581–590 of 960 posts
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Considering I was asking whether there was evidence on trans-performance, sure it matters a little. That's fine if they don't want to compete with men, but the statements were because "it's unfair". I was curious if there had been any studies on this.
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It is entirely clear that it can be the case, as proven by the existence of people "detransitioning". It is also entirely clear that there have been parents (usually mothers) who wanted to have a trans child because it was cool.
There is a logical flaw in suggesting that something that occurs with a small percentage of a population such as “detransitioning” implies anything about every member of a population. Child abuse exists, but doesn’t imply anything about every parent.
> Child abuse exists, but doesn’t imply anything about every parent.
This is funny because that's the exact argument that transphobic opponents say about trans people themselves and the argument as to why gender fluidity or gender outside of sex doesn't exist. "Just because an extremely small number of people believe they are a different gender than their biological sex doesn't mean that gender is different from biological sex" is almost exactly the argument that transphobes use.
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The thing is, we're already using a scissor for ability, just a poor one with the exact problem you describe - it renders trans women unable to make a living playing professional sports. Throwing one group under the bus for another cannot be avoided so long as sex or gender are part of sports divisions. Please let go of the need for this.
You are clearly out of your depth. Have you ever competed in high level sports? Please don't speak on things you know nothing about. It takes a lot of gall to tell someone 'please let go of the need for this' when they are pointing this out. I will do no such thing, but I likely will give up trying to educate you. I won't respond further unless you pick an example sport, and propose how your "scissor for ability" wou…
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Why not Human Olympics?
Why not ignore gender labels and go by chromosomal configuration? There could be XY and XX [1] olympics. And then there should be X, XYY, XXX, XXXY, XXYY, and all the other possibilities [2]. There is more complexity than the binary in the expression of sex in humans. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_differentiation_in_huma... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
Trans women have competed as women in the Olympics once ever and have 0 medals. By the numbers it's a non issue under previous rules (despite the incredible amount of ink spilled over it). People are talking about trans women here but the vast majority of people affected by this change are women who are not trans who have a "disorder of sexual development".
The IOC policy is specifically that athletes need to test negative for the SRY gene to be eligible to compete in the female category. Imane Khelif won gold in the 2024 Summer Olympics women's boxing event, and has since admitted to having the SRY gene. So it isn't a non-issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imane_Khelif#2026
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Not sure how this helps. Olympic events already have relative rating systems that ranks all the participant: pretty complicated and sport dependent systems that determine qualification for the games and competition amongst all the competitors at the games. The problem how to have separate competitions for different groups of participants when there isn't a universally shared agreement on who should be in which group.
If you have a relative skill rating system, then there's no need to split competitors into groups. But if you insist, then you can split them based on skill ratings (define a rating range for beginner, intermediate, advanced, etc). And for games with one-on-one matchups, sampling from a gaussian centered on each player's skill rating is good enough.
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You are clearly out of your depth. Have you ever competed in high level sports? Please don't speak on things you know nothing about. It takes a lot of gall to tell someone 'please let go of the need for this' when they are pointing this out. I will do no such thing, but I likely will give up trying to educate you. I won't respond further unless you pick an example sport, and propose how your "scissor for ability" wou…
I have competed in reasonably high level sports, and my wife was US Masters duathlete of the year a few years ago (with me as her coach). I think you're wrong, though it's easy to see why. Currently, with sex-based categories, a woman can be declared "the best in the world" and most people won't waste much time on the question "yeah, but could she beat the best men?" (granted, some will). They will accept that, e.g.…
In elite sports, no one wants to see "best in division X". They want to see the best hockey players, the best golfer, the best skier, etc. The money incentives are considerable.
This would destroy women's professional sports.
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> There's also cis-male people who will "pass" that SRY test if they take it for some reason... This is news to me - which males are you talking about here? > This is a dumb ass way to try and define the woman's category... It's really not, though. They found a marker they can test for, and have clearly defined exceptions.
> This is news to me - which males are you talking about here? This poor bloke who found out he was infertile during a premarital medical exam, for instance: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7760426/ > It's really not, though. They found a marker they can test for, and have clearly defined exceptions. Have you heard of the politician's fallacy, "something needs to be done, this is something, so this needs to…
Interesting. Perhaps a better test is needed.
> You're also assuming that we even need a test... evidence (no transfemale olympians ever coming not dead last) suggests we don't.
This isn't just about trans women, but also about DSD cases like Imane Khelif and Caster Semenya.
My two cents as a transfem athlete: The attention this topic receives is disproportionate considering how rare we are, especially close to the Olympics level. Most of us do sports for fun/friends and don’t care how they rank us, but would be sad to be banned. There might be more “biological advantage” nuance with people just starting their transition, but by this many years in it feels silly. I registered as a man fo…
Competitive sport is unusual in that the whole thing is, in a sense, a search for outliers. Finding very rightmost person on the histogram of running speed or swimming ability or weightlifting strength. The very, very rare. The 7ft 6in guys. Then we put them on a podium, hand them a medal, and wrap them in a flag. In most other fields, outliers average out. The new subdivision of houses gets framed at the speed of th…
Like you say, we are searching for outliers. We don't cut women that are too strong or too tall. We shouldn't cut out women that happen to be trans. If all the top levels of women's sport end up dominated by trans athletes (something I don't see occurring, and that isn't supported by the data), then good, outliers found. We love to see women succeed.
(To avoid perverse incentives, though, the HRT requirement is critical. Otherwise you have trans women having to choose between being more competitive and receiving necessary medical care.)
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Adding to this: If you do not want to reference the current gender, you can also use "Assigned Female at Birth" (AFAB), or "Assigned Male at Birth" (AMAB). This is useful when clarifying terms, when you do not know the persons identity, or when discussing groups based on the factory default settings.
A female or male is not 'assigned' anything. Just because you are confused about biological reality doesn't mean it doesn't exist.