There are no trans women athletes at the Paris Olympics. So bigots manufactured them.
There are no trans women athletes at the Paris Olympics. So bigots manufactured them.
The true story is much more complex than can be explained clearly in a handful of rage tweets.
Why are conservatives so weird when it comes to women playing sports? Like why do they care about their genitals?
Maybe we need to start calling them perverts.
They are so perverted.
Honestly, most conservatives are just directing their rage toward whatever conservative politicians and talking heads tell them to direct it at. Conservatism lives and thrives on hate, requiring in-groups and out-groups that must be pitted against one another. The new fad is to care about a person’s genitals.
You see, conservatives don’t believe in gender equality, so someone who isn’t a cis woman will always perform better than cis women, because they believe that women are inherently weak and men are inherently strong, failing to believe that any other form of gender identity even exists.
Why are conservatives so weird when it comes to
women playing sportsgestures broadly?Agreed, conservatives are weirdos.
Don’t know if it’s being underreported, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it is … it seems the instigator is regretting the kindling of transphobia paranoia they ignited.
She wasn't the instigator. People just said what they wanted to say. Her unsportsmanlike conduct was just the gap needed to wedge in some hate.
That said, her sincere apology has gone a long way to calm the moderates. It's only bigots that don't care about anything other than having a target that are still pushing this.
And they would do that regardless of any outcome with the flimsiest of excuses.
new rule : https://lemmy.ml/post/18758874
Would a 99% Muslim country like Algeria really allow a trans person to represent it at the Olympics? I highly doubt it.
Honestly, I find the whole things reeks of ignorance. I don't expect everyone to know everything, but I thought Algeria is a well known enough country; and I am surprised that the fact Imane came from there did not clue in everyone as to why she can't be a transwoman! I am in a discussions group and one person brought up the controversy in the chat. The guy is a boomer and probably fell easily to fake news from social media. I gave the simple response that she's from Algeria to clue him in, but others had to explain several times why it is fake news that Imane is supposedly a transwoman!
As I grow older, I realise that people can't know what you know and vice versa. Which is completely fine; but on the one side it shows how each of us are in our own bubble which can have detrimental effects, not just for our own personal growth, but also to the wider society.
I mean Iran recognizes trans women as women and trans men as men. Treats both like shit and is wildly homophobic but it does nominally recognize binary trans people post transition (mid transition is a different story). And Casablanca was at one time a bottom surgery hotspot to a point that a trans person “going to Casablanca/morocco” had an understood reason akin to Thailand today
Sabine Hossenfelder did a video on trans women in sports, and despite her checkered history of non-physics related topics, she raised some good points. ( on YouTube )
Hossenfelder she points out, whether we're looking at college sports, pro sports or the Olympics, we're less seeking fair competitions as we are interesting ones. (As she notes, it's not fair that Usain Bolt got long legs and she didn't), as a result we sometimes separate contestants into classes. Boxing, for instance, is separated not just by sex, but by three weight classes, because otherwise, the 120kg mountain of pure muscle punches all the featherweights over the ropes.
What we're looking for when matchmaking is the same that we are when we match-make for gaming competitions, which is to say near-peers where the outcome of a contest is closely undecided, where we are unable to guess with much accuracy who would win until after the outcome. And in today's athletic classes we're able to categorize trans women with other athletic women who are near-peers and get exciting contests where the outcome is unpredictable.
Hossenfelder suggests all this is going to change once it becomes routine to genetically engineer our offspring. But that will be another era.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=r6Kau7bO3Fw
I think there's another one of these videos too. Don't trust anything she says outside of physics. She's a physicist, but she confidently speaks on issues she has no knowledge on. She's a bad educational YouTube because she lies and pretends like she has knowledge she doesn't have.
This YouTube also has a great video about Sabine's pro-capitalism video where she is varifiably wrong about many things but just doesn't care. She's not reliable, except maybe within her field... possibly.
Even within the field of physics, I find her a little questionable. She stated once that she thinks falsifiability is overrated. That just flys in the face of testability and verification, which opens up room for any untestable theory or hypothesis to take root.
Sorry, but after her Trans care Video I don't have a single ounce of respect left for her. Surely you can find better people to quote here?
100%. She should really stick to physics.
I get it, and I saw the trans-care vid and was repulsed by it as well. (Her take on capitalism sucks as well.) But she did make analyses of sports that I've not heard elsewhere, so even if she's not a reliable authority she can sometimes offer sound logic.
And yes, no-one else breaks down how we sort sporting matches or raises the question of fairness, because it's impossible to make sports fair since genetics can be a bigger advantage than sex (or, for that matter, weight) since it informs not just the capacity for training discipline, but responsiveness to training and peak levels.
It could be that some of us really don't get sports. As a kid, I was criticized for being small (I gained my full height and strength when I was well out of High School and studying computer science) and yet I was harshly criticized for not being as burly as my classmates in sports. (And could get no sympathy when I was bullied by bigger kids as well.) So I don't get why we celebrate athletics competitively, when we should be striving for a personal best.
And as Hossenfelder points out, those who like sports don't want a fair match, but an interesting one. Hence if an ogre with a genetic throwback is able to one-punch every other heavyweight contender, that's not exciting. What's exciting is if two rivals who are nearly evenly matched, are punching it out for the crown.
And in that regard, Imane Khelif and Lin Yu‑ting are established contender their boxing league. Sometimes they win against other contenders, sometimes they lose, and so the ambiguous outcome of the next match is what is important. I'd think if a non-binary person with male sexual characteristics were fighting in the league and wasn't showing clear advantages, they should be allowed in the league, and if someone completely outperforms everyone else in the league, then their gender doesn't matter, they need a different league.
(This has become an issue in some high school wrestling leagues, since sometimes a girl wants to wrestle, and is a strong contender, but other high-schools get wary and misogynistic and no-one wants to wrestle her -- possibly for fear of the stigma of getting beaten by a girl.)
That said, a lot of people are opining about this who really shouldn't be given authority, so I'd suggest challenge every take critically, whether it's coming from Hossenfelder or not. Especially mine.
So we're past the strawmans and they are just going full Don Quixote now?
Honestly we might just need a different metric than gender to separate sports. Something like testosterone level or something, similar to weight classes. Because no matter how you look at it, this isn’t really fair for their opponents, regardless of gender. But then again, there’s also other body differences that might not have anything to do with current testosterone level, so I don’t know.
Testosterone is complicated. Women athletes have higher than average testosterone. Some have higher than athletes who are men! Also T-levels don't accurately correlate to performance, so there's a factor of hormonal responsiveness as well.
But yeah, boxing also has weight classes, so we already know that sometimes we have to segregate leagues in order to keep contests among near peers and exciting.
Here's an interesting article about that: https://daily.jstor.org/gender-incommensurability-in-sports/
The issue is that these athletes are already exceptional. If I, a 6' tall man, got into the ring with any of these women I'd get my ass handed to me. I'm not asking them to make a division that I could win though.
I don't know what the best solution is, but there should be an open "Premier league" that anyone can compete in. If we decide to have other leagues then that gets complicated. Should we have one for class differences, hormone levels, mental capacity, or all other conditions? I'm unsure. The playing field can never be leveled though.
Fair for her opponent? The punch that ended the fight didn't knock out her opponent nor did it break her nose nor even give her a nose bleed. And suddenly all the rules need to be changed? Trying to get that granulated opens a whole new can of worms. What about arm length and height? Blood sugar levels? Angle of shoulders and hips? By this logic Shaquille O'Neal had a unfair competitive advantage on everyone.
I think there are already limits to T levels? I don't follow sports closely though.
there’s also other body differences that might not have anything to do with current testosterone level
Like what? Bone density changes with hrt, that's the only example I see people use.
I'm not saying this would happen, because it'd have a lot of side effects, but I could see a situation like how wrestlers try to drop as much water weight and everything else before weighing in, people drop as much testosterone before measurement. Again, this is purely a hypothetical and not a criticism of anything in our world today, just something I could imagine. Sex/gender is complicated, but hormone levels are also probably also not ideal measurements because it could lead to issues like the above, which I'm sure isn't healthy. I really don't know what the right solution is, but there's clearly no perfect one.
I think because you can have a normal T-level currently but have a more “manly” body because of past T-level. How would they test it in these scenarios, I do not know.
I don't know exactly if the anatomy of trans women is similar to that of non-trans women. I'm ignorant about this. However, if there are equal conditions, it can happen in trances. If there are no equal conditions, I think it can be opened to a separate category. Why shouldn't there be an extra category of trans women or trans men next to men and women?
Why shouldn’t there be an extra category of trans women or trans men next to men and women?
Because trans women are women, and trans men are men. Why shouldn't there be a category for women with pcos?
Current science actually shows that trans women perform worse than cis women in several categories and identical in others. Which correlates with the fact that in the 20 years that trans women have been allowed to compete in the olympics, not a single one has made it there. It was a small study and needs to be expanded upon, but is still better evidence than what any of the reactionary bans have.
Here's a link to an article that includes a link to the actual study https://www.outsports.com/2024/4/12/24091267/transgender-athletes-study-research-science-sports-governing-bodies/
Why. Just reduce it to a single category.
Hell yeah, men VS women, let's go!