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Cont: Transwomen are not women - part 13

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Samson said:
It appears there is a field of acivity where there is true equality, violin playing. International competitions produce similar numbers of men and women victors. It is probable a computer could be objective in matters such as intonation. In fact Korean woman Kyung Wha Chung and Israeli man Pinchas Zuckerman were unusually awarded equal first prize in the late 60's. Some would suggest German Julia Fisher is the best violinist today.

I just checked, the Michael Hill competition in NZ has in fact found 5 male and 5 fsmale winners since inception in 2001.
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That provisionally rules out the Patriarchy, as the reason women don't win open pool competitions. If The Man can't keep female violinists down, how is He going to keep down the female pool players?

On the other hand, it does pose a bit of a problem for my thesis, since I would categorize competitive violin playing as a physical challenge, and therefore would expect it to have the same sex-biased statistical pattern of success as other physical competitions.

I wonder if the subjective nature of the judging has something to do with it. Billiard balls don't give a rip about social justice. Musical judges probably do.
 
Samson said:
It appears there is a field of acivity where there is true equality, violin playing. International competitions produce similar numbers of men and women victors. It is probable a computer could be objective in matters such as intonation.
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You don't need computers, it's perfectly fine to use human judges. Just blind them. Don't let them see the violinist, and you're judging them only by sound.

A lot of orchestras adopted blind auditions, and it made a real impact on who could get in. A lot more women made it into orchestras that adopted the practice.

But now, there's a push to do away with them because they don't produce sufficiently "diverse" orchestras. "Diversity" has supplanted meritocracy as the desired goal. Sex and racial discrimination are only bad when it's the wrong kind of sex and racial discrimination.
 
theprestige said:
On the other hand, it does pose a bit of a problem for my thesis, since I would categorize competitive violin playing as a physical challenge, and therefore would expect it to have the same sex-biased statistical pattern of success as other physical competitions.
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I don't expect that. I think violin playing, although physical, is also primarily slow twitch muscle fibers. I think pool is primarily fast twitch muscle fibers. Males have a higher percentage of fast twitch muscle fibers AND higher neuromuscular efficiency (the percentage of motor neurons that can be triggered immediately), which means that they're going to have finer control over fast twitch exertions than females. But that doesn't give them finer control over slow twitch exertions.

I wonder if the subjective nature of the judging has something to do with it. Billiard balls don't give a rip about social justice. Musical judges probably do.
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Except orchestras have been doing blind auditions for decades, so that's easy to circumvent.
 
Ziggurat said:
I don't expect that. I think violin playing, although physical, is also primarily slow twitch muscle fibers. I think pool is primarily fast twitch muscle fibers. Males have a higher percentage of fast twitch muscle fibers AND higher neuromuscular efficiency (the percentage of motor neurons that can be triggered immediately), which means that they're going to have finer control over fast twitch exertions than females. But that doesn't give them finer control over slow twitch exertions.



Except orchestras have been doing blind auditions for decades, so that's easy to circumvent.
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Yep! Your comments totally superseded my musings.
 
Ziggurat said:
What advantages do men have that transwomen do not have?
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Advantages in what sense? I'm not sure I understand the context of this question.

Ziggurat said:
And you're begging the question (in the true meaning of the term). Transwomen are only a subset of women under certain definitions of women. They are not under other definitions of women such as "adult human female". What definition are you using? And why is that definition better than "adult human female"?
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What definition of "woman" am I using? I suppose, "the feminine gender"*. It allows for the distinction between sex (a biological quality) and gender (a social construct). I'd say it's better than "adult human female" because, at best, it does not ignore the distinction or, at worst, deny it exists entirely.

Is that relevant?



* ETA: I suppose it could be "the adult feminine gender" if we're concerned about age distinctions. I was taking that for granted when I first wrote that.
 
Upchurch said:
What definition of "woman" am I using? I suppose, "the feminine gender"*. It allows for the distinction between sex (a biological quality) and gender (a social construct). I'd say it's better than "adult human female" because, at best, it does not ignore the distinction or, at worst, deny it exists entirely.
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Why do you think it is important to make a distinction between sex and gender?

What practical applications do you see in public policy, for gender decoupled from sex?

Pretty much every practical application of gender discrimination in public policy that we've examined over the course of this thread has turned out to be an application of sex discrimination. Sports. Prisons. Representation.

Gender, decoupled from sex, seems to be functionally meaningless.

Other than claiming to be women, what quality do transwomen have in common with women, that they don't also have in common with men?

What definitively distinguishes the masculine gender from the feminine gender? Attire? A man can't wear a dress if he wants? Pronouns? A man can't use feminine pronouns if she wants? Role in society? A man can't be a nanny, or a homemaker, if he wants?

The only practical application of gender decoupled from sex, that I can think of, is as a form of treatment for someone whose mental health has become deranged at the prospect of social constructs arising from the variances between the two biological sexes. Agreeing with a dude that he's actually a lady, because otherwise he'll kill himself, is an application of gender that I can endorse. As long as I'm reasonably certain of the medical necessity of this treatment, and as long as it doesn't extend to pretending they're biologically female (especially to the detriment of actual females).
 
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theprestige said:
You're making a positive claim, that the woman in your scenario is a transphobe.
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That's not the claim lionking was referring to. And, even then, I'm not sure I claimed the ciswoman was a transphobe, although that's certainly a possibility.

theprestige said:
This claim is based on your begged question, that pool is not a sport, and on your axiom, that Google has the absolute definition of what a sport is.
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You're shifting the goalposts. What I actually said was that pool is not an athletic competition. I used the google definition as one point in a many part argument, not as the absolute definition. That's your strawman.

theprestige said:
Though, to be clear, the sign of your claim that the woman is transphobic is indeed positive. It's your responsibility to support it with something better than a begged question and an appeal to Google.
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Again, this is a strawman and not my claim, although I suppose it could be the case.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Stop it.
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You stop.

Can you rephrase Zig's question in a way that makes sense?

In the post he quoted, the only reference to "advantage" was that transwoman have no biological advantage over ciswomen when playing pool. Zig then asked "What advantages do men have that transwomen do not have?"

Are we still talking about pool? Then, the answer is none because pool is not an athletic competition. Are we talking about transwomen playing against men in the men's league (if they're allowed)? Again, none because pool is not an athletic competition. I don't understand the context of the question. If biological advantage is not relevant to playing pool, what would it matter if cismen or transmen were playing against transwomen or ciswomen?

So, the question is pointless in reference to playing pool. Assuming Zig's question is not pointless, there must be another context from which Zig was asking the question that makes it relevant and there is no harm in asking for clarification.

I mean, no harm unless it annoys JoeMorgue for anyone to not understand things the way he does.
 
Upchurch said:
Okay. Repeating a claim half-way in Latin (Italian?), doesn't prove it true.
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Galileo, having already proven his claim to be true, did not bother re-proving it. He just asserted its truth.

Your whole argument depends on you asserting arbitrarily that pool is not a physical activity, and that competitive pool does not call for physical excellence. That's self-evidently nonsense. What am I supposed to do? Try to convince you that pool is a physical activity?
 
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theprestige said:
Galileo, having already proven his claim to be true, did not bother re-proving it. He just asserted its truth.
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But you haven't proved anything yet.

theprestige said:
Your whole argument depends on you asserting arbitrarily that pool is not a physical activity, and that competitive pool does not call for physical excellence. That's self-evidently nonsense. What am I supposed to do? Try to convince you that pool is a physical activity?
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Okay, the fact that you keep moving the goal posts is a red flag on your argument. I never made the claim that pool is or is not a sport. I never made the claim that pool is or is not a physical activity. Those are all your straw man arguments.

I said that pool is not an athletic competition, responding to your first usage of the term.
 
Upchurch said:
It's a negative claim.


Of course, we're not talking about average players. We're talking about expert level players. Are you claiming that a woman cannot be strong enough to play expert level pool OR that in playing pool the person who can always exert the most power in every turn will win?

In actual athletic competition, it is the person who can exert the most force, move the quickest, or keep it up the longest who will win. That isn't the case with pool.
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You confirm you know little about sport and nothing about pool.
 
Upchurch said:
Unless, of course, either sex practices those skills. Do you think professional pool players practice playing pool?
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Your own link acknowledges the male advantage.

The main findings of our study are as follows: there may be a marginal benefit from cognitive imaging in the early stages of skill acquisition of video-assisted surgical tasks; although the treatment group appeared to benefit initially from the introduction of cognitive imaging, no effect was observed on the remaining trials 1 week later; a comparison of the 4 separate groupings showed that potential benefits from cognitive imaging are inconclusive; and finally there are sex differences in performance (time) of video-assisted suturing and bead manipulation tasks on the completion of initial trial procedures. The main findings of our study are as follows: there may be a marginal benefit from cognitive imaging in the early stages of skill acquisition of video-assisted surgical tasks; although the treatment group appeared to benefit initially from the introduction of cognitive imaging, no effect was observed on the remaining trials 1 week later; a comparison of the 4 separate groupings showed that potential benefits from cognitive imaging are inconclusive; and finally there are sex differences in performance (time) of video-assisted suturing and bead manipulation tasks on the completion of initial trial procedures. These results are in concordance with other research that suggests males perform better on visual-spatial representation.
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Upchurch said:
Keep reading. Search for “practice”.
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The ablity to perform any procedure / act increases with practice. But the males were already ahead. Nothing in that article states that the sexes reached parity. Also of interest is this:

Although females recommended one-on-one instruction as the most important strategy (verbal feedback) and males placed greater emphasis on the suturing practice as a whole (stressing the task-oriented and problem-solving component of completing the procedure itself),
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Male and female brains are just different.
 
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