Cont: Trans Women are not Women II: The Bath Of Khan

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BobTheCoward said:
What is this group that doesn't have tryouts, cares about competitiveness, but doesn't care about the competitiveness within a sex category?
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Let's consider a college sport, say basketball. Do they have tryouts? Yes. Are they competitive? Yes.

Is sandbagging a problem? No. Why not? Because the tryouts are to make the team, not to see which group you play with/against. If you sandbag, you don't get to play at all.

But under your proposal, where men and women can compete head-to-head, either you have to have teams for different skill levels (and hence you could sandbag from a higher level to a lower level), or you only have one level and women are simply excluded. I suspect that you don't have a problem with that latter solution, but it's a solution that pretty much nobody else (including transgender athletes) actually wants, and so it will never happen.
 
Ziggurat said:
Let's consider a college sport, say basketball. Do they have tryouts? Yes. Are they competitive? Yes.

Is sandbagging a problem? No. Why not? Because the tryouts are to make the team, not to see which group you play with/against. If you sandbag, you don't get to play at all.

But under your proposal, where men and women can compete head-to-head, either you have to have teams for different skill levels (and hence you could sandbag from a higher level to a lower level), or you only have one level and women are simply excluded. I suspect that you don't have a problem with that latter solution, but it's a solution that pretty much nobody else (including transgender athletes) actually wants, and so it will never happen.
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But if we are sex segregating, what do you care if there is a level where women are simply excluded? And isn't the sex segregation for competitiveness putting women in a different level now?

Your answer sounds like it is putting some value on the identity of these women as women rather than as a homo sapien with certain sexual organs. You seem to be tying sports to gender identity.
 
Roboramma said:
Sex segregation prevents some fraction of the total group of people from sandbagging to get into the less competitive field of competitors. Specifically highly competitive male athletes can't sandbag to compete against the female field of competitors.

That you don't care about this as an issue doesn't mean others don't. There's no flaw in our reasoning in that we care about this issue.
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What are you doing about same sex sandbagging and why doesn't it apply if both sexes competed?
 
Bob,
I'm not going to go down this road very far, because you don't really like to defend and examine your own positions. You are more into challenging others' positions. However, if you are inclined to change that, and examine your own position, I suggest you start by asking yourself, not us, why there are athletic competitions at all. If you find an answer, then you can see where transgirls fit into that answer.

To everyone else,

Sadly, a lot of very influential people in our society have come to the conclusion that the "competition" part of the competition is either unimportant or actually harmful. This trend has led to a variety of unfortunate phenomena , from transgirls breaking records, to participation trophies.
 
BobTheCoward said:
But if we are sex segregating, what do you care if there is a level where women are simply excluded? And isn't the sex segregation for competitiveness putting women in a different level now?
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Wow. That's... wow. Way to miss the entire point of segregating by sex.

Your answer sounds like it is putting some value on the identity of these women as women
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Well, yes. Society does that. And society is going to keep doing that. There is no actual constituency for doing otherwise, not even among trans athletes.

You seem to be tying sports to gender identity.
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No, I'm tying it to sex. I know what sex is. "Gender identity" is too poorly defined to be useful to me.
 
I read recently (but can't be arsed to track down now) about a race where pole position is determined by qualifying time, with the slowest qualifiers getting the best starting positions in the race. To cut down on sandbagging, they disqualify any racer whose race time is substantially faster than his qualification time.
 
Ziggurat said:
Way to miss the entire point of segregating by sex.
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I feel like this cannot be emphasized enough. The entire point of sports segregation (by weight, height, sex, disability, etc.) is to create more leagues in which people get the chance to really compete, that is, to be competitive. For those of us who enjoy sport, this is all to the good.
 
d4m10n said:
I feel like this cannot be emphasized enough. The entire point of sports segregation (by weight, height, sex, disability, etc.) is to create more leagues in which people get the chance to really compete, that is, to be competitive. For those of us who enjoy sport, this is all to the good.
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Good point - the Paralympics have so many divisions it's impossible to keep up.

I see no reason why the IAAF can't establish a couple of divisions for trans both ways as well as intersex athletes.
 
Ziggurat said:
Wow. That's... wow. Way to miss the entire point of segregating by sex.



Well, yes. Society does that. And society is going to keep doing that. There is no actual constituency for doing otherwise, not even among trans athletes.



No, I'm tying it to sex. I know what sex is. "Gender identity" is too poorly defined to be useful to me.
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What society is valuing is not the thing between one's legs, but the aspects of womanhood that is gender, not sex.
 
cullennz said:
Not with sport. In sport it is judged on sex and long may it continue.

Gender is irrelevant
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Here is a rather generic definition for gender

either of the two sexes (male and female), especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones.

Female sports are tied to the social and cultural differences.
 
BobTheCoward said:
Because transgender women are women by gender, and sports are about gender, women should be able to compete is women's sports.
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No. The biological differences between men and women extend far beyond genitals. If you define gender as all those other nongenital differences, as your previous post suggests, then trans women are absolutely not women by gender.
 
BobTheCoward said:
Here is a rather generic definition for gender

either of the two sexes (male and female), especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones.

Female sports are tied to the social and cultural differences.
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Social and cultural differences largely follow from the biological ones. They are not as separable as you pretend.
 
Ziggurat said:
Social and cultural differences largely follow from the biological ones. They are not as separable as you pretend.
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I'm not saying they are separate. It is because they are intertwined that all women should be allowed to compete in women's sport. Because there is this element of social and culture baked in, the competitors are socially female and check a box.

There are those who do not check the social box but check the other box, let them in too.
 
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