Onus probandi
About that burden of proof thing…
The burden of proof (Latin: onus probandi, shortened from Onus probandi incumbit ei qui dicit, non ei qui negat) is the obligation on a party in a dispute to provide sufficient warrant for its position.
When two parties are in a discussion and one makes a claim that the other disputes, the one who makes the claim typically has a burden of proof to justify or substantiate that claim especially when it challenges a perceived status quo.
This is also stated in Hitchens’s razor, which declares that “what may be asserted without evidence, may be dismissed without evidence.” Carl Sagan proposed a related criterion – “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” – which is known as the Sagan standard.
The perceived status quo is that men have to stay out of women’s sports for much the same reason men must not punch women. It’s also much the same reason adults should not batter children and people should not batter puppies. You could call it the “pick on someone your own size” rule or standard or status quo. You could sum it up, however repetitively, as people should not take advantage of a physical advantage.
It seems like a pretty reliable status quo. There are exceptions, I suppose – if a small feeble person is about to open fire on a crowd then a big strong person should intervene. But as a broad, general status quo rule? I think it’s solid.
It’s such a fundamental principle, that the vast majority of people are shocked at anyone breaching it. We even get shocked at examples in nature, such as the behaviour of lions who take over a pride, killing any cubs.
Dennis Noel Kavanagh (@Jebadoo2) has a great Twitter thread on the subject. Decent parents raise our children to be protective of those smaller and weaker than themselves.
Your example of the gunman is still part of this principle; being armed with a gun immediately makes someone the strongest person in the area, unless there’s someone else who also has a gun ready to fire.
The idea that men can be women, (and that their personality is actually factually that of a woman despite their biology) violates the naturalist ideal of causality so completely that we expect that those who do not recognize Free Will would have to switch gears in order to accept it. It’s not defined in a way that we can develop a testable hypothesis around it, so there’s not even a way to gather and analyze meaningful data to prove that a male can inhabit a female body, or more germane to this study, a male can inhabit a female body.
The idea that there is a hormone wash from the mother during a critical phase of development has been proposed by some biologists, but that could only explain why someone expresses “feminine” traits as a male. And guess what is a social construct? Masculinity and femininity. This does not change the internal sex of an individual. A gender identity cannot be demonstrated, tested for, explained, nor quantified in a way to test if it exists. There is no underlying Theory of Mind that can account for a contra-causal male to have a female mind. That’s why this will always be an extraordinary claim without even ordinary evidence.
And even if, such a thing could be demonstrated and trans reality were accepted by a preponderance of evidence, such people would still have male bodies and have the bi-modal physical advantages of their bodies in competition. Doping for the slightest advantage is not accepted in elite sports, but how are we to accept as fair competition the advantages that male bodies have over female bodies in sport?
Inclusion. And, of course, exclusion of actual women and girls who’ve been training and sacrificing for years to compete at that level.
People understand “punching down.” But they have gotten through their heads that transwomen are so oppressed that to exclude them is punching down. What an elaborate con.
What counts as proof is the main consideration. We’re supposed to accept self declaration as proof, but if we don’t, then we’re supposed to accept lifestyle or ‘living as’ as proof, and finally if we don’t accept that, then we have to accept medical manipulations, such as hormones and removal or addition of body parts as proof. The real proof is beneath all these superficialities though, but there’s strong opposition to looking for proof there. “I am not my collection of molecules…” Blah blah.
Except we are our collection of molecules. We have brains that can be molded by society and our particular circles, but sex (gender if you will) is biological reality and is determined by our collection of molecules. Biology is chemistry, not theology. (Once said by PZ, but apparently he’s forgotten).
Right, they don’t like being “reduced to” biological reality — they prefer to be reduced to illusion.