71–80 of 231 posts
That is a high enough number that, were they to gather somewhere, you'd notice them, but a low enough number that trying to create laws to give them special treatment is political suicide.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The important thing to recognize is that fairness is a pretty fuzzy concept and a lot of the boundary between fair and unfair is defined by particular societal norms (socially constructed, if you will). All elite athletes have biological advantages not afforded to ordinary humans like us. People like Michael Phelps and Alex Honnold are specific examples of course, but even after years of training most people cannot p…
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Earlier quoted context omitted.
The important thing to recognize is that fairness is a pretty fuzzy concept and a lot of the boundary between fair and unfair is defined by particular societal norms (socially constructed, if you will). All elite athletes have biological advantages not afforded to ordinary humans like us. People like Michael Phelps and Alex Honnold are specific examples of course, but even after years of training most people cannot p…
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Does this actually happen? I remember seeing the first transgender woman competing in weightlifting, on the olympic stage. So like the most elite of the most elite competition, in a sport where you'd think muscle mass, skeletal size, and testosterone would matter the most. And she finished dead last. I'm not like a huge follower of sports or anything, I just follow the olympics sometimes. I never see transgender people dominating anything there and certainly not to the extent of Michael Phelps.
If we want to remove people due to lack of competitive fun we can remove Phelps, it was always really boring watching anything he competed in.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing in biology is really binary anyways. Male and female are just useful groupings because we’re a sexually dimorphic species, but as with anything in nature, that’s mostly a spectrum anyways, with strong representations at the anchoring ends.
I mean having an X or Y are pretty damn binary. DNA strand has binary pairs (A-T, C-G). The resulting codons have anitcodon pairs. Then within biological functions you have the parasympathetic system vs the parasympathetic system which do opposite things across the whole body, pro vs anti inflmmatory agents, activators vs inhibitors nearly on every level of biology. Its actually rather astounding how much binary pair…
To be more precise than the headline: People with disorders of sex development such as Morris or Swyer syndrome have XY chromosomes, but they have female external genitalia, because the sexual development that would normally be triggered by XY chromosomes is somehow suppressed.
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Does the condition disrupt normal physical operation of the body as it should normally operate based on the chromosomes present? Yes.
Very interesting. Relates to conversations I've had recently regarding trans people in sports. Turns out that conversation isn't simple, because gender is way more complex than the binary M/F options society has tried to act like it is. Between reasons like in this article, or being born intersex, etc, there are definitely people with female chromosomes who have competed in men's sports, or people with female sex org…
The important thing to recognize is that fairness is a pretty fuzzy concept and a lot of the boundary between fair and unfair is defined by particular societal norms (socially constructed, if you will). All elite athletes have biological advantages not afforded to ordinary humans like us. People like Michael Phelps and Alex Honnold are specific examples of course, but even after years of training most people cannot p…
Very interesting. Relates to conversations I've had recently regarding trans people in sports. Turns out that conversation isn't simple, because gender is way more complex than the binary M/F options society has tried to act like it is. Between reasons like in this article, or being born intersex, etc, there are definitely people with female chromosomes who have competed in men's sports, or people with female sex org…
Coming from a place of curiosity not knowledge with this. Is it not true that strength roughly matches testosterone levels and that is bimodal in the population? Could what we call women’s sports today not be defined on that axis instead?
Some sports actually do test for testosterone in order to determine eligibility (I believe volleyball?)
Also, interestingly enough, people that do estrogen injections end up with lower testosterone production. Estrogen also tends to (but not always!) block the effects of testosterone.
Hormones are weird and how individuals react to them is all over the board.
And example of that craziness is what the article refers to. People with Y chromosomes and uteruses. It's caused (AFAIK) because the fetus didn't respond to the hormones which cause the gonads to turn into male reproductive organs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The important thing to recognize is that fairness is a pretty fuzzy concept and a lot of the boundary between fair and unfair is defined by particular societal norms (socially constructed, if you will). All elite athletes have biological advantages not afforded to ordinary humans like us. People like Michael Phelps and Alex Honnold are specific examples of course, but even after years of training most people cannot p…
>Now, which biological advantages are fair and which are not is determined by society. We have somehow decided that chromosomal advantages are unfair, even though people have exactly as much control over them as they do over the amount of lactic acid they produce or how their amygdala behaves. What's the implication here, that because the distinction is totally arbitrary, that we should do away with it? What does tha…
I don't know, I'm not an athlete, coach, tournament organizer, part of a rule-making body, or one of a number of other roles that would give me insight or authority to be involved in that decision. Why does everyone feel comfortable stepping into this conversation with authority?