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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

#411

Post by nandhinianand »

Y_Y wrote: post #364
pja wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is being philosophically critical of something automatically hostile? There are plenty of things that would argue against on a moral basis, that are important parts of the lives of some of the people I've worked with. I'd never harass them directly or indirectly for one of these things, but it would be hard to keep them a complete secret either. On the other side of the coin, I recognise that the people I work with w…

> I don't think I have the right to insist they supress these beliefs, as long as they're not trying to harm me with them.

The argument from the trans community would be that misgendering and encouraging other employees to misgender them(which will happen if the belief is propaganda-ised) will cause significant emotional harm, risk mental health, cause problems in fulfilling job etc.. I'm not sure about how true this would be, as I'm in the closet and I'm a bit indifferent about what other people think, but can imagine it being very difficult for others.

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

#412

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

kuschku wrote: post #297
lenkite wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless rules are made to enforce division based on sex and not gender, then it's just a matter of time until transgender athletes are the only winners in Women's events. Be prepared to see a lot of dropouts/boycotts by various nations in the Olympics. Eastern nations are not going to stand by silently. Some will shrug and directly enlist straight men in Women's events.

The olympic requirements are already having completely female hormone levels for 2 years. In fact, the limit for testosterone is significantly lower than for cis women, being a significant disadvantage for trans athletes, which is why in all the decades trans athletes have been allowed, you haven't seen any. Cis women with higher levels of testosterone, e.g. caster semenya, are already dominating the olympics, having…

Not sure where you’re getting your information.

The weightlifting rules allows trans athletes to have testosterone levels of 10nmol/L. Some sports are 5nmol/L.

Normal range for men is 9-31nmol/L

Women range from 0.9-2.5nmol/L

Even these guys (link below) who argue that the limits are arbitrary then go on to point to study in which 11 of 234 female athletes had T levels of 8nmol/L and 32 had 2.6nmol/L. 74 of 446 male athletes had 8.4nmol/L.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/mar/20/testosterone-l...

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

#413

Post by samatman »

hutzlibu wrote: post #353
Supermancho wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Grip strength is another easily-measured physical metric where there is practically no overlap between the bell curve for male and female humans.

The applicability of higher grip strength to success in climbing is obvious, I hope.

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

#414

Post by dncornholio »

jean_tta wrote: post #393
dncornholio wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If those testosterone's are not a banned substance, then sure. Why not?

Testosterone is a banned substance because it is a performance-enhancing drug.

Exactly my point. If substance the is banned, why even ask the question?

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

#415

Post by zaarn »

esja wrote: post #366
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…

Most people have no idea just how massive the biological advantage is. Movies and popular culture have conditioned people to think that females can hold their own against men. Individuals can, in some contexts, where the statistical distribution overlaps. For example a mediocre middle aged man can be beaten in strength or speed sports by an athletic 20-something woman. But at the tails of the distribution, where the…

What about intersex females or women with androgen sensitivity? They are XX but might still get "the advantage of growing up with testosterone". Or women who have testosterone insensitivity and an XY chromosome pair (ie, are in all factors but their sex chromosomes female)?

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

#416

Post by nandhinianand »

originalvichy wrote: post #275
junon wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I have clinical depression, saying "you're completely normal and do not have depression" doesn't make the depression go away or subside in any way. Gender dysphoria is oftentimes treated via transitioning in some fashion. Having groupthink on online spaces doesn't alleviate symptoms. I've never heard anyone except trans activists talking about the specifics of someone's trans-ness in an open setting. Certainly not…

>If I have clinical depression, saying "you're completely normal and do not have depression" doesn't make the depression go away or subside in any way. This is really not a good analogy. An identity-linked issue like this would be closer to someone not being included into a certain in-group. For example an African-American who grows up in a predominantly caucasian could be called "not black" or "not black enough" by…

Not sure why you're getting downvoted.. your analogy is a closer one than that of depression analogy

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

#417

Post by jean_tta »

dncornholio wrote: post #414
jean_tta wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Testosterone is a banned substance because it is a performance-enhancing drug.

Exactly my point. If substance the is banned, why even ask the question?

> It's simple: born as a man? Sport like a man. Born as a women? Sport like women.

Well, except for people born as women who take testosterone, then.

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

#418

Post by Someone »

uniqueid wrote: post #184
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…

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.

In many sports, there’s selection for the level one competes at. You won’t see Messi play in third division football, for example, or me being offered a job by a top team. Top athletes want the challenge/fame/money of competing with better players.

In other sports, there’s a rating system that effectively places people with competitors at their level (ELO in chess, tennis rankings)

Either would work in any sport, except for the fact that huge classes of people wouldn’t ever be represented at top level. Prime examples are women and people with disabilities.

In para-athletics, they try to solve that with an elaborate classification system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Para-athletics_classification)

Problem is that training can sometimes move you between categories. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T42_(classification) has “impaired muscle power or impaired range of movement” as criteria. Those can get better with training.

For women, it seems easier, but even ignoring transgenders, there’s various genetic rarities such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/46,XX/46,XY that can put women at an advantage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foekje_Dillema) that we may or may not choose to call unfair (we don’t think it’s unfair for men over six feet to compete in basketball, though, even though that’s largely genetic)

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

#419

Post by JohnWhigham »

slg wrote: post #120
throw0101a wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At its very core, the exclusion is seen as a form of "well you're not really a woman". For the supporters of trans-women being women, is there a canonical / generally accepted list of criteria which would classify people "objectively" as a woman? If there is such a thing as a group of people that can be called "women", how would membership in that group be established? I.e., what really is a woman?

If someone considers themselves a woman, they are a woman. It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that for 99% of life. I can understand some objections in a very limited number of contexts and sports is one of those contexts, but otherwise just allow people to choose where they fall on the gender spectrum.

If anyone can be a woman, then no one is a woman.

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

#420

Post by Y_Y »

secondcoming wrote: post #257
vore wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cate…

This is a really interesting philosophical problem, about qualia generally, but specifically "what it's like to be a something". See the classic essay by Nagel[0].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%...

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