Women can just lump it
Yet another guy cheerily giving away women’s rights.
He’d rather destroy women’s sports than “erase” trans people (by which he means not allow men to compete against women). Easy for him, it’s not his ability to compete fairly in a sport that’s being waved away.
He would rather erase women. So many of them would. It’s astounding.
Jess DeWahls sees it too.
Honestly I’d be in favour of height, age, weight, AND T requirements. In fact, I’ve suggested as much myself. But how many categories would that generate? Or if you’re not going to consider interactions, where will the cutoff for each be? Based on what? Sounds great in theory, but in practice quickly becomes absurd (or at least impractical).
ibbica@1:
Why not just stick with the categories of male & female, and subcategories (such as weight) within those? They’ve worked fine for years. This notion of trying to level the playing field in some way so that men can compete in women’s sports doesn’t do anything for women; it just panders to the feelz of men who are unhappy about being unable to compete against other men.
I’m not in favor of height, weight, and age requirements, except as a means to carve out a category to help people who otherwise could not compete well. Masters Swimming, boxing weight classes, basketball leagues for short people. I’m not in favor of adding markers beyond sex for the purpose of hiding a sex category. Sports for women are for the purpose of providing sports for women, a class of people historically denied sports access, not for providing opportunities for shorter, smaller people with lower testosterone. Tall women should not be kept out of women’s basketball; short men with low T should be.
IMHO, it’s Occam’s Razor;simplest is best.
If you gotta a donger, you don’ta belonga.
Not all subcategories exist… I’ll never be a “successful” competitive weightlifter or basketball player, even in any women’s team, because of my body type. Where’s MY category? (Yes, I’m being facetious.)
Why have categories at all? If it’s to overcome social disadvantages then sex-based divisions make some sense, as do race-based divisions, acting as an imperfect proxy for socioeconomic characteristics (good luck dividing sports based on childhood SES…).
But if the argument is that it’s unfair to have men and women competing because of physical characteristics then what follows should be divisions based on those characteristics. Even if T is considered alone (without additional subdivisions based on height, weight, relative limb:torso length, or what have you that could be tacked on if one was so inclined), then the vast majority of women would still have division(s) to themselves, as would the majority of men. Women with unusually high T might end up competing with men with unusually low T (“might” because I don’t actually know the extremes of those ranges, I suspect there isn’t actually much overlap), but is it “fair” for those unusual individuals to compete against “normal range” (within some confidence interval) women anyway? (Let’s be honest, they’re generally not looking to compete against “normal range” men.)
We could clarify that existing categories are
– Male (Open to anyone)
– Female (Open to females defined biologically not dosing on Testosterone)
And then add Trans and Intersex categories (possibly in Paralympics, possibly in their own grouping)
People who rhapsodise about the alleged fluidity of sex would presumably welcome the expansion of categories to take this on board (and remember TW and TM are not excluded from the Male category (we can even rename it “Open”)
It is very interesting to me that this approach which would be minimally disruptive to the existing system, but actively include both trans and intersex people (who are currently not well served in some cases) is never considered. The approach is always to either crowbar TW into the existing Female category, or attempt to dissolve the M/F split: almost as if the inevitable blow to Female sports participation is a goal in itself.
It needs to be repeated. We need t-shirts.
Men of the same average weight and height as comparable women still tend to have advantages. That’s why sex classes exist; that, and the fact that for millennia, women haven’t had anything of their own except childcare and housekeeping duties.
Now, if you divide men into weight classes and women into weight classes, then you’ve got something. Oh, wait, we already have that, right? So, no problem. Just use the formulation derived by Omar #4. And maybe that should include if you ever had a donger…
It took but a few seconds on a search engine to discover the normal range of testosterone in each sex.
Men: 9.2 to 31.8 nmol/L.
Women: 0.3 to 2.4 nmol/L
No overlap whatsoever.
tigger:
That’s it.!!!
At the door of every womens’ restroom, there should be in future a hormone testing station. Requirement for entry: testosterone concentration =/< 2.4 nmol/L.
Just think of the jobs it will create.! Sea to shining sea.! Testers, bouncers, enforcers, explainers; you name it.
Yes, Omar! And no dongers!
swanalien:
Why in the Paralympics?
Seconding latsot’s question. Hell, why not offer children’s sports days to these men?
Why should it always be people who have disadvantages compared to able-bodied men (including those who are claiming to be women) who must cede their sports to them? If there are men who don’t wish to compete against other men, why not set up their own league?
ibbica@5
That was the reason women’s sports were created. Some of the disadvantages were assumptions that women were incapable of participation in sport, due to physical differences from men. But it wasn’t just the physical differences that led to the creation of separate sports for women.
The social disadvantages continue today. This is part of the impetus for Title IX in the US; many schools, especially those that emphasized the expensive sport of football, funded men’s and women’s sports drastically out of proportion with the male vs female proportion in the student body. Some of the ways schools have attempted to abide by the requirements involve making certain sports women-only, even though men’s teams could also be fielded. Gymnastics and rowing are two that come to mind. Female participation in these sports offset the male participation in football. Women’s teams get a proportionate number of athletic scholarships to give out. Lots of rules trying to impose some fairness on the athletic environment that are simply made easier by the existence of entire teams that are only for women.
I’ve heard a lot of people argue for this, and it might be workable, if the social disadvantages were not the big problem. I don’t think we’re there by any stretch.
This is why I am uncomfortable with making the women’s sports issue one solely of competitive fairness. That’s a big part of the picture, but not the main issue.
“Razor” in close verbal proximity to “donger” is a horror movie cringe moment.
One of my biggest pet peeves is that type of argumentative bell-end that asserts “it could be argued…” without making the argument. Enter Rod Graham:
Okay, this is an argument that can be made. He doesn’t present it here, but asserts that it exists. Worse than not presenting it, he doesn’t know what it is:
But you’re still a transphobe for failing to agree.
As for his suggestions:
This won’t work, because in most sports, if competitors are split by height, age and weight divisions, the men will still be dominant. If competitors are split into hormone levels, this will still result in de facto male and women’s divisions, but for a small number of anomalous individuals whose performance still tracks with whether they are male or female.
Cool, complete elimination of women from the top x tiers of every sport. X will vary from sport to sport and will depend on how many people populate each tier, so let’s look at the 100m sprint. The fastest time on record for a female sprinter is 10.49s, with an asterisk that this time was likely assisted by a tail-wind, and possibly assisted by performance enhancing drugs. In the athletics season following the World Athletics Championship in October 2019, 793 men beat that time. In other words, tier 1 would have to contain 794 people in order for the fastest ever time by a woman – with favourable conditions – to appear in last place.
What about female sprinter in the present season? The fastest time posted by a woman in this same time, by luck, happens to be the second fastest ever at 10.54s. This time is beaten by 994 men; tier 1 would have to have 995 positions available for the single best woman to appear – again in last place.
Yes, easing the cut-off time from that of the fastest time set by a woman ever to the seconds fastest ever increased the number of women by one… and the male population by 201.
But you’re still a transphobe for not wanting self-identification as the entry criterion.
Sackbut @14 – agreed. I suppose my issue is that the arguments get conflated.
Tigger_the_wing @8 – yes, those are the normal ranges. I’m unsure about where the extremes lie. Women and men at the highest levels of competitive sports are unlikely to be statistically normal, but I don’t know what their distribution looks like.
Given the normal ranges of testosterone in the two sexes are so very different, a man with low testosterone is likely to be too sick to compete long before his levels drop into the normal range for women. Likewise, a woman would have to have a whopping FOUR HUNDRED PERCENT of maximum normal testostosterone levels to get into the lowest normal range for men – and she would be caught for doping and banned long before she got that far. You can’t argue that “Some women have high levels of testosterone (compared to normal women) so they could compete against men with low levels.” It is simply insane to follow that line.
To bring horses back into the discussion (thanks, PZ) it is true that some Shetland ponies are bigger than the usual range of Shetland pony sizes, and some racehorses are smaller than the usual range of racehorse sizes. (The ranges don’t overlap, of course, any more than the testosterone ranges overlap for men and women). Would you therefore argue that it could possibly be fair for small racehorses to compete in races previously held exclusively for Shetland ponies?
Holms gave you the figures above; the difference between the performance of men and women in sports requiring speed and strength is enormous. During puberty, men develop muscles which have entirely different biology to that of women, plus bigger hearts and lungs, stronger bones, and faster metabolisms. That is what their high testosterone levels in puberty achieve; reducing those levels to a ‘mere’ FOUR HUNDRED PERCENT of maximum normal testostosterone levels in women is never, ever going to change any of that.
latsot #11
One could make the case that not all paralympians suffer phyiscal disabilities, there are also categories for visual impairment and intelectual impairment.
One could then argue that trans people fall into the intellectual impairment category, simply based on their inability to provide evidence for the claims, and that they also suffer vision impairment, being unable to see anyone outside their own bubble.
XY DSD individuals can present as women and yet have 10-20X the T of normal females.
It does appear, though, that at least some of them are asking about having a third category of athletes, rather than pushing to be allowed to compete with “normal” females (in contrast to the TIM approach): https://www.insider.com/intersex-olympic-athletes-barred-from-competing-in-preferred-olympic-event-2021-7
Roj,
I wouldn’t expect to see a creationist category at the Paralympics, though… Why are special exceptions always claimed for ‘gender’?
I know you’re joking but I’ve seen other people suggest this with all seriousness and apparent consideration. I find it a little offensive that some people seem so keen to shove cheats and cosplayers into the ‘para’ fold. I’d find it offensive even if I took the retcon of the ‘para’ meaning ‘alongside’ rather than being derived from ‘paraplegic’ seriously. In fact, probably more so. “We don’t want them in our Olympics, you should have them in yours.”
Again, I know you’re joking and not proposing this, but some (including swanalien) do, hence the question.
latsot #21
I am probably guilty of mooshing several ideas together in #6 and not thinking through the implications/optics.
The impetus was precisely the issue re Intersex competitors raised in #20; As I said: “possibly in Paralympics, possibly in their own grouping”. It does seem to me that the Paralympics might be a useful model for integrating some Intersex individuals into competition. I get that some might feel Paralympics itself is the wrong platform.
Having got to that point: it seems reasonable to ask if a similar model would mollify people agitating for Trans Inclusion, given that the solutions offered by TRAs are either:
– shoehorn TIMs into Female sport, (unclear where TIFs and NBs fit)
– replace male/female categories with absurd categories cross sex categories (height/weight/etc)
.and therefore would inevitably impact Female sport badly.
It was kind of a thought experiment: do we seriously think TRAs would go for it? (it has advantages over their proposed solutions – helping more Intersex and Trans people than just TIMs.) And if they wouldn’t: why not?’ My guess is the negative impact on Female sports maybe more of a feature than a bug for certain agitators.
swanalien,
I think the difference here is that trans people have precisely the same opportunities to compete as everyone else, but disabled people do not. Disabled people need sports and classifications that are particularly tailored to our needs, but trans people do not. The argument for a special competition or category for people who identify as a sex they are not is no more convincing than one for people who identify as Moomins.
There are several reasons to avoid using the ‘intersex’ label here. Perhaps the top three (in context) are that some people with DSDs have asked they not be used as pawns in the gender wars; that DSD conditions are sex-specific and are not examples of intermediate or indeterminate sexes; and that there’s a broad array of DSDs with different types of effect on the bodies of the people who have them.
I don’t know whether there ought to be a separate category or competition for people with DSDs, but it is absolutely unrelated to the issue of whether there should be the same for trans athletes. I think any apparent resemblance between the two is superficial and a red herring.
As to your thought experiment, we can be sure that many GenderFans(tm) will not tolerate the idea of a separate category for trans/other athletes. We know it because I’ve seen the solution proposed many times and seen the responses. And we know it because those responses are entirely predictable. Every time any sort of third space/service is proposed, it is rejected utterly.
I don’t know enough about how parti
They definitely won’t. The more timid/reasonable among them might make a show of considering it, perhaps even sincerely, but the bulk of TRAs will bristle at anything less than complete integration of trans women with actual women. Any different treatment will be taken by them as a sign that they are not being accepted as actual women, which is their non-negotiable goal.
lastot
I think if you read the last sentences of #22 and #6, you’ll see we are largely in agreement.
I guess I haven’t seen the solution proposed and rejected with reasons (I’ve seen it proposed once or twice and completely ignored which is telling enough.) I’d be interested in any actual reasons given by GenderFans, because I think we should be interested in the various ways these positions are rationalised.
Also I think it is good to reiterate these types of proposals in the debate, to demonstrate to fence sitters the lack of actual commitment to finding inclusive solutions on the part of the Genderists.
Re “nonbinaries”: There was at least one female athlete at the Olympics who declared herself “nonbinary”. As she is female, there was no issue from gender critical people about her playing on the female team, but trans activists cheered about “trans inclusion”.
If she had wanted to try out for the male team? Probably not making the team, and probably not generating much complaint. If she were injecting testosterone? There are doping rules in place already. The primary issue is, of course, men participating in women’s sports, but the trans activists keep presenting it as “trans inclusion”.