Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place

insidethegames.biz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 643 posts

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

#501

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

IgorPartola wrote: post #498
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think using instantaneous testosterone is probably not the right call. Probably a metric like aggregate exposure to testosterone/other androgens over the course of one's life. It would need to be one signal among many -- for example, cis-men should not compete in women's sport regardless of whether they have very low testosterone. But it seems like a signal like this may be needed at some point. Of course it is pos…

So as an average (non-athletic) male, my testosterone is likely lower than that of Phelps. If we were the same height and weight, would my entry into the competition disqualify him for having too much testosterone?

No, because there would be only two categories of competition: female+low-lifetime-androgen-exposure, and everyone else.

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

#502

Post by throw0101a »

makeworld wrote: post #444
zthrowaway wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty easy to answer. A women is someone who can naturally create a child inside of them, or naturally possesses the organs to do so. It’s amazing our collective intelligence has dropped this far. We solved this problem quite a long time ago…

Are people with Müllerian agenesis not women then? Your definition doesn't seem to match up with colloquial usage, even ignoring trans women. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCllerian_agenesis

Contra:

> The first, preferred by Fowler, is that the presence of an exception applying to a specific case establishes ("proves") that a general rule exists. A more explicit phrasing might be "the exception that proves the existence of the rule".[1]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_rule

Or perhaps:

> The phrase means that an extreme case is a poor basis for a general law that would cover a wider range of less extreme cases. In other words, a general law is better drafted for the average circumstance as this will be more common.[1]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_cases_make_bad_law

Further it can be argued that the fact that a defect is present in the biological system does not invalidate the presence of said system generally. The complete lack of a system could be the determining factor.

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

#503

Post by nasmorn »

prox wrote: post #273
CodeGlitch wrote: post #195

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.

Also Hubbard is old and probably not the best make weightlifter previously. So the best woman in the world will likely be beaten by someone who would under different circumstances have already retired and was never that great in the first place.

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

#504

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

onion2k wrote: post #289
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #16

I feel like with this issue at some point we are bound to reach a breaking point. It's just a question of how far along things will go before we get there. People are more and more open about being transgender and there is more and more support for transgender individuals having the chance to live life as their correct gender. This is a great thing! However, it presents a huge problem for women's athletics, particula…

we are going to continue to see huge increases in openly transgender people competing in sport We're discussing literally the first trans woman to compete at the Olympics. Obviously going from 0 to 1 is a huge increase in percentage terms, but there's no evidence that it's going to continue to the point where women's sports are 'destabilised'.

First trans woman in the Olympics and she is essentially guaranteed to win the gold based on the numbers she put up during qualification. We are seeing high school and college athletics grappling with this issue. While it's early days, it's hard to picture a scenario where the Olympics can avoid making a decision on this over the long run.

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

#505

Post by ivanbakel »

t_sawyer wrote: post #398
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…

Except... gymnastics won't end up being dominated by a bunch of people like Simone Biles. Female sports will continue to be dominated by biological males if we continue to let this happen.

So? What would be the downside of trans women dominating womens' sports, if that were even the eventuality?

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

#506

Post by bagacrap »

vore wrote: post #149
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is common to hear a transwoman claim (indeed, even occasionally here on HN) that anything other than recognizing them as equal to ciswomen is an act of violence and prejudice against them, and at worst, they utter some invective about “TERFs”. So, suggesting the recognition of a new gender is unlikely to satisfy at least those strident individuals.

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.

Olympic medals are not and should not be awarded on the basis of minimizing participant angst.

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

#507

Post by ajuc »

bagacrap wrote: post #499
alisonkisk wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should women's championships even exist? Isn't that just a pity prize? Either design a game where women tend to perform better (like certain forms of gymnastics) or where they tend to be more interested due to the cultural aspects (like cheer/dance), or let women compete in other areas of endeavor. Why have leagues for women in basketball but not "men under 6ft tall"? Is it to encourage girls and women to be phys…

This post is generally ridiculous, but I will point out that we do have weight categories for boxing. I suppose we don't have height categories for basketball because no one wants to watch that.

> I suppose we don't have height categories for basketball because no one wants to watch that.

I would. Then it would be more about skill than strength and height, like football.

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

#508

Post by ivanbakel »

buran77 wrote: post #495
dagw wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The evidence is in the performance which falls squarely in line with male performance The article seems to make clear that while she is in the top 10, she's not in the top 3 and is in no way a favorite to win. So I'm not sure what that graph is supposed to be showing. Two women in this weight class have scored a 300+ in competition while Hubbard's best is a 285 from 2019.

It's supposed to say that she's exhibiting typical male level performance, which happens to be substantially above typical female performance at that level. This means she's taking full advantage of a body which developed and trained as male for 35 years to get ahead of women who have to rely "only" on training. You wouldn't let an adult compete in a junior competition because they feel young at heart. You wouldn't l…

Equally, you wouldn't ban a child from a junior competition just because they were able to achieve an adult's performance out of "fairness" to the other children. Hubbard may have a physical advantage over cis women - but lots of athletes have physical advantages over each other. What is different about the kind of advantage you might obtain by being trans?

Also, comparing a trans woman to someone who "feels young at heart" is a false equivalence, and an offensive one. One is an identity, the other is not.

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

#509

Post by nasmorn »

Y_Y wrote: post #432
acituan wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 r…

I tried finding examples of other sports where women are roughly competitive with men at the top level: archery, shooting, curling, ultra-marathon, gymnastics, climbing.

In Ultra Marathon women win races that are not super competitive. Women hold basically zero course records for important races. The difference is smaller though with longer distances. But not even Courtney Dewaulter wins the UTMB outright.

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

#510

Post by atq2119 »

maybeOneDay wrote: post #319
fxtentacle wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your argument is somewhat tangential - are you arguing women are defined by their ability to give birth? Seems fairly obvious that doesn't hold up even when we aren't talking about trans people

There is a bimodal distribution of biological traits related to reproduction. Traditionally, women are defined as members of one of those clusters, the one whose members are generally able to give birth during some period of their lives. This doesn't mean that all members of the cluster can or have or will give birth, but nonetheless the clusters are fairly well-defined for nearly 100% of the population, with trans people being an exception.

Some of the more extreme trans activists seem to want to pretend that these clusters don't exist, which puts them at odds with reality.

Other seem to demand that the clusters shouldn't matter, which I find rather optimistic since they're relevant for reproduction.

Trans rights are a noble goal, but some of the statements made by trans activists are a bit out there.

Post reply on HN