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The Olympics has been dealing with the question of womanhood for a very long time. For a while they were literally stripping and groping female athletes. Later they did chromosome testing, until they discovered intersex individuals who confound that theory.

Even their current testosterone-levels theory is imperfect, since some people have obviously female bodies but inordinately high testosterone levels.

So they seem to be muddling along about as well as they can. If they want to have a separate women's category, it's a question they're going to have to answer.

I've basically had a thought recently about this.

The Olympics will eventually become a contest of the best humans, regardless of sex / gender. This is already how it is more or less today: people born with the right body types, into the right families, etc, will make it to the top.

Thank for you attending my TED talk.

This is the most elegant solution, but it's also functionally equivalent to "women can't do high level sports anymore"

I feel like women's sports is extremely cursed - a sporting competition with a handicap, except the handicap is not specified in the rules but is instead a randomly distributed quirk of biology, meaning that people have to judge who does or does not have it, except that the handicap is also an integral part of a person's identity...

(no I don't mean to say being female is a disability, the context is sports)

That would be the end of females in the Olympics. Male High School Athletes beat Female Olympians in most events:

https://boysvswomen.com

Wow that website is incredible!

Yeah it definitely destroys my little thought :D.

They're already in an arms race about performance enhancing drugs. And even without those, there are artificial limitations like age in women's gymnastics, because of the damage it does. Football players are grappling with decades of head injuries.

If you want to know the very best a human can do, you will destroy them. It's just not a question we can safely know the answer to.

So it's never really going to be fair, and we need to ask a different question. Exactly what that question is remains to be seen.

> I'm often confused as to why this topic comes up on HN

Take a look around, I think you'll find transmen comprise a much larger proportion of this community (and tech communities in general) than the general population.

There's also a lot of desire on HN to comment on political topics while pretending not to comment on political topics. Things like gender identity, women in tech, genetic differences, etc are all wonderful smokescreens to allow us to post politically but maintain a solid veneer of simply having an intellectual discussion on a topic of general interest.

> maintain a solid veneer of simply having an intellectual discussion on a topic of general interest

Some of us have an academic interest in biology, genetics, neuroscience, psychology, etc. while still aligning with the overall origin of this site as a place to discuss the latest in news as relates to technology startups.

It is unfortunate that this politically charged topic is so misunderstood and that ignorance of the basic science behind it is so prevalent, but here we are.

> Things like gender identity, women in tech, genetic differences, etc are all wonderful smokescreens to allow us to post politically but maintain a solid veneer of simply having an intellectual discussion on a topic of general interest.

Especially when it comes to these topics, I imagine it's very easy for people who aren't affected by these issues to "debate" them *because* they aren't the ones directly affected by it.

>maintain a solid veneer of simply having an intellectual discussion on a topic of general interest.

That's a good point.

My guess is that practically everyone knows what side they are on as things get more sporty. The rest is just weaving arguments for the fun of it.

> The rest is just weaving arguments for the fun of it.

Interesting discussion is the HN way!

Some enterprising scientists may have some cutting edge insights reviewing HN comments on technology topics, no reason to suspect otherwise for social sciences.

TERFs primarily don't focus on trans men because they see them as misguided women. You can find many TERFs blaming trans women and "gender ideology" for convincing butch-identified lesbians that they're actually straight men. Personally I think this denies trans men the dignity and autonomy to define themselves as they see fit, but then again, I would say that, I'm trans.

It's ironic that this transphobe fantasizing has led to non-conforming cis women being harassed in the bathroom. Whatever minimal problem there was with women being harassed or assaulted in the bathroom by men or AMAB people has been completely surpassed by these fantasies sparking a witch hunt.

Seems like a reasonable hypothesis to build a psychological study out of, but there’d be a lot of work to do on operationalizing your definitions.

Not sure what part you're referring to but it's more or less overt that many of them think trans men are basically women. This combined with what they say about trans women is most of where the accusations of essentialism come from.

> TERFs primarily don't focus on trans men because they see them as misguided women.

Not well versed in feminist theory, but I’m curious whether anyone has formally documented in the scientific literature these sorts of psychological attitudes.

Probably a cross-disciplinary masters thesis worthy topic if no one has done that research yet.

I think it is the same reason no one has ever cared much about lesbians compared to gay men. [1] But I am not sure why that is.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/lesbians-more-accept...

I was thinking exactly the same thing. A man with a vagina is much less sodomy-y than a woman with a penis.

It's because there is no reason to have animosity toward a woman becoming a man. The main objections to MtF are about safety (a MtF will always be stronger and bigger than a woman on average) and fairness (should male born people get female scholarships, compete in women's sports?). A FtM is not hurting anything or taking any opportunities away from anyone really.

You are making broad statements about the prevalence of psychological attitudes in the general public.

Do you have an academic citation to back up your assertions?

No.

Here’s some interesting research on the prevalence and varieties of reasons why people have negative attitudes towards transgender individuals.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C50&q=att...

The scientific community may not yet have crafted any research on the specific question of attitudes towards transgender athletes, but it shouldn’t be hard to find the research if it exists.

> fairness (should male born people get female scholarships, compete in women's sports?). A FtM is not hurting anything or taking any opportunities away from anyone really

fairness is an issue when considering MtF, but not FtM? why exactly?

Transitioning female to male doesn't make you more likely to win Olympic weightlifting competitions in your new gender, so you'd be vanishingly unlikely to do it for the sake of gaining an advantage.

Ah. We are only considering physical advantages then. There can be many other advantages that are not physical.

Keep in mind that transgender individuals are almost certainly, in general, and by regulation if they are transgender and an athlete, undergoing hormone therapies. In the case of estrogen treatment, that implies a reduction in muscle strength in addition to the other physical changes caused by the addition of estrogen and the removal of testosterone.

This is a factor in why there are regulations requiring testosterone levels below a certain amount in order to qualify in the women’s section of certain sporting programs.

There are no zero sum advantages to being a man that can be harmed by a FtM entering the pool.

>I've hardly heard anything over the years about transmen-as-men vs men-as-men. It seems like most of the focus is on transwomen-as-women vs women-as-women. Maybe we're not as vocal? Maybe we care less?

It's really not that hard to understand. It's the same sort of thinking that motivates the slogan "don't punch down". Males aren't threatened by females identifying as men. But females are threatened by males identifying as women for many obvious reasons. For example, with self-id as the only criteria keeping men out of women's prisons, it undermines the protection women have against abuse from men while in forced proximity. A female in a male prison or male changeroom is a novelty, not a threat.

Seeing as how the historical perspective is almost directly reversed from what you claim, I'm going to have to be skeptical about this. The European-historical aversion to largely one-way nonconforming to gender and sexual roles (men acting as women being a problem, ditto male homosexual behavior) is pretty explicitly due to a rejection of (heterosexual) masculinity translating as a threat to that (heterosexual) masculinity.

Those currents run deep, and run through to today. And that's not to say that "but a guy might go in the girls' bathroom!" is not what bigots say, because as a prima facie claim that's certainly common--but I very much doubt, were we to see some unvarnished honesty, that bathroom fears are actually a primary motivator rather than a convenient battleground.

There is certainly a longstanding cultural thread of defending traditional manhood through explicit castigation of male deviants, but notably the source of the explicit castigation is largely from other males. The pushback against trans-women's acceptance as women isn't largely driven by men. It is pretty evenly distributed, or perhaps even more driven by women. The point is that these seem to be distinct phenomena driven by distinct concerns.

> perhaps even more driven by women

Can you substantiate this? It doesn't match my understanding of the situation either from a cultural or an interpersonal perspective.

I don't have any hard numbers, but it is the impression I get from various organizations and legal challenges to trans legislation in the UK. The organized opposition seems to be largely driven by women.

I suspect it has much to do with the idea that trans-men are transitioning into a gender "in power." That is, adopting masculine social behavior and lifestyle allow transmen to enter the patriarchal fold and slip quite seamlessly into a male dominant society, as long as they remain unknown. Once they are known, the idea that they must be excommunicated or "proven" as female becomes imperative. Transmen are subject to inordinate degrees of violence like transwomen. This is all to say that cis men aren't as afraid, be it in washrooms or on a sports field, of transmen as much as transwomen.

Transwomen, on the other hand, are much more defined, in the eyes of a patriarchal society, by their rejection of masculinity in favor of femininity. To some cis-men, they appear as aberrations or duplicitous (hence the nickname "trap"), to some cis-women they appear as potential unfalsifiable unknowns, and a potential thing to be feared for sexual violence. Transwomen are thus caught in the crossfires of fear from both genders.

I don't think so, that's a work of fantasy and quite the leap.

It's probably more that in the grand scheme of things trans-men don't pose any sort of threat to other males. I don't recall ever discussing trans-men with my peers.

I think it stems from privilege.

Trans women are seen as seeking female privileges (like the ability to compete against women in sports, which is easier than competing against men). Which enrages some people.

Trans men are seen as giving up their female privileges, to which everyone shrugs and says "you want less privilege? Fine by me!"

Are there no privileges afforded to men?

I can think of at least one -- working in tech.

I've met quite a few trans women working in tech!

Of course men have privileges too, but I think many of men's privileges come from confounding variables. Like men are on average taller, and people are biased to view taller people as having more authority, so taller people are more likely to become CEOs etc.

Whereas women's privileges come from society compensating for men's privileges. So society sees women on average are smaller and physically weaker, and thus decides they need privileges like separate sports to compensate.

Trans women who went through male puberty often have the size advantage of men, so them also have the social privileges of women is seen as double dipping.

While for trans men it's the opposite, they're often small like women, but not afforded social protection for it.

Anyway that's just my theory why some people hate trans women more than trans men. I myself have sympathy for both cases, dysphoria sounds pretty awful.

" "A female POC just lost her spot to a white, middle-aged, male-born son of a billionaire. This is supposed to be progressive?" "

Perhaps it's simply a way to more firmly define the progressive stack.

We need an ISO standard in this area.