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Trans Women are not Women

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cullennz said:
Um. Yes they can.

Discriminating on gender happens all the time.
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And the state is involved. The state is the one that decides what discrimination is permitted and what discrimination is not.

Both you and Darat seem to have badly misunderstood my point. You both seem to think that I'm arguing that because gender discrimination is a state issue, the state must be prohibiting all such discrimination. That's not my argument.

My argument is simply that because gender discrimination is a state issue, sporting organizations don't actually get to decide discrimination questions in a vacuum, and should not assume that they will continue to be free from state regulation regarding discrimination against transsexuals.
 
Darat said:
No idea why we do allow such discrimination but we certainly do.
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Seriously? You've never given much thought to this area of public policy? Not enough to form any kind of idea at all? Not even a provisional one?

I mean, just from reading this thread alone, I've at least some idea of why we do it this way. And this is only one of several threads on this topic in the past few years. How are you still not having any idea about this?
 
Darat said:
Sport is a non-state issue, let the various sport bodies and organisations decide for themselves what criteria they wish to use.
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Title IX makes college sports a state issue. And the state is threatening to get involved with the USA Powerlifting organization because of its decision to ban transgender women from competing as women. So it’s not a non state issue, even if it should be.
 
All good

Lets just go with it.

Hey if blokes want to change and enter female sports like boxing and MMA, who cares.

Sure they will be pulverising women in the age of metoo and maybe a couple of girls will die, but that is just a side issue to the fulfilling the rights of the minority.
 
Ziggurat said:
As a legal matter, I don't think the state is better positioned to make this decision. But I am concerned that the basis on which the decision is often made may not be fully informed by all the relevant facts. In other words, I don't trust that doctors are helping parents and kids make the right decisions, but I don't trust anyone else with the power to intervene either.
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It comes down to fear of making the wrong choice. You don't want to transition a child if you feel that child will come to regret that decision. At the same time, that child could just as easily regret putting off the transition, especially if hormonal changes make it much harder to make that transition look natural.

Yes, it's right to be concerned that decisions may not be fully informed, but the job of making sure they are falls on the doctors and parents involved. There is not much you and I can do to help out, and it's certainly unlikely that government could help.

I think on this issue we have to accept that sometimes, despite the best intentions of everyone, sometimes the wrong decision will be made. Hopefully not very often, but you can't rule it out. That shouldn't stop us from doing our best to make the rights decisions.
 
theprestige said:
I'm agnostic. For now, I'm provisionally taking the null hypothesis for your claim: It should not be a choice between the child, their family, and their doctors.
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Who, then?

theprestige said:
Can you tell me more about your guiding principles, when and why you make exceptions, etc.?
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The guiding principle is the choice is made by the people effected by the choice, and that it's nobody else's business.

theprestige said:
So. Your idea that a child should be allowed to choose their gender, pre-puberty. Does it fall under your guiding principle that children should be allowed to make their own choices, and you can't see a reason to make an exception here? Or is the other way around?
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It's not like you're presenting a choice to the child like milk or juice. These kids raise the issue themselves because they feel they're the wrong gender. That's not the experience of most children.

theprestige said:
If that's too broad a consideration, we can keep it in the realm of medical choices. It's not hard to find a kid that doesn't want to be jabbed with a needle. Do we let them choose for themselves whether to get vaccinated?
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You're arguing to me as though my position were that the child and the child alone should be making this decision, and that is not correct.

theprestige said:
If you think that as a matter of social policy we should let it be a choice between the child, their family, and their doctors, then it's incumbent upon you to advocate for this policy.
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Which is pretty easy. If you want to include someone in the choice other than family and the doctors, you need to explain who else you want involved and why. I can't think of anyone else who should be involved, certainly not the government.
 
theprestige said:
Seriously? You've never given much thought to this area of public policy? Not enough to form any kind of idea at all? Not even a provisional one?



I mean, just from reading this thread alone, I've at least some idea of why we do it this way. And this is only one of several threads on this topic in the past few years. How are you still not having any idea about this?
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Nope. I've never looked into the historic and legislative approach that allows sporting bodies seemingly to be exempt from the general policy of can't discriminate based on sex.
 
Lambchops said:
How do you feel about trans people who do not participate in sports?
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100% supportive, and I don't just say that because it's trendy. I started up a gender equality program for employers that helped get some trans workers out of the sex industry and into real jobs a few years ago.

I support their right to use toilets they feel appropriate, despite knowing for certain there are men out there who use it as a front for their perversions, but I cannot support them competing against women who were born women. The physiology is different and no cut & tuck or oestrogen is going to change that.
 
Instead of using sex/gender as a proxy for innate 'advantages' in order to ensure a level playing field, why not simply either (a) do away with categorizations of this kind ; or (b) sequester people/groups on the actual "advantages" one that directly affect performance? Like they do in golf, or in boxing (of course, boxing also keeps apart men and women, but leaving that aside).

But yeah, doing something like this means radical change across sports, plus this sort of thing might be a nightmare to implement, as far as the details.
 
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Like I said, probably too elaborate a 'solution' for the 'problem' at hand.

On the other hand, what other truly fair solution is there to this 'trans' question, as far as sports?

Doing something like this effectively tackles that question, and also unaddressed issues even within the same sex.

But, absolutely, (a) way elaborate, perhaps too elaborate; and (b) making sports too 'fair' may kill the whole thrill in sports (or perhaps not, maybe that's a whole separate debate).
 
I don’t think it would solve the issue with respect to tans people given that they still wouldn’t be able to compete with biological women.
 
Darat said:
However we do know that environmental factors can alter the age of the onset of puberty, over a hundred years ago it is estimated the average age of onset of puberty in girls was around 16, it is now in the USA around 10 years of age. We don't fully know why this has happened but it shows there is a great amount of inherant plasticity so it may be we can safely delay it from the average today of 10 to the average of 16 from a hundred years ago without too many side effects. But as I say we don't have good answers yet.
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As I recall, it's been fairly well-established that nutrition is the primary factor in regulating the on-set and progression of puberty, although the specific mechanisms are not fully understood as yet.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4266867/
 
Chanakya said:
Instead of using sex/gender as a proxy for innate 'advantages' in order to ensure a level playing field, why not simply either (a) do away with categorizations of this kind ; or (b) sequester people/groups on the actual "advantages" one that directly affect performance? Like they do in golf, or in boxing (of course, boxing also keeps apart men and women, but leaving that aside).

But yeah, doing something like this means radical change across sports, plus this sort of thing might be a nightmare to implement, as far as the details.
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Not only that, but it would mean that women would be almost entirely excluded from the high-tier tournaments and competitions.
 
The more I think about it, the more I think that the only logical endgame is to ban competitive sport.

You can't marginalize women in contests of strength if you don't have contests of strength to begin with. It also completely erases the problem of how to categorize genderfluid athletes.
 
Belz... said:
Not only that, but it would mean that women would be almost entirely excluded from the high-tier tournaments and competitions.
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Let everyone compete. Women are practically gone from all level competition. Sports are sexist.

Split into male and female categories based on physical sex. Sports are transphobic.

Split into male and female categories based on identified gender. Trans athletes dominate female competition, practically non-existent from male competition. Sports are now both sexist and transphobic.

Everybody: "We totally understand that you can't please everybody."
Also everybody: "OMG I can't believe I'm not the one you decided to not please."

Can't win, can't lose, can't quit the game.
 
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