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All athletes are outliers from the general population.
There's no population of athletes with normal population dynamics over their athletic ability, because they're already selected to be outliers from the general population. There won't be a normal distribution of talent among athletes, they'll look like what they are, one tail of a different normal distribution (the general population).
When I talk about outliers and extremes, I'm talking about all athletes. Not just the best ones.
And my claim isn't that most cis women athletes can beat most trans women athletes. As I said a lot, no one has bothered to report on those statistics from actual competitions, so we are in a state of total ignorance on that question.
My point is just that talking about the average for the male population tells you basically nothing about what we're actually measuring here, which is outliers from the trans women population vs outliers from the cis woman population.
Ok, lets just settle on an operational definition here.
Is it your position that a world could exist in which no trans woman ever wins a single competition ever against her cis competitors, and yet it is still also true that trans women have an unfair competitive advantage that means cis women shouldn't have to compete against them?
Because that seems to be what is implied by you citing a case where trans women do not win yet still have an unfair advantage. So is this actually compatible with how you are defining fairness here?
If so, I think that's just incredibly silly.
Maybe there's some metaphysical sense in which it is unjust that a trans woman with fewer years of training can be competitive with a cis woman with more years of training (in this hypothetical).
But what actually matters for fairness is whether every competitor in an event has a reasonable chance to win.
If cis women can go to a million events and know that they will never win anything because the top spots are always trans women shattering all their records, that sucks and is unfair to them and unfun for everyone involved.
If trans women aren't over-represented among winners and cis women can easily win in competitions with them all the time, then the sport is healthy and everyone can have fun and no one is at an unfair disadvantage.
Anything outside of that fact is irrelevant, even if it annoys you.
You're stretching the definition of "outlier." In that the average person isn't very athletic at all, sure, but I'm not just talking about Olympic competitors, I'm talking about people who participate in neighborhood soccer leagues and the like.
If you were, then you'd stop making so many handwaving motions when we talk about comparing female apples to trans apples and stop pointing at female oranges.
No, we are not in a state of total ignorance on that question.
I am not sure if your phrasing is intentionally vague or not.
Do I believe it is possible that there could exist a (singular) trans woman who never wins a single competition against her female competitors, and yet it is still also true that trans women have an unfair competitive advantage that means cis women shouldn't have to compete against them?
Yes. Of course. No one claims that all trans women will be beat all women all the time.
Do I believe it is possible that there could exist a world in which no trans women ever win a single competition against female competitors, and yet it is still also true that trans women have an unfair competitive advantage that means cis women shouldn't have to compete against them?
Well, that would seem unlikely, but it's a meaningless hypothetical since we are observably not in that world.
It's not "some metaphysical sense" if their male physiology observably lets them compete at a higher level with less effort, conditioning, and training.
So if you or I competed against women, that would be fair, since women competing against us would have a reasonable chance to win? Or do you claim you would be able to beat any woman in any athletic competition?
So you believe we could only say it's unfair for trans women to compete against women if and only if trans women win every single time?
Trans women are over-represented among winners now. And women are not having fun because they're competing against men who can and have injured them (in contact sports) and are taking monetary prizes from them.
Trying to cast this as "Oh, you're just annoyed by trans women" doesn't work when you are studiously ignoring the facts you reference.
The point of hypotheticals is to get people to examine the boundaries of their ideas and see if they hold up and make sense in the least-convenient world.
It sounds like your answer is 'yes, we could have a world where no trans woman ever wins a competition but they still have a competitive advantage', but you won't come out and say that because you recognize it makes your position sound absurd.
And, yes, I do believe it is absurd for that reason.
We can't actually settle the question of whether trans women have an unfair advantage until we agree on an operational definition of 'unfair advantage'.
I've offered mine, I'm trying to pin you down on yours. But you won't do it, you jump from 'that's an unlikely hypothetical' to 'obvious physiological advantage' to 'yes they are winning more' to 'could you or I compete against female athletes' to etc. The metric switches to whichever thing is convenient in the moment, so it's impossible to address.
Forget reality. Indulge in the thought experiment.
In the abstract, what is your personal operational definition of an unfair advantage?
Once you say what it is in the abstract, we can start to discuss whether it exists in reality.
Are you saying, would it be fair for me, fat and desk-bound and asthmatic and with zero training, to join the women's olympic track and field event?
Yes, that would be fair.
I have zero chance of winning anything at all, no other competitor is at a disadvantage from including me.
Again, why do men's and women's leagues exist in the first place?
So that women have a place where they can compete and have a real chance of winning.
If including someone in the women's league doesn't alter that, then it doesn't interfere with the purpose of the league. It's fair.
And you are, what, intuiting this from 2 anecdotes across all sports and divisions in the country?
This is the central empirical question I'm saying we have no data on.
If you have data on it, by god please share with the class, it will solve this entire debate instantly.
If you're talking about 2 anecdotes where a trans woman won some competition, then no. That's not a national statistical trend demonstrating anything.
Dude. Several people have told you, in this thread and the past, that your habit of being condescending, disingenuous, and using moving goalposts and weaselly arguments, is infuriating.
To echo @raggedy_anthem, I appreciate that you are willing to stand and take on all comers with a heterodox (for this space) viewpoint, I just wish you'd stop doing it in a way calculated to piss people off (and then when they get pissed off, you blink your eyes innocently and insist you're only giving back what was served to you.)
So, to the quote above: no, dude, that is not what my answer is. And you know that.
"you won't come out and say that because you recognize it makes your position sound absurd" is, like "no matter how much it annoys you personally," a bit of rhetorical twerking to make it sound like you've just spiked the ball in the endzone and distract from the fact that you are weaseling around my actual argument.
No, I do not think we could have a world where no trans woman ever wins a competition but they still have a competitive advantage. I carefully explained that in the post from which you fabricated this position. If it were the case that no trans woman ever wins a competition, I would have to concede that this is pretty strong evidence that trans women do not have a competitive advantage. But that is not the world we're in, because trans women do win competitions.
Again, I said that clearly, you know what I said, you understood what I was saying, and yet you responded with this clearly illogical and ridiculous position and claimed that's what it "sounds like my answer is." No, it is not.
Stop. Doing. This. If you want anyone to believe you are engaging in good faith.
As I have pointed out (and other people have done in this thread, with more links and citations, because I'm lazy) there are plenty of metrics by which athletic ability is measured (muscle mass, strength, reflexes, endurance) and trans women clearly have an advantage over women on all of them. You claim you have offered your own metric, but it seems to be "if trans women won all competitions, or a disproportionate number of competitions." And when pressed on what "disproportionate" would mean, given the relative rarity of trans women athletes, you play games with pseudo-statistical arguments but in practice, it boils down to "If trans women don't win everything all the time, then they must not have an advantage."
Being biologically stronger, faster, tougher, and having more endurance on average.
I.e., the advantage men have over women that is the reason for having separate men and women's competitions, despite the fact that some women are stronger and faster than some men.
And if you lost weight and got in shape and trained, as any woman competing would? Would it be fair then, asthma notwithstanding?
If.
Far more than two anecdotes. Times like this I wish I were @gattsuru (not really), but here's the thing: I don't believe that even if I did hunt down all the links you need, it would change your mind because I don't think you are expressing genuine skepticism.
We do have data. It might not be enough data that you can't dismiss it. Like I said, with someone who doesn't have a pattern of winding people up just to skip away, maybe I'd be motivated to go hunt up everything I've read on the subject. But you know, I can't help noticing that here in this thread several people have given you links and studies, and you haven't replied to them. Curious, that.
It's not calculated to piss people off, it's a space-claiming strategy that works in tandem with Zorba decreeing that "misgendering" is now a bannable offense (sorry, he didn't decree anything, he just reinterpreted the rules so that it has always been a bannable offense, comrade).
It's a tactic to slam the overton window left and step on people's fingers if they try to stop it. And it works.
Being an asshole is a bannable offense. You're allowed to say you don't think trans women are women. You're not allowed to make a point of "misgendering" someone to be a dick and express your contempt.
He specifically said that calling Charles Clymer a he with no other mark of disrespect is against the rules. Soon that will extend to linking articles that talk about Charle's "deadname," because that's just how this sort of thing works, and because those are the social rules in the indie game dev scene Zorba is trying to gain status in.
If you think that's unlikely, a few years ago the mods were laughing at the idea of the current rules. And look where we are now.
Darwin knows how this works too, and what "rhetorical strategies" to use to accelerate it and claim yet another space for his party.
I don't even remember who Charles Clymer is (just Googled, okay, some trans woman with a public facing job) or the thread you are evidently still butthurt about, but as for the bolded part, this is not modhatted, but for the record, if you used this line of attack in another thread, I probably would mod you for lack of charity. Not because it's Zorba, and certainly not because he asked me to, but when someone gives a reason for doing something (and agree or disagree, Zorba explained the reasons for saying "Don't be an asshole to trans people just because they disgust you"), do not drop your sneers about how the "real" reason they're doing it is because they're trying to curry favor with people who probably have no idea about the Motte. (If Zorba's concern was really looking good to woke developers, I doubt he'd want them to know anything about the Motte.)
Where are we now? What current rules are you talking about? There's one rule (singular) which to be frank, even the mods aren't entirely clear about but which almost never comes up except when someone is making a point of being an ass. I've never modded someone for referring to a trans woman as "he" and I wouldn't unless the poster was being an asshole about it.
"Don't be an asshole" is a hard rule to complain about, but if using the pronouns that you think are correct for trans people == 'being an asshole', then this amounts to ceding the field, no?
Probably not conducive to truthful discussion either.
And now you seem to be saying that sometimes this would be ok, sometimes 'being an asshole', which in some ways makes it worse -- if it's always or never assholery we could frame our discussion accordingly, but personally I have no idea where that line would be. Either you accept the framework or not.
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