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More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

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Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#161

Post by gruez »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #144
gruez wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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? Would you be equally deferential to the organizer/rule-making body if it was some other controversial issue, like whether women could comp…

I don't see the need to create and articulate a universalizeable moral framework to decide how I should react to a specific case in front of me. I listed rulemakers and organizers but also athletes themselves. I don't know much about the history of the olympics but I would guess the desires and probably activism of women athletes played a role.

>I don't see the need to create and articulate a universalizeable moral framework to decide how I should react to a specific case in front of me.

You kinda do, otherwise your position just sounds like "why are you talking about trans athletes? You should just Trust the Experts, except when I disagree with them, then it's an Important Moral Issue that the public needs to weigh in on".

>I listed rulemakers and organizers but also athletes themselves. I don't know much about the history of the olympics but I would guess the desires and probably activism of women athletes played a role.

This is a very perilous position to hold, because it basically means if there's enough TERF athletes to outnumber trans women athletes (which doesn't seem too implausible, based on purely demographic factors) then it's okay to exclude them.

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#162

Post by EnergyAmy »

lukev wrote: post #156
EnergyAmy wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is simple. Organisms that produce the larger of two gamete sizes are female, and organisms that produce the smaller of two gamete sizes are male. "Intersex" is a misleading term that's been phased out in favor of DSD ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disorders_of_sex_development ). Every person is still male or female. Women have a right to sex-specific sports, and anyone that doesn't qualify is free to compete in t…

Should produce... given what definition? I thought gamete size was definitive? Look, I get what you're saying. Such cases aren't "normal". The claim that "humans have two biological sexes" is true in same way as the claim "humans have five fingers." And yet, people with six fingers exist, as do uncommon sex variations. It's fine. It happens. The only reason to insist so stridently that there's an absolute and inevita…

"Should" meaning "would if it were mature and healthy"

> "humans have two biological sexes" is true in same way as the claim "humans have five fingers."

No. There are no intermediates. Nobody produces "spergs" or "speggs". Someone may produce no gametes because they're not yet mature or because of a developmental disorder, but that just means that they will later on in life, or won't produce the gametes their body is set up to produce.

> The only reason

Bullshit. I bring this up because it's a fundamental fact of biology and HN should know better than to push pseudoscience. Sex in humans is binary and immutable, but that doesn't mean boys can't play with dolls and girls can't like trucks or whatever dumb culture war stuff is raging.

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#163

Post by EnergyAmy »

gruez wrote: post #161
giraffe_lady wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the need to create and articulate a universalizeable moral framework to decide how I should react to a specific case in front of me. I listed rulemakers and organizers but also athletes themselves. I don't know much about the history of the olympics but I would guess the desires and probably activism of women athletes played a role.

>I don't see the need to create and articulate a universalizeable moral framework to decide how I should react to a specific case in front of me. You kinda do, otherwise your position just sounds like "why are you talking about trans athletes? You should just Trust the Experts, except when I disagree with them, then it's an Important Moral Issue that the public needs to weigh in on". >I listed rulemakers and organize…

To your last point, most women don't want men in their sports, but have been pressured to go along with it.

It is okay to exclude men from women's sports because women have the right to sex-specific spaces.

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#164

Post by jenadine »

kulahan wrote: post #8
etchalon wrote: post #5

I'm shocked to find out that sex is more complicated than gender identity, and that there might be a bimodal distribution at play. I have been lied to.

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.

In some species, sex is even quaternary: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25223127 (or is it?)

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#165

Post by BobaFloutist »

aaaja wrote: post #145
sunshowers wrote: post #40

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…

You can compare the world records of female athletes and male athletes in almost every sport and see that really this is an empirical observation. To use one of your examples: Michael Phelps has at this point had his records beaten by a number of other male swimmers. But no female swimmer has come close. Not even Katie Ledecky.

Sure, but how big is the total pool of female swimmers? If we assume that ability to swim (within a sex, for the sake of argument) follows a normal distribution, the denominator of "people that gave swimming a real try" is going to have a direct relationship with the capabilities of the best ever to try. This is completely ignoring funding, encouragement, and access, and strictly discussing the sheer number of women that have literally tried swimming at a young enough age to discover their talent and have the opportunity to become the best swimmer they possibly could if they have it.

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#166

Post by giraffe_lady »

gruez wrote: post #161
giraffe_lady wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the need to create and articulate a universalizeable moral framework to decide how I should react to a specific case in front of me. I listed rulemakers and organizers but also athletes themselves. I don't know much about the history of the olympics but I would guess the desires and probably activism of women athletes played a role.

>I don't see the need to create and articulate a universalizeable moral framework to decide how I should react to a specific case in front of me. You kinda do, otherwise your position just sounds like "why are you talking about trans athletes? You should just Trust the Experts, except when I disagree with them, then it's an Important Moral Issue that the public needs to weigh in on". >I listed rulemakers and organize…

[flagged]

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#167

Post by lukev »

EnergyAmy wrote: post #162
lukev wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should produce... given what definition? I thought gamete size was definitive? Look, I get what you're saying. Such cases aren't "normal". The claim that "humans have two biological sexes" is true in same way as the claim "humans have five fingers." And yet, people with six fingers exist, as do uncommon sex variations. It's fine. It happens. The only reason to insist so stridently that there's an absolute and inevita…

"Should" meaning "would if it were mature and healthy" > "humans have two biological sexes" is true in same way as the claim "humans have five fingers." No. There are no intermediates. Nobody produces "spergs" or "speggs". Someone may produce no gametes because they're not yet mature or because of a developmental disorder, but that just means that they will later on in life, or won't produce the gametes their body is…

> healthy

You're just using more normative words, implying that you can tell what someone "really" is aside from literally any definition you can articulate, since we've established that gamete size does not apply in all cases.

> Sex in humans is binary and immutable, but that doesn't mean boys can't play with dolls and girls can't like trucks or whatever dumb culture war stuff is raging.

Unless you are a biologist who specializes in this, caring so much about this means you are actually very much invested in the culture war.

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#168

Post by autoexec »

sunshowers wrote: post #40
pseudosavant wrote: post #12

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…

> We have somehow decided that chromosomal advantages are unfair

That somehow was mostly because people with certain chromosomal characteristics were heavily disadvantaged in sports, but increasingly wanted participation in them. Because those people (who we called "women") would largely be unable to be competitive and/or would face considerable increased risk of physical harm if they played in/against the same teams as everyone else, people with those chromosomal characteristics splintered off to compete in/against teams of themselves.

This was extremely successful and many women have been happily participating in sports, enjoying the ability to win games by virtue of their training and the non-sex defining aspects of their genetic make up, all without having to unnecessarily accept outsized risks of bodily harm and injury.

It's also worth mentioning that there hasn't been much effort to keep women from competing outside of their own divisions if they're willing to accept the lower odds of success and higher risks of harm to themselves that'd come from that. For the most part, they have been deciding for themselves that it isn't worth it.

It's not even as if chromosomal advantages are the only place we've done this. We have weight classes in certain sports. We have teams that only accept people within certain age ranges. We have divisions based on demonstrated ability. We even have things like the special Olympics. These really aren't a problem or a bad thing to have.

People can't choose their biology, but they can choose to play sports in a way that's more fair and safe for themselves and the others they play with and that's a perfectly acceptable practice that we should encourage. This is true even when it means that some people are excluded from specific teams or events because of things they cannot change about themselves. There are still places for pretty much everyone who wants to play if they look hard enough, even if not everyone is able to be a part of any team or division that they'd like to.

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#169

Post by drdeca »

otterley wrote: post #150
drdeca wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I said race is "less real" not that it is "not real". Here are other things that are more real than "race": "blood type", "whether one has Down syndrome", "the number of limbs one has". These kinds of properties/classifications are, I claim, more "natural", as far as biology. These groupings into classes are more natural (based on biological properties) than groupings into "races".

Maybe choose a more precise and less judgmental adjective than "real." The opposite of "real" is "fake," not "difficult to substantiate."

But “difficult to substantiate” isn’t what I mean? I mean something more like whether something is there independent of what people think of it. (“Reality is that which, when one stops believing in it, doesn’t go away.”)

Distinctions between categories are often somewhat fuzzy, but in some cases there are processes independent of peoples’ opinions that behave largely like there are distinct buckets. Such as “has a left arm”.

With “race”, while there are certainly correlations between various genes and where one was born (and where one’s grandparents were born), and correlations between genes and other genes (which is partially explained by the correlations with location), any lines one may draw to split humanity into “races” will be fairly arbitrary, and at least substantially more arbitrary than splitting by whether someone is male or female (even though there are edge cases there as well; like I said, categories are often a little bit fuzzy).

Now, there may be other concepts that are even less real than race, but I don’t know if any of them are cared about enough to - oh, astrological signs! A person’s astrological signs are probably even less real than race, and people care enough about them to give them names.

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#170

Post by aaaja »

dissent wrote: post #136
sunshowers wrote: post #40

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…

[flagged]

At the 2016 Olympics in Rio, all three medalists in the women's 800m were male athletes with male physiological advantage. None of the three has, or had, a transgender identity.

Fundamentally, this issue isn't about trans. The problem is, competition organizers across many sports decided that including males in the female category is more important than fair competition for female athletes. That's the problem that needs to be addressed.

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