Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place • Hacker News Board

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

#541

Post by textgel » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 5:28 PM UTC

kristopolous wrote: post #468

textgel wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have the right not to be offended. No matter how many times you ask.

Huh? So say, sexually fetishizing children in front of their parents is a freedom? That's actually a crime, you know that, right, it's not freedom of speech. Using racial slurs is a crime in most environments as well. There is no right to say arbitrary things in front of arbitrary people. That's actually not a thing. It's not "your freedom" that's being violated, there never was one there to begin with here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech > Freedom of speech[2] is a fundamental human right that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction.

The list of things at the forefront of you mind would fall under the above. You might get your teeth kicked in but by the actual freedom of speech definition rather than your own truths interpretation there would be no legal response.

It's true however that we don't actually subscribe to that definition any more, so you never know. Maybe you'll have your wish.

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

#542

Post by maybeOneDay » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 5:44 PM UTC

atq2119 wrote: post #510

maybeOneDay wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

If by "shouldn't matter" you mean something like "it's ridiculous to define what a woman is as having a capability that literally all women lose around middle age" then I'd have to count myself amongst those people. Your argument is an extremely weak one for defining what it means to be a woman.

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

#543

Post by strange_loops » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

blindmute wrote: post #473

ryanobjc wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But, I still don't think it's fair for women that an individual who lived the prime of their life as a man, benefitting from all the testosterone and muscle mass Are you.... sure about this? Like how sure are you? What do you think you know? The human body changes surprisingly fast. Astronauts that stay in outer space for too long can't even walk when they return to earth. That "too long" is like... a year basicall…

You don't know what you're talking about. Male hormones in the womb and in puberty confer permanent, drastic changes to muscular power. After training, testosterone levels have very minor effects. An average high school boy athlete could take estrogen for 20 years and still be vastly stronger after that than most female athletes.

> Male hormones in the womb

Can you expand on this? I've not heard of fetuses being affected by androgens before.

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

#544

Post by strange_loops » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 5:55 PM UTC

blindmute wrote: post #477

vore wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I apologize for misunderstanding your initial point: couching the pro-trans movement as an "ideology" had read to me as a dismissal of the pro-trans movement at large and if that is not your intent then I retract my initial comment. That said, I don't really agree with this clarification either: no trans woman is setting out to have gender reassignment to bully their way into competing against women who were lifting…

The trans person's intent doesn't matter. What matters is that they are inserting themselves into female competition at an immense advantage. The fact of the matter is that if you allow biological men into female competition, females will never win anything. That is literally why there are sex separated sports. Females cannot compete with males at the highest level of sport, this is just a fact. I don't think we shou…

In how many areas of life do we "just exclude them" when speaking of minorities to create an ideal ecosystem? This is a slippery slope.

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

#545

Post by kyleee » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

eulenteufel wrote: post #535

mssundaram wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been curious if anyone has studied why there are more and more transgender people lately. I don't believe it is only due to awareness and perception - it seems to be occuring more and more frequently. Do other animals with similar levels of consciousness experience gender dysmorphia?

This is just a personal anecdote: In my puberty I had a strong feeling of rather being a girl and this caused significant mental anguish and some self harm. If had known as much about transgender people back then as I do know I would have likely transitioned then. Today I'm pretty okay with being a man. I still sometimes have problems with it but not in the same order of magnitude. From these personal experiences I t…

Though it may be an unanswerable question (and maybe too personal, please don't feel obligated to share), do you think you would have been better off transitioning?

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

#546

Post by IgorPartola » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

slipframe wrote: post #496

IgorPartola wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thing nobody does that, isn’t it?

I have been on the receiving end of it.

I suppose I made a big generalization there. Yes, people do sometimes use the threat of suicide to gain social leverage. That in no way is equivalent to saying that people who suffer from chronic pain, chronic depression, who are gay, trans, or work in high stress jobs have much higher than average suicide rates. If you hear statistics around suicide broken down by those demographics and see yourself as a victim of terrorism then that says more about you as a person than about anyone else. If someone directly tells you that what you are doing to them makes them feel suicidal then call 911 and walk away from that person. Beyond that, it's not your responsibility. If you keep feeling terrorized by a situation like that, I suggest talking to your mental health professional who can help you develop better coping skills.

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

#547

Post by strange_loops » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

There is a great deal of panic in recent years about transwomen competing alongside ciswomen in athletic events, but how much data do we actually have on this? Are these instances of success just outliers and transwomen not even placing, ignored?

How many areas of life and society are we willing to exclude a minority from before we are satisfied that the playing field is leveled? How many minorities are we willing to target?

This is a complicated, messy issue and society at large isn't going to be perfect at it in these early days. Knee-jerk reactions, like those we're seeing from conservative politicians, are hurting people who don't have the power to fight back.

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

#548

Post by IgorPartola » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 6:02 PM UTC

Given that this discussion has more than 500 comments at this point it's probably a little too late for this, but I suggest that as the HN community we check ourselves before we wreck ourselves. We are by and large a collection of cisgendered privileged white nerds who for the most part don't go to the gym, let alone compete in sports at the elite level. Talking about how women (cis or trans) feel about this issue is probably not our forte and given the clear transphobic undertones of about half the comments here, I think we are definitely not the domain experts here. Perhaps this is an instance where it would be wiser for this community to do more listening than talking.

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

#549

Post by jjk166 » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 6:04 PM UTC

zaarn wrote: post #491

alisonkisk wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there are no such rules. It's a competition. Only a few people can win, and any rules are biased. If you rolled back the clock and tried again, Michael Phelps would never be a champion weightlifter, and the best weightlifter would never be a champion swimmer.

There are in fact rules. Currently for olympic distance running at 400 meters or further, a female must present with a certain maximum level of testosterone. This rule was specifically made to exclude an intersex female-presenting runner who excelled. Due to medical complications, she cannot take medication to surpress her testosterone levels on a long term basis. So yes, such rules exist.

And a boxer who for medical reasons can not reduce their weight to a lower weight category just competes in the higher weight category. It shouldn't matter why you exceed a certain threshold, so long as the thresholds are consistent and relevant you should compete in your category.

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

#550

Post by ajuc » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC

void_mint wrote: post #539

ajuc wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that height clearly matters more. It doesn't mean that skill doesn't matter at all.

> My point is that height clearly matters more. Sorry, in what way is that clear? The best players aren't the tallest, so isn't it clear that your statement is false? The attribute that defines success is skill, not height, which is evidenced by a look at the most successful NBA players. You're saying "Because NBA players are taller than average, tall = success", which is just not really true.

This is a very simplistic understanding of statistics. Basketball success doesn't need to be correlated linearly with height for it to be the single most important factor.

In fact it's pretty obvious there would be a tipping point because extreme height is inversely correlated with health and mobility.

In similar fashion weight matters more than skill in boxing that's why we have weight categories. 120 kg boxer will win over 80 kg boxer 90% of the time or more assuming basic competency. But it doesn't mean that the most obese person in the world would be the best boxer.

And the correlation is even more obvious with basketball than with boxing which you can see comparing the height distribution in basketball with height distribution in adult male population [1]. Average for basketball is higher than 97th percentile for general population. That's not an accident :)

If skill is more important than height where are the 160 cm basketball players? None of them got enough skill?

In soccer 2 players widely recognized as the best in last decade are 170 and 187 cm. Different sides of the general height average.

In basketball this histogram for ALL professional players STARTS at the general average (5'9).

[1] https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2010/compendia/...