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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   30008 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.

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?

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