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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   30001 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023

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Gender Identity and Sports - Once More Around The Track

There has been ample discussion regarding whether trans women should be able to compete in women’s sports, ranging situations as unpopular as Fallon Fox celebrating the bliss of fracturing women’s skulls in cage fights to the silliness of the Boston Marathon extending women’s qualifying times to anyone that says they’re non-binary. For better or worse, some of this is starting to wash out to actual policies at the highest levels of sports, with World Athletics banning trans women from competing as women in the Olympics. Personally, I would regard this as an obvious and easy decision, with no reasonable debate to be had. For the other side, here’s trans sprinter Halba Diouf’s feelings on not being allowed to compete as a woman and here is Science insisting arguing that the null hypothesis should that be trans women don’t necessarily have an advantage.

This is sufficiently well-worn territory that I don’t really expect anything fresh to be said at this point. Instead, I want to focus on something that I’ve always personally thought was quite a lot more difficult to judge correctly, which is athletes that were assigned female at birth, but have conditions that cause them to have abnormally high testosterone, such as XY chromosomes. In recent years, this seems to be coming up more often, possibly because of awareness of it being a thing that happens, possibly because the increased money and visibility of women’s sports has begun to select for increasing levels of biologically unusual people, or possibly because of something that’s not occurring to me. The first one I was aware of was Castor Semenya, who I’ve always had a soft spot for because it seems like a really tough break to have been born labeled as a girl, lived your life as a woman, competed and won at the highest levels, then get told, “nope, sorry, your chromosomes don’t match, so you’re banned in the future”. I hope that regardless of my positions on these issues to always extend that basic level of empathy to someone who truly was not at fault in the creation of a difficult situation.

I recently bumped into an article tying the plight of Diouf to a Senagalese sprinter who turned out to have XY chromosomes and high T, resulting in a ban from the Olympics and this is what gets to the heart of the matter:

LGBTQI advocacy groups say excluding trans athletes amounts to discrimination but WA President Sebastian Coe has said: "Decisions are always difficult when they involve conflicting needs and rights between different groups, but we continue to take the view that we must maintain fairness for female athletes above all other considerations.

First, I’d like to note that this objectively is discrimination and that takes us right to the heart of the point - having a women’s category in sports is inherently discriminatory. That’s the whole point, to discriminate men from women and create a category that is feasible for the best women to win, hence we must determine what a woman is for the purposes of that competition. That a policy is discriminatory simply cannot suffice as an argument against it, particularly when the whole point of the category is to implement a form of discrimination!

Second, I think Coe’s answer is correct and neatly covers all of these scenarios. I used to have a tough time with them, precisely because of the desire to be fair to women like Semenya, but the reality is that Caster Semenya simply isn’t a female and the whole point of women’s sports is to allow women to compete on equal footing against other women. That this will feel unfair and exclusionary to some tiny percentage of the population that has either a gender identity disorder or chromosomal abnormality is barely an argument at all - elite athletics isn’t actually an inclusive activity, it is exclusive and filters for the absolute best in the world for a given ruleset. Within track, use of performance-enhancing drugs is strictly monitored, with spikes in biological passports used to ban athletes even if what they used cannot be identified. With such tight constraints and rules on what physical specifications athletes are allowed to have, I no longer favor something so inclusive as to allow XY or other gender-abnormal athletes to compete - the women have to be actual women competing against other actual women. If nothing else, Lia Thomas has helped provide me some clarity on the absurdity of muscle-bound, testosterone-fueled males in women’s sports.

I too used to feel bad for intersex athletes but at the end of the day the existence of extremely rare intersex individuals is not an argument to let men compete with women based on their desire to do so.

The actual utility of determining who is the 'Fastest Woman' or 'Fastest Man' is non-existent and society's interest in elite sports is in entertainment and propagandizing physical fitness. Anyone who is an Olympic finalist at something like the 800m is the recipient of profound genetic gifts, and the concept of fairness between them and the average person is laughable. Excluding an extreme outlier in terms of genetic advantage for the benefit of a cluster of the far far right tail of the distribution doesn't seem to have much to do with 'fairness' for the general population.

Semenya differs in that her genetic advantage is larger, traceable to a single chromosome, and used to construct a category of social solidarity. If Semenya wins over and over XX women may be less inspired to participate in athletics since they cannot identify with her as an intersex person. Or if there is a single gene which gives massive athletic advantage among 'women' then women without that gene would be less inspired to compete. The carve out for women's sports is an acknowledgement that it is worth creating categories for people genetically disadvantaged at athletics so that even though they can never really be the best they can still be honored for fulfilling their potential, even if it's limited.

The fun futuristic version of this to me would be if we eventually develop some way of calculating genetic advantage from DNA and creating athletic 'gene classes' for different sports. If we're worried XX women will be less inspired to compete if someone with an identifiable genetic advantage like Semenya wins than shouldn't we be worried about short men, or people born with poor biomechanics not competing? In the short term something like height classes in basketball seems like an obvious starting point.

in the short term something like height classes in basketball

That sounds hilariously demeaning to those who would participate. If you think womens basketball is unpopular, this should be a hit right?

Is being a lightweight or middleweight boxer instead of a heavyweight demeaning? Why would participating in the 5'9" and under Basketball Division be demeaning?

I don't expect it to be a commercial success. When they're not joined to nationalist competitions like the Olympics track, swimming and gymnastic events don't seem to draw large audiences either. Youth & College Sports are basically publicly funded programs outside of a few major sports like Division I Football & Basketball.

I don't think we fund them because it's extremely important to society to determine who the fastest 800m runner is, we do it to encourage athleticism broadly. Why not allow the bottom half of the male height distribution an opportunity to participate in the organized version of am enormously popular sport and get some degree of social status for fulfilling their athletic potential?

propagandizing physical fitness

Perish the thought! How could we, as a society, endorse such a thing?!

Like, I'm sorry, but do you think it's bad to encourage people to be physically fit?

To add onto Ec's reply, I think the argument they were trying to make is that the Olympics and all other televised major sports sell a subtly/deceptively-unrealistic image of human capabilities. Frankly, I think a lot of sports-related marketing also does that (athletes on the Wheaties boxes!), and if, instead, we were honest while still trying to make sports a thing for everyone, we'd probably have to become bio-realist to some degree.

I don't see how the Olympics presents an "unrealistic" image of the human body when it's explicitly marketed as an event meant to showcase the absolute peak of human fitness. If it were marketed as "anyone can do this if they put their mind to it" then fair enough, but I really don't know that that's how the event is marketed. Does the Nobel Prize* present an unrealistic image of the capacities of the human brain by handing out awards to the brightest people in the world?

*Peace and Literature excluded.

No? It's a good thing to encourage physical fitness. I suppose I could have used a term with less negative connotations but something like the Olympics is government produced media designed to promote specific values, we just happen to think those values are good.

We need a test that can tell us if there is a function Sr-Y gene or not. That gene is what initiates the cascade of changes that differentiate males and females in humans. There are adult human females with XY genotype but XX phenotype, including a fully functional female reproductive tract and demonstrated capability to produce offspring. The key is that they lack a functional Sr-Y gene and thus the XY genotype is never expressed. Another gene, upstream of Sr-Y, Chromobox homolog 2 (CBX2), can cause a similar break in the sex determination cascade.

The one other edge case I've heard of involve chimeras, individuals with more than one genotype. Most of their cells will be XX but a few will be XY. If those cells are the "right" ones then they can get a pretty substantial boost in physical performance.

Usually 46,XY women (whether Swyer or CAIS) are infertile. There's one publicized case otherwise, a primarily 46,XY woman who also was chimerical in that some of her cells were 46,XX.

citation? this sounds interesting. I wonder if the person even had androgen insensitivity or if it was just the chimaera blend.

Report of Fertility in a Woman with a Predominantly 46,XY Karyotype in a Family with Multiple Disorders of Sexual Development

Androgen insensitivity seems to be the one thing she didn't have.

That family! Lots of chimerism. Like their embryos are porous and bad at maintaining integrity.

Must have been chimerical. XY women have no womb, and their 'vagina' is often too small for intercourse.

She was chimerical, but your statement isn't true in general. Women with Swyer syndrome (46,XY complete gonadal dysgenesis) have no (or "streak") ovaries, but they have a womb and indeed can give birth with a donor egg and hormone treatments. They require hormone treatments to go through puberty and thus develop their secondary sex characteristics. CAIS does cause what you describe.

Swyer syndrome

it's about 4-5x more rare than AIS / CAIS though..

I don’t think that’s *always accurate. Swyer’s syndrome women have uteruses and normal external genitalia, they just have nonfunctional gonads (eg ovaries, or testes). They can get pregnant via egg donation but are otherwise infertile.

Any organized competitive activity will certainly require a set of rules (and will inspire a corresponding set of rules lawyers). Those rules almost always include some element of eligibility ("This is a human running race; horses cannot enter; humans aided by segways cannot enter...").

Which brings to my mind an analogy that might be useful to get more left-leaning folks thinking about the topic differently: the special olympics/paralympics. I have no idea what rules they use, but I am 100% confident that they must have some set of eligibility rules. At some point, people sat down and said, "No, your specific condition does not qualify you to participate in the special olympics/paralympics." Any such set of rules is invariably going to have edge cases. (It's invariably going to inspire a set of rules lawyers, too.) There are going to be people who think it's unfair that they're not allowed to compete. There are going to be people who think it's unfair that someone else is allowed to compete. I think everyone can be aboard the train this far.

First off, I cannot possibly fathom someone on the left agreeing to a proposed rule of, "Anyone who self-identifies as 'special' is automatically eligible." This at least gets them into the right ballpark and out of the bailey.

Then, the motte about burden-of-proof shifting. The much harder position to crack is the claim, "We just need you to provide extensive peer-reviewed evidence that this person would have a competitive advantage." Here is where they set up a hundred foot wall and say, "If you can't crack this, we're back to the bailey of self-identification." However, again, let's go back to the special olympics/paralympics. There is an absolute myriad of specific situations/conditions that someone might think should qualify them for the special olympics/paralympics. It would be an utterly impossible standard to say, "Whelp, if you can't bring metareviews of peer-reviewed research showing that this particular condition, experienced by like 100 people on the planet (99 of which aren't competitive in the sport in question), does not unfairly situate them with respect to the other competitors, then you have to just go back to accepting everyone who self-identifies as 'special'."

Perhaps I'm wrong. If anyone here is "pro self-identification in women's sports" and also "pro self-identification in special olympics/paralympics" on the same grounds of requiring this type of peer-reviewed evidence, I'm all ears.

As an interesting note, I learned recently that the best bench pressers in the world, by the typical measure used, are all in the special olympicsparalympics. This is because the typical measure used is a ratio of weight lifted to bodyweight (or essentially this using weight classes). And, well, the people who max out this metric are all some form of leg amputee or other condition that results in extremely underdeveloped legs. They don't get the same "leg drive" strength that other lifters get, but the simple fact that they're not "wasting" bodyweight on a part of the body which isn't that useful for the bench press is more than enough to make up for it. I imagine that powerlifting federations don't have to go out of their way to exclude these people, because they probably are just happy doing what they're doing and have no need to jump into a powerlifting meet. Powerlifters are supposed to squat and deadlift, too, which they just can't do, so they probably don't bother, because all they'd be accomplishing is putting their name at the top of the bench board and everyone else being annoyed, mentally ignoring them, thinking, "Well, of course, there's that guy, but I set the real top bench number." Politics is dumb, though, and I sort of view the whole drive to require trans eligibility as politically-motivated; it would be akin to a political movement to do something dumb like try to wreck powerlifting federations with amputees just because your politics tells you to be an asshole.

Interestingly, I think the difference between the Special Olympics and the Paralympics is a very good intuition pump for the trans and intersex in women's sports issue.

The purpose of the Paralympics is to increase the range of body types that can experience elite athletic competition - in particular to include disabled ones. So once you qualify, the competition is as intense as it is in the Olympics. So naturally you need rules which are hard to cheese - including about eligibility. Someone who does not have the type of body that the Paralympics are for entering the Paralympics defeats the purpose of the event. (The London 2012 Paralympic programme featured a Paralympian joking that "Paralympians spend as much time trying to get classified as more severely disabled than they actually are as Olympians spend trying to conceal their performance-enhancing drug use" - gaming eligibility is considered the same tier of filthy cheating as doping.)

The purpose of the Special Olympics is to showcase the achievements of an underrepresented group. Although it is still competitive, and people still try to win, the stakes are intentionally lower and the aim is to encourage an atmosphere of friendly competition, sportsmanship, and health and social benefits to non-winning participants. As a corollary, the Special Olympics can be less careful about eligibility. (They allow anyone with a relevant diagnosis from their own doctor to participate without them having to be formally "classified" by a Special Olympics doctor the way Paralympians are.)

Are women's sports more like the Paralympics or the Special Olympics? People involved in elite women's sports are 100% clear that they are like the Paralympics - the aim is to allow a wider range of bodies (i.e. female ones) to compete at an elite level. So allowing male-bodied people who count as women to enter defeats the purpose, because they don't have the right type of bodies. The only question about allowing trans women is whether taking cross-sex hormones that stabilize your testosterone in the female-typical range makes your body effectively female. (And the answer varies by sport) But a lot of advocates for women's sports think of them as more like the Special Olympics - the aim is to showcase the achievements of female athletes in a way which encourages women and girls to exercise more. And in that case, if you think that trans and intersex "women" are part of the underrepresented group you are trying to showcase, then of course they should be able to participate.

I think it’s a bit simpler than that. The biggest drawback to natal males in women’s leagues is that it’s basically legalized cheating. And the real harms are economic: scholarships for women going to men, women being shut out of the Olympics (which often gives athletes enough recognition that they can endorse products), and women’s professional sports being entirely populated by natal males.

Women’s soccer is a case in point. Most colleges have a female soccer squad. But the physical abilities of women who play soccer is such that just about any decent male high school player can get a full-ride scholarship to play soccer on the women’s team. And schools knowing this will absolutely run with it. Find a guy willing to take just enough blockers and estrogen to qualify as a woman, wear a dress on campus, and get a free college education. It’s kind of reverse doping. But schools who make money by having really good female teams wouldn’t care much and would want as many natal males on their teams as possible. Which naturally means that for sports like that (and probably softball and tennis and lacrosse as well) any women trying out would be denied opportunities. They simply can’t keep up physiologically. So if these women needed a scholarship to be able to afford school, it sucks to be them.

FYI, I think you're conflating Special Olympics with Paralympics. Many of the same points apply to both, but when I got to the powerlifting section, I was a bit puzzled by why mentally impaired folks were dominating the bench press...

You are 100% correct. I'll try to edit for clarity.

Why can't consumers of the product (who supposedly bring money, oh, I forgot about sports extracting money using goverments) decide, not some comitees and journalists?

It's not like it has correct answer to the question

In practice, sports leagues are monopolies. Consumer choice isn't a phenomenon that exists there.

Take, for example, my local high school. It plays in the local conference with other high schools in the area. What would consumer choice look like for girls at this school who don't want to compete with 6'2" 190lbs. "Natalie?" There is no choice for these girls, should the local conference accept "trans" girls as actual girls.

Further, I don't think most of women's sports is really a consumer affair? What women's sports league pays for itself in the manner of the MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA, etc.?

I find the idea of women's sports chuckle-worthy, about the same tier of interest as the Little Leagues. Aww, you poor things, incapable of standing up in absolute terms, let's make a nice carveout for you so that you can say you tried.

At least in tennis you have something sexy to look at.

The first one I was aware of was Castor Semenya, who I’ve always had a soft spot for because it seems like a really tough break to have been born labeled as a girl

The real tough break is having a name that sounds like castor oil with semen in it, as far as I'm concerned.

At any rate, I've always watched the whole trans in sports debacle simply for the popcorn munching potential, since I don't give a shit about the outcome either way, it's always fun to see people tearing their hair out when trying to reconcile mutually incompatible maxims and desired outcomes.

Fuck it, let's have a Transhuman Olympics, where PEDs, augmentation and everything you can do short of fighting the other participants is legal. As a tweet once said, let's see how high humans can really jump.

as Fallon Fox celebrating the bliss of fracturing women’s skulls in cage fights

Whats that phrase again, play stupid games and win stupid prizes? Unless those women were coerced with cattle prods into stepping into the ring, they made the eminently stupid move of embracing their fate instead of boycotting or bowing out. Certainly, if I participated in a wrestling match and my opponent was a Silverback gorilla, I'm conceding right there and then.

  • -18

Fuck it, let's have a Transhuman Olympics, where PEDs, augmentation and everything you can do short of fighting the other participants is legal. As a tweet once said, let's see how high humans can really jump.

Hard agree.

Maybe it's my autism , but having gender segregated sports always struck me as dumb.

I remember competing in wrestling against dudes in my weight class but with about 6" less neck circumference than me and KNOWING they were just fucked; that I could walk up to them and let them do as much shit as they wanted and nothing would stick.

Extending this; I think the two categories I actually respect in sports are natty and enhanced.

One to appreciate the extend of human capacity; the triumph of will over flesh.

One to watch human shaped Rhinos slap dingers all day.

I find the idea of women's sports chuckle-worthy, about the same tier of interest as the Little Leagues. Aww, you poor things, incapable of standing up in absolute terms, let's make a nice carveout for you so that you can say you tried.

As others have pointed out this was not in the spirit of the rules in multiple ways. Usually you are a good poster, but this is a bad enough violation that I'm still going to give you a one day ban for it.

All I wish to say is that I find your ruling highly disappointing, especially since this is my first and only ban on The Motte.

In fact, I've made a nigh identical comments at least twice in the past without censure.

At the very least, you'd think being a poster in good standing would earn some leeway, especially since a warning would have gotten the point across just as well.

I also found the situation disappointing.

The past comments should have probably had censure, the fact that you felt such a comment was within the rules is a problem. That sounds like a mod failing.

It did provide you leeway. If you were a problematic poster I would have given 3-7 days, or maybe that would have been the last straw and it would have been a permaban. A warning is appropriate when someone has just barely crossed the line. When overstepping it too far a harsher response is necessary. The further you cross the line the harsher the response. This is to let you know and other posters know where that line is.

Your comment here makes me think the ban was not harsh enough. I'd never reban you for the same offense. But I want to make it as clear as possible: the comment you made was real bad, and it clearly broke a few of our discussion rules. You need to avoid making these comments or you will quickly blow through any good will you have earned through quality comments.

We have permabanned users with multiple AAQCs to their name. It is sad when it happens, but we will do it if it becomes necessary. In the few cases of this happening that I remember, the users always seemed surprised by their permaban. They had became so accustomed to their good posting being a shield that they lost the habits of avoiding bad posting. I have wondered before if that was a failing on the part of the mods. That we let the bad posting go on long enough unpunished (or lightly punished) that it became a habit.

We have permabanned users with multiple AAQCs to their name.

I'm curious. Who?

I find the idea of women's sports chuckle-worthy, about the same tier of interest as the Little Leagues. Aww, you poor things, incapable of standing up in absolute terms, let's make a nice carveout for you so that you can say you tried.

Antagonistic, uncharitable and unkind.

Whats that phrase again, play stupid games and win stupid prizes? Unless those women were coerced with cattle prods into stepping into the ring, they made the eminently stupid move of embracing their fate instead of boycotting or bowing out.

So they should just jettison their entire career and passion and identity to make a point because someone found a way to bring a gun to a knife fight?

By boycotting a fight that brings a risk of severe bodily harm? If they don't, then the lady doth not protest enough as far as I'm concerned.

If someone brings a gun out while you're scheduled for an afternoon bout of competitive knifing, you first clear the premises before trying anything else.

Not that I think their career would be at much risk if they did the above, especially as a group.

I find the idea of women's sports chuckle-worthy, about the same tier of interest as the Little Leagues. Aww, you poor things, incapable of standing up in absolute terms, let's make a nice carveout for you so that you can say you tried.

Unfathomably based.

At least in tennis you have something sexy to look at.

As Sailer likes to remark from time to time, the most popular men’s sports are like a stand-in for war, the most popular women’s sports are like beauty contests.

And the women are happy to oblige. Hence why female indoor volleyball players wear skin tight booty shorts to spend much of their time bent over in the ready position, women’s MMA has a well-trodden MMA -> e-thot -> OnlyFans pipeline, and many female tennis players are more than eager to engage in some Instathottery. Kournikova walked so Bouchard could run.

And the women are happy to oblige. Hence why female indoor volleyball players wear skin tight booty shorts to spend much of their time bent over in the ready position, women’s MMA has a well-trodden MMA -> e-thot -> OnlyFans pipeline

Meh. I watch MMA and the actual contests aren't beauty competitions. See this. Obviously tastes may vary, but I don't try to get my titillation from any place that might lead me to seeing a woman like that. Women's dress is also not that different from men's (women get a rash guard) so it's not like a volleyball thing.

A few women (Paige VanZant) who are atypically attractive (by sport standards) go into Onlyfans but then you might as well say that being a lawyer, KFC employee and random internet sensations famous for totally different reasons are beauty contestant winners.

Prominent successes like Amanda Nunes and even Valentina Shevchenko aren't really in that niche.

The simple take is that Onlyfans, by virtue of "Uberizing" sex work, allows any attractive woman to translate even a minor platform more directly into simp-provided income. A sport like MMA which pays less will simply have more people joining the game.

Meh. I watch MMA and the actual contests aren't beauty competitions. See this.

You might be surprised (or not) at how much female MMA fighters enjoy being sex objects. An example would be Joanna herself, who got breast implants even when weight cuts were already difficult for her. Her revealed preference was that she preferred optimising being a sex object rather than optimising competitive performance.

Indeed, women’s MMA or volleyball or tennis or even gymnastics or figure skating aren’t literal beauty competitions in the strict sense, where the winner is declared based on who’s supposedly more beautiful. Even literal beauty contests aren’t literal beauty contests, as they typically involve political and idpol considerations, and ability to deliver some progressive-aligned opinion.

Nonetheless, the point of metaphorising popular women’s sports to a beauty contest is that oftentimes, women’s sports are but paths for women to launder and leverage their sexuality, another path to have a plausibly deniable way to display, exhibit, advertise their assets.

Prominent successes like Amanda Nunes and even Valentina Shevchenko aren't really in that niche.

I certainly know of Amanda, but I’m not too familiar with her on-goings. However, Valentina is totally in the e-thot niche. “The Bullet” knows what she’s doing: her Insta is filled with bikini pics, and she often posts videos of her doing little dances on social media as can be sometimes seen on /r/ufc and less so /r/mma. It's no coincidence that Valentina is a face that’s launched a thousand simps, hence the infamous ‘complete’ pasta:

*Of all the women's MMA champions of all time (so far) she seems like the most 'complete' human being - by far. Skilled, tough, smart, beautiful, extensive world travels and has lived in the 3rd world for long periods, speaks multiple languages, tactical firearms training/enthusiast, dancer, film/arts school, actress, outdoorsy, etc.

You can tell she genuinely has her shit together, like she could probably be a millionaire running just about any business, if she wanted.

Are there any other female fighters that impressive?*

Onlyfans, by virtue of "Uberizing" sex work, allows any attractive woman to translate even a minor platform more directly into simp-provided income. A sport like MMA which pays less will simply have more people joining the game.

I would posit it’s mostly because, chances are, a given female MMA fighter has had a lot less paternal investment in her life compared to say, a given WTA player, where fathers are typically quite involved. Thus, many more female MMA fighters will engage in what is sometimes referred to as “fatherless behavior.” The Bouchards, Badosas, and Giorgis of the world will post slutty photos on Instagram to their fathers’ annoyance and exasperation (RIP to their fathers, especially Sergio Giorgi), but haven’t crossed the Rubicon to OnlyFans or porn. At least so far! Growth mindset.

Fair point on JJ's absurd implants - which slipped my mind. Though I don't know what personal circumstances motivated her. Lots of different targets when you optimize sex appeal. It's possible she was seeing the end of her career and wanted to be sexier for the final catch.

Indeed, women’s MMA or volleyball or tennis or even gymnastics or figure skating aren’t literal beauty competitions in the strict sense, where the winner is declared based on who’s supposedly more beautiful

My point was that those sports do things that are clearly for titillation e.g. how female volleyball players dress compared to men. In MMA women either dress equally modestly (given existing norms about male-female modesty) or dress more conservatively (from a gender-blind perspective).

And then they go engage in a traditionally masculine activity that is not known to improve anyone's beauty, let alone a woman's.

Nonetheless, the point of metaphorising popular women’s sports to a beauty contest is that oftentimes, women’s sports are but paths for women to launder and leverage their sexuality, another path to have a plausibly deniable way to display, exhibit, advertise their assets.

MMA is...not a good sport for that. Because it pays less at the low end, comes with significant potential physical downsides that affect your sex appeal and is also mainly not a self-feeding sport: people in MMA got there through something else, usually a lifetime of training something else. Something that avoids at least some of these problems (e.g. grappling poses less of a risk to your pretty face).

Mackenzie Dern was already hot. She could have been a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu instathot. Her sex appeal is not improved by getting punched in the face, I don't care what feminists say; that sort of "empowerment" isn't hot.

How bout: plenty of women will use their sexuality as suits them. Attractive athletes will leverage it where they can but it's probably not why they were training at 13. Ronda Rousey didn't give up her youth becoming a judoka to launder and leverage her sexuality I don't think (she did it, like many, cause that's what her mother wanted). But, when she got famous, she did leverage her "hot - for sports" nature.

TBH she could have just dressed provocatively rather than ruin her knees trying to place in Judo. Works for most women.

I certainly know of Amanda, but I’m not too familiar with her on-goings. However, Valentina is totally in the e-thot niche.

Oh, I'm well aware of /r/MMA's crush on Valentina. That's why I said "even Shevchenko".

She's "sports-hot" and gets simps for that reason. But my general perception of her is not as an Thot and not that the UFC promotes her that way.

She's promoted (or was promoted) on the grounds of being a technical (some might say "boring") fighter. But, tbf, I don't really follow her Instagram besides the general idea of her as a jet-setting, multilingual, gun-toting, James Bond-esque badass. Maybe I missed things.

Aww, you poor things, incapable of standing up in absolute terms, let's make a nice carveout for you so that you can say you tried.

This but unpatronisingly.

I'm far from an athlete, the only sports I do is for health, I never liked competing, and yet I find myself wanting to smack the living hell out fellow nerds who completely miss the point of sports. It is the least surprising thing in the universe, that the person saying the above is also a transhumanist.

In sports, the actual physical achievement is just the cherry on top, a certificate of accomplishment, a badge you can wear and show off, but which you only get for putting in the work, but the actual thing is about the work itself. It's about showing up for training every day, and persisting throughout all the failures. Virtually all benefits of sports, to the individual as well as society, come from the latter not the former, and it's blindingly obvious it should be encouraged in everyone, regardless of their level of achievement. But some people seem to be indeed blinded by it.

It's about showing up for training every day, and persisting throughout all the failures.

Does showing up for daily events in Genshin/WoW/the likes and persisitng useful for society somehow?

Your posting doesn't show causal mechanism besides "blindingly obvious"

About as much as going on a rigorous diet of pizza, hamburgers, coke, and chocolate cake.

How can you not see the difference?

What is the causal mechanism?

Actual professional sportsmen usually like their chosen discipliple (self-selection), so this point doesn't fly.

Maybe a fairer comparison is having a team and playing a ranked RTS with them?

Depends on the RTS. Chess is complex enough that we kind of treat it as a sport. With video games some of them would probably go in the fast food category, while others could go in the sports category.

In sports, the actual physical achievement is just the cherry on top, a certificate of accomplishment, a badge you can wear and show off, but which you only get for putting in the work, but the actual thing is about the work itself.

This isn't what sports is about at all. Sports IS about the physical achievement - Usain Bolt doesn't train harder than other people, but he still gets medals, because the medal is for the physical achievement, not for how many hours of your life you can sink into training. And wouldn't this be an argument in favor of women's sports? Women can train just as hard and obsessively as men. But the point is not the training but the result.

And wouldn't this be an argument in favor of women's sports? Women can train just as hard and obsessively as men.

Yes, that's why we subsidize it.

But the point is not the training but the result.

The result is what gets the eyeballs, and what inspires people, but I don't think it's the point.

I think you're 100% right here. Fat little kids running around kicking worn out soccer balls to play like Messi is an infinitely positive social good, even if they never get any better than "pretty bad at this." I used to be a pretty big sportsball hater, but now I'm in favor of anything that gets people off their phones and moving around.

Striving for self-improvement every day is a commendable goal. I agree with your entire last paragraph. However, my frustration with non-transhuman sports is that we've been approaching it wrong. By establishing boundaries on the extent of self-improvement, we've failed to encourage individuals to truly maximize their potential. Imagine how much stronger and healthier you could be with a carefully developed and safe PED stack? Society discourages such considerations. How much greater could you become by aiming for a pair of cybernetic limbs? Integrating the best technology is a core component of human betterment. Rejecting this notion undermines the very premise.

The purpose of sports is to teach people to continuously strive to push the limits of human physicality—except, it seems, when it comes to genuinely pushing those limits. Sports have always been constrained, sanitized by the types of self-improvement that the general public finds acceptable. This approach is marred by the sentiment, 'I don't want to better myself in this way, so no one else should be rewarded for it either.' It's affirmative action for bioconservatives.

I think the easy strawman to this is Mr. Tex's vision of unrestricted sports.

The purpose of sports is to win. It is, at it's core, a competition. And the goal of competition is to be the victor.

There is no high-minded 'pushing the physical limitations' involved here. I assure you, the last thing you want is to have transhuman philosophy applied by people that, while not insane, are atleast slightly off kilter from the rest of humanity.

You have to be. Consider; These are the people that literally and metaphorically torture themselves just for... what, five minutes of glory? If that? You have the apex, the celebrities, yes, but that's some long odds to bet with chancy return on that investment.

And you don't find reasonable men at the top of mountains.

Sports and competition are the last places I'd be applying transhumanism.

There is no high-minded 'pushing the physical limitations'

I agree that there is a focus on victory. But come now. Hardly anyone reaches the top without falling in love with something about the feeling of climbing.

And I'm not looking to the tops of mountains for reasonable men. I look to the tops of mountains for Great men. For men so mad that when they reach the top, they begin to teach themselves to fly.

Maybe there does exist a carefully-developed and safe PED stack which could significantly enhance performance without significant side effects, but as soon as you allow any PEDs, there would be a strong incentive to disregard health and take the highest possible dose. In the end, the ranking still ends up being a combination of genetics and hard work, except all the athletes have now destroyed their hearts and livers. It's a prisoner's dilemma.

Edit: If you allow cybernetic enhancements, implants, etc., you would still need some restrictions, otherwise a shot putter could just mount a trebuchet on their back. The line has to be drawn somewhere, and "no cybernetics at all" is a very natural place to do it.

If the Olympics committee doesn't ban cochlear implants or pacemakers, then we're already past the "no cybernetics" line.

At any rate, I'm personally not concerned about the prisoners dilemma here because the athletes in question are competent adults who can simply choose not to compete or stick to the kiddy leagues/baseline only competitions instead.

It's a prisoner's dilemma.

This is a valid concern. Ideally, sports would gatekeep based on the actual end result concerning health and sustainability. Currently, it is acceptable to destroy your body through non-PED methods but unacceptable to improve your health with PED methods. If health is part of bettering oneself, and that's the point of sports, the current system is using very poor heuristics for it.

Regarding restrictions on cybernetic implants, I believe you might be mistaken about where we are drawing the line right now. We do permit glasses, for instance. So, our boundary is more like "Only cybernetics that enhance people to a perceived human norm," which is also a somewhat natural distinction.

I do think the appeal of sports needs to relate in some way to the human body, and technological advancements should be integrated into that body. Otherwise, it becomes more like a vehicle expo than a competition to enhance human morphology. In the long term, we might decide to move on to less human morphologies, but at that point, I think there will be plenty of room to subdivide by factors such as morphology type and weight class.

The purpose of sports is to teach people to continuously strive to push the limits of human physicality—except, it seems, when it comes to genuinely pushing those limits.

Well, yes. The point is pushing to the limits, and even going too far with that is frowned upon (see: doping scandals). You're arguing for pushing past the limits, and if you do that, you're no longer human. As a transhumanist, you likely believe this is the entire point, but there's a whole bunch of us naked monkeys that would like to remain the way we are, thank you very much.

Well, regarding your affinity for the classically human, I'll just reiterate from a past post that I'm fine with the neo-Amish existing. And am even willing to protect them if they decide to stay human while I race ahead into the unknowns of the alien frontier. But I'm not going to sit by and let "you can be whatever you want to be when you grow up" remain an empty platitude parents tell their children. When I say it I mean it.

Yeah, that seems fair.

Virtually all benefits of sports, to the individual as well as society, come from the latter not the former,

Citation needed

Even experience for programming contests generalize poorly to useful programming, and what about growing more muscles or doing useless things?

I think that professional sports are detriment to the society. As they age, athletes can't compete anymore, many did not accumulate enough money, some can find work as a coach but many do not, and often find themselves in crime.

often find themselves in crime

Do you have any examples of this? I'd genuinely never heard of that before.

It was big in ex-USSR, here's song "We are former sportsmen, current racketeers"

https://youtube.com/watch?v=APPx0VtwYpw

Of course, obviously less an issue in richer countries.

OJ after the civil trial, but he's admittedly somewhat a special case.

I do not miss the point, I simply do not care about the point.

Not that I'd expect you to notice that, you treat transhumanists like they killed both your parents in a deserted alley.

  • -12

More chill, please.

I'd like to say that Arjin has been less than charitable before, to the point of threatening to murder all transhumanists.

In that light, pointing out his jaundiced perspective on the matter is me being about as chill as it gets.

I do not recall any death threats, but be sure to report them if you see them.

Maybe he means this. It was an obvious joke IMO, but if I deserve to be spanked, you can spank me, daddy.

I any case, I was also a bit unchill with "that the person saying the above is also a transhumanist".

It's more about what you're planning to do to my descendants, than what you did to my ancestors, but yeah, I suppose you're right.

It is also about what they did to our ancestors. Do not forget that eugenics was a progressive and transhumanist idea. Unlike backwards conservatives, we progressives understand The Science of Darwinism, and we also have moral strength to do what is right. We will employ population-wide controls to weed out genetic diseases, and make humanity clean once and for all. There will be some eggs broken making this omelette, but the only thing that can cast moral judgement on us is the man at the end of history. And we know for sure that this Man is a transhumanist of unspecified cultural and ethnic background, but who has unlocked the universal [trans]human potential in his true consciousness. This man will thank us for progressing The Work ushering him forth.

Do not forget that eugenics was a progressive and transhumanist idea

Oh, I do bring that up when appropriate, but for the most part I let bygones be bygones.

here is Science insisting that trans women don’t even have an advantage

This isn't a fair characterization of that article. While I agree they're arguing for trans women to be allowed to compete, their argument is primarily that there is not sufficient evidence to demonstrate trans women have an advantage (i.e. a negative claim), not that trans women don't have any advantage (a positive claim).

It's still nonsense though. The male advantage is very well replicated. You can't just assume as a baseline that our current choice of treatment for dysphoria, HRT, perfectly eradicates all differences. You have to prove it. Saying "transwomen are women, therefore they should be assumed to be the same in everything unless proven otherwise" is pure word games.

I'm not even completely against transwomen in women sports, as @rae correctly points out XY people born with androgen resistance become largely indistinguishable from regular women. Though I'm admittedly incredulous about the obvious physical advantages accrued in male puberty and also the neurological advantages during early development (better developed spatial reasoning and reaction times), which seem unlikely to be changed through HRT after the fact.

I'm not even completely against transwomen in women sports, as @rae correctly points out XY people born with androgen resistance become largely indistinguishable.

If we're talking about androgen insensitivity syndrome I don't think it's a given that's the case:

"Individuals with partial forms of AIS show variable degrees of virilization and sexual ambiguity, but even in the face of complete lack of androgen response, some anthropometric features, such as height and the dimensions of bone and teeth, are intermediate between typical male and female patterns (20)."

https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/85/3/1032/2660594

COVID made me aware that actually you can't resolve arguments by quoting scientific articles. There has actually always been a lot of low quality evidence that you can't trust. Researcher bias is a given in this area. Opinion pieces are mere sophistry. Science used to progress by consensus, whereby shared facts would gradually accrue through the process of reproducibility and sufficient status given to integrity and actually being right. Now science is just more polarised politics. There is no loss of status for spouting shit because your tribe will back it up. Actual biologists are failing to defend the most basic facts about biological sex, deliberately muddying longstanding understandings and erecting obvious straw men in pursuit of pleasing their tribe.

Fair critique, I clearly get a bit too salty about those sorts of arguments. I've updated the original post to:

here is Science insisting arguing that the null hypothesis should be that trans women don’t necessarily have an advantage.

I think this accurately reflects the article, but I'm open to further criticism.

As @rae alludes to below, the culture war implications of trans women in sports overshadow any actual concern for female athletes. The attitude of conservatives towards women's sports in my lifetime has been blase at best and condemnatory at worst. The most popular women's sport by far is tennis, but even there, a quick perusal of the world rankings reveals no household names. The biggest women's college event of the year is the NCAA tournament, and that isn't exactly a hot ticket. When Pitt basketball student tickets were hard to come by, the lottery system in place gave you credit for the number of women's games you went to just to boost attendance. The discussion about Title IX below had an air of incredulity about it, suggesting that if it were costing OCR this much to enforce equality among men's and women's sports, perhaps we were better off without it. I doubt many conservatives would care too much either way; they might not exactly rail against the idea of a school being forced to spend ungodly sums on unprofitable women's sports because they spend millions on the football team, but if the law changed tomorrow and colleges started shutting down women's teams or at least restricting them (playing locally as independents rather than flying them all across the ACC footprint or whatever) I imagine the arguments would mirror those they make when one someone suggests WNBA salaries should be on par with the men.

And then when a trans person goes from being ranked 400th nationally to 38th in a sport no one cares about regardless of what gender is playing it because they won some tournament that most people haven't heard of but is supposedly kind of prestigious, women's sports become a sacred thing that must be protected at all costs. I understood that there was real concern in the early days of the trans saga when advocates were arguing that personal identity trumps all and it raised the specter of failed male athletes ticking a box differently just to get a chance to compete, or for scholarship money, or whatever. But the relevant governing bodies imposed testosterone limits, and while we can argue that those limits are too high or too low, we can't argue that no man is meeting the most lenient ones without taking supplemental estrogen. The effects of taking supplemental estrogen are such that it's doubtful that any man would undergo this treatment just for a shot at playing organized sports in a discipline that offers no hope of making any money as a professional. Do they have a competitive advantage? Maybe, but I don't really care. The trans population is small enough that it's probably not a huge difference in the grand scheme of things, and you never hear about the trans athletes who don't win anything. One thing you never hear about is what the actual women athletes have to say about this. Governing bodies don't seem to be too concerned, and polls have repeatedly shown that the competitors aren't either. And if those most at stake don't care, then why should we? After all, when it comes to the priority of things, sports are pretty far down the list.

The trans population is small enough that it's probably not a huge difference in the grand scheme of things, and you never hear about the trans athletes who don't win anything.

The exponential nature of the normal distribution means that relatively small differences in the average ability translate to 100x and more differences in representation when we are talking about one-in-a-million and rarer levels.

There's this unspoken assumption that yeah maybe transwomen on HRT still have like 15% higher lung capacity, but there's like 1 of them for every 300 women athletes, nobody would notice them without looking on purpose. Then you have Lia Thomas and those cyclists and "All three medalists [in 2016 Olympics 800m track] have been found to have the 46,XY karyotype" (despite intersex women being even rarer than transsexuals) and try to convince yourself that this is a series of freak coincidences that definitely don't signify a trend.

No. Math says that if HRT and stuff limit inherent advantages of transwomen to like 15% on average, and there's less than 1% of transwomen athletes, then top 100 women athletes among 8 billion people will be entirely trans.

See also https://putanumonit.com/2015/11/10/003-soccer1/

I don't care to watch them unless there's a particularly memeworthy sprinter warmup video making the rounds, but I fully support my tax subsidies for women's sports only going to biological women, so they can enjoy the social and psychological benefits of teamwork, sportsmanship, discipline, etc. If trans people wanted to make trans sports leagues open to both or birth sex segregated I'd be fine subsidizing those (and ignoring them).

Did you just lay out a basis for fair competition, admit it might not be sufficient and then finish with saying you don't care? Interesting argumentation.

One thing you never hear about is what the actual women athletes have to say about this. Governing bodies don't seem to be too concerned, and polls have repeatedly shown that the competitors aren't either.

Here's another one.

One thing you never hear about is what the actual women athletes have to say about this.

Because they're justifiably terrified of being ostracised and/or losing their livelihoods.

Tennessee-based player Jennifer Castro, who competes in the [disc golf] Amateur Masters Women 40+ category, says that “I personally know of women who refuse to sign up for events if a transgender is playing, not because we hate them but because we feel we have zero chance, so what is the point of wasting our money on registration fees?”

In late August, Castro became so exasperated by the [Professional Disc Golf Association]’s permissive stance that she mounted a sort of sting operation, presenting herself anonymously to the organization as a transgender woman seeking to compete in a female category. After Castro’s inquiry was routed to the PDGA’s medical committee, outgoing board member (and five-time Women’s Open World Champion) Elaine King wrote back with the following advice:

If you meet the criteria to play in gender-based divisions then you can register with the PDGA as “F” or “female.” You are under no obligation to discuss your personal information with anyone. No one may challenge your eligibility to play in a female division unless they can provide evidence that you may not meet the requirements. Note that a player’s appearance is NOT a basis for any challenge … Some transgender women have voluntarily elected to provide proof of their eligibility to the Medical Committee in confidence. In doing so, any potential question about their eligibility to play in that division could be quickly settled. However this is purely voluntary and not required.

In the days since, Castro has gone on a very public Facebook campaign, citing King’s message as evidence that, except in cases where a player who’s already listed as male seeks to change status to female, “transgenders don’t need to submit anything upfront. [The PDGA] is just taking their word that they meet the criteria medically.”

At a recent Nashville tournament, Castro reports, her sponsor, a small local company called Momentary Bliss discs, politely suggested that she take a less “hostile” approach with her anti-PGDA commentary. Castro refused, and the partnership was ended.

According to one source I spoke with, several board members are sympathetic with the complaints of women who want male bodies excluded from protected female categories. But they also feel reluctant to act unless their stance is publicly supported by a critical mass of high-profile players. For their part, on the other hand, many top players reportedly don’t feel they can provide that public support until the board signals clearly that plain talk about male and female biology won’t be denounced as transphobic.

It’s a collective-action problem, in other words. According to Jane and Mary, about 80 percent of the women on tour oppose the inclusion of male-bodied players in female divisions (a figure that’s admittedly impossible for me to confirm). But no one in this majority group wants to be among the first to come forward, for fear of being labelled a bigot—thereby allowing the other 20 percent to hold sway.

Good article, thank you for sharing.

The most popular women's sport by far is tennis, but even there, a quick perusal of the world rankings reveals no household names.

I mean, isn't that more that the very well known Williams sisters didn't really have any obvious successors for the public eye?

Also Emma Raducanu’s US open victory in the US Open in Summer 2021 was a HUGE deal in the UK. She instantly became one of the biggest sporting personalities in the country. And such an underdog story!

How much of that is the lack of equivalent success in the Men's game recently, though? I feel that a hypothetical Michael Raducanu on the same run gets lauded for longer.

Novak Djokovic seems fairly well known.

With the talk of tran mma competing as women can someone give me a run down on how this ever came to pass? I would have assumed mma = not woke. And trans men would have always been banned from fighting women.

Combat sports are subject to the jurisdiction of the various state athletic commissions. The matches themselves are scheduled independently by promoters (the biggest MMA promoter is UFC) and are supervised by sanctioning bodies approved by the athletic commission. The actual rules the commission enforces are state law and determined by the legislature. Only two trans women to date have fought in unsanctioned MMA matches, the most prominent of whom was Fallon Fox, who amassed a 5–1 record between 2012 and 2014. All that happened there was that she was granted a license by the California Athletic Commission after she had proven she had undergone all the necessary procedures (and the commission required a full sex change), and a promoter scheduled the fights. She was later granted a license in Florida. MMA people were pissed but it wasn't MMA people who had the authority to make the decision, it was state bureaucrats and individual promoters. The inherent danger of combat sports means they aren't like basketball or whatever where anyone can rent a gym and stage a tournament, and the increased level of state supervision has historically led to a system that was based more on independent promotions rather than organized leagues or even widely-recognized sanctioning bodies (which is why boxing has 743 sanctioning bodies and title fights result in the awarding of 15 belts).

An mtf tranny in MMA was actually one of the earlier men in women's sports controversies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallon_Fox

An mtf tranny

Don't do this. Directly using slurs (as in "use," not "mention") is a direct violation of several of our rules.

Didn't realize it was considered a slur here, sorry.

Come on, dude. It's a slur everywhere. Nobody uses it except to be insulting. (No, don't point to the handful of trans people who use it to refer to themselves. You also can't call black people "niggers" here just because some black people use it amongst themselves.)

Not objecting to your original modpost, but I think you're incorrectly excluding the "is clueless" category here. This strikes me as a thing where lots of people are clueless, and more than that as a thing where there's a fixed supply of clues.

Yeah, the original modpost even makes for a very nice clue.

Personally, I think banning slurs here is a good idea, just because it's really hard to regulate the actual principle.

Which is, you can use whatever language you want as long as you don't start wielding it as a tool of war. We're fine with calling ourselves "tranny gayfucks" or whatever because we know each other's motives well enough to have faith in it's lightheartedness. Or on 4chan because threats aren't credible anyway and desensitizing to toxic language is fun.

A semi-anonymous internet culture war thread where you're not supposed to be waging culture war is a trickier situation.

Nah, it's just what spending too much time on 4chan normalizes

I do not report you because I practically never do but I would like to ask you not to use basic slurs. I don't care about it but others may care and this poisons the site for neophytes. Let's not slide into /r/CultureWarRoundup even faster.

Fracturing someone’s skull is absolutely nuts. It is the hardest bone in the body, it’s extremely strong, very few people on earth can do that spontaneously barehanded.

My understanding is that’s virtually unheard of in women’s combat sports, and very uncommon even in top level men’s combat sports.

Also, in absolute terms Fox sucked and all of Fox's wins are against nobodies, the only time Fox fought a UFC-caliber (but mediocre at best, by UFC standards) female fighter, Fox got TKO'd.

This has been a bit of a theme, in which it turns out an average man transitioning will go from a 50th percentile athlete as a male to a 95th percentile as a man but doesn't necessarily automatically win all the Olympic Golds ever compared to equivalent female outliers. Then again, the lack of elite athletes transitioning doesn't provide us with the opportunity to prove the rather obvious conclusion that MTF Lebron annihilates the WNBA.

The attitude of conservatives towards women's sports in my lifetime has been blase at best and condemnatory at worst.

This frequently made point is over stated, at least unless by 'conservatives' you mean the online presence rather than the actual constituents . Conservatives with daughters want their daughters to be able to compete and while I've met plenty of liberal parents with kids in sports nearly every conservatives parents I've met has had their kids do sports. Sports in general are conservative leaning(this again is not to say that most normie left leaning people aren't also involved)

I doubt many conservatives would care too much either way; they might not exactly rail against the idea of a school being forced to spend ungodly sums on unprofitable women's sports because they spend millions on the football team

I always find this comparison facile, the men's sports are profitable, they subsidize other parts of the school not the other way around.

But the relevant governing bodies imposed testosterone limits, and while we can argue that those limits are too high or too low, we can't argue that no man is meeting the most lenient ones without taking supplemental estrogen.

And without the conservative railing this might not have happened, and it still doesn't seem fair. Fairness really matters in sports, violating it is a big deal. Did you actually ever play sports growing up? It takes a substantial amount of time to be competitive, undermining that with unfair practices is crushing. You can see how upset unfairness makes whenever a referee makes a call that people think is incorrect.

One thing you never hear about is what the actual women athletes have to say about this.

Of course you don't, they'd be canceled.

And if those most at stake don't care, then why should we? After all, when it comes to the priority of things, sports are pretty far down the list.

Like all appeals to "Why do you even care about this? It's so unimportant". The response is obvious. If it's not important and we care more than you do then let us have our way. If you think it is actually important enough to fight over then drop this shaming act.

Like all appeals to "Why do you even care about this? It's so unimportant". The response is obvious. If it's not important and we care more than you do then let us have our way. If you think it is actually important enough to fight over then drop this shaming act.

There is actually an asymmetry here that invalidates this argument, because the pro-trans contingent and the anti-trans one claim to be defending different terminal values rather than arguing in opposite directions over the same one. The pro-trans camp will say that trans representation in women's sports is important because [grand matters of fairness and justice in our society]; the anti-trans camp, on the other hand, generally says that no trans representation is important because [small subset of women can't win prizes at little league competition anymore]. There's nothing particularly inconsistent about saying that caring a great deal about the former is natural and caring a great deal about the latter is suspect. Now, of course from our vantage point it is of course clear that the anti-trans camp actually also is in it for grand matters of how our society is structured, rather than a weird dogged obsession with giving cis women a small chance to win that cup; but game theory forces them to dissimulate and assert even when pressed that they are really in it for [giving more nice things to women] (a societally comparatively accepted goal) rather than [giving fewer nice things to mtf trans] (a goal that is easily painted as vindictive or outright Voldemortian).

The pro-trans camp will say that trans representation in women's sports is important because [grand matters of fairness and justice in our society];

Allow me to rephrase this as fairly as you have represented my position. The pro-trans camp tries very hard not to actually think of the ground truth of what transgenderism means. If they do the farce of trying to hold in their head that gender is both a social construct and also an innate characteristic will cause painful cognitive dissonance. So when a topic, like sports, comes up that noticing the physical reality of trans people comes up they just obfuscate and point to the applause lights of "We're doing something important to blah blah blah past injustice, blah blah blah equality blah blah blah representation". It doesn't matter even a little bit to them that the ground truth of what they're arguing for is impossible to justify. That including trans women in women's sports defeats the entire purpose of the division. It is not about women's sports at all to you, it is about dissolving the category and you do not care about the costs.

[giving fewer nice things to mtf trans] (a goal that is easily painted as vindictive or outright Voldemortian).

It is my opinion that there is literally no such thing as an MTF trans person. It is a made up category that will not exist in two decades. It is incoherent to reason about giving or taking things away from people who share a common memetic delusion. You and your allies have created this suffering you are attempting remedy.

there is literally no such thing as an MTF trans person.

I don’t think I understand you. There is obviously a group of natal males who feel something so viscerally that absolutely derailing their lives seems like a worthy alternative. I know several of them. Regardless of how you feel about their social and medical interventions, isn’t this a category?

It is incoherent to reason about giving or taking things away from people who share a common memetic delusion.

How so? We group people by beliefs all the time: Democrats, conspiracy theorists, children who believe in Santa. Sometimes the beliefs are openly unfalsifiable. It is perfectly reasonable to discuss Christians as a group.

I don’t think I understand you. There is obviously a group of natal males who feel something so viscerally that absolutely derailing their lives seems like a worthy alternative. I know several of them. Regardless of how you feel about their social and medical interventions, isn’t this a category?

I've gone through this in another thread here but the general point is that this is a matter of memes and not reality. Men derailing their lives on totally false beliefs is not new and does not prove the beliefs. Otherwise the existence of monestaries would prove the existence of God. No one can transition from male to female there is no path between these two states.

How so? We group people by beliefs all the time: Democrats, conspiracy theorists, children who believe in Santa. Sometimes the beliefs are openly unfalsifiable. It is perfectly reasonable to discuss Christians as a group.

Christians are people who believe in the divinity of Jesus christ, this is more akin to being told to call Jewish people "the chosen people", it implies I agree with the position. If you want I will admit to the existence of males who desire to be females.

MtF/trans woman (and FtM/trans men) are the commonly used terms for the phenomenon. Are there any other terms that you can use that would be understood? Otherwise you can add it to the list of many terms like horseshoe crab (not actually a crab), peanuts (actually a legume), mincemeat pie (has no meat), etc. If you tried to call peanuts “pealegumes” people would just be confused, even if you’d be right.

All models are wrong, but some models are useful - FtM/MtF (and FtNB/MtNB) is a handy way to identify a trans person. With older folks or those less steeped in LGBT issues, “trans man” or “trans woman” often provoke confusion - sometimes they think a trans woman is an FtM and vice-versa, while the full “female to male” terminology makes it explicit that the person started off as female and now appears male, or is attempting to, even if their biological sex isn’t actually male.

I'll ask again -- if we deliberately want to underline the (purported) sex/gender dichotomy rather than play motte and bailey with whichever ones convenient, shouldn't we try very hard to avoid mixing the two in the terminology we use to label people doing gender transitions?

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Suppose there is a crossroads in death valley that has no nearby resources. No access to water, the land is not arable, the soil makes building anything difficult and there are no natural resources. It would be irresponsible to name that place "gold hills California". It would imply to credulous people that there was a some good reason to move to this inhospitable place only for these prospective prospectors to live unnecessarily difficult lives. Not only is there no gold but the territory seems designed to create human suffering for its occupants.

You're saying "this crossroads exists, we might want to be able to refer to it, and us prospectors here call it gold hills". And you're right that such a territory plainly exists. But your proposed map of the territory seems to me to imply false and dangerous hope to travelers. And your recruitment drives at my kid's school to go dig fruitlessly in the dirt out there for the promise of riches is, I think, actively harming people.

And I harbor no ill will to the people if "gold hills". They're fellow citizens whom I believe to have bought into a false hope. They deserve to be helped, pitied and loved. But the continued delusion helps no one.

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The term "peanuts" is a historical accident. They weren't deliberately named "peanuts" by someone who knew very well that they weren't nuts by anyone else's standards, but wanted to force others to treat them as nuts anyway.

Saying MtF trans people don’t exist is a bizarre viewpoint - what do you call the obviously real number of people who are born male, have gender dysphoria, and are transitioning to have the characteristics of females by taking hormones and going through surgery? Those people clearly exist, and MtF is an apt descriptor, as they are going from male to female - in some cases successfully enough to pass, in some cases not. The “MtF” term is useful to distinguish between MtFs and FtMs - I don’t see any commonly used alternative words that avoid confusion (many times I’ve had to explain to people the direction of transitioning of people I know - e.g. X used to be a girl and now is a boy).

Also trans people have existed since recorded history, there’s ancient Sumerians trans priestesses called Gala, the Roman Emperor Elagabalus, and kathoeys (aka Thai ladyboys) are not a recent western phenomenon.

I’m a trans woman (so not surprisingly in the pro-trans camp) and I have thought very hard about the ground truth of transgenderism, and am exceedingly aware of the physical reality of being trans - the entire point of transitioning is to have fewer of the physical traits of your natal sex, as those are what’s causing psychological distress. There’s nothing requiring cognitive dissonance there, HRT and gender reassignment surgery do make you take on the characteristics of the opposite sex, albeit not all and with varying degrees of success.

The social construct of gender is a very real thing in that other people will identify you as a man or a woman and treat you differently, and that may not align with your preferences. If you transition, your goal is then to be perceived as the opposite sex (again, you may not be successful). I don’t see how this requires any cognitive dissonance, or creates any contradictions with my position towards sports, which is allowing trans women in women’s sports if they didn’t go through male puberty or if it can be medically proven that they have no physical advantage resulting from their natal sex.

Saying MtF trans people don’t exist is a bizarre viewpoint - what do you call the obviously real number of people who are born male, have gender dysphoria, and are transitioning to have the characteristics of females by taking hormones and going through surgery?

Motte and bailey on "exist".

Motte: Someone who I am trying to apply the term to exists.

Bailey: Someone who the term accurately describes exists.

Also trans people have existed since recorded history, there’s ancient Sumerians trans priestesses called Gala, the Roman Emperor Elagabalus, and kathoeys (aka Thai ladyboys) are not a recent western phenomenon.

While I'm not familiar with these particular examples, having experience with pop-sci discourse, and the arguments progressive activists use, I'm going to pull a Nybbler here and say "none of these people were trans".

Here's an interview with Paul Vasey, the guy who brought the Fa’afafine into the spotlight, throughout which he explains how these sort of groups are routinely misportrayed as trans, even though they never pretended to be anything other than men.

There's something of the motte and bailey about your comment. The motte 'trans people have always existed', if presented without qualifications, sweeps a lot of metaphysical assumptions under the rug that people are liable to take on, eg that it's some kind of fundamental human category, that people can be born in the wrong body etc.

The bailey is that trans are 'people with dysphoria who benefit from medical treatment so they feel more congruent with their bodies'.

I accept that their are people who experience gender dysphoria and that a proportion may be content with changing their sex appearance. But there are also people that experience dysphoria even after transition. The simple truth of the matter is we don't know the effectiveness of transition as a treatment in terms of long term follow up, especially for the recent cohort of people. In particular we don't have any evidence against a counter-factual such as alternative treatments.

Also it seems likely to me that the popular trans narratives of the motte are actually contributing to the dysphoria bailey.

Ed: well, that's embarrassing appears I have the motte and bailey the wrong way round...

Saying MtF trans people don’t exist is a bizarre viewpoint - what do you call the obviously real number of people who are born male, have gender dysphoria, and are transitioning to have the characteristics of females by taking hormones and going through surgery? Those people clearly exist, and MtF is an apt descriptor, as they are going from male to female - in some cases successfully enough to pass, in some cases not. The “MtF” term is useful to distinguish between MtFs and FtMs - I don’t see any commonly used alternative words that avoid confusion (many times I’ve had to explain to people the direction of transitioning of people I know - e.g. X used to be a girl and now is a boy).

There is no epistemicly coherent method to differentiate between the experience of being a man who actually has the internal experience of a woman and being a man who mistakenly believes they have the internal experience of a woman but in fact has typical male internal experiences. The difference between the two interpretations of experience is purely memetic, as one of these interpretations leads to pathology it is a harmful meme. Taking hormones and mimicking the opposite sex is a behavior and esthetic decision and has no bearing on the person's sex. Just their presentation.

Also trans people have existed since recorded history, there’s ancient Sumerians trans priestesses called Gala, the Roman Emperor Elagabalus, and kathoeys (aka Thai ladyboys) are not a recent western phenomenon.

These are other memes and are nothing like actually transitioning from one sex to the other. In every one of these cultures this is a third state, usually of weaker men who could not provide being used by the other men rather than being simply killed.

You don’t transition because you have the internal experience of the opposite sex - you transition because you have distress at having the experience of your natal sex. You don’t need any exposure to the modern trans gender discourse to develop gender dysphoria, simply existing in a society with different genders is enough.

Trans people don’t believe they are actually changing their sex, which is which the term “transsexual” was abandoned in favour of “transgender”. But hormones are not purely aesthetic and feminisation/masculinisation of the brain is actually scientifically observable - not only on MRI scans but also on test scores, e.g. post HRT, visuo spatial ability is enhanced in FtMs, while verbal working memory is enhanced in MtFs (see https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306453020301402).

If anything, I’d say trans people experience distress at their internal experience not aligning with their desired gender and post HRT it does - many anecdotal reports of how your mental state changes on estrogen or testosterone, not only from trans people but cis people who also undergo HRT (e.g. men with low T who report increased energy, confidence, etc).

As someone who has dysphoria and tried many ways to deal with it, I have yet to see any treatment that’s better than transitioning - it’s the current medical consensus for a reason - but if you know of any, feel free to link them.

Trans people don’t believe they are actually changing their sex, which is which the term “transsexual” was abandoned in favour of “transgender”.

Shouldn't it be "MtW" then?

(This is not a semantic complaint, it cuts quite deeply to the tendency to mix-and-match sex and gender as is most convenient for the given situation; ie. changing the name of "Women's sports" to "Female's sports" would probably not generate an acceptable situation for those who think that male trans people should be competing in those.)

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You don’t transition because you have the internal experience of the opposite sex - you transition because you have distress at having the experience of your natal sex.

This both not at all universally the definition trans advocates use and in fact a minority opinion(see truscum discourse) as well as a phrasing that obscures more than it enlightens. What is distress? What are the experiences of a natal sex and how do you differentiate them from those of the complimentary sex having only experienced one of them(or in the case of prepubescent children neither of them)? Memes are powerful things, anyone in the wrong side of a social media pile on can attest to their ability to induce distress.

Trans people don’t believe they are actually changing their sex, which is which the term “transsexual” was abandoned in favour of “transgender”.

I was tempted to just respond to this part because it's all the is really necessary for the local debate. So why the push for trans women in women's sports? If we're all in agreement the males and females are and remain different and these differences are the obvious motivating factor for the different leagues(as well as the vast majority of the sex based discrimination tolerated and mandated in our societies) then what possible ground could you be standing on?

But hormones are not purely aesthetic and feminisation/masculinisation of the brain is actually scientifically observable - not only on MRI scans but also on test scores, e.g. post HRT, visuo spatial ability is enhanced in FtMs, while verbal working memory is enhanced in MtFs

I do not contest that hormones have huge impacts on many things we care about. All the more reason to be careful with them. And to make my position more clear, I have no actual problem with consenting adult trans humanist practices, if men want to take hormones to be more feminine, bolt tits on any part of their body or hell, more exotic stuff, more power to you. What I reject is appropriating a place in society that was not carved out for you and the attempt to colonize my mind and the mind of my kin with your memes. It is not normal to do these things, and that's fine abnormality is fine, but there is such a thing as normal that should be maintained. It's the path most likely to lead to good ends, deviating from it should be done with full knowledge of the consequences and I am very unimpressed with the signposts.

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You don’t need any exposure to the modern trans gender discourse to develop gender dysphoria, simply existing in a society with different genders is enough.

This is rather misleading. While it's true in the sense that even without exposure to the discourse, there will still be individuals exhibiting dysphoria (as proven by their documented existence prior to them being exposed in mass media), it's also true that exposure to the discourse absolutely dwarfs whatever factors make someone transgender absent the exposure, as shown by the massive increase in referrals to gender clinics, and the flip in age/gender ratios of people being referred there. The fact that we can observe something similar with other disorders like anorexia, multiple personality / DID, TikTok Tourette's, or outright delusions like recovered memories or alien abductions, would also indicate that this isn't merely a case of more people coming out due to increased acceptance.

But hormones are not purely aesthetic and feminisation/masculinisation of the brain is actually scientifically observable - not only on MRI scans but also on test scores, e.g. post HRT, visuo spatial ability is enhanced in FtMs, while verbal working memory is enhanced in MtFs (see https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306453020301402).

If anything, I’d say trans people experience distress at their internal experience not aligning with their desired gender and post HRT it does - many anecdotal reports of how your mental state changes on estrogen or testosterone, not only from trans people but cis people who also undergo HRT (e.g. men with low T who report increased energy, confidence, etc).

That sounds plausible, and even detransitioners talk about it, but it's an open question what it all sums up to in the grand scheme of things. For example, how come it inevitably turns out that 90% of women in communities like this turn out to be trans? How come trans bros hardly ever show up?

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As I've said elsewhere, I think phrases like 'anti-trans camp' are low-resolution and actually serve as a subtle ad-hominen.

To lay out my beliefs on the matter, I think we need a much deeper frame to understand this issue. For me the very phrase 'trans-person', while it can serve as a descriptor, or an identity, is actually fundamentally question-begging. I don't see empirical evidence proving a fundamental category of trans person, beyond the self defined identity. I see different groups within trans that potentially have little to do with each other, including autogynephiles, dysphoric youth, gender non-conforming people, gay people and people with a mixture of mental variation including autism, obsessive people and those with other comorbidities such as trauma, anxiety and depression. And I see evidence of social contagion.

Which is not to say there are not well adjusted trans people who are content, and I am personally willing to meet them as they wish to be met, but in my opinion, phrases like anti-trans, while they might describe a certain demographic, are also fundamentally misleading, and are potentially deliberately reducing the resolution of the issues.

the anti-trans camp, on the other hand, generally says that no trans representation is important because [small subset of women can't win prizes at little league competition anymore].

The terminal value that I am defending is "MTFs are not women and should not be treated as such". Which obviously entails their exclusion from women's sports as well.

I imagine that the majority of conservatives feel the same, but they've been browbeaten into not admitting this in public discourse.

Right, I understand that. The point I'm trying to make is that "why do you care so much?" is not inconsistent or hypocritical: it's just trying to get the conservative interlocutor into admitting this after all (or force them into contortions that will make them look ridiculous to spectators).

There's nothing particularly inconsistent about saying that caring a great deal about the former is natural and caring a great deal about the latter is suspect.

Sure there is, you can't tell other people what they find important.

[giving more nice things to women] / [giving fewer nice things to mtf trans]

It's disingenuous to try to boil the debate down to these things.

Sure there is, you can't tell other people what they find important.

Surely I can express an opinion on what it's reasonable for them to find important.

It's disingenuous to try to boil the debate down to these things.

I'm not trying to "boil down" the debate to those statements, but just using them as glosses for whatever the positions actually are (which probably gets lost at the soundbite level anyway). As far as I can see, the preferred narrative of the anti-trans camp here is that they seek to protect women's sports from trans incursion (are you disputing that?), and if one side says that we need to do a thing in order to right a historical injustice against a small minority that is subjected to suffering far in excess from that experienced by most people in our society, while the other says we need to not do that thing in order to have fairness in women's sports, then I figure that as a neutral and largely indifferent bystander I'd think that the former side has a pretty good case that they care about their cause because it's important but the other side should not care so much about theirs because it's unimportant. Why do you figure are the people against MtF in women's sports largely saying that they are doing it to protect women's sports? Are you saying we shouldn't take them by their word, and instead imagine that they are fighting for a cause equally as grandiose?

Surely I can express an opinion on what it's reasonable for them to find important.

You can do whatever you want, but what does it bring? You think they're being unreasonable, they think you're being unreasonable... is there a way to move this conversation forward in any way? Or does it make more sense to accept it's important to everyone involved for different reasons, and go on from there?

and if one side says that we need to do a thing in order to right a historical injustice against a small minority that is subjected to suffering far in excess from that experienced by most people in our society, while the other says we need to not do that thing in order to have fairness in women's sports, then I figure that as a neutral and largely indifferent bystander

If this is how you're describing the controversy then you're neither neutral, indifferent, nor a bystander.

The other side doesn't accept the first side's premises, it would be just as trivial to paint the pro-trans side as unreasonable if you "neutrally" described everything starting with the "anti-trans" premise and rejected any possibility to have any of them questioned.

Why do you figure are the people against MtF in women's sports largely saying that they are doing it to protect women's sports? Are you saying we shouldn't take them by their word, and instead imagine that they are fighting for a cause equally as grandiose?

Why are you ignoring all the other things they are saying? It is true that women's sports will be destroyed if it becomes an open category, so they're correct when they say that. But the grandiose question that they do bring up, which for some reason you've avoided mentioning is "what is a woman?".

I should state at the outset that I'm agnostic on this issue and don't particularly care what is ultimately decided. If the NCAA decides to ban all trans athletes I'm okay with that, as it's their prerogative. My main concern was that a standard of mere self-identification would lead to a problem of moral hazard, but the testosterone limits made the cost high enough that I don't see that being an issue. When I refer to conservatives I'm referring to a combination of real people I actually talk to and mainstream conservative outlets. I would never base any categorical statements on what people are saying online. The comments sections of things like Fox News are usually a decent indication of unfiltered sentiment, but hardly something to base broad statements on.

And without the conservative railing this might not have happened, and it still doesn't seem fair. Fairness really matters in sports, violating it is a big deal. Did you actually ever play sports growing up? It takes a substantial amount of time to be competitive, undermining that with unfair practices is crushing. You can see how upset unfairness makes whenever a referee makes a call that people think is incorrect.

Fairness in sports is entirely relative and is completely related to whatever objectives are trying to be achieved. For instance, some people complain that the new MLB rules favoring baserunners are unfair to pitchers but that misses the point. Yes, they increase stolen bases. But that is the point. Any rule changes to promote offense are inherently unfair to the defense and vice-versa. But there's no abstract "correct" rule system. The entire point of the rules is to create a competitive and entertaining product. So while people complain about unfair ref calls, the complaints are about the calls, not the underlying rules. If I say it wasn't defensive holding I'm saying that because it didn't look like the player was held, not because I think the NFL was wrong to try to limit the impact of Mel Blount in 1978. Here we're just talking about eligibility requirements. Is it fair that the Olympics now not only allows professional athletes but specifically guns for them? Amateurism was supposed to be a key component, but there wasn't too much consternation when they started allowing pros in the '90s. There's still some controversy, but it's more along the lines of whether the NHL should shut down for two weeks to accommodate the Olympics, not whether the games should be for amateurs.

I always find this comparison facile, the men's sports are profitable, they subsidize other parts of the school not the other way around.

Football and basketball teams with established fandoms and winning records subsidize the rest of the school, and I suppose it's only fair for women's sports to be part of that.

Men's curling is no more profitable than women's curling.

Sure, but it's never the curling team getting blinged out locker rooms that are posted next to run down parts of campus to try and make it sound like money is being misappropriated. I really don't have that much of an issue with the popular teams subsidizing other teams, It's the entitlement to it that I find distasteful. The fact that people genuinely seem indignant that very profitable departments have nice stuff and then have the gall to declare that the profitable departs don't deserve some of the profit they bring in. It goes right down to the fundamentals of the left world view that just rubs me the wrong way, it's always this sneering belief that people and groups can't possibly deserve to be more successful than others. That those on top must have cheated others out through some zero sum rat fucking because it's incomprehensible that other people can just be excellent and produce genuine value.

Men's curling is no more profitable than women's curling.

Are you sure about that? I'll have to look up some actual numbers, but my intuition would be that just as men's basketball is more profitable than the entirely unprofitable cost center of women's basketball, so too would men's baseball lose less money than women's softball (though both are still unprofitable). Anecdotallly at my uni the dorms were really close to the baseball stadium and I always saw bigger crowds at men's baseball than women's softball.

Here's my local university's sports budgets to flip through. Football was up about $58 million, basketball about $10 million, men's hockey broke even (up $170K even!), and everything else is a fiscal drain. Somewhat amusingly, this school won both women's ice hockey and women's volleyball nationally, even set volleyball attendance records, and still lost millions on both sports. Maybe the reputational gains and fun that students have makes up for it, maybe not, but you've got to spend it somewhere due to Title IX, so I guess they decided to pour money into the women's sports that they might have success in. Things like golf, soccer, track, tennis, and swimming are money losers on both sides in fairly comparable amounts.

Just one school, but I bet it's a common pattern for schools with power conference football teams. Football pays for everything else and then some.

This is exactly the analysis that converted me from loathing college football to a begrudging support. I still don't enjoy the hype, but I can now see the good things football programs bring to the environment. I want people to be able to do fencing, curling, archery, golf, soccer, track, etc. I think those are excellent channels for character development. If football makes all of that possible, then I support football.

Baseball is still pretty popular though, most sports probably attract no crowd at all, men or women.

One thing you never hear about is what the actual women athletes have to say about this.

Of course you don't, they'd be canceled.

Case in point: Riley Gaines. She is the swimmer whose trophy was literally taken from her in order to give to Thomas. She's been speaking out about this issue and has prompted protests and physical confrontations when she's spoken in California.

Cancelled from the left, certainly, but as these things go, it's only the people who are willing to become the mascot for the right that are willing to risk cancellation from the left. Which is then used against their credibility and to question their motives.

EDIT: Sniped by @badnewsbandit with the reference to the same woman.

Riley Gaines's problem wasn't that she criticized the eligibility requirements but that she went full-bore conservative culture warrior. She appeared at Donald Trump rally and in a Rand Paul campaign ad. The event she was confronted at was sponsored by Turning Point USA, not exactly an uncontroversial group.

Cancelled from the left, certainly, but as these things go, it's only the people who are willing to become the mascot for the right that are willing to risk cancellation from the left. Which is then used against their credibility and to question their motives.

Martina Navratilova's been saying the same basic thing as Gaines but she still has her commentating job at The Tennis Channel and gets interviewed in mainstream news and sports outlets about other things without any throat clearing or even mention of her opinions on trans athletes.

Riley Gaines's problem wasn't that she criticized the eligibility requirements but that she went full-bore conservative culture warrior.

...

Martina Navratilova's been saying the same basic thing as Gaines

And is being attacked for it just the same.

But if you can find a prominent progressive activist defending her right to make those arguments, and only criticizing her choice of platforms, please give a link. It's still disingenuous, given the cancellation attempts stemming from this issue, but at least it would make some sense.

I don't see how a trans journalist writing an op-ed criticizing her approaches cancellation.

But if you can find a prominent progressive activist defending her right to make those arguments, and only criticizing her choice of platforms, please give a link.

This isn't the litmus test. Prominent journalists don't, as a matter of course, write op-eds defending other people's positions.

I don't see how a trans journalist writing an op-ed criticizing her approaches cancellation.

Wait, if this solely about cancellation, not the reason for why progressives are attacking her, than your original statement makes no sense. Why would sponsors drop her for supporting one of the 2 mainstream political factions in their society.

This isn't the litmus test. Prominent journalists don't, as a matter of course, write op-eds defending other people's positions.

I said activists, not journalists. It doesn't have to be an op-ed, can be a blog post, a tweet, or a youtube video for all I care.

One thing you never hear about is what the actual women athletes have to say about this.

Of course you don't, they'd be canceled.

Well sometimes they can find a niche and other times they are very physically cancelled.

The difference between male and female athleticism is not minor competitive advantage. Most top high school male times beat most female olympian across almost all sports. I'll find the website if someone is interested.

https://boysvswomen.com

I'd think that someone posting here would be more cautious about making arguments that presume that the opinions of a few people are representative of some kind of consensus. The fact that some people have filed lawsuits is no more dispositive than me arguing that because Brittney Griner, Megan Rapinoe, and Billie Jean King came out in favor of trans athletes then that counts as some kind of consensus. I made that comment because I don't see any measured attempt to find out if a consensus actually exists. I see people saying that their participation is unfair but they're not saying this as competitors, or parents, or even fans, just as people with no stake in it but who don't like the idea of it. I have no problem with a ban personally, but if one is implemented it should be at the request of those who are actually impacted, not because of culture war busybodies. I've seen no attempts or even calls for at least running some kind of poll to get a pulse on the situation, just people who have already made up their minds about the appropriate solution.

here is Science insisting that trans women don’t even have an advantage.

This includes the line:

No, Vilain says. The lab studies of athletes’ hemoglobin and muscle mass say nothing about whether trans women can run faster, jump higher, or throw farther. “You have to demonstrate that before excluding” transgender athletes, he says.

I'm probably preaching to the choir, but this is utterly backwards. The default is that men can't compete in women's sports. If you want to assert that some set of procedures the man undergoes makes it fair for them to compete, that is what has to be demonstrated. One study with n = 8 doesn't cut it. I'm sure that a wokeist would screech in rage that obviously transwomen are women, but such claims are just definitional assertions that are not-even-wrong and convey no information.

That a policy is discriminatory simply cannot suffice as an argument against it, particularly when the whole point of the category is to implement a form of discrimination!

This is true, and we could have many additional splits when it comes to sports. In fact, we do have other splits. An obvious one is by age (minimum or maximum), but we also have teams composed of only students from one school or university, we have weight classes in combat sports, etc. The goal is to make competitions that are relatively fair and competitive, although of course some people have massive natural advantages over others like being tall in basketball, and AFAIK there isn't really a "average height basketball league." It all seems somewhat arbitrary to me, to be honest, but I think the solution is something like a trans division (probably not enough population to make it competitive though).

I'm probably preaching to the choir, but this is utterly backwards. The default is that men can't compete in women's sports. If you want to assert that some set of procedures the man undergoes makes it fair for them to compete, that is what has to be demonstrated. One study with n = 8 doesn't cut it. I'm sure that a wokeist would screech in rage that obviously transwomen are women, but such claims are just definitional assertions that are not-even-wrong and convey no information.

I think even this is too charitable. Imagine if we proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that one-armed men perform the same in basketball as women. Should they be allowed to play in the WNBA? No... of course not, because they are men! They still had this advantage, it doesn't matter at all that they have some sort of compensating disadvantage, this is simply not how this works. The exact same thing is true for trans women.

That's fair as a point of view; I'm talking about the absolute bare minimum to consider allowing it.

AFAIK there isn't really a "average height basketball league."

There was a minor professional basketball league, the World Basketball League, that existed from 1988 to 1992. It limited players to under 6'5" initially (later changed to 6'7").

Many cities also have men's recreational basketball leagues that limit players' heights to under some limit, e.g. 6'0". I guess sub-6-footers need something to do while their taller counterparts are crushing puss on Tinder. The competition in men's rec-leagues can be pretty stiff—many ex-pros and elite amateurs—even in the sub-6'0" leagues.

In American hand-egg, there's also a collegiate "sprint football" league that limits players to 178 pounds or less.

The competition in men's rec-leagues can be pretty stiff—many ex-pros and elite amateurs—even in the sub-6'0" leagues.

This jumps out as soon as you start to take any game or sport remotely seriously. The people that are good are really good, even at local levels. If you live in a city with a few hundred thousand people, the best guys are probably going to kick your ass at whatever hobby you pick, even if you're pretty decent. The average guy isn't very good at running, lifting, fighting, or gaming, but there are enough guys that are that you find out about levels to the game pretty quick.

Somewhat overlapping with this conversation, there are many less women that are competitive at any of these, even in things that are participate in at similar rates. If you go to a local running race, there are usually going to be about as many women as men, but there are usually many fewer women that are at something like ~70% of age standard.

AFAIK there isn't really a "average height basketball league."

The Seattle Chinese Athletic Association has an Asian Basketball League

SCAA recognized the difficulty of its teams in competing against other high-school age clubs from other city leagues. The formation of ABL provided a better athletic experience by allowing players to compete against other players of similar skill level.

It's not quite a height limit, but it's close. There's a similar adult alumni league for past participants in the teenage league.

Asian-Americans aren't much shorter, on average, than other races and there are a decent number of big Asian dudes. When we're talking local basketball like this, you're apt to wind up with the dominant bigs just being 6'4" dudes rather than 6'7" dudes, which is a very different situation than a height cap! This actually seems like it lines up more with how sex segregation works out than something like weight classes.

A relatively small average difference can produce a relatively large difference when comparing how many are at some point near the tail of the distribution.

Sure, that's why I said that you'd see smaller bigs. Am I underestimating the effect in a way that isn't obvious to me?

Do people on both side of the debate actually care about women's sports, or is it just an excuse to wage the culture war? I don't care about sports one bit so I'm perhaps biased, but it's fairly obvious that testosterone is a (natural) performance enhancing drug with permanent effects, and that you're not separating by sex/gender as much as by hormonal level - it's not "women's sports" as much as "women with T levels below X sports", otherwise women with endocrine conditions wouldn't be barred. I assume if a female took T during her teenage years but later detransitioned and then had normal female hormone levels, she would still be barred from women's sports - otherwise isn't that a huge loop-hole?

In the more general case, I also assume if there was a doping agent that had permanent effects even if the athlete stopped taking it and had undetectable levels during drug testing, they would also be banned from competing.

As a compromise, I think trans women should compete in sports where there testosterone does not give you an advantage, such as long-distance swimming, fast climbing, equestrian sports, shooting, etc.

otherwise women with endocrine conditions wouldn't be barred

That's usually a euphemism for XY intersex individuals.

equestrian sports

Are not divided by sex of the human participant. There are medal winners of both sexes across equestrian sports. Some are divided by the sex of the horse (although horses have less sexual dimorphism than humans, it is some).

Do people on both side of the debate actually care about women's sports, or is it just an excuse to wage the culture war?

Why do crocodiles ambush prey crossing the river instead of coming on land to snatch them?

Sports is where the weakness of the "trans(wo)men are (wo)men" is most visible, and where the apparent moral highground of progressives defending the weak against bullies is reversed. It's the ideal terrain for conservatives. So that's where they choose to fight, hoping victory there translates to victory elsewhere.

Exactly, which is my point in general. It's not about sports, it's about using sports as a pretext to attack trans people. This is why I'm not as quick to dismiss progressive claims of racism, or sexism, or various phobias as I used to be. There is a core of true believers who are genuinely concerned about women's sports, and then there's a huge cadre of bandwagon jumpers who are simply disgusted by the entire notion of trans people and fear that any concession, no matter how minor, is going to poison the well and lead to a slippery slope where as Homer Simpson would put it, "the entire world's gone gay".

  • -12

This keeps being trotted out - surely it's possible that people can be concerned about the broader trans question and specific justice issues in sports. And, there's nothing inconsistent about concern for justice in sports and not having any interest in sports. Concern for justice is baked into humans. Everyone can have an opinion. Not to mention that sports is big within culture. If you are concerned about the spread of self-id in relation to women's private spaces, for example, you are going to be interested in what's happening in the wider public space.

Im not suggesting this is your argument, but this type of thing does seem to end up in 'why do you care so much about this small thing'.

Tldr, of course people are concerned about the big thing that includes the small thing, but they can also concerned about the small thing, and different aspects of the small thing. Humans have multi-caring capability.

And we should stop supporting Ukraine because it is enriching the military industrial complex.

I can't help but think "but other than that Mrs Lincoln how was the play?" When you bring up the idea that discussion shouldn't happen on a subject because people might be mean.

Exactly, which is my point in general. It's not about sports, it's about using sports as a pretext to attack trans people. This is why I'm not as quick to dismiss progressive claims of racism, or sexism, or various phobias as I used to be.

No, that's not my point. Sports is the best terrain to attack the idea of transgenderism. The fact a man is not a woman is never more manifest than when you set trained men and women against each other athletically. For anti-trans activists to choose the most favorable situation to make their case suggests nothing about their motives. Some may be motivated by phobia, others by reason or tribal affiliation or whatever; for anyone, it's the best place to set the battle lines.

I apologize that the language I used was probably stronger than what was warranted. But the general point remains—it's a less relevant side issue to attack a bigger idea. The problem is that attacking the bigger idea doesn't make sense unless there are concrete reasons to do so. If the best concrete argument you have for attacking the idea of transgenderism is that it has the potential to create unfair disparities in women's sports, then it doesn't come across as much of an argument to me, especially if criteria are put in place to mitigate those concerns and keep people from abusing the system. If the real reason you want to attack the idea of transgenderism simply boils down to "I just don't like the idea of it", then that's a pretty thin rhetorical reed.

There are a lot of people with comprehensive and well articulated arguments to trans issues, but an even bigger group of people who don't want to listen to them.

If the best concrete argument you have for attacking the idea of transgenderism is that it has the potential to create unfair disparities in women's sports,

It's the one that is most obvious but the implications are much broader. We have protections for women's spaces in our society for very real reasons and allowing males into those spaces because they want in has real harms. Prisons are another concrete example but people care more about athletes than criminals so this is a better wedge issue.

Exactly, which is my point in general. It's not about sports, it's about using sports as a pretext to attack trans people.

I don't think calling it an "attack" on trans people is either charitable or accurate. Disagreeing with the defining of the term "woman" to include "transwomen" isn't an attack on trans people, at worst it's an attack on a certain ideology that pertains to trans people.

Yeah, I apologize for phrasing it that way. I'm not particularly sympathetic to a lot of the ideology you refer to, I just think that getting worked up over something with so little real import is cover for other underlying sympathies that are harder to defend.

fear that any concession, no matter how minor,

I would impugn such an absolutist stance on trans-activists sooner than their opponents. The former is unwilling to concede that MTFs are in many ways distinct from natal women. Instead any disagreement with TWAW is considered transphobia.

Or, you know, people just don't want you to rewrite reality willy-nilly, and it has nothing to do with disgust, and bandwagons.

The woke left's belief system includes a gnostic spiritualism with specific metaphysical beliefs. That's why they do the #TransWomenAreWomen #TransWomenAreWomen #TransWomenAreWomen chanting online.

The idea that being male for years permanently changed them is unacceptable.

Conservatives don't really care about women's sports either. However they've noticed certain things about the woke left's response to trans women in sports.

Fallon fox was fighting 10 years ago. In that time the woke left has been unable to come with a coherent response. They can't just admit that a transwoman cracking cis women's skulls in the ring is bad, it would be acknowledging that their beliefs are wrong.

The transwomen in sports pits woke ideology against some of it's strongest allies -- white women in college.

Naturally conservatives are going to keep poking the issue with a stick. There's no downside and it's fun.

Do people on both side of the debate actually care about women's sports, or is it just an excuse to wage the culture war?

I care insomuch as I have a daughter who wants to compete in sports as I did when I was young and be given a "fair shot" at becoming an athlete worthy of scholarships, etc.

As a compromise, I think trans women should compete in sports where there testosterone does not give you an advantage, such as long-distance swimming, fast climbing, equestrian sports, shooting, etc.

Something to consider is it isn't just current levels of testosterone which gives one an advantage. Going through male puberty grants additional bone density, height, muscle mass, etc. than had they of been women going through puberty. So while their muscle mass may regress some, the advantages of extra height and bone density do not disappear

And much larger lungs.

I didn't know that one

The volume of adult female lungs is typically 10-12% smaller than that of males who have the same height and age

it's fairly obvious that testosterone is a (natural) performance enhancing drug with permanent effects

Correct

and that you're not separating by sex/gender as much as by hormonal level

Incorrect. You're separating by sex. Sex is more than just hormones, although hormones are significant. There's simply no way for a female to go through male puberty, hormone supplements or no. If you want to make that case, go ahead, but I'm not willing to simply accept this second clause despite agreeing with the first clause.

As a compromise, I think trans women should compete in sports where there testosterone does not give you an advantage, such as long-distance swimming, fast climbing, equestrian sports, shooting, etc.

I think long-distance open-water swimming is the only sport I know of where women have a genuine advantage over men, due to the buoyancy of fat that they carry on their bodies. Climbing, at any speed, is definitely not one given the discrepancies in grip strength between men and women.

Shooting is also one where I think you're underestimating the male advantage. There's a reason why all of esports is dominated by men. Reaction time and precision at speed are both better in men than women.

I don’t know about (certain types of) shooting; famously the Soviets found that women could be good, even excellent snipers. This being said, I don’t know all that much about competition shooting. My guess is that there wouldn’t be much of an advantage for males in, say, thousand-yard rifle.

Incorrect. You're separating by sex. Sex is more than just hormones, although hormones are significant. There's simply no way for a female to go through male puberty, hormone supplements or no. If you want to make that case, go ahead, but I'm not willing to simply accept this second clause despite agreeing with the first clause.

Sexual differentiation in humans is mediated almost entirely by androgens (e.g. testosterone) - individuals with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome have an XY chromosome but end up with a typical female phenotype externally indistinguishable from XX females, although internally they will lack a uterus or ovaries (instead having undescended testicles - the vagina generally appears normal but will not lead anywhere). Before the 1990s the diagnosis was typically hidden from the patient and they never knew they weren't ordinary women.

However, you can certainly make the argument that sex is more than just puberty - males are exposed to androgens in the womb, and develop differently from the 7th week of gestation onwards. But without any androgens at all, genetic males end up externally indistinguishable from females.

I love sports and I love women's mma but otherwise I have zero interest in women's sports.

I do, however, care about living in reality and living in a world that acknowledges some truths.

One of those truths is someone who went through male puberty will always, in every single case, have a competitive advantage over a woman.

I don't even really care that some weightlifting record has been broken or some high school girls might lose a scholarship. If anything, I think it's funny.

I just care that people are pretending about the realities of this situation.

One of those truths is someone who went through male puberty will always, in every single case, have a competitive advantage over a woman.

Are you saying that every single person who went through male puberty can beat any woman, including top-level female athlete? That would be blatantly false. Obviously the average male beats the average female, and top-level male beats top-level females, but a top-level female will beat the average male. See average mile run times: 6:30 for top 1% of males, 7:48 for top 1% of females, 8:18 for top 50% of males, 9:51 for top 50% of females. Interestingly enough, the female mile run record is 4:12.33 while the male world record from 1913 was 4:14.4 - the advantages of modern nutrition, sports science etc. can outweigh male puberty without it.

The extreme of rightist gender essentialism is just as wrong as leftist blank slatism, humans aren't that sexually dimorphic a species that you can make such blanket absolute statements. Personally, I went through male puberty, but in high school the female athletes routinely trounced me in every sport or measure of physical fitness. In phys ed I even remember having to play with the girls because I had 0 chance with the boys. This is despite me working out a decent amount - I just didn't have the bone structure or metabolism the other teen boys did.

  • -12

So basically an average male is closer to a top1% woman than a top 1% woman is to a top 1% man? I imagine it is probably like what the top 1/3 of men outperform the top 1% of women?

There is a large sizable difference between men and women.

That seems like what that data would indicate and is pretty consistent with casual observation. On the other hand, those top 1% times look suspiciously slow to me. My wife's mile time is like a minute faster than that putative 1% and she's never particularly close to the top of local races. Maybe these are supposed to be the top 1% across the entire population, regardless of age or training? Hey @rae, where did the numbers come from? I'm not trying to be argumentative, I'm genuinely curious because I've previously had this conversation with people about where exactly I think I rank among runners in the general population and those numbers would imply that I'm much, much higher than I would have thought.

They looked suspiciously slow to me as well until I thought about it. I ran XC in high school and I usually hit the mile mark in a little over 6 minutes while pacing myself for 5k on a hilly course (hills take their toll because not only are you slower going up them but you have to pace yourself before you get to them and you're gassed coming off of them). Had I been running a straight mile on flat pavement I probably could have shaved a good 30 seconds off my time. My 5k times were usually in the low 20s and I never broke 20 minutes, which meant that I was barely good enough to qualify for varsity and my times never counted towards the team score.

But I ran all the time. Several years later, after a summer I spent almost entirely outside engaged in some form of athletic activity but during which I had made a pact with friends to never run unless it was one of three times reserved for emergencies, I decided to go back to the park where our XC meets were held and run a mile on flat pavement. I can't remember my exact time, but it was definitely over seven minutes and probably over eight. Long enough that I was disgusted with myself, despite otherwise being in close to the best shape of my life. A reasonably fit person who doesn't run all the time is going to have better times than an unfit person but it's going to be difficult for them to beat a person who actually trains, even if that person isn't really any good.

Now go to your nearest Wal-Mart and take a look at you average American. How many of these people do you think could run a mile in 6:30 or faster? Keep in mind that even reasonably fit teenagers probably won't hit this unless they run all the time (there were plenty of reasonably fit teenagers on my XC team who couldn't hit this even though they did run all the time). So while that number may seem ridiculous at first glance, it's at least plausible.

I think you're right and I've just gotten too used to numbers in the running world and always comparing myself to guy the in front of me rather than the people behind me. I just went back to Strava to go look at where I was when I first started running, and yeah, it turns out that an all-out mile for me back then was apparently just a bit faster than 8 minutes. This is easy to forget because even a few months later, I was a shade over 35 minutes for an 8K. That was off of what I would consider very light training, but it's still quite a lot more than most people are doing. I just recently helped a buddy pace his first sub-20 5K and that was for a 145-pound guy that's had a couple years of running, including a full marathon cycle behind him. I forget that getting down to those sort of paces takes real, distance running-specific training for most people. So sure, I can buy that only one in a hundred men in the United States can lace 'em up and run a 6:30.

Those look like percentiles for general population to me, though I have no idea of the source. For college aged population the Health related physical fitness test manual by the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance has some tables. For the 1980's era publication it puts the 99th percentile male college student norm at 5:06, 99th percentile female norm at 6:04, 80th percentile male 6:05, 50th percentile male at 6:49, and the 50th percentile female at 9:22. The exact percentile levels are very sensitive to selection, there's a 30 second gap in the 99th percentiles they give for different college aged males for example.

Eyeballing these, they still just make a ton more sense to me. If I was looking at a random college-aged sample, I would expect an average guy to be able to gasp out a sub-7 mile, a pretty fast guy to be right around 6 minutes, but only guys that either ran, played soccer, or did some other endurance-heavy sport to get close to 5 flat. The women's numbers look really slow, but most women (even young women) aren't really in any kind of running shape, so that makes sense. I would think looking at college-age numbers are more instructive for discussion of athletic ability because there isn't much reason to care how fast the septuagenarians are (although I bet it predicts their remaining lifespan pretty well).

Are you saying that every single person who went through male puberty can beat any woman, including top-level female athlete?

No

I wanted to add a follow-up to @KMC 's comment, where he beat me to pointing out the straw-man.

Sex differences do confer tremendous advantages for the median male over the median female in sports. For example, one well-cited study suggested: "The results of female national elite athletes even indicate that the strength level attainable by extremely high training will rarely surpass the 50th percentile of untrained or not specifically trained men".

The difference in athletic distribution between males and females is so great that not only is the combined distribution bimodal, it's qualitatively different. Given tail effects and a roughly bell-curve distribution, this competitive advantage is only exacerbated at the tails.

It's basically a dog-bites-man story nowadays each time some regional-level mid-teens boys team defeats a professional, even-Olympic-level, women's team. Hockey and football/soccer have provided a regular reminder.

Aside from mandatory PE classes, throughout my teenage years I rarely played any sports with girls due to the gulf in athleticism between teenage boys and girls. The limited times that I did was generally because a local girl's team was competitive on the national-level, and thus invited a given team of mine for a friendly to help them prep in giving them better competition than a local girl's team could.

We'd be instructed by our coaches and asked by the girls to play normally, but it was tough. We would basically treat the girls as fine china, playing tentatively and being extra careful not to hurt them. Chivalry runs deep. It felt weird playing in a friendly against opponents who were, on average, so much smaller, slower, and weaker than us. They even seemed to have slower reaction times, like they were running on constant lag. Maneuvering or dribbling around the girls wasn't all that more difficult than doing so around traffic cones.

It would quickly devolve to us going 1 on N_sport against them on offense ("your turn" then "my turn" to solo and shoot), and 0-2 on N_sport on defense (we'd lazily jog or walk back), where N_sport is the number of players typically on the court/pitch/field/or whatever, depending on sport. Our coaches would typically reduce the numbers of players on our side until the play became more balanced. It'd generally have to get under 0.5*N_sport until things got more interesting.

Fair point, that was a straw-man. My uncharitable interpretation was perhaps motivated by my own personal experience of being in the >95th percentile of teenage boys and not being able to match my overweight, untrained male classmates despite going to the gym 3x a week and trying to average around 3k calories a day. I didn't feel like my male puberty had given me much competitive advantage when I would get beaten in arm wrestling by random female classmates or the teacher assigned me to play football with the girls in PE, so while I agree that the male/female athleticism distribution is bimodal, overlaps do exist.

You were an exceptionally small/weak male that drew the short straw in the genetic lottery.

I wonder what would happen if you got a freaking animal of a woman in here…6’2”, 200 pounds, national champion swimmer who could bench 225. I’m guessing this animal would be more likely to shrug and say that she wasn’t that much weaker than the guys…

a freaking animal of a woman in here…6’2”, 200 pounds, national champion swimmer who could bench 225

She would compare herself against freaking animals of a man that she saw at the national swimming championship. Yes, Katie Ledecky is a swimming monster, but she know that past 400m the differences between her and equally qualified male swimmers start to look insurmountable even to untrained eyes.

Yeah. I don’t know if she’d compare herself to Joe Average, though…our puny hero from before compared himself to both Joe and Jane Average. The fact that most men are far stronger than most women didn’t sink in quite as much for this guy, due to his not personally experiencing that. The puny guy didn’t compare himself to exceptionally small/weak/scrawny women…

Are we using the same sign for the quantile direction? There's virtually no overlap of the top 5% of male athletes and female athletes.

Seems like you were also adversely selected for arm wrestling. Like weight makes a huge difference when comparing with male classmates, not just because being bigger makes it easier to carry more fat free mass. Fat leverages make a big difference in strength sports. I would also assume female classmates willing to arm wrestle are not random? Like they were probably in the top quartile of self assessed strength and that's why they would participate in such a challenge. I can't think of any instance where I've seen a petite woman seriously challenge a man to arm wrestling in person.

I sort always had the implicit assumption that much of the culture war aspect of the issue comes down to the elite levels. It's not clear to me that the local D level rec-league shouldn't just be an open league. For individual sports no one cares if you win the novice, 35-40 yr old, 65-70 kg, nearsighted division of your local park run. Like if it matters to someone, anyone can find a "competition" where they hand our participation trophies.

I didn't mean overlap in the athletes (unless you're comparing modern-day female athletes to early 20th century male ones) but the general athletic level of the population. As for the arm wrestling, I was beaten by a highly athletic female classmate, and then it was a challenge against one that wasn't particularly athletic as far as I know, not petite but fairly average build, perhaps top third to top 50%. There's a possibility I have mild endocrine issues, I have signs of low prenatal androgen exposure (and paradoxically high T levels despite low masculinisation, suggesting some compensation for lowered androgen sensitivity).

Which is another reason that I'm favouring the hypothesis that endocrine disruption is responsible for the surge in transgender identification, and that the focus should be on that rather than nebulous concepts of gender identity, along with waging the culture war over what should be purely a medical issue.

I sort always had the implicit assumption that much of the culture war aspect of the issue comes down to the elite levels. It's not clear to me that the local D level rec-league shouldn't just be an open league. For individual sports no one cares if you win the novice, 35-40 yr old, 65-70 kg, nearsighted division of your local park run. Like if it matters to someone, anyone can find a "competition" where they hand our participation trophies.

Most of the attention is on elite levels sure, but the laws in Kansas block transgender girls from playing in public school and college sports, which as far as I know aren't elite. The culture war debate extends to the trans girl that wants to play on her high school soccer team as well as the top echelons of women's sports, although in both cases the number of trans athletes is still extremely low.

I was thinking of slide 33 of the presentation of the USAPL report I had referenced down thread. That sample is best raw total for elite powerlifters 2011-2018. People often cite the grip strength study in untrained people, but I would have thought it was less applicable to trained individuals participating in sport. I think the quantile cuts are similar though. For virtually any otherwise equal selection, the strongest woman is about as strong as the average man.

Your situation makes a lot more sense now that you've explained a bit more. I do think that prenatal androgen exposure is a more important factor in athletic performance than most people realize. At least on par with puberty effects and free testosterone. It seems to dominate neuromuscular efficiency effects in animal models. That neuromuscular efficiency is what really separates elite athletes from mere mortals. It also effects androgen sensitivity which in turn effects how well people respond to training.

I do consider college sports to be elite. Even a D III player is on a totally different level than an average person.

I was imprecise by the implication that highschool level didn't matter. It sort of depends on what the purpose of scholastic sports is, but doesn't fit into the same bucket as elite levels to me. In the US most highschoolers that are eilite enough to get to the colleget level play club as their most competitive team. I guess that belongs to the same category as college? For the sports sponsored by the school, I'm sympathetic to the notion that trans girl want to play. On the other hand there are plenty of regular cis-boys that aren't good enough to even play on the JV team. Are school sports supposed to be accessible to literally everyone? I don't think they are at most high schools. I say this as someone who's best chance at a varsity letter would have been convincing my school to add a scholastic bowl team. I also don't think the institutionalization of sports for youth has been a positive development. The neighborhood sand lot games seem better to me at accommodating a variety of skill and strength levels.

Yeah. I think there’s something to the idea that atrazine is making the frogs gay…and the humans queer. And trans.

Lots of confounders: but are trans people more likely to have grown up near like farms using lots of pesticides or plastic bottle factories or something?

One thing that's really striking to me about this is how the advantage grows when it's multi-dimensional sports like football, basketball, hockey, soccer, and so on. When there is just one dimension to focus on, the best women are very good, with elite female runners coming up only ~12% short of what men accomplish at pretty much every distance from sprinting to marathoning. Suffice it to say, the result is that very few men are even close to the best women. In stark contrast, those multi-dimensional sports demand strength, speed, size, reaction times, hand-eye coordination, change of direction, and so on, making each dimension one where the best women won't be close to the men and even the women that are best at one thing are greatly inferior to male peers along others.

From a personal experience standpoint, I'm a smallish guy that grew up focusing on basketball (bad choice, whatever), then adopted endurance sports in my mid-20s. I'm a better runner than I was a basketball player due to my size and this makes me just barely good enough to beat most local women in a 10K, but still slower than D1 athletes. In contrast, when I'd play basketball, the physical gap is enormous, just absolutely ridiculous that it takes an incredibly skilled woman to even make it close. Even as a slender guy, the strength, coordination, aggression, and leaping are just so large of advantages.

I don't suppose I have a specific point other than that men and women are obviously very different and that I think people that deny this are basically just lying through their teeth or have absolutely no experience with physicality.

Crazy that I hadn't actually thought about this specific point until you made it.

I mean, I get that men having greater muscle density results in them being more physically capable across the board. So same conclusion.

But that is really it. A woman who is a genetic freak might be able to train some specific skill to the point she's actually a notable elite at that skill. Kicking, throwing, running agility routes, SOMETHING.

But her overall utility to a team is based on a whole package of skills, and if she minmaxes so she's competent at one, she'll end up radically deficient in the others, so she'd almost by definition be a liability.

This is even demonstrated in the relatively simplified sport of gymnastics. Females compete in four different categories, men in six.

https://gamerules.com/mens-vs-womens-gymnastics/

Yeah, it’s always reminded me of (the inverse of) Lewontin’s Fallacy.

Among a pool of athletic women, a given woman might only be somewhat slower and slower-reacting than a given athletic man in those two individual dimensions—and almost certainly much smaller, weaker in the dimensions of size and strength (among others)—thus, as a result, the median athletic woman in terms of overall athleticness is a universe away from the median athletic man when evaluated via the first principal component.

That's also true for psychometric traits and gender expression as well. Women and men overlap massively in each psychometric trait or each way they express gender, but if you look at them all at once in a higher dimensional space the gulf between them is massive and binary. It's why all these claims that gender is really a spectrum fall flat on me. It's easy to tell these 'non-binary' people are really binary if you look at all their behaviors at once.

As someone with the letter X on their driver's license, I find this a little funny. Let's assume you're correct, and I fall smack dab in the middle of the side of a high dimensional bimodal distribution with other AMABs.

It still comes off as weird and subversive that I eat estrogen pills for breakfast no? The doctor is still going to be confused if I tell him I'm a man and hand him my hormone test results. TSA still stops Trans girls for having a dick in their pants.

If some of the dimensions of your gender expression are off the charts outliers, I think it still makes sense to make room for the term 'non-binary' in relevant contexts, if not as a personal identifier.

  • -10

"has an advantage" != "is better". Two different competitors will always have a multitude of different advantages and disadvantages relative to one another. It just happens that the results of male puberty have a very strong advantage over the results of female puberty for almost all sports.

One of those truths is someone who went through male puberty will always, in every single case, have a competitive advantage over a woman.

Are you saying that every single person who went through male puberty can beat any woman, including top-level female athlete?

Nope, that's a straw man. You can have a competitive advantage and still lose. Male puberty gives you a competitive advantage, not a guaranteed win. You even make the same point yourself:

the advantages of modern nutrition, sports science etc. can outweigh male puberty without it.

There are other advantages. That does not negate the puberty advantage.

I competed in swimming, and I was slow, often slower than many of the women, who were straight up better swimmers than I was. Yet the shorter the race, the closer I came to the fastest women, the greater advantage my sex gave me, the less being a better technical swimmer could overwhelm being bigger and stronger.

What do you mean by competitive advantage? It sounds like you're saying males have a raw physical advantage (e.g. being bigger and stronger) against females in every single case but that females can have better techniques/training, which is what I disagreed with. Male puberty by itself gives you larger and stronger bones, increased muscle mass, higher circulating hemoglobin, etc., but you can still end up with a weaker physique in absolute terms than a genetically lucky female with access to the best nutrition and sports science while growing up. What competitive advantage do you have then?

You can argue that male puberty gives you a competitive advantage all else being equal - same environment, same nutrition, but different sex - but in absolute terms, you don't necessarily have an advantage because you went through male puberty. What competitive advantage does a 5'4 twink with slender body type (narrow shoulders, small joints, etc.) have against say, Brittney Griner? I doubt any amount of training could bridge that gap.

I mean, sure, maybe that 5’4” scrawny dude would lose a one-on-one contest to freak of nature Brittney Griner. Maybe.

I don't want to speak for KMC, but is the commonly understood usage of the term "competitive advantage" not generally understood to apply to the performance gap between the n percentile man and nth percentile woman? Like you might define it as a factor that positively affects performance in a given discipline. In that definition an 80 kg lifter has a competitive advantage over a 70 kg lifter, even though the 70 kg lifter might be stronger. Or as another example, you could take an average amateur cyclist and dope them to the gills with EPO and they would still get instantly dropped by the worst Tour de France rider. That doesn't mean EPO isn't a competitive advantage for a cyclist.

At the risk of getting bogged down in semantics, the "in every single case" clause in KMC's comments was what made me raise an eyebrow - while sure male puberty (or EPO) is a competitive advantage, the way it was phrased could be interpreted ambiguously as meaning people who went through male puberty are at an advantage by always being bigger and stronger while female athletes can have superior technique/training - see KMC's subsequent comment. Best to clarify to avoid a potential motte and bailey.

I wrote up this whole musing about how I thought you were wrong, only to realize that I’d misread you as saying “comparative” advantage.

Anyway, I still want to chime in and say that I read Mihow as making the extreme claim: any man would have an advantage over any woman. Not necessarily an overwhelming one, but that we’d expect the man to win more than 50% of the time.

This seemed hyperbolic to me, and I think your read makes a lot more sense.

Maybe but it is far closer to the truth than people realize.

Performance enhancing drugs or any other sort of 'doping' is a huge loophole for everyone competing in anything. Having natural born advantages is a loophole for everyone at the elite level. Swimmers aren't short, gymnasts aren't tall and nigh every single athlete worth anything has received some form of extra 'supplementation' to their 'diet'. None of that in any way opens the door for trans people to participate in anything since none of that changes the fact that trans people don't fit into the main categories.

If you are not a traditional woman or a traditional man you don't fit and are excluded. No one should need to leverage their ruleset against the demands of those who don't fit. There need not be a special category or a special class. Trans people are simply not allowed to compete according to their 'gender identification' because it falls outside the scope of the categories. If you want to compete, you need to follow the rules like everyone else.

On top of everything else, where do people get the idea that compromising or meeting the demands of a vocal politically motivated minority is in any way necessary or required? Like, why on earth should anyone even entertain some unsound logic pretzel that exists only as a thin veneer for the deconstruction of a century long tradition which is only being pursued so that trans people can 'express their gender identity'. It's total hogwash from start to finish.

Even in a good faith debate about the grains of gray that exist when categorizing men and women, trans people in no way, shape or form fit as a 'gray'. From their time in the womb to everything else. From the tips of their fingers, shape and size of their brain, to the soles of their feet. Men and women are not the same. Categories are never perfect, but that doesn't mean they are therefor subject to our own want and whim.

Even in a good faith debate about the grains of gray that exist when categorizing men and women, trans people in no way, shape or form fit as a 'gray'. From their time in the womb to everything else. From the tips of their fingers, shape and size of their brain, to the soles of their feet. Men and women are not the same.

While I mostly agree with the rest, this marks to me as odd. Aren't trans people the definition of gray? If you take opposite-sex hormones, you end up with opposite-sex characteristics and are more-or-less pharmacological intersex - especially if you start before puberty. There's been studies showing that brain structure is altered to resemble the opposite sex, and a trans woman will typically be half-way between a natal male and a natal female when it comes to athletic performance (as shown in military studies).

Trans people are the opposite of grey. They fit into a category with no issue. It's just not the category they want to participate in. This is opposite to an intersex person who can not find a fit in either category without issue.

To your point on opposite sex hormones, I think you are overstating the case a fair bit. But even if it was all as true, or even more true than you state, it would not change anything. Every single trans person that had a 'normal' body made a choice to disqualify themselves from traditional sporting events by altering it. No surgery or hormone can change the fact that a trans person is cutting into the development cycle of a traditional sex and altering it. It's possible to maybe get away with that sort of thing within a category, but to move categories? That's just moving out of bounds.

If you take opposite-sex hormones

Which many trans people, including trans athletes, by their own admission explicitly do not.

If an adult is trans but not taking hormones and has no intention of taking any in the future, their trans status is highly questionable unless they have a medical contraindication or live in a hostile environment where transitioning is dangerous.

If an adult is trans but not taking hormones and has no intention of taking any in the future

they can apply for a gender recognition certificate in my country, and be legally considered just as much of a woman as any female adult.

Do people on both side of the debate actually care about women's sports, or is it just an excuse to wage the culture war?

Some certainly do, such as the athletes themselves. I do, because I love sports in general, compete as a hobbyist, and have female friends that compete at higher levels than me. I suspect that there are many bad faith actors, with the left-wing version being people that don't care about any sports and the right-wing version being people that don't honestly care about women's sports.

I assume if a female took T during her teenage years but later detransitioned and then had normal female hormone levels, she would still be barred from women's sports - otherwise isn't that a huge loop-hole?

I would assume so, and we'll have to cross that bridge at some point as well. In keeping with my spirit above that elite women's athletics shouldn't be about inclusiveness, I would be in favor of banning them as well. Their non-doped competitors would probably agree.

As a compromise, I think trans women should compete in sports where there testosterone does not give you an advantage, such as long-distance swimming, fast climbing, equestrian sports, shooting, etc.

If men don't have any advantage in these sports (which I'm skeptical of, but let's set that aside), they should simply not be gender-segregated at all.

Slightly tangential, but relevant to the overall theme of the discussion the statement:

... sports where there testosterone does not give you an advantage

and

If men don't have any advantage in these sports...

Are not actually talking about the same thing. The 2019 report by usapowerlifting found that androgens like testosterone contribute about 10% to power-lifting total, where as male-female sex difference in total is 64%.

Somehow most of the discussion misses differences in motor neuron density, which primarily occur in the prenatal environment.

Right, absolutely, I didn't intend to imply that T is the only relevant consideration. Even if hormonal advantages were completely abrogated, larger skeletal structure conveys an advantage in many sports by improving things like striking force or grip strength. To restate the blindingly obvious, men and women are actually different and it's not just an on-off switch that one can throw in adulthood.

Equestrian sports are already sex integrated - and for some time the Olympics had mixed shooting, though they stopped in the 80's (don't know why.)

Some long distance swimming competitions are sex integrated, and oftentimes men and women have similar times. But looking at the Olympics 2020, the top women's time is 1:59:30.8, which would have placed her at 23 (out of 24). So at the highest levels of competition, it still looks like men have the advantage.

Equestrian sports are already sex integrated

European ones at least. Not so much for Rodeo events where things like Barrel Racing are typically only women while most of the other events are men only.

This entire conversation gets to the root of 2 questions about segregation:

  1. Is sex based segregation fundamentally different from every other kind of segregation by group ?

  2. Is all segregation a form of affirmative action ? There are always group level differences, and the lower-performing group benefits from segregation.

I've always figured the common sense reasons were still applicable: safety, and fairness.

Weight classes in combat sports are another form of segregation (although one is allowed to move up or down in weight, of course), but I think it is nearly universally agreed that this makes for more fair and exciting competition and ensures more safety since smaller fighters won't have to duke it out with guys who have 100 pounds on them.

We could lump everyone into one big class and just let people fight with whomever they want, but I daresay that they would naturally recreate the existing categories as smaller fighters wouldn't want to risk injury in fights they can't even win, so they'd opt to fight each other, only.

I expect almost the exact same would occur if we did away with all distinctions between athlete classes and let them 'voluntarily' choose who they are and are not willing to compete against. Women would probably clump together since they'd not want to risk injury by larger males and would want to feel they have a chance at winning on their own skill. And there'd probably be a, uh, selection effect whereupon women who chose to compete against men would get injured and drop out of the sport or get so bored with getting trounced continually that they just quit.

So in sports competition it's often the case that they're aiming for fairness in competition, and the underlying safety of the sport, while honestly trying to open up eligibility to as many as possible.

All of which are pretty handily achieved by separating out women's sports.

There are other ways to partition things, of course. We do have sports leagues specifically set aside for disabled athletes, and I think absolutely fucking NOBODY would seriously suggest doing away with those leagues in the name of equality. So in short yeah, we kinda do find certain sorts of light segregation to be acceptable.

We could lump everyone into one big class and just let people fight with whomever they want, but I daresay that they would naturally recreate the existing categories as smaller fighters wouldn't want to risk injury in fights they can't even win, so they'd opt to fight each other, only.

Marketability and aesthetics matter here too. When I discuss MMA with other fans, I don't think I've ever met someone whose favorite weight-class is heavyweight. If we take the general claim that people want to watch the best athletes in the world at a given sport, this is actually a pretty interesting result! Elite heavyweights would surely handle lighter fighters without any real trouble and we've even smaller jumps like Izzy Adesanya moving up and struggling against Jan Blachowicz because of their visible power differential. And yet, the guys I like watching the most are welterweights (170 pound weight class), and I think that's a pretty common opinion due to the depth of the weight class, excellent speed and conditioning, while retaining enough power for knockouts to be a constant threat.

I think sports that are banning trans women and placing other restrictions on sex anomalies are certainly focusing on safety and fairness, as you mention, but it does seem like there might be a bit of marketability and aesthetics involved in decision-making for sports where revenue is involved. Is it possible that people just think it looks stupid to have mannish-looking XY women dominating track races? This could be a combination of fairness, marketability, and aesthetics.

This is a really interesting point too, since it seems obvious that people aren't just aiming to watch the very tippy-top best competitors in the world, they also want to see, well call it 'entertaining' matchups, which I'd guess roughly translates to "the best displays of pure skill."

And Heavyweights, I'd argue, are NOT where the highest skill levels are on display. Still fun as hell to watch, but more for the pure spectacle of two gorilla-esque men tearing into each other. But something like Demetrius Johnson's Suplex into Flying Armbar probably only happens in the lower weight classes.

I know nothing about MMA. If all weight classes were abolished, would it essentially just be the heaviest fighters at the top? Is weight such a dominant factor that there's no point where some combination of diminishing returns, weight/agility tradeoff, and the larger population in the lower weight classes would yield a smaller top ranked fighter?

This will vary somewhat based on the actual sport itself.

But any sport that allows grappling is going to be dominated by heavier fighters, if only because the ability to heave your opponent to the ground and lay on top of them is... well fundamentally it is impossible to counter this strategy if you're smaller and weaker.

There's a reason all of the top wrestlers of all time look more like Grizzly bears than humans.

Maybe that point exists, but it doesn't exist below cutoff for moving into the heavyweight division, which is at 205 pounds. Above that, the tradeoffs apparently do start happening with speed and coordination, because heavyweight is the only UFC weight class that isn't strictly dominated by people fighting right at the weight limit for their class. Heavyweights must be 265 pounds or less, but there are occasional champions and many competitive fighters that weigh in around the 230s.

In lower divisions where the gaps are only 10-15 pounds, fighters due move between weight classes with some success, thanks in part to how weight cutting works - a guy that fights at 145 often weighs 155 before their final cut and may walk around at 165 before starting their training camp and leaning up a bit. With proper notice, fighting at 155 instead of 145 becomes feasible for quite a few guys. Connor McGregor won titles at 145 and 155, then tried to move up to 170 and failed pretty badly, losing the power advantage he had at lighter weights while also losing speed as he gained weight.

So, yeah, to a first approximation there would be no such thing as 155-pound fighters if weight classes didn't exist. Guys that currently fight at 205 or in rare cases 185 may be able to bulk up enough to compete in an open division, but it would be more or less strictly required to be 220 pounds or heavier to be competitive.

Barring extreme outliers, yes. There's a reason why fighters dehydrate themselves into a life-threatening state to fit into the lower weight bracket. Every pound of muscle you can put on helps.

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