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Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

nytimes.com

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Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#691

Post by BonitaPersona »

fyredge wrote: post #669
michaelt wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Insightful indeed. It really frames the issue with trans athletes as a competition problem. We search for outliers yet arbitrarily limit the range of players available. Gender segregation, weight classes, these are antithetical to the underlying aim of competitive sports. Perhaps we should completely do away with them, everyone competes in the same sport, separated only by leagues to reduce one-sided competition.

Segregation by sex is not arbitrary, and segration by weight isn't either (even if the actual values of the implementation are).

But, anyhow, the thing you're looking for is the "open" format that already exists in other competitions like chess, where there's an open category and then any specific categories.

Ironically, in dance competitions (specially swing dancing at least), the open category is done the newbies, and higher levels have other more speciallized categories: advanced, invitational, ...

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#692

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

wstrange wrote: post #587
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

If we are talking about amateur sports where the stakes are low, the concept of slotting athletes into divisions makes sense. 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.

Implicit in what you're saying is that they want to see the best sex-identified athletes in a given sport. If that wasn't true, women's sports would have no audience and we know now (finally!) that this is not the case.

I personally think that we'd live in a much better world where you compete against others who broadly speaking are in the same performance category as you.

But I do appreciate that the transition to such a world would, indeed, destroy women's professional sports, and thus I do not attempt to really advocate for that transition. If it could happen overnight (it cannot), perhaps I would, but that's not where we live.

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#693

Post by appreciatorBus »

space_fountain wrote: post #681
remarkEon wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is. Note the parenthetical. >(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.) This is incoherent as an argument. It conditions the category on checking off boxes on a medical treatment list. I hope it's not necessary to explain why this is absurd.

I read the statement as follows: There is a category called woman, it’s defined by something that’s identify related. Sports should only be segregated by this category, except that to remove perverse incentives it’s reasonable to require hrt I’m unclear on what you find absurd about this?

> There is a category called woman, it’s defined by something that’s identify related.

But that’s not how it’s defined. People have been using that word in every language humans ever invented for thousands of years to mean biological female. If you want to argue that there is something else that isn’t biological sex and you want to invent a word for it, go nuts, but “woman” is already defined. Words can and do change definitions over time, of course. If it’s your contention that the definition by consensus has already changed, say so, but there are billions of people on this earth who haven’t got the message, which seems odd for something determined by consensus of the people who use language.

Putting that aside, since sports are about physicality and accomplishing things in the real world, it makes no sense to base them on “identity” - something that cannot be detected or defined by anyone but the self identifier - rather they should be based on physical aspects of reality.

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#694

Post by sojournerc »

hananova wrote: post #393
gorgoiler wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The basketball league for short people would probably ban people who tested over 5’5” even if they were 6’10” but identified as short .

Good thing that’s nothing like HRT then, is it? Height is (well, mostly) immutable. Sex is not, though many people will fight tooth and nail to pretend otherwise.

Can men get pregnant?

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#695

Post by appreciatorBus »

Ralfp wrote: post #678
appreciatorBus wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Genspect, which is also a biased source on the subject: Organization that supports position supports position . If Genspect can be discarded as being a biased source, then so can WPATH and every other org supporting gender ideology. Given the fraught nature of the debate, Wikipedia seems like a poor source for determining the bias of players in the debate - the most passionate debaters have plenty of time to just e…

Can you explain what „gender ideology” is supposed to mean? The primary issue with Genspect is poor scientific rigour applied to their publications, as I have shown above. Pretty much „if it fits our platform, we will spread it”.

WPATH : if it fits our platform, we will spread it.

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#696

Post by UncleMeat »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #578
callistocodes wrote: post #334

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…

No one cares at amateur levels but we are speaking of the Olympic. I'm all for transgender to do sport, have fun and even compete but Olympic games are about who is the best of the world. If you chose to identify as another sex, you can accept to give up on competing at the highest of the highest level. It's not like a big sacrifice.

Tons of groups rage at trans girls in high school sports, to the point of sending bomb threats. This wont stop at the olympics.

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#697

Post by remarkEon »

space_fountain wrote: post #681
remarkEon wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is. Note the parenthetical. >(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.) This is incoherent as an argument. It conditions the category on checking off boxes on a medical treatment list. I hope it's not necessary to explain why this is absurd.

I read the statement as follows: There is a category called woman, it’s defined by something that’s identify related. Sports should only be segregated by this category, except that to remove perverse incentives it’s reasonable to require hrt I’m unclear on what you find absurd about this?

This part:

>except that to remove perverse incentives it’s reasonable to require hrt

"I took a drug, therefore I am now a woman" is not a reasonable position to hold. The debate starts out with one based on an identity, and then in the very next formulation reduces that identity to which medicines you take.

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#698

Post by remarkEon »

ahhhhnoooo wrote: post #671
remarkEon wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>from what was assigned at birth The passive voice language here is really bizarre. Who is doing the assigning? >Separating conjoined twins for example. This is not, in any way, comparable to a 12 year old taking medications that permanently sterilize them.

> The passive voice language here is really bizarre. Who is doing the assigning? Typically the parents and doctors. "You have a beautiful baby girl!" Is assigning a gender

No, this is an observation. What, do the parents and doctors flip a coin or throw darts before "assigning" a "gender"?

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#699

Post by BonitaPersona »

x0x0 wrote: post #660
dpark wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to look at strength standards for women and men at the same weight. https://exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/StrengthStandards Weight classes are a great thing in some sports. They do not solve for the discrepancies between women and men, though.

As an example: men super heavyweight snatch record: Lasha, 225 kg. With Krastev 217 way back in 1987. Women: 149kg, Li Yan. So a 76kg delta. Clean and Jerk: Taranenko 266kg in 1988; current Lasha 267kg. Women's is Li Wenwen 187kg. An 80kg delta. Gender matters.

Is it gender, or is it sex, that matters? This is exactly the point, that it is sex that matters, and specific ruling for intersex conditions also matters.

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#700

Post by kelipso »

txrx0000 wrote: post #633
kelipso wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will end up being all men at all the skill rating levels.

No it would not. Look at chess ratings.

Basically proving my point. Very few women in top chess. Currently there are 0 women in top 100 chess players. Only 3 women were ever in the top 100 chess players. And chess is not even a game where men have a natural advantage like in almost all of the physical sports.
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