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

261–270 of 643 posts

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

#261

Post by herodoturtle »

kristopolous wrote: post #250

This has become the perennial "test case" to use in order to frame generalized trans discrimination. It's an outlier that's being pushed in as a substitute to set the framing for the entire discussion as if broad policy should be generalized from an extreme outlier. This is the same tactic that was used to argue against gay marriage, finding some unusual extreme event and then trying to substitute it as commonplace.…

From the article:

> Of course, this debate is taking place in a broader context of discrimination against transgender people, and that is why the question is never free of ideology. However, the extreme nature of this particular situation really demonstrates the need to set up a stricter legal framework for transgender inclusion in sports, and especially elite sports.

You say:

> It's an outlier that's being pushed in as a substitute to set the framing for the entire discussion as if broad policy should be generalized from an extreme outlier.

That's not at all what the article is saying. The article is specifically talking about this particular situation.

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

#262

Post by cudgy »

jeremybms wrote: post #154

One 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…

Interesting idea, but I doubt it would solve the issue at hand. The sport must still determine how to factor in variables like sex and prior advantages of testosterone. You can bet that these determinations would be heatedly argued and pressure from all sides (including corporate sponsors and activists) would most likely pollute the sport.

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

#263

Post by anoncake »

seunosewa wrote: post #246
woodruffw wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also doesn't really line up with the fact that we fawn over genetic quirks that let Michael Phelps dominate his sport. If we think that certain sorts of genetic quirks are unfair in women's sport, why do we allow them in men's? I appreciate that you’ve said this so concisely and clearly. The Olympics are, overwhelmingly, a show of extraordinary human abilities. Singling out transwomen for scrutiny and prejudice…

Cis women are 50% of the population while transgender women are less than 1% of the population. Excluding 50% of the population from sports is obviously more problematic than excluding less than 1%, even if both are not ideal.

More than 99.9% are excluded from Olympic-level sports anyway.

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

#264

Post by dncornholio »

This problem is made artificial difficult. It's simple: born as a man? Sport like a man. Born as a women? Sport like women.

Gender in sport is not about identity, it's about biology.

Also it creates a huge backdoor to Olympic gold medals. There's nothing that stops turning the female category into all transgender..

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

#265

Post by xupybd »

uniqueid wrote: post #184
nimbleal wrote: post #126

I 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…

sports has everything to do with sex and nothing to do with gender Dividing by sex is a substitute for dividing by the things that really matter: height, weight, strength, bone density, etc. If sports grouped competitors by a combination of those attributes, it would solve a lot of issues, including debate over transgender athletes.

I think life time testosterone levels would help too. Hard to define and monitor but a huge performance impacted

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

#266

Post by buro9 »

nimbleal wrote: post #126

I 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…

Sex is not binary either.

Intersex athletes exist too and are not as rare as you may imagine.

Here's a more notable recent example of the controversy of delineating by sex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caster_Semenya

Likely there were always intersex athletes who had advantages, but only the relatively recent anti doping and medical examinations would reveal them.

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

#267

Post by kristopolous »

herodoturtle wrote: post #261
kristopolous wrote: post #250

This has become the perennial "test case" to use in order to frame generalized trans discrimination. It's an outlier that's being pushed in as a substitute to set the framing for the entire discussion as if broad policy should be generalized from an extreme outlier. This is the same tactic that was used to argue against gay marriage, finding some unusual extreme event and then trying to substitute it as commonplace.…

From the article: > Of course, this debate is taking place in a broader context of discrimination against transgender people, and that is why the question is never free of ideology. However, the extreme nature of this particular situation really demonstrates the need to set up a stricter legal framework for transgender inclusion in sports, and especially elite sports. You say: > It's an outlier that's being pushed in…

It's a political football. An internal technicality of an institutions rules committee being presented as an international debate is the politicizing thing here.

This inflation is done all the time to push a political agenda. The "welfare queen" to ban humanitarianism, Willie Horton to create the modern carceral state. This is super common.

Most of the time it fails, like with Garcia Zarate or Juan Leonardo Quintero to try to demonize all Hispanic immigrants.

The first to cover this was far right rags like dailywire and newspunch in 2017 or so.

Is this new to you?

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

#268

Post by pja »

Erwin wrote: post #179
vmception wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 res…

Current UK situation seems to be that being "Gender Critical" is a protected belief, based on the ruling case of a case where a tax expert lost her job for tweeting about how men cannot just change into women: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Forstater_v_Centre_for_Gl...

Note that the court held two things: 1) Strongly held philosphical beliefs have much the same protection as religious beliefs in law and 2) That doesn’t mean you get to express those beliefs to other people in workplace.

In other words, anti-trans (or GC) beliefs occupy much the same position in law as anti-gay Christian beliefs. You can /believe/ them all you like & can’t be sacked for that belief, but if you express those beliefs in the workplace you’ve just created a hostile environment for other employees & your employer can simply fire you (after going through the appropriate disciplinary procedures where required by law) due to your breach of the Equality Act, under which being trans (specifically in law: gender reassignment) carries protected status in the same way that being a different skin colour or sexuality does.

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

#269

Post by jean_tta »

dncornholio wrote: post #264

This problem is made artificial difficult. It's simple: born as a man? Sport like a man. Born as a women? Sport like women. Gender in sport is not about identity, it's about biology. Also it creates a huge backdoor to Olympic gold medals. There's nothing that stops turning the female category into all transgender..

Should FtM people, taking testosterone, compete with cis-women?

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

#270

Post by 74d-fe6-2c6 »

In my opinion there should no longer be any restrictions based on gender at all. Statistics will show that people with male primary genitalia will do better in some sports while in others those with mostly female primary genitalia will be advantaged. I don't see the problem and I think this differentiation is antiquated.

In short: stop differntiating between men, women, transgender, transsexual, men identifying as women, women identifying as men - just bunch them up together and call it a day.

Post reply on HN