I always thought this category of problem would become acute when people with a disability became sufficiently augmented (with an advanced prosthesis for example) that they could compete with and eventually beat non-disabled athletes. At that juncture it would be necessary to create a new kind of Olympics for augmented people, because nobody wants to box with someone who has a terminator arm.
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
#152What if women compete with/against men based on weight, or perhaps muscle mass class or something like that, could a gender-neutral competition be possible?
for the same weight, males will have more upper body strength due to basic physiology. idk what muscle mass class is.
i feel like it strongly depends on the competition in question. i doubt it with weightlifting.
but women clearly have an advantage in gymnastics
Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
> However, it presents a huge problem for women's athletics, Trans women have been able to compete for years in Olympic level sport, and they haven't wiped the floor with cis women. I fail to see evidence of the problem - I see a lot more evidence of it being a culture war and TERF talking point. It also doesn't really line up with the fact that we fawn over genetic quirks that let Michael Phelps dominate his sport.…
It’s not a quirk that makes it unfair for them to compete in women’s sports, it’s the fact that they’re not women. If I’m a 240lb judoka, it would be unfair for me to compete in the 160lb weight class just because I feel thin on the inside.
First of all, I suggest you refrain from calling trans women "not women" – this is, whether you intend it to be or not, quite disrespectful. You can talk about the biological implications of being transgender without erasing their identities like that.
Second of all, there are physical changes from hormone replacement therapy. associated with transitioning. This is absolutely not "240lb judoka feeling thin on the inside" and not absurdly cut and dry like you suggest.
Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place
#154One 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 young age, and these measurements, along with characteristics like weight and height, could serve as inputs to the handicap model. The handicap model would be updated each year; potentially the model used in a given Olympic event for a given year could even be updated based on the results recorded in that same year.
Of course there are a lot of practical issues, and even if they were overcome, it is unclear that the results would be satisfying.
Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place
#155Yup - finally this has reached the point where gender politics crashes into reality. I’m not against any gender doing what they wish. But really, the point is when you (by nature) have testosterone coursing through your bloodstream… even if you transitioned, by the very nature of things you have an advantage of strength, agility, speed and desire over your female peers. As much as we would love to believe it, men are…
This graph made the rounds on Reddit: https://i.redd.it/vv4ws1848t671.jpg One has to completely ignore reality to try to pretend that is a fair competition. One other thing to note from that graph is the worst performance from a man was significantly better than the best performance from cis-woman. Testosterone makes you stronger, who knew?
There's no way to look at that graph and not conclude that all of the arguments about how estrogen makes the transgender body equivalent. A mediocre man stays a mediocre man. I would really like to know the source posting.
Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place
#156If this is an issue for all MTF weightlifters, would it be reasonable to disqualify someone only if they had previously competed at the same level as a male?
pretty sure if you take any random 250lb male that plays football or something they could be the number one female lifter in the world if they identify as a female for an hour. so not sure if that disqualification would matter
Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place
#157This is a very controversial topic. Many have spoken about it at length. I personally believe it's not fair for women in athletics. There are several excellent suggestions/solutions discussed on this thread. I feel like there needs to be another category which would include people who're naturally male/female/others and/or identify as something/someone else. And keep the existing male and female categories as they ar…
It doesn't go without saying. Which is why you said it. The pro-trans movement starts from the assumption that any disagreement with their ideology is "harm". They've bullied everyone into accepting what is transparently a ridiculous situation; often by alleging bad faith. I'm very happy to see someone from professional women's weightlifting refer to this as a "bad joke".
"Ideology"? Is it unfathomable to you that people would reasonably be able to feel that they have a different biological gender to how they feel in their mind? And that people cavalierly dismissing their acceptance in society is somehow not harmful?
If you want to talk respectfully about the implications of transgender athletes in sport, that's one thing. But what you are doing is not that. You're trying to dismiss the plight of trans people at large.
Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place
#158if sex is a social construct and men and women are exactly the same then let’s just get rid of distinction between male and female sports and combine them.
women will never come in the top 100 again for the vast majority of sports, but it’ll force people to reconcile the contradictions they claim. or maybe they’ll just say sports are sexist
Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place
#159One 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…
This is actually a good idea in some scenarios
For example, several sports have weight classes which are of course "abused" (as in, the athlete will do as much effort to fit onto a lower class - going through severe diets and dehydration)
Now if instead of weight you would measure "fat free mass" and maybe height, this would leave much less margin for maneuvers.
(Or, ok, you could re-weight the athlete just before the competition and disqualify them if there's a bigger difference from the weighting date - that would work as well)
Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place
#160I 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…
basically what happens in online spaces is that regional separate evolution of trans terms clash
for example, in American English, the trans community has centered on a separation between sex and gender
In commonwealth English, that specific separation in the lexicon hasn't reached consensus even within the trans community, let alone in a broader colloquialism from people wanting to understand and people actively resisting any form of trans acceptance
so its actually really impossible to determine if there is an educational moment possible if someone is coming across as trans exclusionary when using sex/gender interchangeably or if they are irreconcilable, especially as people pile on to being mad at that person (see for example JK Rowling’s tweets. nobody assumed it was an educational moment while its not even clear that the UK has sex/gender separation concept)
So far it doesn't seem people even notice this is going on, that the inclusive communities are evolving terminology slightly differently! Lets check back in 5 years!