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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   30011 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.

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.

More comments

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.

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