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Comment by asdfasgasdgasdg | Hacker News Reader

I feel like with this issue at some point we are bound to reach a breaking point. It's just a question of how far along things will go before we get there. People are more and more open about being transgender and there is more and more support for transgender individuals having the chance to live life as their correct gender. This is a great thing!

However, it presents a huge problem for women's athletics, particularly in sports where strength differences are a large determiner of performance differences. If, as it is said in some circles, a full .5% of the human population is transgender, we are going to continue to see huge increases in openly transgender people competing in sport. In sports where long term exposure to male hormones enhance performance, it's hard to see how life-long XX bodies will be able to compete. Which seems like a bad outcome since the whole point of the existence of women's sport is to allow women to have space to compete without facing insurmountable built-in disadvantages.

It may take a couple more decades but I don't see a stable equilibrium where MTF athletes are competing with cis-women in high level sport, especially if they made their transition during adulthood.

I would be fascinated to hear about different models for how this plays out. I've read the occasional news article about it but I'm not really very familiar with the thinking on the other side of this issue, particularly when it comes to the physical advantages trans women have over cis women in sport.

View on HN

I won't risk saying this in real life or anywhere where my real identity is known, but I do wonder if the end result will be similar to what's common in many parts of Asia: a third/fourth gender.

Instead of saying trans people are 100% identical to the gender they identify as, they'll be seen as something different. E.g., In Thailand there's the concept of kathoey (westerners refer to them as ladyboys). The Indian subcontinent and culturally related areas have hijra. They're not seen as the same as women, but they're not seen as men either. They're something else, and it's okay.

I've also seen a lot of westerners trying to push their ideas of gender globally and getting enraged when it doesn't fit. Some people get enraged when, for example, Thai kathoey aren't simply referred to as women, but for a lot of those people in Thailand, they don't see themselves as identical to women. So while trying to stop people from misgendering people, they overstep and misgender people who weren't being misgendered.

It is common to hear a transwoman claim (indeed, even occasionally here on HN) that anything other than recognizing them as equal to ciswomen is an act of violence and prejudice against them, and at worst, they utter some invective about “TERFs”. So, suggesting the recognition of a new gender is unlikely to satisfy at least those strident individuals.

These aggressive activists do more to inflame anti-trans sentiment than any other. I'm fine with live and let live. Call yourself what you want, wear what you want, marry who you want -- no problem. But today's trans-activist is not satisfied with that; they also want to bully people and organizations into absurd things like having a person who lived and developed as a man for 35 years competing in strength sport against biological women.

It's not safe to say in liberal workplaces anymore, but this dynamic of transwomen activists forcing their way into women's spaces is creating exactly the same dynamic as men dominating women in other areas of life. As a woman, I'm tired of it. The latest example from my life: At my company all the women's groups are being rebranded to "gender minorities" groups to accommodate the wishes of a few activists deploying the usual bully tactics. If you disagree at all, you are labeled a TERF and they try to get you fired. So who, exactly, is creating the hostile workplace?

From first principles, transwomen feel like they should be just as much of a woman born biologically female, but they just happened to be born biologically male. This dysphoria causes a great deal of angst and I don't think the benefits of othering them as any kind of second-class woman can outweigh that.

If I have clinical depression, saying "you're completely normal and do not have depression" doesn't make the depression go away or subside in any way.

Gender dysphoria is oftentimes treated via transitioning in some fashion. Having groupthink on online spaces doesn't alleviate symptoms.

I've never heard anyone except trans activists talking about the specifics of someone's trans-ness in an open setting. Certainly not something someone who's just trying to go about their day would even care about, let alone making a point that "hey by the way you're not biologically a woman, peace".

It's such a weird argument to me. Then again, I'm a dirty "transmedicalist" as labelled by the twitter trans community, so what do I know.

>If I have clinical depression, saying "you're completely normal and do not have depression" doesn't make the depression go away or subside in any way.

This is really not a good analogy. An identity-linked issue like this would be closer to someone not being included into a certain in-group.

For example an African-American who grows up in a predominantly caucasian could be called "not black" or "not black enough" by someone trying to hurt them based on the way they speak or act differently.

You can imagine that this would be alleviated by people not putting up arbitrary rules on who "can be called black".

Gender dysphoria is a mental disorder (saying this in the most scientific way possible). It's not a cultural stigma.

So no, I disagree that it has any semblance to the "not black enough" argument.

I did not claim it was not a mental disorder. I said it is linked with identity in a way which is dissimilar to the depression analogy.

Is it far-fetched to say that the severity of negative emotional and mental effects on a person depends on how accepting the culture is of those who do not fit into the majority?

No, but that's not what you insinuated, and I feel as though you missed my point - I was simply talking about the reaction by others to a mental condition: saying "you're a biological woman" to a trans woman does about as much good as saying "just be happy" to a depressed person. It doesn't solve anything, and it reduces the very real condition and the effects of said condition down to talking points and virtue signalling.

Having gender dysphoria isn't a thing to be ashamed of, just any other mental health condition is not something to be ashamed of. Saying "you're a biological woman sis" is like saying "we're just going to act like you don't have it because it's shameful".

It doesn't make any sense from me, nor does it make sense to most of the trans individuals I follow. It seems, yet again, to be the allies that cause the most misinformation (just like we faced with the gay marriage debates).

Not sure why you're getting downvoted.. your analogy is a closer one than that of depression analogy

'Feel'. My confusion comes from the fact that these people were not born female and so can have no idea what it is to 'feel' like a woman any more than I can 'feel' like a wolf.

This then reduces womanhood to a state of mind, rather than any physical and/or chemical criteria, which I think is wrong. Why should natural born women have their identity diluted?

It also seemingly reinforces the 'two genders' claim by categorising trans people as one or the other.

Like I said at the top, I am a bit confused by it all.

This is a really interesting philosophical problem, about qualia generally, but specifically "what it's like to be a something". See the classic essay by Nagel[0].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%...

In today's language (in the US at least), gender is a state of mind, precisely because talking about the mental aspect of gender/sex is very useful both for talking about transgender people and for studying how mental gender identity affects people's lives. As for "feeling" a certain gender, I get it. What you say makes sense, but humans aren't creatures strictly operating by logical principles. Sometimes, what our brains tell us doesn't make sense. But, if you spend every day of your life fighting the nagging feeling that you don't actually identify with gender you're "supposed to" identify with, are you going to trust logic, or your own experiences? You can't just say to yourself, "guess I'm being illogical, I'm gonna stop feeling this way now". I recently happened to watch a video by a trans woman where she summed up her experiences with trying to understand why she felt this way as: "And why am I a woman? Because I'm a woman. That's it. I mean, I can describe my experiences and my feelings to you to help you understand better, but I can't logically prove anything. And I'm super fucking sorry if you can't handle that mankind was set adrift in an absurd world. That must be super fucking hard for you. Tell me all about it." This was after spending years of her life trying to find a more satisfying explanation and failing to be convinced by any. As far as reinforcing the gender binary, trans women are just as able to be girly girls or tomboys as cis women are, and the same goes for trans men. On top of that, there are plenty of non-binary people, which depending on who you ask, either fall or don't fall under trans. Gender is confusing, I agree, but the fact that there are so many people feeling this way means that we can't just simplify and say "you can't really know what it means to feel like a woman" when the lived reality of these people is much more complex and something they've been struggling with for a while.

> But, if you spend every day of your life fighting the nagging feeling that you don't actually identify with gender you're "supposed to" identify with, are you going to trust logic, or your own experiences?

Do you support applying that same logic to transracialism? E.g. white woman identifying as a black woman?

I don't know much about transracialism at all, but it makes sense to me if you look at it as a cultural identification kind of thing. Both my brother and I were born in and grew up in the states, but I identify more with American culture while he identities more with the culture our parents are from, so culture at least is a mental identity thing rather than a physical reality.

If it's purely a racial/ethnic kind of thing that's about your genetic heritage, I agree it doesn't make sense to apply the same concept. It's like the distinction between sex and gender I mentioned above, trans people identify as a specific gender regardless of their sex, and I think people can identify with a specific culture regardless of their race/ethnicity. To better complete the analogy, I could definitely imagine a white person growing up in Japan their whole life and feeling a general unease about the mismatch between their cultural identity (Japanese) and their race/ethnicity (white), and in cases where that unease is severe enough, potentially being willing to go through surgery to better reflect their identity. Dysphoria over racial/cultural mismatch (if it even exists, idk) seems much less common than gender dysphoria, but I don't see why you wouldn't apply the same logic to both.

White/black may be widely viewed as preposterous but things like Hispanic/white are often a matter of self identification and culture more than genetic reality.

Thanks for your response; I was expecting to be on the receiving end of downvotes/abuse.

> you spend every day of your life fighting the nagging feeling that you don't actually identify with gender you're "supposed to" identify with

I have no problem with believing that some people aren't the gender they physically represent. But, in my mind, arriving to the conclusion that 'I don't identify as a male, therefore I must be female' isn't right.

> And why am I a woman? Because I'm a woman

Again, they don't actually know that they're a woman. They know they're not male, for sure, and I'm fully on board with that. But insisting that they're female... I'm not sure. Is 'trans woman' not sufficient?

Benjamin Boyce has a YT channel that deals with some of this stuff that I watch occasionally to try help understand.

> But, in my mind, arriving to the conclusion that 'I don't identify as a male, therefore I must be female' isn't right.

I think for trans women, it isn't so much a conclusion following from not identifying as male as it is simply 'I identify as female', but this runs into the same issue that you brought up in your first comment of not actually knowing what being female is. But then again, doesn't knowing they're not male imply they know what being male is despite not being male? I think it's just too philosophical of a point for most trans people to concern themselves with when they're dealing with who knows how many other issues.

I recommend either reading or watching more stories about trans people's personal experiences if you want to get a better sense as to why people feel that way, as different people probably have different reasons. I don't personally have any recommendations (the quote I mentioned earlier was a small comment from a video on a completely unrelated topic), but thanks for the recommendation for Benjamin, I'll check him out!

I think you've quantified it as second class when it isn't actually so for kathoey or hijra

Olympic medals are not and should not be awarded on the basis of minimizing participant angst.

I wonder about that. From what I've understood while talking to trans people and reading what they wrote (so a small sample that's probably biased), the place in the society associated with their gender (the one they transitionned into) is really important. For example, in my experience, trans women want to be recognized as women and live mostly the same as cis women.

I first encountered this because I was puzzled as to why so many trans people seemed to be renforcing gender roles instead of trying to abolish them. The answer is that gender roles matter a lot to them, and fitting in matters a lot to them too. That's why I think the "third gender" solution would be really unsatisfying for most (or at least a part).

Yeah. I think for people today it's absolutely unacceptable. There's a need to fight oppression and gain acceptance.

But once nobody cares anymore and nobody is bothered by the existence of trans people, I wonder if that's when it'll settle into a separate gender. Things like the issue in this topic with imbalance in sports and other areas might eventually result in another change in social structures outside of a strictly binary system.

I don't think this is about external acceptance, but more about internal acceptance. To take an extreme example: If you're suffering heavily from gender dysphoria, decide to transition to female, change absolutely nothing to your life and just try to convince yourself that you're just a women who expresses her gender differently, most of the time the dysphoria will stay here. Of course as always: there are lots of trans people and they're all individuals with their own desires and issues so this is an oversimplification. But I've been many time surprised by their desire to fit in traditional gender roles.

An oft-repeated mantra is also that "gender is a social construct." I think up until now, American society has for the most part retained some pretty strict images of gender roles and stereotypes. Turn on a TV and it's bumbling, fat father and smart, responsible wife or buff, rugged masculine hero and sexy seductress on nearly every channel. Not much of a middle in the public eye.

Now that it's being normalized that you don't have to be in either of those groups or even try to be anything like them, kids a generation from now might grow up with a different standard. Plus, honestly, despite what people try to say, kids put things into distinct groups. With a growing presence of trans people in media, I do wonder whether kids will grow up with the idea that "this is fine, but different." The trans people simply being the male/female gender they identify as is a social thing that we're taught to accept, which could very well change because the next generation doesn't think of it that way anymore.

See also: America's formerly strict ideas of race. Not long ago, you were white, black, or asian and society decided what you were. Now we accept that there are in betweens and people outside those labels, and none of them are bad identities to have.

This may be true, however you can't have it both ways.

The argument that competing in Super-Heavy weight lifting (the class that Laurel competes in) is following a general western stereotype of cis women is laughable at best. I'd argue that by standards from the last 100 years it's almost as far from it as a sport can be.

I recently learned that the Navajo historically recognized more than two genders. This article says at least 6 but initially I heard 4. It's not something I've looked into much so I can't really say.

"In the Diné language, there are at least six genders: Asdzáán (woman), Hastiin (male), Náhleeh (feminine-man), Dilbaa (masculine-woman), Nádleeh Asdzaa (lesbian), ‘Nádleeh Hastii (gay man). All come from the Diné creation story, in which asdzáán and hastiin, a cisgender married couple, were not getting along and separated. When that happened, dilbaa and náhleeh emerged from hiding and were seen as a special group that could perform the duties of both women and men, stepping into the vacated partner roles. They were accepted by asdzáán and hastiin, who realized their survival depended on them."

https://www.hcn.org/issues/52.2/indigenous-affairs-why-are-d...

There's the fascinating debate in Anglo-Saxon archaeology around this, too.

Some "male" graves (buried with weapons, armour, etc) have female skeletons in them. And some "female" graves (pots, jewellery, broaches) have male skeletons in them. This is not disputed by anyone, the skeletal and DNA analysis is unequivocal.

But all the writing we have from the period only mentions standard sex/gender roles (all warriors are "he", all primary care givers are "she", there's no mention of homosexuality, etc).

However, all the written evidence we have is from christian sources, and as we know, christianity (especially catholic christianity) has been pretty pro-patriarchy since the start. So while there's no evidence for it, one explanation is that the original pagan Saxon culture had different ideas about gender and sexuality, but this got edited out by the monks transcribing the old pagan sources.

Feminine beauty in Thailand allowed transgender people to have their own platform where they are able to challenge stereotypes and claim cultural recognition. Miss Tiffany's Universe is a beauty contest that is opened to all transgender women. Beginning in 1998, the pageant takes place every year in Pattaya, Thailand during May. With over 100 applicants, the pageant is considered to be one of the most popular transgender pageants in the world. Through beauty pageants, Thailand has been able to promote the country's cosmetic surgery industry, which has had a massive increase in medical tourism for sex reassignment surgery. According to the Miss Tiffany's Universe website, the live broadcast attracts record of fifteen million viewers. The winner of the pageant receives a tiara, sash, car, grand prize of 100,000 baht (US$3,000), equivalent to an annual wage for a Thai factory worker. The assistant manager director, Alisa Phanthusak, stated that the pageant wants kathoeys to be visible and to treat them as normal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathoey#Miss_Tiffany's_Univers...

Sad to say third/fourth gender is mostly still unacceptable in most Asian countries. Only acceptable in small part of Asians. Third/fourth gender is more acceptable in ancient Asia though. In Thailand Kathoy mostly compete in Men Category.

Have you ever been to India/Pakistan/Bangladesh?

like in Samoa, they've always had the 3rd gender, Fa’afafine.

In Tahiti they’re Māhū or raerae.

Perhaps I am way of base here. But it seems to me like MTF athletes simply should not be allowed in sports where testosterone would be considered doping (or some other criterion to determine whether having been biologically male is a significant advantage).

My proposal would clearly suck for MTF athletes. They'd be forced to either drop from competitions, or compete in the men's league. An MTF athlete competing in a men's league is likely to experience disphoria. It will also probably attract people saying "Look they are still a man, they are even in the mens league!". Both of these would be very hard to handle for MTF athletes. Probably causing many of them to drop from professional competition.

I hope this would be addressed partially by not having a "mens league" but an "open league" and a "womens league".

But otherwise, I think this is acceptable fallout to keep athletic competition fair. Yes, this policy will harm MTF athletes, and that is simply unfair. But the alternate policy is even more unfair. It might not harm individual MTF athletes, but it harms the acceptance of trans people in wider society a lot. Moreover, it harms athletes in general a lot.

In the end, I feel the following harsh sentiment. If you are truly MTF, then transitioning is probably more important than keeping your profession. It really sucks to force people to give up their profession when they are already going through a tough time. But I don't see any other way.

The problem with using testosterone as your marker is that many cis female athletes have higher serum levels naturally than trans women in this context. In fact, to get the benefits of secondary sex characteristics for trans women they often have to have LOWER testosterone and higher estrogen levels for cis women in their weight and age. This is done to overcome the masculinization they've gone through. Basically, to get the boobs you gotta carpet bomb the testes forever or snip snip.

The idea was not to look at testosterone markers. The idea was that "testosterone is effective doping" might be a decent heuristic for FTM athletes have an advantage from their biology.

Whilst there are indeed cases of trans athletes with lower testosterone, that doesn't cover all cases. And it is the remaining cases that matter. Don't underestimate the damage this is doing. I visit 9gag quite often. The population there is not trans positive (and generally intollerant). Memes against trans people have become a lot more prevalent there. It is galvanizing a lot of simmering sentiment against trans people.

And the scary thing is, on this specific issue of MTF athletes, their argument doesn't immediately fall apart. That is not the kind of foothold we should want for them.

I think using instantaneous testosterone is probably not the right call. Probably a metric like aggregate exposure to testosterone/other androgens over the course of one's life. It would need to be one signal among many -- for example, cis-men should not compete in women's sport regardless of whether they have very low testosterone. But it seems like a signal like this may be needed at some point.

Of course it is possible that we collectively decide that it's ok that cis women have no chance of winning the Olympic weightlifting gold ever again. That seems like a bad outcome to me, but I am only a single voice. If the relevant stakeholders are ok with that it won't be a great tragedy to me that my opinion is ignored. But, for example, my wife had a very negative reaction when I posed that scenario to her. It seems to me like as the implication of current policy becomes more clear, more folks are going to want to change the policy.

Even aggregate exposure isn't going to be a good metric. You don't keep the muscle mass for long. In fact, one of the big issues that trans women deal with is osteoporosis. I've personally known some trans women who've had to actively had to use supplements to prevent fractures and the like. No amount of exercise will be enough to build up density. The reality is that trans folks are probably on the bottom rung in the majority of cases in physical performance. Those that endure this and even get sports rarely rise above the average.

> You don't keep the muscle mass for long.

That is not what the research I have seen shows. And the incident being discussed in the story we are commenting on seems to put the lie to this notion.

So as an average (non-athletic) male, my testosterone is likely lower than that of Phelps. If we were the same height and weight, would my entry into the competition disqualify him for having too much testosterone?

No, because there would be only two categories of competition: female+low-lifetime-androgen-exposure, and everyone else.

> I hope this would be addressed partially by not having a "mens league" but an "open league" and a "womens league".

Actually, AFAIK some (many? the majority? almost all? who knows...) of what we think of as "mens leagues" are already "open leagues". Can't recall if it was our national football league (Finland's Valioliiga), or the UEFA or FIFA (maybe all of them?) that simply doesn't have a rule "the Valioliiga / UEFA Champions League / Euro Cup / FIFA World Cup is only for men". So in theory women could compete there, too... They just don't.

Unless rules are made to enforce division based on sex and not gender, then it's just a matter of time until transgender athletes are the only winners in Women's events.

Be prepared to see a lot of dropouts/boycotts by various nations in the Olympics. Eastern nations are not going to stand by silently. Some will shrug and directly enlist straight men in Women's events.

The olympic requirements are already having completely female hormone levels for 2 years.

In fact, the limit for testosterone is significantly lower than for cis women, being a significant disadvantage for trans athletes, which is why in all the decades trans athletes have been allowed, you haven't seen any.

Cis women with higher levels of testosterone, e.g. caster semenya, are already dominating the olympics, having natural hormone levels that'd be an immediate disqualification for any trans athlete.

Muscle density isn't built to competitive Olympic levels in 2 years. Having a lifetime of male-level hormones and then 2 years of low testosterone is still an advantage, as we've seen in many events so far.

This is also a strategy that has been used for doping, where athletes in their teens get pumped full of steroids, then go clean for some years and are suddenly very competitive in the 'clean' divisions.

Not sure where you’re getting your information.

The weightlifting rules allows trans athletes to have testosterone levels of 10nmol/L. Some sports are 5nmol/L.

Normal range for men is 9-31nmol/L

Women range from 0.9-2.5nmol/L

Even these guys (link below) who argue that the limits are arbitrary then go on to point to study in which 11 of 234 female athletes had T levels of 8nmol/L and 32 had 2.6nmol/L. 74 of 446 male athletes had 8.4nmol/L.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/mar/20/testosterone-l...

With normal HRT, you're usually reaching T levels around 0.5nmol/L (mine are 0.53 at the moment).

So pretty much every genuinely trans athlete will have a disadvantage compared to cis female athletes.

In fact, even pre transition, my levels were lower than those of 11 of 234 cis female athletes, so I never got any of the "benefits" testosterone supposedly has.

None of your statistics are an argument for banning or restricting trans athletes.

There are significant differences in skeleton muscle function that will never go away by having female hormone levels for 2 years.

All it is really doing is expose how much of current results are down to genetics and hormone levels anyway.

This has always been a problem, but one where all but the sports most extremely affected, like e.g. weightlifting with weight classes, have pretended it is not.

In powerlifting there additionally are "tested" and "untested" federations, where it's an open secret that the untested federations are full of steroids.

The point being that one can keep pretending these differences don't exist and agonise over the effect trans people may have, or you can introduce class systems that equaliser by physical characteristics irrespective of sex and gender.

In most sports performance-enhancing therapies are banned. Entire federations and countries were banned from participating at major competitions. By allowing hormone therapies we are basically discriminating against hematocrit therapies and so on. It's a Pandora's box and it's open already so we better be handling it rather sooner than later.

There are many disadvantages/advantages that various groups face/possess. It is ideological which ones we choose to elevate.

Genes for height, genes for fast twitch muscles, testosterone, etc… aren’t the same for different groups. Some of these disadvantages are just as insurmountable.

Many sports are closed to poor people. Equestrian, sailing, etc… aren’t sports for the poor.

Richer countries often have better technology (see those Nike shoes and the swimsuits that were banned).

We are just in the land of competing interests.

> There are many disadvantages/advantages that various groups face/possess. It is ideological which ones we choose to elevate.

Is basketball a conspiracy against short people? Weightlifting for tall people? Are combat sports full of weight-ist people who won't allow a heavyweight pound a welterweight? Is football the least ideological sport because it allows a greater variety for BMI and height?

Let us not bury the glaringly obvious fact that sex is a category with one of the strongest, if not the strongest, explanatory power for performance across almost the entirety of athletic endeavors in existence.

You said conspiracy. I said advantage.

Height is a huge advantage in basketball. The average height of an NBA player is over 6’5”. Height is mostly genetic except for malnutrition. Different populations have different average heights.

The optimal build for a weightlifter is to have short arms and legs and to have the two parts be of equal length. That is mostly genetic. Of course different population groups have differences here as well.

Weight is an advantage in combat sports both because you can dish out more and because you can absorb more punishment. I suspect that high bone density is advantageous and is mostly genetic. Different populations have different bone densities.

No one is denying that sex has explanatory power. The point is that many other things have explanatory power as well and that choosing which categories to consider is ideological.

Why have separate sports for sex? Why have separate weight classes? Why have a minimum age requirement for gymnasts? Why not allow professionals until 1992?

Why not have separate height classes for basketball? Why not have separate weight classes for football?

> The point is that many other things have explanatory power as well and that choosing which categories to consider is ideological. Why have separate sports for sex?

No need to complicate; if we didn't have sex segregated sports, for almost all sports (save for maybe open ocean swimming), we couldn't have any women competing at all[1]. In fact there are "battle of sexes" type exhibition matches that demonstrate the rough placement eg Braasch vs. the Williams sisters.

[1] To expand this statement because I know some people will get offended; this doesn't mean men are better at sports than women. It says, at the tail end of distributions, where most of the professional sports are played, tail end of men's distribution will be better than tail end of women's, leaving no opportunity for women to compete if distributions are intermixed.

I tried finding examples of other sports where women are roughly competitive with men at the top level: archery, shooting, curling, ultra-marathon, gymnastics, climbing.

In Ultra Marathon women win races that are not super competitive. Women hold basically zero course records for important races. The difference is smaller though with longer distances. But not even Courtney Dewaulter wins the UTMB outright.

men's and women's gymnastics are practically different sports. they only share 2 events and those events have pretty different rules between men and women.

Roughly competitive doesn't cut it when the competition itself is designed to find out and honor the outliers. If top 3 men in archery has consistently higher scores than the top 3 women, pitting them against each other would mean women not getting any medals anymore.

So unless you have hard statistics to back up these claims or are an expert in one of these fields, I would go with the experts' decision to sex segregate their leagues because they might know a few things or two we won't necessarily consider.

Just from my amateur interest; for outdoors archery, the draw strength matters a lot for accuracy, in curling likewise drive and sweeping strength make a difference.

That's true, but there are enormous differences between those other categories compared to sexuality! For one thing, we do not know exactly which genes code for each of these traits yet. And for another thing, the genes coding, for example, fast twitch muscles are not generally part of someone's identity the way gender is. I don't think the presence of those genes nor their uneven distribution does anything to defuse the social issue that we're talking about.

To be completely clear, in some sports there appears to be a moderate risk that elite cis-women will be completely unable to compete with elite trans-women. This is going to be visible and apparent. I don't think this will be acceptable to the most people, and they will likely look to change the system.

Nit-picking your other points: there are not really any popular rich-people-only sports any more, except perhaps auto racing. I don't think broader society is all that interested in the egalitarian properties of yacht sailing. R.e. the clothing technology: yes, and those things were banned because of the advantage they conferred. That's exactly what I'm talking about here.

> Nit-picking your other points: there are not really any popular rich-people-only sports any more, except perhaps auto racing.

I can assure you, from personal experience, that rowing, cycling, tennis, and lacrosse are overwhelmingly wealthy sports. You don’t have to pass a credit check to play them, but they are absolutely a class apart (both economically and racially) versus sports like baseball and basketball.

Besides tennis, those are also not popular sports in the sense I'm discussing. And tennis is probably the least compelling of your examples.

Golf, skiing, snowboarding, windsurfing, kitesurfing, mtb-ing, street cycling, motorracing: all have thousands or even millions of participants, so can be considered popular, but require participants to spend thousands on equipment, travel, access to slopes, etc. If you can do any of these, you're considered rich.

In a world with ~8 billion, a sports audience of a few million is considered quite niche.

Every sport is niche somewhere. Football[soccer] is the most popular sport in the world, but in America it's niche.

You keep listing second and third tier sports. It doesn't really address my argument about the most popular spectator sports at all. And even if it did I don't think it would do much to defuse my main point, which is that a lot of people will not accept a situation where cis women are effectively barred from winning in any sport.

> Many sports are closed to poor people. Equestrian, sailing, etc… aren’t sports for the poor.

Skiing is expensive for most people, but having grown up in a mountainous area, most kids could and did go skiing for very cheap.

we are going to continue to see huge increases in openly transgender people competing in sport

We're discussing literally the first trans woman to compete at the Olympics. Obviously going from 0 to 1 is a huge increase in percentage terms, but there's no evidence that it's going to continue to the point where women's sports are 'destabilised'.

First trans woman in the Olympics and she is essentially guaranteed to win the gold based on the numbers she put up during qualification. We are seeing high school and college athletics grappling with this issue. While it's early days, it's hard to picture a scenario where the Olympics can avoid making a decision on this over the long run.

Olympics is like the end stage. Transgender people competing in sport has been a common thing for past 3-4 years now. I personally know 3 girls who lost their sports scholarships to multiple transgender competing and taking all the top spots.

A girl who's case is heading up to U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit wrote a post on USAToday a month ago before USAToday edited her post without her permission and made changes to it:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/05/22/transgende...

She did an interview last week:

https://youtu.be/5HYL9pJGs8w

> However, it presents a huge problem for women's athletics,

Trans women have been able to compete for years in Olympic level sport, and they haven't wiped the floor with cis women. I fail to see evidence of the problem - I see a lot more evidence of it being a culture war and TERF talking point.

It also doesn't really line up with the fact that we fawn over genetic quirks that let Michael Phelps dominate his sport. If we think that certain sorts of genetic quirks are unfair in women's sport, why do we allow them in men's?

> It also doesn't really line up with the fact that we fawn over genetic quirks that let Michael Phelps dominate his sport. If we think that certain sorts of genetic quirks are unfair in women's sport, why do we allow them in men's?

These are not the same thing. Michael Phelps dominated the sport as a whole, males and females. A genetic quirk to be the best of the world vs a genetic quirk to be a big fish in a small pond (with all respect to females powerlifters, but males just have better records) is not the same at all.

I think a better comparison is one made in the article, to steroids. Steroids are just testosterone after all. Imagine someone put steroids in the food of a powerlifter for 20 years (I'm using this metaphor because I don't want to insinuate that the powerlifter did it on purpose). Do you think it would be fair to let them compete? Stopping them from competing is unfair to them, but allowing them is unfair to all other powerlifters.

It’s not a quirk that makes it unfair for them to compete in women’s sports, it’s the fact that they’re not women.

If I’m a 240lb judoka, it would be unfair for me to compete in the 160lb weight class just because I feel thin on the inside.

First of all, I suggest you refrain from calling trans women "not women" – this is, whether you intend it to be or not, quite disrespectful. You can talk about the biological implications of being transgender without erasing their identities like that.

Second of all, there are physical changes from hormone replacement therapy. associated with transitioning. This is absolutely not "240lb judoka feeling thin on the inside" and not absurdly cut and dry like you suggest.

>Second of all, there are physical changes from hormone replacement therapy. associated with transitioning. This is absolutely not "240lb judoka feeling thin on the inside" and not absurdly cut and dry like you suggest.

These drugs do not "erase" the biological reality of sex differences.

I'm not arguing there is no biological difference – there absolutely is. I am arguing that there are different lines people can draw and that the example given is absurd and reductive of these considerations.

What percentage of the population are Olympians? And what percentage of the population are trans? Being openly trans is more accepted in lots of the world now, but not everywhere. I'm not sure we have enough evidence to say whether or not trans people could have an advantage in some Olympic sports for some genders. Either side of the argument seems plausible to me and it will be incredibly difficult for everyone to agree to one stance when there are so many intangible parts to this argument.

I appreciate that you’ve said this so concisely and clearly. The Olympics are, overwhelmingly, a show of extraordinary human abilities. Singling out transwomen for scrutiny and prejudice amounts to special pleading.

Cis women are 50% of the population while transgender women are less than 1% of the population. Excluding 50% of the population from sports is obviously more problematic than excluding less than 1%, even if both are not ideal.

More than 99.9% are excluded from Olympic-level sports anyway.

But all have some at least theoretically plausible hope, say as a child, to aspire to them. Back when sports were only for men, ~50 % -- women -- were excluded even from that. Allowing trans women to compete as women will again remove that hope from ~50 %: Non-trans women.

Yours is a non-argument.

here is a thought experiment for you: no more genders in sports. at all. everyone competes under the same rules. we bother with quirks like gender? i mean, we want equality right? everyone competes under the same rules /s

Your snideness is noted, but this is precisely the stoic mindset: athleticism is most virtuously practiced when we only compare current selves to our best possible versions of ourselves.

We can’t change anything about how others are; we can only better ourselves. Telling transwomen that they can’t perform athletic excellence on their own terms is myopic and inconsistent with our own praise for factors outside of our control. Worry less about them, and more about yourself.

We are talking about competition between others. You have worry about yourself compared to other people - that's the whole point.

We are not arguing the virtues of athleticism I don't understand why you wrote that.

nah. if you’re working on yourself that’s fine. if you’re working a lifetime to be the best at something only to be cheated out of it, we’re talking about something else.

to nail this point home: if you are training to ride a bike and you’re the best in the world at it and after that someone comes along with an electric bike and wants to “compete” with you you’re gonna have a problem. nothing wrong if everyone has an electric one and the sport involves electric bikes. something is wrong if someone brings an electric bike and claims the bike is the same as the others.

I don't think they like to be referred to as "electric" anymore.

Nobody is telling transwomen that they cannot perform/compete. Just that they shouldn’t compete with women.

So you admit you want to abolish women's sports?

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