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Trans Women are not Women

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Belz... said:
I hope your rising testosterone levels erased any confusion you might have had about yourself!
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I don't thing I was ever confused as such. It's just, it never turned into THE big issue of my identity. There are things I rate up there as defining who I am, but they're just not about whether I wear pants or a skirt. I'd still be just as ok as being either, really.
 
Archie Gemmill Goal said:
No, I am arguing that we shouldn't be excluding transwomen on the grounds that they aren't really women. If there are more objective criteria to be used that ends up with them being excluded then I am open to look at that but they may well/probably will also catch a number of biological women.

Because they AREN'T getting brushed aside. The vast vast majority of those cis-women have exactly the same chance of competing in top level elite sports as they always had. ZERO.

And those who aren't elite will still be able to compete at their non-elite levels because 0.3% can't displace 50% entirely.



No I have simply looked at the arguments put forward and countered it.

If the argument is that it is significantly more prejudicial to include transwomen as exclude them that would seem laughable.

If the argument is that transwomen have a biological advantage then I would probably agree, but most elite sportspeople were born with a biological advantage, so what's the reasoning for drawing the line where it is other than 'transwomen are not real women'?

The truth of the matter is that there really isn't anything sacred about the existing rules. They were drawn up based on an easy metric to suit a societal need. Those needs may be changing. So its worth looking again at the rules to see if we can come up with something better.
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highlight 1 - The objective criteria is being a biological woman.

highlight 2 - It is the HOPE of the POSSIBILITY of having the chance of competing at an elite/professional level that would be significantly diminished among a much larger proportion of biological women, particularly young girls. One might argue it would also be unfairly increased in trans-women. Anyone born male has the same likelihood of becoming an elite male athlete as anyone else born male. Same thing for females within the current paradigm. Many females and males feel that is fair and valuable and worth preserving.

highlight 3 - Yes. that's the unavoidable crux. Doing the best with "what you're born with" is foundational to fair play in sport. That's why it is deemed unfair to artificially increase hormone levels and it seems similarly unfair to allow one to artificially lower them to the threshold of the maximum limit. (see above point regarding unfairly increasing the likelihood of one group being able to compete at an elite level).

highlight 4 - That's a reasonable statement, but I think your detractors on this thread are pointing out that this seems impossible since biological sex is both influential on sporting ability and not-changeable. Some alternatives have been presented, but they don't seem feasible. Do you have any others to present?
 
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attempt5001 said:
Anyone born male has the same likelihood of becoming an elite male athlete as anyone else born male. Same thing for females within the current paradigm. Many females and males feel that is fair and valuable and worth preserving.
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This is demonstrably not the case. Which is part of the point I have been making all along. For a multitude of reasons not least of all biological differences WITHIN the groups being discussed.

Somehow this has been seen as denying that there are biological differences between the groups as well. Which is bizarre.

In some sports such as boxing or weightlifting these differences are seen as important enough to have different classes of competition. in others like tennis, basketball and soccer it isn't.

You can look at the people who compete in elite sports and realise that there are certain body shapes and physical attributes that make people excel. There aren't many 5'4 guys in the NBA, there aren't many skinny little guys winning the 100m and there aren't many muscle-bound hulks running marathons.

So when someone argues 'you can't let people with a biological advantage thanks to an accident of birth compete and win at sports, it wouldn't be fair' I just look at the current situation and go 'huh?' Because that is exactly the situation we have right now.

If someone says 'but some people have too much of an advantage and it will spoil the competition' then I have sympathy for that position but I am asking to then define 'too much' and to look at ways we can address that without simply excluding entire classes of people many of whom may not have that level of advantage at all.

And to look at real cases such as the transwomen I have shown a couple of times rather than invented fantasies about Roger Federer suddenly competing as a woman.
 
I'm 5'7". If I wanted to create a basketball league to play and compete with other people between 5' and 5'10" because I thought it would be more interesting I don't see why anyone would have a problem with that.

Some of the people competing would have other genetic advantages than height that would affect their ability to play the game. They might have proportionately long arms, or better reaction times, or countless other advantages. Okay. But the particular people involved simply came to an agreement that we were only interested in competing with people within a particular range of height.

It might turn out that some people would enjoy watching our games. Maybe a fandom would arise. Cool.

If someone then came in and said he identified as 5'5", even though he was 6'3", I don't think that should obligate us to let him join the game.
 
Roboramma said:
I'm 5'7". If I wanted to create a basketball league to play and compete with other people between 5' and 5'10" because I thought it would be more interesting I don't see why anyone would have a problem with that.
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And what if you decided to exclude Dutch people because statistically they are taller than average?
 
That's actually an interesting point.

I guess that if taken to it's end it leads to the conclusion that men should be allowed to compete in women's sports.
 
Archie Gemmill Goal said:
And what if you decided to exclude Dutch people because statistically they are taller than average?
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Yes, what would be the problem then?

We routinely make up categories like that. E.g., the weight categories in boxing. E.g., there's wheelchair basketball, where you have to be disabled to even be allowed on the field.

And before you pull out of the ass some "but you don't REALLY have to be disabled" stupidity, here's the actual definition in their rules:

PLAYER: Any individual who, because of permanent severe leg disability or paralysis of the lower portion of the body, will benefit through participation in wheelchair basketball and who would be denied the opportunity to play basketball, were it not for the wheelchair adaptation, is eligible.​

That's it. If you are physically able to play without a wheelchair, you don't qualify for it.

And yes it's discrimination. So what?


You just seem to be the kind of silly person whose only argument seems to be barking some form of "but it's discrimination!" like a broken parrot. So what, silly? We discriminate every day, and it's ok. If you want it to mean anything, you have to show that it's UNFAIR discrimination. Otherwise it doesn't mean Jack Schitt. Arguing that we should make it MORE unfair in the name of "but it's discrimination!!!111eleventeen" is the dumbest idea ever.
 
HansMustermann said:
Arguing that we should make it MORE unfair in the name of "but it's discrimination!!!111eleventeen" is the dumbest idea ever.
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Worse still, it's the idea that we should discriminate against a larger group in order to let a tiny group win unfairly.


Thing is, there is no perfect solution for trans people. You can check for hormone levels all you want, but their biological advantages, as a group, don't vanish. Against men they can't compete, and against women they have unfair advantages, and you can't give them their own league because there are too few of them. So what's the solution? Make them win against women, that's what!
 
Archie Gemmill Goal said:
And what if you decided to exclude Dutch people because statistically they are taller than average?
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What forms of discrimination are we allowed to engage in?

For the most part, western societies have decided that we should not discriminate on the basis of factors which are superficial, but we can discriminate on the basis of factors which are substantive. Race, for example, is mostly considered superficial for employment (actors playing roles of historic persons is an example of a rare exception). Eyesight is considered substantive for many jobs (you can't fly a plane if you're blind).

Is the difference between men and women substantive? When it comes to sports, I think the answer is yes, and society for the most part agrees, which justifies segregated mens and womens sports. Is the difference between trans women and women substantive when it comes to sports? I think the answer is still yes.

You have appealed to the existence of other differences, such as height, which can also be substantive for sports, and questioned why we don't segregate on that basis. Well, the answer to that is that the existence of a substantive difference doesn't always require you to segregate on that basis. In the case of sports, it's basically a question of what basis people want to segregate along. It appears people aren't interested in a separate basketball league for short people. They are interested in a separate basketball league for women.

So do fans want trans women competing in the womens sports leagues? I think the answer is largely no.

And I don't think any further justification is actually required.
 
Roboramma said:
That's actually an interesting point.

I guess that if taken to it's end it leads to the conclusion that men should be allowed to compete in women's sports.
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Well I am not sure it does i think all it means is that if we are excluding people we need to be careful on the grounds we are excluding them that those grounds are justifiable and that it's not simply a matter of prejudice.
 
Ziggurat said:
What forms of discrimination are we allowed to engage in?

For the most part, western societies have decided that we should not discriminate on the basis of factors which are superficial, but we can discriminate on the basis of factors which are substantive. Race, for example, is mostly considered superficial for employment (actors playing roles of historic persons is an example of a rare exception). Eyesight is considered substantive for many jobs (you can't fly a plane if you're blind).
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And I don't think I have ever argued otherwise. However we need to exercise caution when we decide on which factors are substantive because we most certainly do not discriminate on EVERY factor that is substantive.

i think anyone who tried to argue that we shouldn't let Kenyans compete in distance running because they keep winning all the time would be rightly castigated for it and yet it would appear there is something substantive in certain East African ethnicities that gives them an advantage.

Is the difference between men and women substantive? When it comes to sports, I think the answer is yes, and society for the most part agrees, which justifies segregated mens and womens sports. Is the difference between trans women and women substantive when it comes to sports? I think the answer is still yes.
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Well this is part of the key question. But we should also bear in mind that there is quite a broad distribution across these groups which means its very difficult to simply apply broad brush strokes to individuals.

Not all Kenyans are great distance runners. Not all transwomen are going to significantly or even necessarily ANY better than ciswomen in a given sport.

You have appealed to the existence of other differences, such as height, which can also be substantive for sports, and questioned why we don't segregate on that basis. Well, the answer to that is that the existence of a substantive difference doesn't always require you to segregate on that basis. In the case of sports, it's basically a question of what basis people want to segregate along. It appears people aren't interested in a separate basketball league for short people. They are interested in a separate basketball league for women.
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Indeed. But that's a choice we make and therefore we need to exercise thought about how we make it in a way that isn't unnecessarily prejudiced and, no, we don't just get to say 'well people like it that way so tough' otherwise we might well continue to have racially segregated sports.

So do fans want trans women competing in the womens sports leagues? I think the answer is largely no.
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Well we don't actually know what fans think, or how they will feel after its been happening for 20 or 30 years. But that's not really the key question anyway. Did fans necessarily want black people competing in baseball alongside white people?

And I don't think any further justification is actually required.
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Well I disagree. We don't pander to prejudice and discrimination and bigotry in other fields and I don't think we should do so in sport either.

So I don't think this is the issue at all, the issue is the one you raised initially - can transwomen compete in sport alongside women while still maintaining the integrity of the sport and the competition and my feeling on this is that the answer is probably, yes, sometimes. Is there therefore a sound justification for excluding those people?
 
Sports are inherently different from job searching or our legal system and it doesn't make you "woker than us" to pretend it is not.

The spirit of competition is the core of sports, not a side affect.

Jane not getting a job simply because she's a woman is discrimination.

Jane not being able to lift as much weight because she's a woman is not.
 
I think once AGG understands the reason why women and men are segregated in sports, he'll also understand why it's a bad idea for transwomen to compete with women in sports.

But this thread is not up to the task. You can lead a horse to water, etc.
 
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