example. But the worlds top climbers are male, too.

(but the gap is in climbing seems to be smaller)

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

#354

Post by acituan »

babesh wrote: post #185
acituan wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 diff…

> 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?

No need to complicate; if we didn't have sex segregated sports, for almost all sports (save for maybe open ocean swimming), we couldn't have any women competing at all[1]. In fact there are "battle of sexes" type exhibition matches that demonstrate the rough placement eg Braasch vs. the Williams sisters.

[1] To expand this statement because I know some people will get offended; this doesn't mean men are better at sports than women. It says, at the tail end of distributions, where most of the professional sports are played, tail end of men's distribution will be better than tail end of women's, leaving no opportunity for women to compete if distributions are intermixed.

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

#355

Post by robertlagrant »

rjmunro wrote: post #349
nerdponx wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> There's actually a campaign in wheelchair tennis to allow players who don't actually need a wheelchair to be allowed to compete

I've wondered about this - it's an interesting idea. Then the sport is just "Wheelchair tennis" and anyone can try.

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

#356

Post by robertlagrant »

pja wrote: post #268
Erwin wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current UK situation seems to be that being "Gender Critical" is a protected belief, based on the ruling case of a case where a tax expert lost her job for tweeting about how men cannot just change into women: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Forstater_v_Centre_for_Gl...

Note that the court held two things: 1) Strongly held philosphical beliefs have much the same protection as religious beliefs in law and 2) That doesn’t mean you get to express those beliefs to other people in workplace. In other words, anti-trans (or GC) beliefs occupy much the same position in law as anti-gay Christian beliefs. You can /believe/ them all you like & can’t be sacked for that belief, but if you expres…

I'm not sure that's relevant; the case was a Tweet, was it not?

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

#357

Post by chupasaurus »

rocqua wrote: post #321
ivanbakel wrote: post #280

Earlier 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 ... 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…

Are there any examples of this worry about "genetic freaks" in non-women categories? It seems much less relevant to me in a category where everyone can enter than one that is restricted to a subset to give that subset 'fair' competition.

Aleksandr Karelin instantly comes to mind.

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

#358

Post by Karsteski »

gambiting wrote: post #314

So you know how few years back companies were peddling this idea that forcing your real name in comments will make the discussion more civil and proper? Yeah, I can click on every single one of those people in this comment section, see their real name and their FB profile, and it still doesn't stop them from being vile on the internet.

What are some examples of vile comments, according to you?

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

#360

Post by sandworm101 »

The proof will be in the medals. The worst thing she could do for her cause is to actually win. If people see a sport where such transgender athletes are on the podium regularly and it is obvious they are doing better as a group, change will be demanded. Weightlifting looks to be that first test case but we were almost there before. Running faced a debate over allowing people with modified bodies to compete, but the so-called bladerunner disappeared from the scene and has yet to be replaced by another. The big question is the same as drugs: how much technology do we allow people to use? Are we committed to the idea of "natural" bodies in competition or do we allow technological modifications?

(Pistorius was born with feet. They were deformed feet and were surgically removed when he was very young. He used surgery to improve on his "natural" body. The prosthetic blades were then a second stage down the rabbit hole of technological augmentation.)

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