Cont: Trans women are not women (IX)

[shuttlt]

What on earth does that have to do with Lia Thomas and sport?

Look I know you want to avoid the sport issue, but this is at the cutting edge of this whole topic.

I don't mind the sports issue. It's a symptom though, not the cutting edge. Treating it as if it was a genuine debate where we just needed to find the right balance is nonsense. It's like discussing the Civil Rights movement as if it was a debate on the correct allocation of seats on busses where a solution to make both sides happy was all that was called for.

 

[Darat]

Really?

Lia has been mentioned countless times in this thread. Lia has broken womens swimming NCAA records galore and relegated women swimmers to failure. Lia wants to make he US womens Olympic team. Lia is non-transitioned with a girlfriend and self identifies as a transgender lesbian.

How many women swimmers are going to be disadvantaged by the Lias of this world?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_Thomas

Aren't you asking the same question as I am asking? Since I asked it I'm unlikely to know the answer else I wouldn't have had to ask in the first place!

 

[lionking]

Aren't you asking the same question as I am asking? Since I asked it I'm unlikely to know the answer else I wouldn't have had to ask in the first place!

What?

This as your question:

system.
?

Clear as day, without doubt. I posted a link about Lia Thomas. What more do you want?

 

[Darat]

What?

This as your question:



Clear as day, without doubt. I posted a link about Lia Thomas. What more do you want?

No that was not my question - this was my question:

...snip...

If transwomen are permitted to compete against biological women, then ultimately, biological women will be pushed down or out of their own sports as all the top performers who hold all the records will be transwomen. Why should a tiny minority group of people be allowed the unfair physiological advantage of going through male puberty, something that biological females are denied.

...snip...

Not arguing against sex segregation in sport but how likely is the above given the very small number of trans people?

You quoted my post and said: "How many do you want to see? Lia Thomas alone has been a disruptive swimmer in the US college system."
Which had nothing to do with my question as far as I can see. Did you mean to quote someone else and was answering their question not mine?

 

[lionking]

No that was not my question - this was my question:



You quoted my post and said: "How many do you want to see? Lia Thomas alone has been a disruptive swimmer in the US college system."
Which had nothing to do with my question as far as I can see. Did you mean to quote someone else and was answering their question not mine?

No, you ignored the fact that Lia Thomas is disrupting and disadvantaging women swimmers. If you don’t see the relevance, that is your problem not mine.

Your post suggested that transwomen do not impact womens sport. My response is that it only takes one to effect many. I would like to hear a response that disagrees with this.

 

[d4m10n]

Nobody at all is suggesting that new-born babies should not be sexed/gendered in the way that they always have been.

Who came up with CAMAB/CAFAB if nobody objects to sex assignment at birth?

https://www.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/4bgdgr/camabcafab_why_do_people_use_it/

 

[smartcooky]

Not arguing against sex segregation in sport but how likely is the above given the very small number of trans people?

I explain this in my post #1425

You have to consider how elite athletes get to be elite. They are a tiny, tiny percentage of all the Athletes.

For example in New Zealand we have about 6,000 registered women Track Athletes. At elite level, we have... three (0.05%). They are Zoe Hobbs, Camille Buscomb and Portia Bing. They achieve elite level by the times over the distances they run. Transgender women WILL run faster that any of these three are capable of.

To give you some idea what that looks like, Zoe Hobbs is a 100m/200m sprinter, with a PB of 11.08 over 100m. There are currently 30 male sprinters in NZ whi have run the 100m faster than Zoe. Two of them are considered to be elite level (Edward Osei-Nketia - 10.08, and Tiaan Whelpton - 10.14), the next four are at level 2 and the rest at level 3.

If any one of those were to declare themselves transgender, they will instantly leapfrog Zoe Hobbs who will then have no chance of qualifying for the next Olympics or World Championships... the single women's 100m spot on the team would be taken by a man masquerading as a woman.

 

[smartcooky]

How many do you want to see? Lia Thomas alone has been a disruptive swimmer in the US college system.

We have one in Mountain Biking in NZ... Kate Weatherly, who as a man was no more than a below average competitor finishing regularly in the second half of the field in the men's down hill. Weatherly takes the transgender option to enter the women's downhill and wins the National Championships in a time 30 seconds faster than the next competitor in an event where 30 seconds would usually cover the first 20 to 30 finishers!

 

[Darat]

No, you ignored the fact that Lia Thomas is disrupting and disadvantaging women swimmers. If you don’t see the relevance, that is your problem not mine.

Your post suggested that transwomen do not impact womens sport. My response is that it only takes one to effect many. I would like to hear a response that disagrees with this.

What an absolute load of crap.

Read what question I asked not what question you seem to have thought I'd asked.

 

[lionking]

What an absolute load of crap.

Read what question I asked not what question you seem to have thought I'd asked.

It looks like you changed your question from your sarcastic emoji and question mark.

But whatever. Do you think Lia Thomas has disrupted women’s swimming in the NCAA? I don’t really expect an honest answer.

 

[TomB]

Huh?

Nobody at all is suggesting that new-born babies should not be sexed/gendered in the way that they always have been.

The issue is around people who come to realise that the gender they were assigned at birth is not in alignment with their true gender identity.

OK, regardless of which side I look at this from, and I'm sympathetic to both sides, this is so wrong it bothers me. It's a grossly inaccurate use of language.

Doctors do not "gender" babies at birth. At least not on official documents. They "sex" babies at birth.

One of the key components of this discussion has been that sex and gender are no longer considered synonymous. While some debate that change in language usage, this does not give me any problems. Except when the people pushing that change, forget about it when it is convenient for them.

Doctors do not "assign" a gender to a newborn. They make an observation of sex. There is no observation they can make of that time of gender, as gender is now defined as something akin to a personality trait or self-image. Something internal.

The sex they observe is not "assigned," it is observed. This is no different than the other observations they make at birth: birth weight, number of fingers and toes, etc. It is not an assignation or a judgment, it is an empirical (*) observation.

At birth, the doctor has no way to determine gender. The only thing that is noted on official documents is "sex." (Granted, there may be some forms that use the term "gender," but this is not because they are collecting something different, it's because usage is changing or has changed and the forms do not reflect the change.)

If the doctor does any gendering at birth, it would be in informing the parents of the sex with the phrase "It's a boy/girl," but that's pretty nit-picky. Knowing the sex, of course, can lead parents to make assumptions about gender. If anyone's assigning a gender at birth, it's parents by choosing clothes and painting the nursery.

But sex, is not assigned. It is observed and noted. Can that observation be incorrect? Sure. There are a very few intersex conditions that may result in a misleading phenotype at birth. These are not "mis-assigned." they are erroneous observations due to the absence of data that is not normally needed or collected.

* For those who aren't familiar with the term, "empirical" means:

1 : originating in or based on observation or experience empirical data
2 : relying on experience or observation alone often without due regard for system and theory an empirical basis for the theory
3 : capable of being verified or disproved by observation or experiment empirical laws
4 : of or relating to empiricism

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empirical

 

[Darat]

It looks like you changed your question from your sarcastic emoji and question mark.

But whatever. Do you think Lia Thomas has disrupted women’s swimming in the NCAA? I don’t really expect an honest answer.

I can now time travel - amazing. Must go back and let myself know the winning £195 million lottery ticket from a week or two ago.

My question did not change - you however have persistently avoided answering the question I asked.

Do you know the answer or not?

 

[shuttlt]

Doctors do not "gender" babies at birth. At least not on official documents. They "sex" babies at birth.

I suppose one could say that by doing that, the baby is almost certainly going to be socialised and treated as if it had the associated gender. In that sense, they are acting like the sorting hat and assigning the baby to Slytherin or Hufflepuff. If you take an environmentalist view of gender, then they pretty much are implicitly assigning a gender.

 

[TomB]

Nope, I understand it perfectly - its just that you are wrong... completely wrong.

Where do you think elite athletes, and sub-elite athletes come from? Do they just magically appear out of nowhere like fairy dust? No, of course they don't. They come from the grass roots of every sport. They are the ones who strive hard to succeed, and so through sheer skill and determination make it to the next level, and the next, and the next an so on. Only a tiny percentage of grass roots athletes ever make it to the next level, and only a tiny percentage of those make it to the next, and so on.

It is at the level of grass-roots in women's sport that having transwomen competing against women will do the most damage to women's sport (and let's not piss around with all the PC semantics here - however you try to spin it, transwomen are physiologically male). Bigger, faster & stronger transwomen will dominate women's sports at those levels, there is zero doubt about this fact. It is already happening now.

That domination will lead to women being unable to progress in their own sport, and this will lead to transwomen being the ones who predominantly progress up the levels thanks to the unfair advantage of their male physiology. Ultimately, the women trying to compete in women's sports will have no chance of progressing, particularly in individual sports like athletics, where select is based on times and placings.

This.

I'll go further.

Young people who try sports when young, generally do not persist in a meaningful way in the absence of a certain level of success. The idea that because lower level sports are generally considered "recreational" and therefore somehow separate from elite or sub-elite sports shows a lack of understanding of how athletic progression works.

The "elite" athletes usually begin in recreational sports. It is success at that level that motivates them to move into higher level programs. For some, these recreational leagues occur at a very young age where it is arguable that there is no advantage due to sex. But many kids don't really begin playing organized sports until The early to mid teens. This includes some who go on to become "elite" or "sub-elite" athletes.

Most of the girls on my daughter's softball teams started playing around ages 11-13. Those who did well in the Park District league, moved up to a more competitive recreational league and then to high school and/or travel teams from there. This progression specifically includes a few scholarship college athletes.

Had they had to compete with males in the park district and rec leagues, they would not have experienced the success that motivated them to move up and eventually win scholarships.

The things that happen at the recreational level affect the outcomes at the elite levels. So LondonJohn's proposition that these are distinct is incorrect.

Now, it's arguable that the number of trans-athletes is so small that it has a minimal effect. In some ways, yes. Maybe.

But think of the following sports and whose name or image you can bring to mind:

Women's swimming
Women's cycling
Women's weightlifting

We know who Lia Thomas is, but how many of us can name a current biological female swimmer? I know most of us wouldn't know a name anyway, But the point still stands that the person who comes to mind...effectively the image of women's swimming...was born male.

I think that's significant.

 

[Rolfe]

I suppose one could say that by doing that, the baby is almost certainly going to be socialised and treated as if it had the associated gender. In that sense, they are acting like the sorting hat and assigning the baby to Slytherin or Hufflepuff. If you take an environmentalist view of gender, then they pretty much are implicitly assigning a gender.

It's not the obstetrician who does that though, it's the parents. It's not as if the parents aren't perfectly capable of figuring out which sex the baby is without being told - those attending the birth just like to make a performance out of it.

If the baby was born at home with no medical personnel in attendance the parents would still know which sex it was, and would carry on right as they were going to anyway with the pink or the blue (or not, depending).

 

[Darat]

I explain this in my post #1425

You have to consider how elite athletes get to be elite. They are a tiny, tiny percentage of all the Athletes.

For example in New Zealand we have about 6,000 registered women Track Athletes. At elite level, we have... three (0.05%). They are Zoe Hobbs, Camille Buscomb and Portia Bing. They achieve elite level by the times over the distances they run. Transgender women WILL run faster that any of these three are capable of.

To give you some idea what that looks like, Zoe Hobbs is a 100m/200m sprinter, with a PB of 11.08 over 100m. There are currently 30 male sprinters in NZ whi have run the 100m faster than Zoe. Two of them are considered to be elite level (Edward Osei-Nketia - 10.08, and Tiaan Whelpton - 10.14), the next four are at level 2 and the rest at level 3.

If any one of those were to declare themselves transgender, they will instantly leapfrog Zoe Hobbs who will then have no chance of qualifying for the next Olympics or World Championships... the single women's 100m spot on the team would be taken by a man masquerading as a woman.

I understand your point but I am still wondering how many trans-women would want to become top/world-class women athletes? The reason I am wondering is that the actual number of trans folk seems to be very small (as a percentage of the population) yet we do seem to be seeing quite a few competing or trying to compete in top women's sporting events. Is it in proportion to the number of trans-women in the population? Or do they seek such competition disproportionately to their percentage in the population? Or is that we are sensitised to these stories - like when you buy a red car and you start to see a lot "more" red cars on the roads when it is just you are noticing the red cars more?

I know it's neither here nor there in regards to allowing trans-women to compete in women's sports but I think it could be an interesting line of study.

 

[Rolfe]

I can just imagine girls involved in athletics at senior school level or similar. Constantly being beaten by boys with long hair. "Don't worry dear, "she" won't be eligible to compete against you once you get to a certain level of competition. Keep trying for second place until then."

It's not going to work. It would be soul-destroying for these girls. Part of the incentive to progress is success in the more junior leagues. Being constantly deprived of that, even by someone who won't be eligible at a more senior stage, is going to put most girls off for life.

Not to mention the discomfort of being forced to strip in front of this boy with long hair and a cock and balls. Not to mention the congitive dissonance of being forced to refer to him as "she" and smile nicely and congratulate him on his success.

Toxic doesn't begin to describe it.

How many such situations is too many? Do we just tell these girls, too bad, there aren't so many of these boys, you just had the bad luck to be in the same group as one of them. Suffer to validate the feelings of the boys, there's a good girl. You're doing a good thing.

Bollocks.

 

[shuttlt]

It's not the obstetrician who does that though, it's the parents. It's not as if the parents aren't perfectly capable of figuring out which sex the baby is without being told - those attending the birth just like to make a performance out of it.

If the baby was born at home with no medical personnel in attendance the parents would still know which sex it was, and would carry on right as they were going to anyway with the pink or the blue (or not, depending).

It's language games and weird ways of looking at the world. If you look at it as a social ceremony where there is a ritualised sorting hat moment, then that is kind of it. Sure, some parents might go "to heck with the them, I'm raising this son of Adam as a daughter of Eve.... but very few people do. If one is looking at gender assignment as something imposed by some version of the patriarchy, then I don't see why we shouldn't say that it is the obstetrician who assigns it. It's a Rousseauian, man in a state of nature, kind of way of looking at it. Obviously they are loonies.

 

[shuttlt]

I can just imagine girls involved in athletics at senior school level or similar. Constantly being beaten by boys with long hair. "Don't worry dear, "she" won't be eligible to compete against you once you get to a certain level of competition. Keep trying for second place until then."

You'd also have to wonder, before committing years of your life to something like that whether the water won't have risen to the elite level by the time you get there.

 

[Rolfe]

You'd also have to wonder, before committing years of your life to something like that whether the water won't have risen to the elite level by the time you get there.

Good point.

People usually fail to realise the extent to which an extremely good performer can dominate a sport. Think about tennis. Nadal, Djokovic and the others (now that Federer has more or less retired). Sure, there are other men in with a shout, but they're scrappng around for penny-numbers of titles compared to what these two (three) have scooped up.

Now imagine there are just two "transwomen" in women's tennis (and I'm not talking Richards here, competing at an age when men have normally retired gracefully to the seniors, I'm talking people in their twenties). That's not many, is it? Surely we can be kind to them?

Serena Willliams couldn't beat a man ranked outside the top 200. We'd have a women's game dominated by a couple of males, in much the same way Nadal and Djokovic dominate the men's game, and the women scrapping around for a few titles here and there maybe on a day one of the males was injured or something.

And saying, well we won't let them enter the big tournaments, won't work. Girls need fair competition to rise through the levels of their sport. Not the hope that one day, if they work hard enough, they can come second or third often enough to qualify.