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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

#381

Post by twic »

globular-toast wrote: post #298
jeremybms wrote: post #154

One possibility that could potentially work for certain sports, like weightlifting, where the competition is solely in terms of individual records, would be to do away with the existing division by weight and male/female and instead introduce a handicap model based on measured characteristics. For example, all players might be required to have blood testosterone levels recorded at regular intervals starting from a yo…

Well, once we figure out exactly what attributes make an athlete good at a given sport, we might as well skip the sport entirely. Just give the medal to the guy with the greatest genetic potential to be good at that sport.

No, this is the opposite idea - you give the medal to the person who makes the most of whatever genetic potential they have.

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

#382

Post by [deleted] »

b0rsuk wrote: post #199

I don't have a big problem with people who "identify as" someone else. I have a big one with people who insist that *I* must call them in a particular way. It clashes with the idea that freedom of one person stops where freedom of another person starts. What about my right to call another person as I see them? This is invasive. I'm not telling them how to live - they are. This is *gaslighting* and promoting *taboos*.…

[deleted]

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

#383

Post by ivanbakel »

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.

>Are there any examples of this worry about "genetic freaks" in non-women categories?

There are lots of examples at the Olympic level, some of which can be found elsewhere in this thread. Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps are probably the most well-known recent cases - both dedicated athletes who also had some physical quirk which helped to ensure that they totally dominated their respective sport for the period that they were in their physical primes.

To be clear, the point is that nobody is "worried" about genetic outliers in mens' sports. If you were unlucky enough to be competing in a national Olympic swim team at the same time as peak-fitness Phelps, you were expected to suck it up and accept that you very likely had no chance of getting a gold medal. A great deal is made out of training and mentality, but at the end of the day, physicality is still a big silent factor in these competitions that the athletes simply have no control over.

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

#384

Post by [deleted] »

ben_w wrote: post #251
ffggvv wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#385

Post by FriedrichN »

sterlind wrote: post #337

As a trans woman, every time something like this hits the news, it makes me absolutely miserable. Conservatives and TERFs respond with vitriol and attack all of us as a group. I'm made to feel like some viking juggernaut, perverting the youth and forcing my way into women's spaces, when I really just want a quiet happy life as a cripple who can barely walk, much less dominate at weightlifting. The backlash against tr…

Please be aware that people who say this is unfair (in sports) aren't saying trans people aren't allowed to be who they are. I am against trans women competing in women's sports, especially those who transitioned late in their life. But that doesn't mean I'm against trans people.

I don't mind the whole bathroom thing. Poop where you want, everybody poops. And conservatives will always find a reason to be against anything that goes against their norms. You might find that the backlash is getting worse, but actually it isn't. More people than ever are accepting of all things LGBT, conservatives have just become more vocal exactly because they are becoming a minority.

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

#386

Post by nandhinianand »

CodeGlitch wrote: post #195
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...

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

And there's a bunch of trans people anecdotally debating it claiming things like height reduction and others. The truth trans people on (long-term) hormones have not been studied on physiological characteristics to be sure they're affected or not.

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

#387

Post by ivanbakel »

buran77 wrote: post #344
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…

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 tha…

> 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.

I don't see the clear difference. In what qualitative sense does Hubbard's genetic advantage differ from the genetic advantage of any athlete at the top of their sport? There are many competitions which are dominated by one individual, regardless of the training or medical help which every other competitor can afford. Should those people be excluded from competing for reasons of fairness?

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

#388

Post by twic »

Zababa wrote: post #10

These kind of issues are really interesting because sports are by nature unfair, but it's been decided to remove part of the unfairness but now some is brought back in with that.

A piece theorising "refinement culture" [1] points out that the Olympics have changed a lot since their invention and revival. Originally, they were a celebration of the human form. Now, they're about putting up the most extreme freak you can find.

I didn't find the overall argument persuasive, but i thought that was interesting.

[1] https://paulskallas.substack.com/p/refinement-culture

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

#389

Post by throwaway486165 »

makeworld wrote: post #136
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.

Sex is also more than just binary. https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/assets/File/051_... https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/sa-visual/visualizing-s...

Sex not being binary is technically correct, the best kind of correct, but it misses the wood for the trees.

Most (but not every) step on that continuum are known as diseases of sexual development [0].

These arguments often come up in discussions around trans issues, but its a trick of misdirection, although the DSD community does have a higher incident of gender identity issues (which is what you'd expect), around 5%, 1% that actively changed their gender, the lack of transition within the DSD community seems to suggest DSD and gender dysphoria are not related phenomenon.

The idea that sex is a continuum, based on known disorders, is like saying human bipedalism is a continuum due to people being born with less than 2 full legs, or more than 2 legs (extra toes), or losing them in later life. Although technically correct the observation does not really change the conversation.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disorders_of_sex_development

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29606626/

[edited for clarity] added: the lack of transition within the DSD community

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