Cont: Transwomen are not women - part 13

[Emily's Cat]

There's plenty of interlocutors for you to choose from in this thread. I'm not the one that decided to get into a two-day slapfight with JoeMorgue, and then try to foist that interaction as typical.

If you're a TRA or adjacent that wants to talk, that could work. If you're just going to argue in bad faith, that won't.

Anyway, let me know when you two are done, and we'll see. Or engage with Emily's Cat, or Elaedith, and leave Joe to his cynical observer role.

Meh. I'm unsurprised, and I suspect Elaedith is as well. After all, we generally make solid posts, with facts and reasoning... and we're females so we're the ones most directly affected by endeavors to let males into female single sex spaces against our will and without our consent. Engaging with us is bad for the brand.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Obviously I'm much less confident about the specific theoretical reasons for thinking that men have an advantage in pool. The point here is that those reasons are evidence.

How confident? I can imagine some ways to test the idea in which I'd be willing to bet on a male biological advantage at about 3 to 1 odds. So not extremely confident*, but that's my weighing of the available evidence.

I find it interesting that your odds is in close alignment with my estimate for what the top 100 would look like if there were zero sexism and equal participation.

I would guess that even though we're both working from a fairly intuitive basis... it's a reasonable approximation of the distribution of height and armspan for males and females, and how much overlap there is in those distributions.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I agree and I've noticed this often getting fudged and fumbled on all sides. If anything there's at least four axes of socialization pressures around gender growing up: boy (and you mostly fit in as a boy) boy (and you super extra do not fit in as a boy); girl (and you mostly fit in as a girl) girl (and you super extra do not fit in as a girl). My point being that people of either sex who grow up with tons of negative feedback about their gender performance nevertheless are NOT growing up with the gender socialization pressures that their society applies to the opposite sex. They're growing up with the gender socialization pressures of performing their gender wrong.

If someone was raised as a boy who obviously didn't fit in as a guy at all, it would probably be accurate for them to say they weren't socialized as, idk, correctly male guys, but it would not be true at all to say they grew up under the social pressures that girls do, even if they identified with girls the whole time.

So yeah the gender based selection pressures around participation in activities would not be the ones experienced by the opposite gender, unless/until the kid was being identified that way by their social environment.

And since people around here treat babies differently by gender from birth, you'd need a different society that doesn't do that at all, to take that effect out of the equation. (Man personally I would have loved gender starting no earlier than puberty, myself! Opt out please!)

These are extremely good points with respect to how those sex-based pressures are applied, and turn into gender roles and expectations.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Fair question. And in response, I'll ask: How many leagues do you intend to have?

As many as needed. As many as interest can support.

For full clarity like I've said before we're mainly talking about professional or at the very least organized sports. If 10 random people want to get together at the park and play a pick up game of sportsball where's there's no "stakes" (for lack of a better term) involved I don't think here anyone really cares how they divy up the wiener roast and the clam bakes.

So for the purposes of this discussion when I say "sports" I'm talking organized sports that are sanctioned, tracked, metric'ed or otherwise have have stakes.

So with that clarification we have to factor in two things, both sorta the same thing. Interest in the sport and money.

If we change X factor about sports and nobody watches the sport, nobody wins in that scenario; the men, the women, the cis, the trans, the butchers, the bakers, or the candlestick makers. If people don't want to watch biological men versus biological women or don't want to watch a league that doesn't let people play as the gender they identify as or doesn't want this or doesn't want that, however this eventually plays regardless of your, mine, or anyone's personal opinions about it. If nobody wants to watch Football because Football isn't fun to watch anymore, then who gets to play football in what combination become a meaningless secondary question real quick.

And even sports that aren't "professional" in the literal "this is a business and this is how they make money" sense still aren't going to work if nobody cares about them or wants to watch them or is engaged in them.

So a BIG question here has to be "What do sports fans want to watch?"

And I'm sorry but right now, with the information we have people don't want to watch women's sports. The largest female sports league in the world is the United States National Women's Soccer League and it's 65th in the world, behind dozens of men's leagues that me, you, and everyone in this thread would be lying if we said we had even heard, much less were engaged fans of. I'm pretty sure there's no hardcore fans of the Carribean Premier Cricket League in this discussion and it's more popular than the most popular women's league. By several ranks.

Given the simple numbers involved it's mathematically safe to say that WOMEN want to watch male sports more than female sports.

Or even more meaningfully right now in North America there is... like just so much football. Like a lot of football. The NFL is the largest sports league not just in the US but in the world by a fair margin. College Football is, let us cut any pretentions of crap and just call it what it is, a major professional sports league with a diploma mill system attached to it. High School Football is a defacto pro-league in large chunks of the country. Arena Football, Indoor Football, hell they are taking a SECOND stab at the XFL.

That's a lot of football. We love football. We can't get enough football.

How many professional women's football leagues are there? One. Lingerie Football. I'm not making that up. There's 74 High School Football Leagues for boys. There's one for girls.

You can't force engagement. This isn't like hiring practices at a business or equal opportunities in education or even disparage in elected officials. You can't force the kind of voluntarily engagement an entertainment like sports needs. You can (to some degree, massively oversimplifying this) force equality when needed in things that matter but this is sports. It's purely voluntary entertainment. If people don't want to watch women throw a ball or kick a ball or shoot a puck around the field as much as men you can't make them.

Which brings us to your next point.

When you sort leagues in this way for athletics, whether it's intentional or not you end up excluding females from participation. Remember that the super-elite pro female soccer teams routinely get beat by middle school male teams.

Yes. This is true. And I can't help it, I can't fix it, and I can't make it not true. I'm sorry. I've talked about at length in this long, long, long, interminably long discussion about the "Can't win, can't lose, can't break even, can't quit the game" and "Impossible trifecta" situations this discussion has put us in time and time again and I'm sorry but "Oh and by the way the solution ALSO has to let biological women maintain some illusion that they are physically equal to men IN THE WAY SPORTS BASED PERFORMANCE IS MEASURED" is... no. Sorry.

If, under the "just sort by performance" concept I presented, the "market" can support, let's say a Major League, a AAA Minor, and AA Minor Football League and all 3 of those leagues are 100% biological male outside of maybe a few scattered exceptions here and there then... sorry. It's not even a matter of me liking it or thinking it's "right" in any useful or meaningful sense of the term it's just not a problem I or anyone can solve.

"I get to play sports in an organized league with a TV Deal and a sponsorship with Nike and my face on Wheaties box" isn't like access to abortion or equal pay.

 

[Emily's Cat]

This is a bit of a tangent (except that I've brought it up before), but what you are talking about here is the perception of their adherence to gender roles. It's the same thing. We very rarely directly observe a person's sex, and even then there are exceptions. More often, we come to a conclusion about someone's sex (gender, really) based on how closely they match our idea of what a particular gender is supposed to look like.

So if Jason Momoa tosses on a pink dress, you 100% believe that society at large is going to expect Momoa to start popping out babies?

With a relative few exceptions, we are extremely good at sexing other adult humans. And in those exceptions, many of them are intentionally trying to obfuscate their sexual characteristics.

Honestly, I'm just completely tired of this kind of claptrap. This absolute disinformation campaign that says we can't ever tell whether a person is male or female unless we see their hoo-hoo, and we're only able to guess because girls wear dresses and have long hair and boys wear trousers and have short hair. It's dumb and it hasn't been true for the entirely of my entire goddamned life.

It's entirely backwards. There's a meme out there about this.

Traditionalist: The woman does the dishes.
Feminist: Anyone can do the dishes.
Trans Activist: Whoever does the dishes is the woman.

It's completely regressive and it reinforces the exact stereotypes that we feminists have tried so hard to dismantle. So instead of insisting that females have to wear dresses because it's "unladylike" for a female to wear trousers... you've come all the way around the the other side of it and now you just say "anyone who wears a dress is a female" and **** any female who prefers trousers.

Hell, by your reasoning and your infantile logic... I'm a man. I don't shave my legs, I have short hair, I don't wear dresses or heels, I don't wear makeup. According to you, nobody will be able to tell that I'm female, because you've laid down the law here, and apparently I look like what a "man" is supposed to look like.

And yet in real life, somehow, I have never once been mistaken for being a male. It's a mystery I tell you, a true and baffling mystery.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I agree with all of this, including the snipped parts, but I would but air -quotes around the highly subjective word "correct". Just because non-conforming boys* don't have the identical negative social pressures as conforming girls*, doesn't mean they can't also have negative social pressure of a similar severity.



* please excuse the short-hand. it's very wordy otherwise.

Your point is not wrong. It's also entirely irrelevant. So irrelevant that I am baffled as to what you think you're accomplishing by posting it.

 

[Emily's Cat]

As many as needed. As many as interest can support.

For full clarity like I've said before we're mainly talking about professional or at the very least organized sports. If 10 random people want to get together at the park and play a pick up game of sportsball where's there's no "stakes" (for lack of a better term) involved I don't think here anyone really cares how they divy up the wiener roast and the clam bakes.

So for the purposes of this discussion when I say "sports" I'm talking organized sports that are sanctioned, tracked, metric'ed or otherwise have have stakes.

So with that clarification we have to factor in two things, both sorta the same thing. Interest in the sport and money.

If we change X factor about sports and nobody watches the sport, nobody wins in that scenario; the men, the women, the cis, the trans, the butchers, the bakers, or the candlestick makers. If people don't want to watch biological men versus biological women or don't want to watch a league that doesn't let people play as the gender they identify as or doesn't want this or doesn't want that, however this eventually plays regardless of your, mine, or anyone's personal opinions about it. If nobody wants to watch Football because Football isn't fun to watch anymore, then who gets to play football in what combination become a meaningless secondary question real quick.

And even sports that aren't "professional" in the literal "this is a business and this is how they make money" sense still aren't going to work if nobody cares about them or wants to watch them or is engaged in them.

So a BIG question here has to be "What do sports fans want to watch?"

And I'm sorry but right now, with the information we have people don't want to watch women's sports. The largest female sports league in the world is the United States National Women's Soccer League and it's 65th in the world, behind dozens of men's leagues that me, you, and everyone in this thread would be lying if we said we had even heard, much less were engaged fans of. I'm pretty sure there's no hardcore fans of the Carribean Premier Cricket League in this discussion and it's more popular than the most popular women's league. By several ranks.

Given the simple numbers involved it's mathematically safe to say that WOMEN want to watch male sports more than female sports.

Or even more meaningfully right now in North America there is... like just so much football. Like a lot of football. The NFL is the largest sports league not just in the US but in the world by a fair margin. College Football is, let us cut any pretentions of crap and just call it what it is, a major professional sports league with a diploma mill system attached to it. High School Football is a defacto pro-league in large chunks of the country. Arena Football, Indoor Football, hell they are taking a SECOND stab at the XFL.

That's a lot of football. We love football. We can't get enough football.

How many professional women's football leagues are there? One. Lingerie Football. I'm not making that up. There's 74 High School Football Leagues for boys. There's one for girls.

You can't force engagement. This isn't like hiring practices at a business or equal opportunities in education or even disparage in elected officials. You can't force the kind of voluntarily engagement an entertainment like sports needs. You can (to some degree, massively oversimplifying this) force equality when needed in things that matter but this is sports. It's purely voluntary entertainment. If people don't want to watch women throw a ball or kick a ball or shoot a puck around the field as much as men you can't make them.

Which brings us to your next point.



Yes. This is true. And I can't help it, I can't fix it, and I can't make it not true. I'm sorry. I've talked about at length in this long, long, long, interminably long discussion about the "Can't win, can't lose, can't break even, can't quit the game" and "Impossible trifecta" situations this discussion has put us in time and time again and I'm sorry but "Oh and by the way the solution ALSO has to let biological women maintain some illusion that they are physically equal to men IN THE WAY SPORTS BASED PERFORMANCE IS MEASURED" is... no. Sorry.

If, under the "just sort by performance" concept I presented, the "market" can support, let's say a Major League, a AAA Minor, and AA Minor Football League and all 3 of those leagues are 100% biological male outside of maybe a few scattered exceptions here and there then... sorry. It's not even a matter of me liking it or thinking it's "right" in any useful or meaningful sense of the term it's just not a problem I or anyone can solve.

"I get to play sports in an organized league with a TV Deal and a sponsorship with Nike and my face on Wheaties box" isn't like access to abortion or equal pay.

You're not wrong, but I think we're talking about this from different angles.

At the end of the day, all cards on the table... most professional sports are going to be male dominated, and the male leagues will be more popular for spectators. It's not that complicated - these are sports, they are based on physical ability and performance... and in this males are considerably advantaged over females. For-profit sports, even more so. When it comes to olympic sports, where the competitors are elite but not "making a career of it" there are a fair number of sports where the female competitions are just as popular as the male. And in some few - gymnastics, ice skating, volleyball - the female sports are somewhat more popular.

But let's step back a bit and talk about compensated non-professional sports, as well as school sports. There are a bunch of marathons and cycling events out there, and they have historically divided by sex. And you know what? Nearly as many females show up to compete as do males. And nearly as many spectators show up to watch the females as the males. The money isn't huge, but it's not nothing either. The prize might only be $10K, but that's still a nice pot.

Schools can't afford to have unlimited numbers of teams so that a few females can play in the 72nd level team. So if you lift the division by sex, you end up excluding females from sports completely. Local and regional non-career sports can't afford to have unlimited teams either. So when you remove the division by sex, you exclude females from participating.

At the end of the day, the removal of sex-based divisions - or allowing some males to cross those lines because of how they feel on the inside - the effect is to exclude females from the opportunity to participate. It turns the entire thing into a case where "Sports are for Boys" and the females are just expected to take up knitting and cooking instead. It reinforces sexist stereotypes and excludes females from full participation in society.

 

[Roboramma]

I agree and I've noticed this often getting fudged and fumbled on all sides. If anything there's at least four axes of socialization pressures around gender growing up: boy (and you mostly fit in as a boy) boy (and you super extra do not fit in as a boy); girl (and you mostly fit in as a girl) girl (and you super extra do not fit in as a girl). My point being that people of either sex who grow up with tons of negative feedback about their gender performance nevertheless are NOT growing up with the gender socialization pressures that their society applies to the opposite sex. They're growing up with the gender socialization pressures of performing their gender wrong.

If someone was raised as a boy who obviously didn't fit in as a guy at all, it would probably be accurate for them to say they weren't socialized as, idk, correctly male guys, but it would not be true at all to say they grew up under the social pressures that girls do, even if they identified with girls the whole time.

So yeah the gender based selection pressures around participation in activities would not be the ones experienced by the opposite gender, unless/until the kid was being identified that way by their social environment.

And since people around here treat babies differently by gender from birth, you'd need a different society that doesn't do that at all, to take that effect out of the equation. (Man personally I would have loved gender starting no earlier than puberty, myself! Opt out please!)

Thanks, this post was excellent and gets at the point I was trying to articulate much better than I did. Agreed on all counts.

 

[Roboramma]

It isn't like flipping a switch. The trans kid in my son's grade school wasn't at all a surprise when they transitioned. Adherence to gender norms (or lack thereof) is completely applicable to pre-transition trans girls as it is to cis girls.

To be clear: you are saying that pre-transition trans girls are being socialized as girls, both at home and by society at large?
I'm not sure that's even true post transition, but the whole point of transition is that society is treating them according to gender norms that they don't identify with. If they were already being treated as girls, what would transition even mean?

This is a bit of a tangent (except that I've brought it up before), but what you are talking about here is the perception of their adherence to gender roles. It's the same thing.

No, I'm saying that when parents bring a male baby home they raise that baby as a boy. It's only many years later that child may or may not decide to be trans. The original socio-cultural gender norms applied to the child are dependent on people's perception o the child's sex.

We very rarely directly observe a person's sex, and even then there are exceptions. More often, we come to a conclusion about someone's sex (gender, really) based on how closely they match our idea of what a particular gender is supposed to look like.

We very rarely directly observe anything. That doesn't actually affect the point though.

For example, this is an X thread showing a picture of mayor of Nashville, TN, Freddie O'Connell and his family. Based on the comments (and there are many, many threads like this one), this is a picture of either: two gay men, two lesbians, two adult transgender people, two adult transgender people and one transgender kid, or an entirely cis heterosexual family of four. If you care to dig through those comments, and I don't recommend it, you will see that some think that Freddie is not masculine enough to be a man. Or that some think that his wife is too masculine looking to be a real woman. I'm not quite certain which child some people think are trans, but I think it's the little one.

Now, no one is directly viewing the sex of any of these people. No matter how hard you looks, you will not see anything between the range four penises to four vaginas. People are, instead, comparing them to their idea of what a male gender or female gender is supposed to look like, despite the fact that biologically male and female people have a very wide and overlapping proportions, shapes, and amounts of body hair.

A few points. First, even on a glance humans are very accurate at determining sex. It doesn't need to be 100% accuracy to be meaningful. Second, most of our meaningful interactions with people aren't based on a glance. Your family knows your sex. Your friends very very very likely know your sex. Your acquaintances also very very likely know your sex, particularly given not just their own observations but the role of gossip. The idea that people's sex isn't generally common knowledge among those they interact with frequently and who thus influence their development, is just not reasonable. Note also that we're not talking about post transition trans people, we're discussing that parts of one's life that would have influenced whether or not they took up pool as a hobby and then career.

That is a very polite way of saying cognitive bias and has no particular merit over anyone else's personal experience-based Bayesian framework. I will fully admit I don't have the evidence to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no biological sex-based advantage in playing pool, but I also know there isn't enough evidence to suggest that such an advantage, if it exists, is greater than any other genetic advantage one might have.

It's actually not, but I don't feel much like going into a deep dive on epistemics right now. My viewpoint is exactly the framework that lets my say dark matter is real even though it hasn't been directly detected. It's not about some subjective feelings based approach to evidence, but rather the opposite, and simply notes that indirect evidence is still evidence. That evidence is still objective.

Further: no one claimed that no other genetic advantage can be greater than the advantages due to sex. I've made no claim along those lines. Its entirely consistent with my view that sex based segregation makes sense that many women are genetically advantaged in pool over many men, in fact I think that's true. But the distribution of advantages skews enough toward men that different leagues make sense to me. Maybe some more complex genes-based segregation that took into account every player's entire genome before assigning them to a league would be even more fair, but no one is offering to implement that system. We have an option between sex-segreation, no-segregation, and gender segregation, and the first of those choices seems the most fair to me.

What I do know is that, as of 6 years ago, the organization that calculates and tracks the ratings of professional pool players published a video that states that biologically female professional pool players are just as capable of top-level playing as biologically male professional pool players. Right now, that is the closest thing to objective evidence from an authoritative source on the matter that we have.

Again, the evidence as you presented it suggests that a male advantage does exist.
(I'm going off your and other's description of the video, since, as mentioned earlier, I'm unable to watch it, but your description seems to have got the point across well)

There are reasons, in the "hypothesis" sense, to believe that there is a biological advantage to playing pool. Evidence is something we're very much lacking, to determine if it is a valid reason or not.

Again, I think this is just a confused epistemics. Maybe we should start another thread on that topic.

Social influence is definitely a possible reason why there could be more men higher placed in the pool ratings that women. Is that a valid reason that trans women should not be allowed to play in the women's league?

Yes, I think it's a valid reason, but again it's a much less forceful reason that biological differences. I also think there are tradeoffs (the interests of transwomen) so I don't think there being any reason necessarily settles the issue.
Why is it a valid reason? For the reason I said earlier: the social influence that prevents women form competing at the highest level likely apply to women not men, and to be more clear, they apply to women and not trans women. You have argued that the opposite is the case, that those social factors would apply equally to women and transwomen, but not men. I don't think you've made a convincing case, and rather think that any plausible social factors wouldn't apply to trans women.

 

[Roboramma]

Aside: Thanks Emily's Cat for some good posts.

 

[theprestige]

We very rarely directly observe a person's sex

Who's "we"? As far as I can tell, it's the exact opposite: We very rarely fail to directly observe a person's sex. Sure, given our social values concerning modesty, we very rarely directly observe a person's genitalia. But it's not like most people are androgynes until we directly observe their ding-dong or their hoo-ha. You say you rarely observe sex, but what you really mean is that you rarely make conscious note of it.

 

[smartcooky]

We very rarely directly observe a person's sex, and even then there are exceptions.

Oh FFS, this is getting ridiculous (if it wasn't already).

But OK, I'll play your stupid game

There are 13 people depicted in these two photos. Which ones are male, and which ones are female.

(CLUE: Only a ******* moron would get any of them wrong)

 

[Cosmic Yak]

Because it is the same question asked in a different way, but still void of any context needed to give a meaningful answer, assuming I even know enough about whatever situation you are asking about to give a meaningful answer.

As I said before: it depends. It depends on the type of activity, how and when someone transitioned, how you determine an unfair genetic advantage, and possibly what the person was like pre-transition.

Every other question you had falls under that answer without additional context, except this one and then only partially.

Good lord. I never thought I'd find myself agreeing with JoeMorgue, but it really does appear you are avoiding answering the question in a way that is so evasive as to appear to be deliberately dishonest.
OK, assuming 'context' doesn't mean 'some 4.5 billion years ago, the Earth formed', then try this.
A trans football player in the UK kicked a ball so hard that it actually broke the knee of a female player. The injury was so serious that the player's season ended right there. A manager (in a quote that I can't now find, so you'll just have to trust me on this) said that his hardest tacklers were simply 'bouncing off' the trans player. As a result of this, 4 teams refused to compete against the trans player's team, and that player has now resigned.
In the specific case, what specific tests would you use to determine whether or not this player was 'female enough', for want of a better term, to be allowed to continue in the female league?
Do the wishes of the other female players, who perceive that the strength and speed of this player are clearly above pretty much all of theirs, and who therefore do not wish to risk serious - even, career-ending- injury in matches against this player, count in your eyes at all?
And to ask again, because I do not recall any straight answer from you, do you accept self-identification as evidence enough, or do you think there should be some sort of medical bar to surmount as well?
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/67482965

 

[Cosmic Yak]

Just to add a bit more for upchurch.
I happened to see some of the World BMX Chamsionships on TV a few weeks ago. It's not a sport I follow, but if it's on, I'll watch it. What struck me was the extraordinary difference between the male and female sections. The men were routinely attempting tricks that were way, way more difficult and risky than the women. It was almost as if they were different sports altogether.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPMFCcCdE80
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYS2KHf3ypM
Now, if one of the lower-tiered men decided one day that they were trans, and entered the female league, they would absolutely destroy all of the top female competitors, by a wide, wide margin. This would effectively end the competition for first place, and thus the competition as a whole.
In this specific case, what specific tests would you use to determine whether that previously-male player could switch to the female league?
Again, would you accept self-ID as evidence enough?
As a last point, the argument you are making, that unusually-talented female athletes and sportswomen crop up from time to time, and those unique talents don't disqualify them from participating, is not sound. We're not talking about those special people, who by lucky genetic quirks have significant advantages over the rest of their sex. What we are talking about here is that, overall and in general, males have the advantage in speed and power over women. By allowing biological males to compete in women's events, you are granting them, not an individual- and therefore temporary- advantage. You are granting them an overall, permanent advantage.
As an example, back in the day, Graf and Navratilova dominated women's tennis. It was pretty much a dead cert that the Wimbledon final would be between these two. However, that was down to these two particular players being head and shoulders above the others. Once they retired, the playing field was levelled again. If biological males were competing, however, that advantage would be permanent, as one retiring trans player would most likely be succeeded by another.

 

[Cosmic Yak]

Just to add a bit more for upchurch.
I happened to see some of the World BMX Chamsionships on TV a few weeks ago. It's not a sport I follow, but if it's on, I'll watch it. What struck me was the extraordinary difference between the male and female sections. The men were routinely attempting tricks that were way, way more difficult and risky than the women. It was almost as if they were different sports altogether.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPMFCcCdE80
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYS2KHf3ypM
Now, if one of the lower-tiered men decided one day that they were trans, and entered the female league, they would absolutely destroy all of the top female competitors, by a wide, wide margin. This would effectively end the competition for first place, and thus the competition as a whole.
In this specific case, what specific tests would you use to determine whether that previously-male player could switch to the female league?
Again, would you accept self-ID as evidence enough?
As a last point, the argument you are making, that unusually-talented female athletes and sportswomen crop up from time to time, and those unique talents don't disqualify them from participating, is not sound. We're not talking about those special people, who by lucky genetic quirks have significant advantages over the rest of their sex. What we are talking about here is that, overall and in general, males have the advantage in speed and power over women. By allowing biological males to compete in women's events, you are granting them, not an individual- and therefore temporary- advantage. You are granting them an overall, permanent advantage.
As an example, back in the day, Graf and Navratilova dominated women's tennis. It was pretty much a dead cert that the Wimbledon final would be between these two. However, that was down to these two particular players being head and shoulders above the others. Once they retired, the playing field was levelled again. If biological males were competing, however, that advantage would be permanent, as one retiring trans player would most likely be succeeded by another.

 

[Lithrael]

Waaay back in the thread I brought up a few examples like that of times when really unusually exceptional athletes just obliterated the competion for most of their careers. At the time my point was that nobody kicks you out for ruining the sport for all the other athletes who can't compete with you.

In the past these have been rare exceptions, and we've been broadly ok with the idea that the people stuck competeing with the superheroes of the sport are going to miss that spotlight through no fault of their own. Fans would be like 'yeah, they came in second, but to THAT GUY! Any other time they'd be first!' It felt unfair, but... How could you possibly adress that? Even while those second-best athletes' carreers were absolutely negatively impacted by the bad luck of having their prime years sync up with those of a superstar of their sport.

But it is a point I can't ignore, that the way it is right now, a whole subset of trans athletes are in that position. What does the sport do if you ALWAYS have a couple of 'they destroy everyone else' types competeing? I don't think anyone really wants that, and a lot of people who DO want trans people in general to be able to play where they want, believe that it's a problem that will get solved with time as people figure out ways to handle it. On the other hand, acting like it isn't a thing at all is not going to help anyone.

Broadly agree with Joe's thoughts on sports leagues.

But I super don't think that letting trans youth play on girls' teams would ruin school team sports that are only nominally competetive anyway. There's gotta be a way to let young trans folks who aren't out there trying to play knee-busting soccer participate in the kind of sports that are 90% social.

Lastly though I gotta say look. I can see all YOU GUYS are good at clocking gender but there are people out there who just aren't. I'm fine telling Britney Spears from Jason Momoa but for me a whoooooole lot of people who obviously are supposed to be women look like to me like they could be men and a whooole lot of people who are probably guys look to me like they could be women. If you high-effort cross-dressed everybody in town without telling me I'd notice the ones who are Very Obvious Gender but there are plenty I would not. At least some people are not lying when they appear to not get it about some of this stuff.

 

[varwoche]

@Upchurch I answered your questions and I hope you'll answer mine, restated below. But -- I recognize that the pile-on phenomenon (for want of a better term) is uncomfortable for the person being piled on. So take your time.

1. What about the girls who don't make the team because Trans kids beat them out? Why are their wants and needs less important than those of the Trans kids?

2. What about boys who don't make the boys team who are not Trans? Should they be eligible for the girls team? If not, how do you justify the disparity?

 

[Paul2]

I wouldn't say so.

Then how do you reconcile my critique of deciding things on a case by case basis with your promotion of it in an earlier post?

Trans is pretty rare in itself. Rare enough that we could evaluate on a case-by-case basis and not necessarily needing a blanket ban?

 

[Upchurch]

To be clear: you are saying that pre-transition trans girls are being socialized as girls, both at home and by society at large?
I'm not sure that's even true post transition, but the whole point of transition is that society is treating them according to gender norms that they don't identify with. If they were already being treated as girls, what would transition even mean?

No, sorry. I knew this particular kid since pre-school when they were in my son's class. They started with all the presentation of a cis-boy and gradually the presentation changed. I remember someone's birthday party where they were rocking a My Little Pony footy-pajama-hoody with a unicorn horn sort of thing. There was one Halloween where this kid pulled off an amazing Zelda costume, for example. With all of it, it was clear that they were not a strict adherent to gender conformity. Fortunately, the school kids and parents, at least, were supportive and didn't give them any crap for it. Their dad implied that other aspects of their lives hadn't been so open-minded.

Their actual transition was in either 2nd or 3rd grade, I think, and consisted of a new first name, new pronouns, switching to the girl uniform, and using the girls' restroom. Again, everyone at school accepted it because it really wasn't that big of deal.

No, I'm saying that when parents bring a male baby home they raise that baby as a boy. It's only many years later that child may or may not decide to be trans. The original socio-cultural gender norms applied to the child are dependent on people's perception o the child's sex.

Again, as with above, that's not absolutely true or, at the very least, some people's definitions of socio-cultural gender norms are looser than others or are not as important..

A few points. First, even on a glance humans are very accurate at determining sex.

This is an often-repeated idea that just doesn't stand up to any sort of challenge. If you don't believe my description of the argument over the picture I posted a link to, you can go read it yourself.

But if you don't want to go on formally-twitter, there are situations like this where people tried to stop cis-women from using the women's restroom because others didn't believe they were biologically female. The first time I'd heard of that kind of thing happening was when it happened to a friend of mine.

The inability to discern sex from outer appearance is common enough that Aerosmith wrote a song about it 40 years ago.

It's just not true that humans are "very accurate" at determining sex at a glance. The more someone deviates their appearance from gender norms, the worse we are at it.

Second, most of our meaningful interactions with people aren't based on a glance.

People that we know well aren't the people that we are judging based on their appearance or, at least, I would hope it isn't. I'm sure there are times.

Your friends very very very likely know your sex. Your acquaintances also very very likely know your sex, particularly given not just their own observations but the role of gossip. The idea that people's sex isn't generally common knowledge among those they interact with frequently and who thus influence their development, is just not reasonable.

I'm sorry to disagree with you again, but that has just not been my experience. That kid in my son's class? I know of at least one kid's parent, who join the class after their transition, had no idea that this kid was trans and just thought she had always been a girl.

I, myself, was in a community band for at least a year or two before I found out that one of the older musicians was a trans man. When his transition was announced at a band function, both my wife and I were shocked because it never occurred to us that he was anything other than a man.

Note also that we're not talking about post transition trans people, we're discussing that parts of one's life that would have influenced whether or not they took up pool as a hobby and then career.

Yeah, I know. Pre-transition people, unless they are working very hide themselves for their own safety, do not conform very well to gender norms.

It's actually not, but I don't feel much like going into a deep dive on epistemics right now. My viewpoint is exactly the framework that lets my say dark matter is real even though it hasn't been directly detected. It's not about some subjective feelings based approach to evidence, but rather the opposite, and simply notes that indirect evidence is still evidence. That evidence is still objective.

You don't want to talk about it, that's fine. My point is that the foundations of your Bayesian framework is still based on only on your subjective experiences and things that you find as important or relevant. My experiences are things that I find important or relevant are not the same.

Further: no one claimed that no other genetic advantage can be greater than the advantages due to sex.

I did not mean to imply that you had. I apologize if it come off that way.

My point is that, from a purely biological fairness point of view, the contents of one's pants seems the least relevant of any of the physical traits for any competition that wouldn't be against forum rules to discuss.

But the distribution of advantages skews enough toward men that different leagues make sense to me.

Wouldn't segregation by height or, perhaps, arm span make more sense, if the goal was to reduce biological advantage and to focus on practiced and developed skill?

Again, the evidence as you presented it suggests that a male advantage does exist.

That is the exact opposite of the conclusion that was reached.

 

[Roboramma]

Just a quick comment because I should be getting to bed, I'll reply to your post in full tomorrow:

I don't think that it's typical for people who are trans to have been socialized according to gender roles of the opposite gender (the gender that they later transition to). If that were the case, I'd question the whole idea of trans at all, it would just seem to be a product of bad parenting. "I'll raise my son as a girl, and he'll experience a very difficult life, social stigma, and gender dysphoria as a result". Again, that's not what's going on. Instead, trans people are people who are socialized as normal, but feel gender dysphoria in spite of that.

If you want to argue that the typical trans person was raised according to the gender roles of the opposite sex... that seems like one of the few actual transphobic positions I've seen raised in this thread.

 

[Upchurch]

I don't think that it's typical for people who are trans to have been socialized according to gender roles of the opposite gender (the gender that they later transition to).

Perhaps they were not raised to conform to their identified gender norm, but that does not mean that they necessarily conform to their birth gender norm and, if I had to guess, the magnitude of a trans person conforming to their birth gender norm will probably go down as it becomes more socially acceptable for them to not do so. That particular culture shift has been happening for a while now.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Aside: Thanks Emily's Cat for some good posts.

 

[JoeMorgue]

We've yet again looped back to "well do they follow the gender roles of the opposite sex" when I thought those were supposed to be bad things.

"I wear a dress and have long hair and makeup therefore you have to accept me as a girl."

No because I don't think women should have to wear dresses, long hair, and makeup.

And yes this IS the same thing. You can't have gender roles that only work if they are being done non-traditionally.

Now someone is going to say "Okay but nobody said transwomen HAVE to wear long hair and makeup" and I'm going to go ahead and pre-answer with "Of course because what transwomen have to do to 'meet the roles of the other gender' has never been answered."

 

[Emily's Cat]

No, sorry. I knew this particular kid since pre-school when they were in my son's class. They started with all the presentation of a cis-boy and gradually the presentation changed. I remember someone's birthday party where they were rocking a My Little Pony footy-pajama-hoody with a unicorn horn sort of thing. There was one Halloween where this kid pulled off an amazing Zelda costume, for example. With all of it, it was clear that they were not a strict adherent to gender conformity. Fortunately, the school kids and parents, at least, were supportive and didn't give them any crap for it. Their dad implied that other aspects of their lives hadn't been so open-minded.

Their actual transition was in either 2nd or 3rd grade, I think, and consisted of a new first name, new pronouns, switching to the girl uniform, and using the girls' restroom. Again, everyone at school accepted it because it really wasn't that big of deal.

I get what you're saying... but ti Lithrael's point, that kid still isn't going to be subjected to the social pressures that females get. To some degree they might hear some of them, but a whole lot of them aren't going to land at all.

For example... Do you think that young male, who presents as a "girl", is genuinely going to be subjected to the same social constraints about sex and sexuality that females face? Do you think they're going to be subjected to a constant stream of conflicting pressures, on the one had a need to be chaste and not be a "slut" because "loose girls are dirty" and they "might get themselves pregnant"... while also being deluged with messaging to constantly be more sexy and to appear sexually available to males because their worth is based on whether or not males want them, and they don't want to end up as a "spinster" or an "old maid"? Do you think the pressures of birth control are going to have the same impact on that male child? Are they going to be faced with risking pregnancy or taking drugs that have unpleasant side effects, all because society views females as being completely responsible for protecting themselves from pregnancy, to the point where most females are expected to carry condoms in case the male they're interested in is too ******* dumb to take responsibility for their own sperm? When that child hits puberty, do you think their parent's are going to *shrink* their freedoms, and start limiting their ability to spend time with males without direct adult supervision, be expected to be effectively chaperoned in public and never alone because of the risk of sexual assault? Or do you think that child's parents are likely to allow them greater freedoms, room to roam and explore, and greater autonomy which is what most males experience at puberty? Is that child going to be pressured to be discreet about their bodily functions, because "girls don't fart or burp or spit"? Will they face embarrassment and worry about whether or not their pad might leak and then everyone would know they were bleeding from their vagina?

Sure, there are going to be some experiences that a young male who presents as a "girl" might face, especially if they pass relatively well. But you severely underestimate the amount of pressures and expectations that are sex-based. Like, based on actual real sex, not on whether or not we like sparkly things. Even the most tomboyish, masculine, wild young female ends up being subjected to the sex-based pressures, no matter how much people like you think they don't "look" appropriately "ladylike".

But if you don't want to go on formally-twitter, there are situations like this where people tried to stop cis-women from using the women's restroom because others didn't believe they were biologically female. The first time I'd heard of that kind of thing happening was when it happened to a friend of mine.

The inability to discern sex from outer appearance is common enough that Aerosmith wrote a song about it 40 years ago.

First off, "Dude looks like a Lady" isn't about the inability of humans to discern sex. It's about a transvestite.

And that leads into my second point - we're EXTREMELY good at discerning the sex of adults. There've been numerous studies that demonstrate that even when you remove all makeup and hair, we can correctly identify the sex of a person from their face alone with about 99% accuracy.

On the other hand... when people make a concerted and intentional effort to obfuscate their sex and to mimic the markers of the opposite sex, yes, it gets more difficult. Sexual mimicry can and does complicate things. But that doesn't mean that we're not incredibly good at determining sex, it just means that we can be tricked by people who make efforts to present false indicators.

For consideration, we can tell an orange from a tennis ball pretty easily. But if you take a tennis ball and you layer on a textured coating, paint it orange, and glue a stem to the top, we're going to be fooled. That doesn't in any way suggest that humans are really bad at telling the difference between an orange and a tennis ball!

My point is that, from a purely biological fairness point of view, the contents of one's pants seems the least relevant of any of the physical traits for any competition that wouldn't be against forum rules to discuss.

This is where you start to sound like you're being intentionally disingenuous. You know damned good and well that the divisions in sports aren't based on genitals. They're based on the fact that humans are sexually dimorphic, and that dimorphism results in males being bigger, stronger, having more muscle, more fast-twitch fibers, greater lung capacity, larger hearts, and a femur-to-hip angle that is advantageous in running and most swimming. A male can totally cut off their penis and testicles, have an artificially constructed facsimile of a vagina... and they will STILL have all of the physiological advantages of being male.

This aspect of the discussion is not, and has never been, about genitals. Don't expect me to believe that you're completely ignorant of that fact.

Wouldn't segregation by height or, perhaps, arm span make more sense, if the goal was to reduce biological advantage and to focus on practiced and developed skill?

Sure, sure. But while you're at it, you might want to incorporate additional divisions around lung capacity, heart size, and the angle of the femur.

Or, you know, you could apply some very basic and well understood sense to the issue, and realize that all of those extremely important criteria are strongly correlated with sex, and then you can short-cut the entire process and just use sex as the dividing factor since that's what the resultant sorting is going to produce as an actual outcome.

Unless... unless the reality is that you give zero ***** about females, and you are quite happy to see females excluded from athletics and competition altogether.

 

[Emily's Cat]

We've yet again looped back to "well do they follow the gender roles of the opposite sex" when I thought those were supposed to be bad things.

"I wear a dress and have long hair and makeup therefore you have to accept me as a girl."

No because I don't think women should have to wear dresses, long hair, and makeup.

And yes this IS the same thing. You can't have gender roles that only work if they are being done non-traditionally.

Now someone is going to say "Okay but nobody said transwomen HAVE to wear long hair and makeup" and I'm going to go ahead and pre-answer with "Of course because what transwomen have to do to 'meet the roles of the other gender' has never been answered."

To be fair, it's a bit more complex than just that. It's not just the presentation aspects.

And yes, a whole lot of those social expectations are ******** that should be done away with. In fact, they *were* going away, all through the 80s and early 90s. But they've come back with a vengeance, and in part we have the trans movement to thank for that regression.

There are a LOT of social pressures that are based not on what a person likes or dislikes but on their actual, real sex.

Think about all the various aspect of your childhood and teen years that were related to your body. Even as infants, parents must treat male and female babies differently. Not in terms of what toys or colors or clothing they choose... but in terms of hygiene and care. Parent's are going to put a cone or cloth over the genitals of a male infant, just so they don't get peed on all the damned time. They're going to have to properly clean under a male infant's foreskin, and make sure their urethral opening is clean. On the other hand, they're going to have to make absolutely sure they're wiping front to back if the baby is female, and they're going to have to take extra care to make sure that the infant's vulva remains untouched by feces or they risk a UTI. And they need to check for labial irritation from improperly fitted diapers or diaper rash. As young kids, potty training differs for males and females too.

At puberty, there are a lot of differences that arise from sex as well. At a minimum, our bodies develop differently, and thus our education differs. Beyond that, there are different behavioral pressures that arise. Things like young females no longer being allowed to go topless (assuming they had liberal enough parents to allow it as pre-pubertal children). Females are conditioned to not expose a lot of flesh in early puberty, to be very conscious of how their breasts protrude, how much thigh is exposed, and whether or not their undergarments are visible through their clothes. It might seem like this is just social... but there's an aspect of biology here as well. As females become sexually mature males become very aware of it, and the risk of sexual harassment and assault rises dramatically. Females are taught to be aware of what inadvertent signals they might be sending, and to take steps to minimize undesirable sexual attention from males. We're conditioned to exist in the world in groups, never alone, for our own safety. Males have to learn to deal with random erections, wet dreams, etc. They also start being taught not to stare at female bodies (hopefully they're taught this, sometimes I think it gets missed), and what not to do with female friends. The dynamic between the sexes alters, and the nature of friendship between males and females changes as sexuality enters the picture.

There's a lot of social claptrap that is unrelated to sex. There's a lot of stereotypes and conditioning that should rightly be called "gendered expectations". Things like males being expected (and often encouraged) to be loud, opinionated, adventurous, energetic, and competitive. Things like females being expected to be quiet, docile, cooperative, calm, and to sublimate their desires to the desires of others. All of that is crap and needs to go.

But not all of our conditioning is purely social. There's a fair bit of it that is directly related to our sex, and is a component of us being a sexually dimorphic species with different bodies and different risks.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Which again, brings us right back to first principles.

When a person identifies as trans rather then cis, what changes? And I mean what actually, functionally, measurably, objectively changes.

We've been having this discussion for years now, it's one of the major social debates going on, and the degree to which that most basic and simple and core question not only hasn't been answered but hasn't even been attempted to be answered at this point since it's the whole point is frankly absurd.

1. "It's complicated" is not an answer.
2. "It's a spectrum" is not an answer.
3. "It's a case by case basis" is not an answer.
4. "An entirely internal and non-falsifiable sense of self identity changes" is not an answer.
5. Something is functionally equivalent to "They want to be the other sex" is not an answer.
6. "I don't understand the question" is not an answer.

 

[Agatha]

Please continue the conversation in the continuation thread here.

Posted By: Agatha