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I've been thinking about how to phrase this for a while, so I'll just give it a shot: fairness in sport is arbitrary. We make rules to create a competition that we feel is valid and interesting, and we change those rules if we feel like doing so. As others have pointed out, there are many forms of competitive advantage in sport that we ignore or encourage, so it's not about making sure everyone is on a perfectly level playing field and equal in every way and it never has been. Given that sport is a human-created thing, and we can change the rules arbitrarily if we like (and governing bodies do this all the time), we have to balance our notions of fairness against what should be a distaste for discriminating against a group of people. I think to justify banning trans women from women's sport, you would have to demonstrate an overwhelming competitive advantage that, in practice, makes a given competition meaningless, not simply theoretical advantages that are similar in magnitude to natural variations that we already allow or even encourage; anything less cannot possibly justify discriminating against a marginalized group in such a heavy-handed way. No one has ever demonstrated that overwhelming advantage, and I highly, highly doubt anyone ever will.
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Apr 7, 2022 14:22
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Jaxyon posted:That's actually exactly what's happening It’s like an Onion headline. “If Trans Women Aren’t Dominating Women’s Sport, Why Do I Keep Insisting They Are?”
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Apr 7, 2022 19:17
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If we're concerned about muscle density and skeletal changes and whatever else male puberty is accused of causing which allows trans women to perform better than cis women in certain disciplines, should there be tests of those specific genetic variations in cis women in order to maintain fairness? If a cis woman is too tall, or their feet are too big or their hands are too big, or whatever else, do we judge that they are physiologically "insufficiently feminine" to compete fairly against women? If you start from the idea that trans women are women (which they are), then you accept their biology as one of many possible variations that occur in women, not an "unfair advantage." To judge that their specific biology is an anti-competitive problem, you must first start with the idea that trans women are not real or legitimate women, which is why this entire discussion ultimately boils down to transphobia.
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Apr 7, 2022 20:23
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Blurred posted:I'm not particularly invested in this issue one way or the other, but I'm not sure how this would be any more or less fair than a 6 foot 4 cis woman participating in that sport? There already are huge disparities in body shapes and sizes among people of the same biological sex, some of which are going to be highly advantageous for success in certain sports. How is the occasional trans athlete participating at the highest levels of sports going to make the situation any more unfair for the less biologically blessed athletes than it already is? Yes, exactly. Like, there's always going to be people who are multiple standard deviations from the norm, in both directions. Oh, you feel "hard done by?" Well that's life, bucko. There's so much variation in human physiology and experience. I was born with a disability that hosed with, among other things, my balance and my flexibility. I liked playing sports, but being honest about it: I was poo poo at it, and there was very little I could do about it even with practice and physiotherapy and all that other stuff. Was it unfair, in a way that required some sort of remedy, that other people were better than me without even trying hard? I don't think so. Was it frustrating? Yeah, it was. gently caress it, that's the way life is sometimes.
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Apr 7, 2022 23:06
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I also really resent the implication that you must be trans to give a poo poo about the rights and fundamental human dignity of trans people. It's like saying "oh, you think Black lives matter? Huh, I wonder how many of you are Black..."
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Apr 7, 2022 23:48
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mastershakeman posted:Probably for the same reason boys don't want to wrestle girls. Weight classes pretty much solve the issue of fairness, and there's some very talented female wrestlers. But its a terrible time for the boy going up against them - win, and you've merely 'beaten a girl', lose and hoo boy are you gonna hear it from your teammates. When I was in that sport in high school there was an excellent female wrestler in the county that absolutely everyone avoided until they had to face her at state meets. I think it's important to call that out for what it is, though: unabashed sexism. Like I said in an earlier post, I was born with a disability. Not enough of one that, as far as I know, I could compete in para events, but enough that I was always pretty solidly worse than most people at physical things including sports. Like, what, beating me would be more honorable than losing to a highly skilled, fit woman? In what world? It's just sexist bullshit.
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Apr 8, 2022 00:06
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LionArcher posted:I do have a trans question in general. Not about the sports stuff. I do appreciate the fact that this thread clearly goes over this poo poo is bullshit, and I'll use it when dealing with the one friend who usually says "trans stuff is fine, but what about those sports..." (Yes, this friend is cool minus listening to Joe Rogen and those kind of things). From my understanding: it's essentially impossible to get gender-affirming surgery as a minor. It's simply not happening, no matter how much anyone involved says they desire it. Again, from my understanding, the current standard of care given to trans minors is, at most, puberty blockers, which are not permanent for obvious reasons, and are also used in treatment of precocious puberty in cis children. I tend to agree that minors should not be making permanent, life-altering decisions, like those involved with gender-affirming surgery -- after all, even many adult trans people choose not to partake of those surgeries, because it's not like a fairy waves a magic wand and BAM you're the opposite gender now! And, as you say, the focus on what's going on in someone's bathing suit region isn't really the deciding factor of what makes someone trans or not. On the other hand, I think it's also impermissible to say that the best course of action is "no treatment" because puberty is, indeed, a very permanent change even if it's naturally-occurring. Finally, as a cis person, I just find it really, really unlikely that any teenager is thinking "you know what? I'm sick of the dick, YEET!" on a whim. It doesn't make common sense that a person who is not questioning their gender in a very real and legitimate sense would suddenly "decide" that they're trans. If you are comfortable with your gender assigned at birth, the changes associated with puberty are largely positive -- just as they are for trans people who get the right hormones all of a sudden and poo poo finally feels right.
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Apr 8, 2022 02:14
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I would also say, if it seems like "a group" is doing it, maybe they were a group because they recognized they had things in common prior to connecting all the dots, even if they weren't sure what it was. The fact that several people in a peer group would all come out at once is by no means evidence that it's based on trends or peer pressure; it could equally be that they all finally feel supported and safe to do so. EDIT: And again: if you're a cis person, what is your natural reaction to the idea of transitioning gender? It's probably not real fuckin desirable, because just like trans people feel that they ought to transition to live as their authentic selves, the vast majority of cis people *also* feel their gender identity is important and good -- it's just that they've never had to think about it or do anything about it. If you're a man, you prefer living as a man; if you're a woman, you prefer living as a woman. If you are non-binary/intersex poo poo gets really complicated but you find your own way. This applies whether you are trans or cis, it's just that us cis people don't need to do anything about it. PT6A fucked around with this message at 02:46 on Apr 8, 2022 |
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Apr 8, 2022 02:40
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Lance of Llanwyln posted:The only care typically given to minors without rigorous assessment are puberty blockers, which, IIRC, are used for other things as well and are quite safe and it's not difficult to reverse. Once they are a bit older, they can begin HRT, which is vastly more effective when you're A) a teenager and B) you haven't already gone through the wrong puberty. It is exceedingly rare for any surgical interventions to occur before 18. The only exception I can think of is Kim Petras: she required a special dispensation from the German government to get bottom surgery at 16. Yes, just in case it wasn't clear: that jives completely with everything I've ever heard, but I wasn't comfortable saying that I knew it for sure.
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Apr 8, 2022 02:51
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Timeless Appeal posted:Going through male puberty as a feminine person is horrible, and I'm not exaggerating when I say traumatizing. I feel like this is an important thing to note, both as the experience of trans people who've gone through the wrong puberty, but also in terms of: why no one is transitioning just to dominate sport or hang out in women's restrooms or whatever the nonsensical panic of the day is. If you are cis and you go through puberty that doesn't align with your gender identity, that's also really horrible in the exact same way, which is yet another reason why literally no one is doing it on a whim. Not only that, we have proof that it's severely hosed up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer
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Apr 8, 2022 03:19
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LionArcher posted:Again, thank you all for the replies that went in depth into it. I appreciate it. Glad my gut was wrong on this one. Well, you know, I think honestly it's a subject that is fraught with emotion and a lot of people don't know the details. So, I do appreciate you taking the time to ask and listen. There's also a lot of propaganda, in that I think one could be a reasonable person and legitimately believe that minors are getting life-altering surgeries upon request. It's emphatically not true, but I understand, given the discourse, why a lot of people believe it is true. The other point I'd like to make is: the reason I hang out in these threads is that trans people don't need the additional burden of explaining this poo poo. I'm not going to get everything right all the time, as an ally; I'm still learning and growing myself -- but I feel like I do know enough that I can talk about the basics and hopefully take the weight off trans people having to justify or explain their own existence, even just a bit. Further, I'm grateful that I know so many people who have taken the time to explain this stuff to me, and I just want to pass it on.
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Apr 8, 2022 03:42
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Jaxyon posted:There was already a study posted in this thread that studies that. I imagine they’ve at least fantasised about that possibility, yes. Look at all the racist bullshit about Black people and their “advantage” in sport, as well as its supposed origins.
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Apr 8, 2022 23:57
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When I see women who see themselves as tomboys expressing concern about the implication that they might be trans, what that tells me is that they are not trans; they are happy with their gender identity the way it is even if they don’t follow the expected social norms. If gender identity were not real and important to one’s sense of self, then presumably they would not care about the possibility of someone suggesting they may be trans. And ultimately I don’t think they have anything to worry about, because no one anywhere is going around trying to convince cis people that they’re actually trans. Everything works in completely the opposite direction.
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Apr 9, 2022 04:19
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Timeless Appeal posted:Regardless, I do think it is overly dismissive to say these women have nothing to worry about. No, they're not being railroaded into being trans people, but Cis men and women are constantly being judged for their gender expression and how their bodies align with their asserted gender. Fat women and thin women with small breasts experience this. Black women's femininity and gender is often judged when they choose to wear a natural hairstyle. I'm sure you've seen some lovely movie or cartoon that laughs about men from other cultures wearing dresses or skirts. Lesbians and other queer women constantly have had their womanhood and femininity mocked. Excellent point, and I do want to clarify: I think they don't have anything to worry about with regards into be coerced or convinced to "become" trans. They do still have reasonable concerns about the policing of gender roles and gender performance and sexuality, as I suppose all people do to some extent in our society. One thing that should be more frequently pointed out about the ridiculous "bathroom bills" is that... it's women as a whole who suffer from those. You're not not going to be suspected just because you are, in fact, a cis woman who presents masculine. Trans women will also be harassed (but not all of them, because you can't reliably tell who is trans by looking at them!), but it's not exclusively trans women who will be harassed.
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Apr 9, 2022 15:33
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To play devil's advocate to a certain point, I agree that there is some value in being allowed to debate certain topics that could perhaps be interpreted in some cases as bigotry, and I don't think this needs to devolve into Twitter 2.0 where any hint of something that could be interpreted out of context as bigotry is tantamount to a capital offense. With all due respect, I don't think that's what happened here. This was just bigots wandering in and spouting bigoted poo poo for no reason beyond doing it. I don't think there's a particularly good reason to allow that in any case ever. If we're concerned about where the line is between "questionable but worthy of debate" and "vile bigotry" I think sometimes it needs to land with the mods, and the "accused" can make their case personally to a mod, rather than making GBS threads up a thread with bigoted nonsense. We can judge a policy on its results. The results of the current policy have been Not Good in this thread, as people have mentioned. The policy needs to be suitably adjusted in that case, as it's pretty clear that it's not achieving its goals despite the policy having been designed and implemented in good faith by the mods.
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Apr 9, 2022 17:47
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Sedisp posted:Here's a fun little thought experiment. If one day trans women were absolutely dominating in say basketball is that bad? If it's bad why isn't it bad that tall women dominate basketball? Bearing in mind this is entirely hypothetical because trans women are not dominating in sport, it's simply not a thing that's happening, we can look at observable reality: we already "discriminate" between certain groups in sport on the idea that there are very large discrepancies in ability and we generally desire close competition. In practice, we form categories based on age, gender, weight and disability depending on the sport. These would all be unacceptable things to discriminate against in other contexts. We have them because, despite the presence of outliers (younger kids playing on a team for older kids, golfers eligible for senior tours choosing to play a standard tour, women playing on men's teams, people eligible for para-sports competing in general competition, etc.) it's generally accepted that the advantages are usually, but not always, sufficiently overwhelming that the competition would not be reasonable if they were combined. This is, emphatically, not the case with trans women in sport. Yes, trans women have won competitions. No single trans woman has dominated a single sport the way some cis women have, much less are trans women dominating across the board. If reality were completely completely different and trans women were dominating women's sport, then I think we could at least have the debate as to "what is fair and just" in a way that both respects gender identity and allows for "fair" competition, but I think that's a really tricky debate to have without veering into transphobia, obviously. We don't have to have that debate, because it's not based on the world we live in.
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Apr 9, 2022 23:01
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I think there's also the discussion to have about athletes like Caster Semenya. She's a great example of the problem of defining gender in a very specific way to create an illusion of fairness. She was assigned female at birth, she has lived her entire life as a woman, she identifies as a woman. There is no sense in which one can say, presuming one is not a piece of poo poo, that she is not a woman. Yet, she has been banned from certain specific events (oh, what a surprise: it's the ones she's good at) due to a biological quirk unless she undergoes specific medical procedures, because otherwise she's just too good. That's where this discussion leads; it's not merely trans women, it's all women. Just as with the ridiculous "bathroom bills," cis women will and do suffer as a result, because when you get right down to the issue, it's the policing of the definition of "woman" to be in accordance with the patriarchy and its wishes. Yeah, I don't doubt that women who have to run against Semenya feel that it's really, really loving difficult to compete with her. Well, you know what? Tough poo poo. I'm sure the people who ran against, I dunno, Usain Bolt, felt that was pretty goddamn difficult too. I'm sure women who play tennis against Serena Williams really struggle as well. That's the way life goes sometimes, when you're outclassed by a superior athlete who has an advantage because that's just the way they were born. So, proof by contradiction: let's assume we decide that certain biology is simply not fair for sport. If it's determined that any aspect of your biology: height, shoe size, lung capacity, lactic acid production, joint mobility, bone density, muscle density, anything, was more than two standard deviations in the beneficial direction for a given sport, then: too bad, no sport for you. Would anyone give a single gently caress about watching the resulting sports? Would that be a fair competition in the sense that we understand fair competition in sport? No, that would be awful and stupid. It would completely change the landscape of every sport, in all likelihood, and not in a way that anyone would like, and everything would still be tilted toward the people at the very edge of what is allowed versus everyone else.
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Apr 11, 2022 02:00
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The entire conceit is that there's a maximum level of gud you can git as a woman, and anything beyond that is unfair. The Semenya issue is the perfect example of that: here is a cis woman, who is simply too good at what she does, and there's all sorts of bitching about the fact that she is just too good for pretty much all other women to compete with her. This is not a trans issue because she is not trans, but it's relevant to the discussion because it proves the idea that being a woman in sport is, too often, defined as being somehow weaker or worse. Any deviation from that is simply not okay!
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Apr 11, 2022 03:28
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The reason we have categories is the same reason we have sport/competition in general, I would say: it's fun to compete. I mean, my god, look at people who speedrun video games for little or no money, just to do it and say they've done it. I know people who've spent tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars buying planes and practicing in them, just to compete in aerobatics competitions because they enjoy doing so. Now, how do you define the divisions that make the competition meaningful to the people participating and the people watching it? That's a more difficult question, but it's also entirely arbitrary. Any competition involves those decisions. Who decides what weight various events get in a decathlon? Who decides what distance archery competitions get shot at? Who decides what constitutes a butterfly stroke or a breaststroke in comparison to freestyle? On what basis is the Formula One specification for a given season decided upon? It's arbitrary, but ultimately enough people decide: yeah, this is okay, we'll compete by these rules and standards, for whatever reward it carries. There is no grand, immutable truth to these competitions, for either men or women. The only question is where we draw the lines. Are we ethically okay with drawing the lines such that they exclude trans women? If so, what about Black women? What about cis women with unusual physical abilities; if so, is "too tall" okay, then what about "too much of a specific hormone?" I think the real issue is that there's money connected with this poo poo, and it's essentially arbitrary. If you're competing against a trans athlete and you lose, nothing has happened. If you're competing against a trans athlete and you lose and as a result you lose a scholarship, yeah, I get why you'd be pissed off about that, but it also has nothing to do with the trans athlete. I have a disability, I wasn't going to be able to compete for any such scholarship in the first place, I and most people won't get a Nike sponsorship, so... deal with it! The rest of us have.
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Apr 11, 2022 04:50
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Gentleman Baller posted:While I agree the Semenya decision was truly ridiculous, I don't know if this maximum allowable performance for a woman thing really works. My point is that drawing the line at specific hormones with given thresholds is entirely arbitrary. It's a variation, just like any of the things that make top-level athletes great in their respective fields. Oh, she has a condition that makes her better? Well, so does every top level athlete. People have just decided that this specific condition/variation is beyond the pale! There's no great logic to it, it just seemed right to enough people at the right time.
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Apr 11, 2022 04:57
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Jaxyon posted:Semenya has one condition of increased testosterone. There's other conditions in women that also increase T, and they're not banned under the ruling. The rules target some intersex women, and that's it. It also targets specifically the events that Semenya is best at competing in, not even track events in general or sports in general. It's pretty hard to see it as anything but complete bullshit that they forced through because they were pissed off, very specifically, that she was winning events. You can define fairness in sport in a lot of ways, but I don't see how this is possibly considered "fair."
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Apr 11, 2022 14:08
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Uh huh. And this is different from people with specific biological quirks excelling at certain things, and being allowed to do so... why? Obviously she has an advantage. So does literally every other high-level athlete. There are no average people at the Olympics.
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Apr 11, 2022 17:44
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Harold Fjord posted:I don't think anyone's treating it as the same but many of the concepts apply. For example, internal variance of the segregated groups. Where you are born during the year and where the age cutoffs for participation impact children sports careers which then carry on into higher level competitive play. I think there's also the issue of sports scholarships at the youth level, in a lot of cases. Now, of course, there are six billion better ways of handling that particular problem in a way that doesn't discriminate against trans people, so I don't consider it a valid excuse, but I think that's definitely one of the reasons that emotions run particularly high around youth sports in the US.
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Apr 11, 2022 18:09
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Here's a question: are there are biological conditions/traits that a man could have, that would be judged to give such an advantage in a sport that they are simply banned from competition in the issue of fairness? If such a condition were found, such that men with the condition were 1700 times over-represented in a certain competition, would that be unfair? Heck, same question regarding women's competitions: if another condition with such over-representation were found and it had no relation to testosterone or a masculine appearance (because, let's face it: the whole reason Semenya was investigated was that she looked insufficiently feminine), would it be restricted? I'm going to take a wild guess and say, "no." EDIT: Actually, I take that last part back. If you look at how gymnastics scoring was adjusted to gently caress over Simone Biles, I think it's entirely likely that anything that helped a non-white woman would probably get restricted. PT6A fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Apr 11, 2022 |
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Apr 11, 2022 19:15
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Yeah, for what it's worth: Caster Semenya holds no world records, in any event. This woman, who is apparently simply too good to be allowed, has been bested by another woman in every event she contests. I don't think you can reasonably call that an advantage that is so overpowering that it simply cannot be allowed. She is very good as what she does, and as a result she is extremely difficult to defeat. Well, that's elite sport for you!
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Apr 11, 2022 21:46
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Harold Fjord posted:Pretend I'm a moron. How is overrepresentation at the podium measured here? And is the podium top 3? My assumption is that they are saying "these people are X% of the population, they should be winning X% of the medals if it's not an advantage." It's really, really stupid because I don't think anyone is claiming that this condition doesn't confer an advantage. The only disagreement is whether that advantage should mean Semenya and others with the same condition should be barred from competing. If we banned everyone with extraordinary physical gifts from sport, I don't think sport would be very popular to watch. It would, of course, still be fun to participate in because "everything is about winning and losing" is something you should grow the gently caress out of in grade school.
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Apr 11, 2022 21:59
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Semenya's case is valuable as a proof by contradiction. If the issue with trans women athletes is that they were assigned male at birth instead of female, then it stands to reason than an athlete who was assigned female at birth and lives as a woman, should be allowed to complete with women. So the issue cannot be the gender that someone is assigned at birth and lives as. If the issue with trans women athletes is something about testosterone, then it follows that a cis woman like Semenya should not be allowed to compete (and all other female athletes should be tested to ensure they are within quantifiable limits, not just women with Semenya's specific condition, or women who strike some people as too masculine-looking), but trans women undergoing medical treatment with hormones should be allowed to compete. That doesn't make transphobes happy either, so the issue cannot be hormones. Well, what else could it be? That's why this case is relevant to the topic of the thread even if Caster Semenya is a cis woman.
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Apr 12, 2022 03:28
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Fritz the Horse posted:Looking at their posts and rap sheet seems to me like they're drunk. Drunk transphobic "jokes" are just as unacceptable as sober ones, of course. Yeah, I’ve been drinking even while posting in this thread, and no matter whether I’m sober or tipsy or drunk, trans women are still women and should be allowed to compete against other women. Shageletic posted:That's what is so horrible about these trans sports bans currently passing in US legislatures. Kentucky just passed one and as far as anyone knows, there is only one trans kid playing in a school system there, and she started playing because she started her school's first ever girls field hockey team. Now a whole state has told her she can't play sports. It's hosed Yeah, if you can count the affected people on your fingers, chances are it’s a law being specifically targeted for an unacceptable reason. That’s just common sense. If the law is aimed at one person, as in this case, it is functionally a bill of attainder, which is something that we consider vile and unacceptable for obvious reasons.
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Apr 15, 2022 15:01
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I think the unspoken assumption here is that there's people who would "transition" not because of a legitimate belief that they are trans, but to gain some sort of advantage in sport. And, sorry: I just don't see it. People are cis for the same reason that people are trans: because that's their gender identity. No one's going to give up their gender identity just to compete in some sport with some advantage. Look at all the bigotry and poo poo that trans people have to put up with just because they're trans, and yet: many still decide to go ahead with transition in whatever way they feel is right for them. That's the power/importance of gender identity; it's one of the fundamental ways people -- cis and trans alike -- define themselves and act in the world. If you're willing to put yourself through that and live a continuously inauthentic life that doesn't match your gender identity, just to win some sports for a while? That's mental illness concerning the importance you place on winning things.
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Apr 16, 2022 17:54
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Cease to Hope posted:You keep pointing to the unsubstantiated possibility that there might, somewhere, someday, be a trans woman who has a physical advantage. You should have to name a single trans woman who has had an advantage before you continue. And after that, to explain why such a physical advantage is not tolerable in competition while essentially all other physical advantages are. As someone who was born with a disability, let me disabuse everyone of the notion that sports ever is, was, or will be a level playing field. It's not, and the idea that it is or should be is based around a very specific idea of what a "normal" person is.
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Apr 17, 2022 16:00
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