Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by skjfdoslifjeifj » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 1:42 AM UTC

SilverRed wrote: post #69

slg wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>by the very nature of things you have an advantage of strength, agility, speed and desire over your female peers. By the very nature of things LeBron James has an advantage of strength, agility, and speed over me. (no clue why you included desire in your comment) Basically every elite athlete is born with a genetic predisposition to be better at their sport than the average person. It takes a lot of determination an…

This is true but if we work with this line of logic, we should just remove the gender split in sports and make it purely a game for the best of the best. What this means is that most females will be removed from sport since they can't compete with the average male athlete. Society has spoken already and decided they want to see female athletes which is why many male only sports have started their own female only side…

> which is why many male only sports have started their own female only sides

Most of the popular sport leagues don't have any rules disallowing female competitors. I'm sure the NHL, NBA, NFL, MLS, MLB, Premier League etc. would love to have a female player that was good enough because it would be a marketing dream.

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

#72

Post by unrealhoang » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 1:46 AM UTC

SilverRed wrote: post #69

slg wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>by the very nature of things you have an advantage of strength, agility, speed and desire over your female peers. By the very nature of things LeBron James has an advantage of strength, agility, and speed over me. (no clue why you included desire in your comment) Basically every elite athlete is born with a genetic predisposition to be better at their sport than the average person. It takes a lot of determination an…

This is true but if we work with this line of logic, we should just remove the gender split in sports and make it purely a game for the best of the best. What this means is that most females will be removed from sport since they can't compete with the average male athlete. Society has spoken already and decided they want to see female athletes which is why many male only sports have started their own female only side…

> Or to have trans people pick sports where physical strength is not at play like motor racing, shooting, chess, etc.

Even at those non-physical sports, men still have a big advantage, it shows in all of the sports you listed and e-sport. Gender split in sports is there to protect women. The men sport is actually a game for "the best of the best", I don't think there would be any complain if there's a woman (cis or trans) want to challenge that space.

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

#73

Post by wolfgang42 » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 1:48 AM UTC

leephillips wrote: post #68

wolfgang42 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Assigned female”[0] just means that their original birth certificate has an ‘F’ in the sex field, normally assigned based on observed physical characteristics. It also generally implies that everyone assumed this was correct (with the associated gender roles etc) until the person began expressing a gender identity independently—in this case a different one, though for most people they tend to be the same. In this ca…

This doesn’t really make sense. The hospital personnel who record the sex of the baby aren‘t saying anything about “gender roles”. They’re simply recording the sex of the baby. It will only be incorrect in extremely rare circumstances of external anatomy not being indicative of sex. (And the field in the birth certificate is for sex, not gender. That would make no sense.) EDIT: It’s rather underhanded to abuse the ed…

I didn’t say that the hospital personnel were involved in the gender role—the parents would generally take the lead on that one, but they usually use the medical advice as a basis. Yes, it’s unusual for all these aspects (assigned sex at birth, phenotype, gender identity, and so on) to not match, but it’s useful to have separate terms for the cases in which they don’t—as in the case of our hypothetical 14-year-old. (Thanks for the correction on the field name; edited.)

(EDIT to your edit: I changed the text on that comment and then spent a couple extra minutes rephrasing this comment before I posted it. Probably I should have done those in the other order, sorry about that.)

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

#74

Post by unrealhoang » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 1:51 AM UTC

SilverRed wrote: post #70

devit wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the fittest people with an expressed SRY gene (aka "biologically male") are generally 10-15% better at sports than those without it (aka "biologically female") so if you allow SRY-expressing MtF transgender people to compete in the female category against non-SRY cisgender female people (rather than only letting them competing in the male category), and there are enough of them at top levels, no cisgender wom…

>incentivizes male athletes that can't win medals but are close to take hormone replacement theory solely so they can compete This might seem absurd but when you consider that they already go to extreme lengths to sneak in highly dangerous and life altering drugs just to win, I can see it happening.

There has been normal athletes pretended to be disabled to cheat the paralympic game, so yeah, it obviously will happen.

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

#75

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 1:57 AM UTC

babesh wrote: post #60

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #16

I feel like with this issue at some point we are bound to reach a breaking point. It's just a question of how far along things will go before we get there. People are more and more open about being transgender and there is more and more support for transgender individuals having the chance to live life as their correct gender. This is a great thing! However, it presents a huge problem for women's athletics, particula…

There are many disadvantages/advantages that various groups face/possess. It is ideological which ones we choose to elevate. Genes for height, genes for fast twitch muscles, testosterone, etc… aren’t the same for different groups. Some of these disadvantages are just as insurmountable. Many sports are closed to poor people. Equestrian, sailing, etc… aren’t sports for the poor. Richer countries often have better techn…

That's true, but there are enormous differences between those other categories compared to sexuality! For one thing, we do not know exactly which genes code for each of these traits yet. And for another thing, the genes coding, for example, fast twitch muscles are not generally part of someone's identity the way gender is. I don't think the presence of those genes nor their uneven distribution does anything to defuse the social issue that we're talking about.

To be completely clear, in some sports there appears to be a moderate risk that elite cis-women will be completely unable to compete with elite trans-women. This is going to be visible and apparent. I don't think this will be acceptable to the most people, and they will likely look to change the system.

Nit-picking your other points: there are not really any popular rich-people-only sports any more, except perhaps auto racing. I don't think broader society is all that interested in the egalitarian properties of yacht sailing. R.e. the clothing technology: yes, and those things were banned because of the advantage they conferred. That's exactly what I'm talking about here.

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

#76

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 2:05 AM UTC

eric4smith wrote: post #52

Yup - 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?

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

#77

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 2:07 AM UTC

wolfgang42 wrote: post #61

kazinator wrote: post #20

I think sports categories should be chromosome strings. "XX division", "XY world record". "XXY 400 m finals", "XYY long jump trials", ... Gender identity doesn't factor into it at all; the words "man", "woman" should not be used. Problem solved; you don't get to wedge yourself into competition with XX persons if you're XY.

That seems like it introduces more problems than it solves; genetic essentialism as a solution to debates about gender tends to be an approach that nobody agrees with. Now you still have the same concerns about people using hormones, plus: - intersex people whose phenotype and genotype don’t match (putting them in the “wrong” category) - chimeric people who belong in different categories depending on which part of th…

[deleted]

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

#78

Post by xboxnolifes » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 2:30 AM UTC

skjfdoslifjeifj wrote: post #71

SilverRed wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true but if we work with this line of logic, we should just remove the gender split in sports and make it purely a game for the best of the best. What this means is that most females will be removed from sport since they can't compete with the average male athlete. Society has spoken already and decided they want to see female athletes which is why many male only sports have started their own female only side…

> which is why many male only sports have started their own female only sides Most of the popular sport leagues don't have any rules disallowing female competitors. I'm sure the NHL, NBA, NFL, MLS, MLB, Premier League etc. would love to have a female player that was good enough because it would be a marketing dream.

Male only may be a wrong choice of words. It's usually male dominated league with an alternative female-only league.

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

#79

Post by SilverRed » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 2:43 AM UTC

unrealhoang wrote: post #74

SilverRed wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>incentivizes male athletes that can't win medals but are close to take hormone replacement theory solely so they can compete This might seem absurd but when you consider that they already go to extreme lengths to sneak in highly dangerous and life altering drugs just to win, I can see it happening.

There has been normal athletes pretended to be disabled to cheat the paralympic game, so yeah, it obviously will happen.

I have heard this is a very serious problem with even genuinely disabled athletes pretending to be in worse condition than they actually are to get in easier games/handicaps.

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

#80

Post by smegcicle » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 2:43 AM UTC

Theory5 wrote: post #25

JoeyBananas wrote: post #18

What is the argument in favor of allowing transgenders to compete in female sports? Does anyone actually defend this decision?

Why wouldn't people support transgendered people able to be the gender they wish and being able to do so in all possible aspects? Be they transwomen wanting to play female sports, or transmen wanting to play male sports (which you oddly leave out of your question).

> transmen wanting to play male sports

I don't think it's odd to leave out of the question, since there would be very little opposition to such a proposal.

The argument against would be mostly twofold: 1) it might be 'weird' to have a 'girl' in the men's locker room 2) depending on the sport, there might be an issue of safety

either way, not a big deal- as some other commenter said on here, women's sports is a carveout for a specific demographic (biological females, as if that's in question), and transgenders of all kinds would be much more welcome in regular 'men's' sports, or their own 'hormone free-for-all' programs, than an already established subgroup that does not wish to be so infiltrated.