Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

851–860 of 960 posts

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

#851

Post by x0x0 »

BonitaPersona wrote: post #699
x0x0 wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

eh, the article didn't seem to clearly define the differences and I find it boring. People should do whatever they want with their lives and their own genitals. Just don't cheat at sport or pretend that Laurel Hubbard -- who was a modestly good lifter as a man (like... good for a hobby level?) but went to the olympics as an (old for the sport) woman had any business in the olympics. And that Laurel didn't steal a spot from an actual woman who deserved to be there.

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

#852

Post by ragall »

allreduce wrote: post #850
ragall wrote: post #835

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> And those people are given the escape hatch of "transness" which is a lie politely allowed by society which gives people the delusion of trying to be what they cannot ever be. I'm arguing that it ought not to be a polite lie if there are people whose mental makeup is better suited to a gender expression not corresponding to their sex, who then inhabit that different role in everyday life. I frankly don't get your a…

> I'm arguing that it ought not to be a polite lie

A lie is defined in terms of it not being the truth, not in terms of effects on someone. Those effects are entirely irrelevant.

> My understanding is that the worst side-effect of using hormones is infertility, while surgery comes with more risks.

Men getting oestrogens are getting osteoporosis in their 20's and 30's.

> Anyway, it's about trading off mental anguish against possible complications of medical intervention.

It's not even doing that in most cases, because the self-loathing that caused people to look for the "transness" escape hatch turns out to have outside causes and won't go away.

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

#853

Post by 1718627440 »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #701
1718627440 wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His proposal is to make divisions by whatever way it would be the justest way. If that would be the man/woman division for a given sport, than keeping it is part of his proposal. His proposal is not going to be less just than the current rules by definition, but it IS a bit vague.

Her* (sorry)

Fair. Did I fail at reading comprehension or at making implicit assumptions?

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

#854

Post by ryzvonusef »

The issue is literally one of segregation.

You create, as a form of entertainment for the masses, an event for peak athletes to display their talent...by quirk of biology that means men.

You create a women's category to let them have their own entertainment niche.

You have in fact segregated sports, by gender, or sex, or whatever you want to call it.

Now there exist individuals who challenge the boundaries of this segregation. What do?

The realpolitik answer would be to segregate these individuals into yet another niche.

Of course the question arises, how many segregation categories to you create before it becomes all meaningless?

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

#855

Post by stahtops »

crote wrote: post #739
aucisson_masque wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, it just got to be fair for everyone. Can't make a woman with 'internal testicles and higher levels of testosterone compare against other women, that would be like accepting dopping.

And Michael Phelps should be banned for having freakishly long arms - his genetic advantage is basically doping as well, obviously!

If you divided the competitors into “has freakishly long arms” and “doesn’t have freakishly long arms” groups to compete within, and Phelps met the metrics for freakishly long arms, are you saying you think he should be free to compete in either group?

If so, there was no point in dividing into groups.

That said, I am sure athletes and governing bodies could agree on a better solution than outright banning- for example all it takes is a group that pairs a freakishly long armed swimmer with not, and they compete as pairs. Or an open group- maybe someone without freakishly long arms will find a way to win.

Anyway, it’s sports, people will min/max everything you let them, and we know from history they may bend or break rules as well. At the end of the day someone has to make a rule and enforce it, over time it will evolve.

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

#856

Post by dspillett »

4bpp wrote: post #824
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…

Taking a step back, I think "search for outliers" doesn't quite get to the heart of the issue. Why are we searching for the outliers, and why are we so particular about the base distributions that we are searching for outliers of - why are there women's sports at all (if the outliers they find are not outliers on the same metric in the whole population), and why is boxing, for example, divided into weight classes? It…

> and why is boxing, for example, divided into weight classes?

Entertainment value. Put a flyweight against a heavyweight and the audience are not going to care. No audience means no money for the show runners, and the Olympics is, when you get down to the brass tacks, all about money.

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

#857

Post by testbjjl »

whattheheckheck wrote: post #730
testbjjl wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, so I ask questions to increase my understanding? Is that a bad thing?

Ask chat gpt how to increase your understanding using Blooms revised taxonomy of learning using college level textbooks and primary source information with Amazon purchase search links. And follow up every side with a steel man, good faith critical thinking summary with deep, cross cutting questions that strike at the heart of the arguments. Additionally follow up with which demographics and political class does each…

If the rules changed mid competition and I lost a race to someone who had been competing on a men’s varsity team and then shortly after competed on the women’s team, it would be very hard for me to just shrug and say they beat me fair and square. That reaction is not unreasonable.

It may not justify sweeping laws, but it absolutely justifies having an honest conversation about fairness.

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

#858

Post by delecti »

Auracle wrote: post #762
delecti wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is absolutely possible, and it has been done in cisgender children with precocious puberty for decades. > Puberty blockers alter hormones dramatically during critical growth phases. Which is generally the goal. It is of course not possible to retroactively have allowed puberty to progress as though the blockers had never been taken, but it is possible to cease the blockers and allow it to resume, again, as is done…

I had a brain injury when I was 12 that knocked my testosterone levels way down. In my 20s this was discovered and I went on testosterone replacement. My hands are still the same size as my mom’s. My feet didn’t get back to the size they were before the accident. I didn’t regain the height I lost. God only knows what it did to my brain. Maybe if you’re only on them a little bit you’d be fine, but the whole concept is…

Your anecdote is a bit of a tangent. Trans kids wouldn't be on blockers as long as your hormone levels were out of balance, and they generally want to avoid the changes which you bemoan the loss of.

But do you even find your life to be significantly harmed by your smallish stature? There are short people who never had brain injuries, and it's generally not such a concern that we feel the need to make them larger. Lots of them even wish they were taller.

And it's a pretty frequent straw-man to compare tomboys to kids with persistent gender dysphoria. They only seem superficially similar to people who really haven't engaged with the huge breadth of research on trans people over the past century. It also ignores the fact that there are feminine presenting trans masculine people (those born female, who medically transitioned, but still present femininely), or tomboy trans feminine people (born male, medically transitioned, still present masculinely).

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

#859

Post by allreduce »

ragall wrote: post #852
allreduce wrote: post #850

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And those people are given the escape hatch of "transness" which is a lie politely allowed by society which gives people the delusion of trying to be what they cannot ever be. I'm arguing that it ought not to be a polite lie if there are people whose mental makeup is better suited to a gender expression not corresponding to their sex, who then inhabit that different role in everyday life. I frankly don't get your a…

> I'm arguing that it ought not to be a polite lie A lie is defined in terms of it not being the truth, not in terms of effects on someone. Those effects are entirely irrelevant. > My understanding is that the worst side-effect of using hormones is infertility, while surgery comes with more risks. Men getting oestrogens are getting osteoporosis in their 20's and 30's. > Anyway, it's about trading off mental anguish a…

> A lie is defined in terms of it not being the truth, not in terms of effects on someone.

I don't disagree.

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

#860

Post by remarkEon »

crote wrote: post #741
remarkEon wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It is quite common for babies to come out of the womb with blonde hair, only for it to darken to brown later in life. The baby isn't blonde, it just looks blonde right now. Same with gender. Doctors observe a flavor of genitals, make a reasonable assumption, and legally assign the gender which seems appropriate.

What? Hair color and gender are not the same thing. This is a bizarre argument.
Post reply on HN