Trans Women are not Women

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Ziggurat said:
That's correct. And it's unfortunate for them, but they shouldn't get to ruin the women's category to remedy that problem.
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Devil's Advocate: You're begging the question that the women's category has important social value to begin with. Why should the sporting world get to ruin a transgender's sense of self and healing journey to remedy the sporting world's binary gender problem?

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The irony of this argument is that once you get rid of meaningfully fair competition, there's no value in being a transgender athlete anyway.

1. Identify a respected institution.
2. kill it.
3. gut it.
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.

This is essentially what TERFs are worried about, with regards to the feminist movement.
 
sadhatter said:
Maybe competitive sport isn't really an area trans people can compete fairly against anyone other than themselves. And there is nothing wrong with that. No one says the concept of the paralympics is evil.
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I don't think any paralympians are demanding to be treated as if they were able-bodied. Most of them seem to be interested in being treated as human beings, in being recognized for their earned achievements, and in being given fair opportunities to participate in society. Right? Someone who's leg disabled doesn't run around demanding, "pretend my legs work!". He says, "give me a ramp".

A ramp is fine. An open category for transgender athletes is fine. Pretending a dude's legs work when they actually don't is perverse.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
Well, individual trans athletes may be dominating here and there, but the relatively small numbers of trans people is going to limit how much this is going to occur. It's not like we are going to start seeing situations where an entire varsity team for a high school is all trans women.
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I think you're underestimating the effects. High school sports may be capturing the headlines now, but it won't end there. Should the Olympics accept male to female transgenders in women's sports? Because there are more than enough transgenders to dominate the Olympics. And that will have consequences downstream. And even at the highschool level, you're not just competing against your school, but often across the state. And it doesn't take many transgender athletes to completely dominate state competitions. If the state level competitions are always dominated by transgender athletes, that can affect participation in sports even at schools with no transgender students.

I am sympathetic to those isolated cases where cis-women feel the tables are tilted against them and all their hard work isn't being properly rewarded.
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The tables are tilted against lots of people. If you're a dwarf, no amount of hard work will ever make you competitive in sports. Trans athletes don't deserve accommodations any more than countless other people who are at some disadvantage. It's unfortunate for them that their numbers don't suffice to sustain their own sports categories, but such is life.

Though one could conceive of a college or professional team deliberately recruiting an all trans team from across the country if they felt it could provide a competitive advantage and there were enough trans athlete of high ability to recruit.
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Teams will sometimes recruit for advantage even when the rules don't allow it. If the rules do allow it, it's guaranteed to happen.
 
//Slight hijack//

There actually is a weird little "I identify as disabled" subculture, people who live their lives in wheelchairs even though... their legs work or in extreme cases have even intentionally disabling themselves in order to fit in with their "identity."

I wonder A) if any of them have ever argued they should be allowed to be in the Paralympics (or similar) based on their identity and B) if not how long before someone tires?
 
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JoeMorgue said:
There's also the small problem that the Paralympics is an entirely different dynamic.

"Just put them in a 3rd category" is not going to work with people who defining themselves as belong to one of the two established categories is... well sort of the point.
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Self definition means nothing compared to actual results.

If i am 6 foot and 220 of muscle, me feeling like a dainty lady isn't going to fix your jaw if I punch you.
 
theprestige said:
Huh. Looks like I was ninja'd by JoeMorgue across the board on this last exchange. Well played, JoeMorgue!
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This is one thing me and you seem to (mostly) be on the same wavelength on.

Like you I do completely accept that... what Transpeople are trying to get across to society is a legit thing that exists. Stepping back from the labels some form of gender disparage is a thing that people can have.

I just think that, probably through no ill will or bad intention, the concept there were trying to get across solidifying into "identifying as the other gender" took the discussion and the movement (for lack of a better term) to... a less than ideal place. And now that's become the "standard" way of looking at it and as evidenced here it doesn't really... work.

These people absolutely deserve our respect and support and love. But we aren't beholden to conceptualizing it exactly as they do in order to achieve that.
 
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theprestige said:
Devil's Advocate: You're begging the question that the women's category has important social value to begin with.
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Consumer spending on women's sports suggests that a lot of people think it does.

Why should the sporting world get to ruin a transgender's sense of self and healing journey to remedy the sporting world's binary gender problem?
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The sporting world has no obligation to anyone's sense of self or their healing journey. To the extent that sports provides benefit and has value, that benefit and value scales with participation (from both athletes and audiences). That participation is contingent upon a sense of fairness, which is why sports organizations worry about doping. If the competition is not viewed as fair, people won't want to compete, and won't want to watch.

Male to female tansgender athletes competing against female athletes undermines the fairness of the competition, and threatens both audience and athlete participation.

The irony of this argument is that once you get rid of meaningfully fair competition, there's no value in being a transgender athlete anyway.

1. Identify a respected institution.
2. kill it.
3. gut it.
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.

This is essentially what TERFs are worried about, with regards to the feminist movement.
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Iowahawk is the best.
 
theprestige said:
Minorities are people, too. I'm a big fan of the 80% rule in general, but when it comes to people?

Ten percent or one percent, why shouldn't they be catered to?
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Because feudalism sucks?

Change minorities to royals in your sentence and you should see the issue.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
The problem is that trans people are a very small minority of the population, so a trans league is not really feasible on anything but the largest scales.

What do you do with a trans women high school student that wants to engage in high school sports?

1) put them into the women's league and frustrate the other women athletes that may be inherently disadvantaged

2) put them in men's league were the trans student is disadvantaged and may be deeply ashamed of being labeled as the opposite sex

3) forbid them from competing

no solution is perfect, but I'm inclined that 2 is likely the most fair option, though not a very good one.
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I think 2 is obviously the best choice.

We have to keep in mind that athleticism isn't "fair" for everyone to begin with. People have disabilities, hormonal problems, stunted growth, etc. ie many things outside of their control (or possibly anyone else's). This doesn't mean we need to break the system for the rest of the people to compete so that those who aren't fit enough can compete.

Maybe transgenderism just simply falls into the same category: tough luck, you can't get everything in life
 
Manger Douse said:
Red Dwarf?
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Yep.

To the current topic, what I'd advocate is some kind of handicap system. It would take some maths and fine tuning but I don't think it'd be that hard to find the right spot where trans athletes can still win on occasion but don't obliterate the competition. Something like, say the cis male record time is one minute and the cis female record time is one minute ten seconds, let all the women race together but put a (10-x) second handicap on the trans women competitors. It would still hurt some feelings but at a level I think everyone could deal with. You do have to balance 'treat me like x' with 'give everyone a fair shot.' That is, if you want to formally compete in women's sport, yeah, you'd have to be out as trans and get the special rules. It's not ideal but neither is the world.

I'll digress to say when it comes to top-tier sports I don't think there's much that's 'fair' about it anyway because it's very difficult to wrestle 'fairness' into all of the mess that goes into being able to compete in something like the Olympics anyway. It's more a matter of getting rid of advantages that look bad, like not letting athletes dope or use steroids. Nobody imagines putting caps on how much time or money or coaching or dietary assistance a training athlete has access to, for example. We'll all cheer when a guy who can only train in his spare time in his back yard wins but nobody kicks the ground and says it wasn't a fair competition when my-whole-life-is-this-sport types win. In that spirit I'll say that the amount of 'unfair' that a trans-handicap would be, compared to the amount of 'unfair' that not having any handicap would be, would not be extraordinary.

Anyway, the handicap thing could would work for intersex or other hormonal condition people who can handily blow away the rest of their category too. I would never for example want to chuck out someone like Caster Semenya from being able to compete with other women, but she walked all over them when she was in her top form. Currently the International Association of Athletics Federations deals with that wrinkle by requiring hyperandrogenous athletes to take medication to lower their testosterone levels. I don't think that's an ideal solution.
 
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pharphis said:
his doesn't mean we need to break the system for the rest of the people to compete so that those who aren't fit enough can compete.

Maybe transgenderism just simply falls into the same category: tough luck, you can't get everything in life
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Maybe transgenderism does fall into the same category. However, our society is currently struggling to implement a paradigm in which transgenderism *is not* a disability, and in which transgenders *are not* unfit.

So it really does come down to a question of social justice. Is it more socially just to uphold an MtF transgender's desire to function as a woman in competitive sport? Or is it more socially just to bar her from that role in society?
 
theprestige said:
Maybe transgenderism does fall into the same category. However, our society is currently struggling to implement a paradigm in which transgenderism *is not* a disability, and in which transgenders *are not* unfit.

So it really does come down to a question of social justice. Is it more socially just to uphold an MtF transgender's desire to function as a woman in competitive sport? Or is it more socially just to bar her from that role in society?
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Its more socially just to bar them from that role in society.
 
Alternately the trans women could all agree to be like Dash in the Incredibles, enjoy being in the competition and show off a bit but graciously not win the holy **** out of it because they understand the concept of not ruining everyone else's fun.

It could just be informally agreed that winning too much, too easily is gauche. Because it's the trans woman superpower. And cis women don't have superpowers. And you're just as much a woman as a cis woman. So there you go.
 
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I think Strawberry's opinion is worth 1 toot from my butt.

There, I said what I was thinking.
 
Lithrael said:
I think Strawberry's opinion is worth 1 toot from my butt.

There, I said what I was thinking.
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Come off it, Jenner has fathered six children by three different women and became an Olympic gold medallist in a men's event. He's no more a woman than Mohammad Ali was a woman.
 
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