What's the implication here, that because the distinction is totally arbitrary, that we should do away with it? What does that mean for women's sports?
I don't know, I'm not an athlete, coach, tournament organizer, part of a rule-making body, or one of a number of other roles that would give me insight or authority to be involved in that decision. Why does everyone feel comfortable stepping into this conversation with authority?
Would you be equally deferential to the organizer/rule-making body if it was some other controversial issue, like whether women could compete at all? As a sibling comment mentioned, women couldn't even compete in the olympics before 1900, so if it came up as a culture war topic would your reaction also be "I don't know, I'm not an athlete, coach, tournament organizer, part of a rule-making body, or one of a number of other roles that would give me insight or authority to be involved in that decision"?
I listed rulemakers and organizers but also athletes themselves. I don't know much about the history of the olympics but I would guess the desires and probably activism of women athletes played a role.
You kinda do, otherwise your position just sounds like "why are you talking about trans athletes? You should just Trust the Experts, except when I disagree with them, then it's an Important Moral Issue that the public needs to weigh in on".
>I listed rulemakers and organizers but also athletes themselves. I don't know much about the history of the olympics but I would guess the desires and probably activism of women athletes played a role.
This is a very perilous position to hold, because it basically means if there's enough TERF athletes to outnumber trans women athletes (which doesn't seem too implausible, based on purely demographic factors) then it's okay to exclude them.
It is okay to exclude men from women's sports because women have the right to sex-specific spaces.
the clergy, such at least as can be fully confided in, may admissibly and
meritoriously make themselves acquainted with the arguments of opponents, in
order to answer them, and may, therefore, read heretical books; the laity,
not unless by special permission, hard to be obtained. This discipline
recognises a knowledge of the enemy's case as beneficial to the teachers,
but finds means, consistent with this, of denying it to the rest of the
world: thus giving to the élite more mental culture, though not more mental
freedom, than it allows to the mass [0].
I think a regime where intersex cis women, as well as trans women who have been on testosterone suppression for a long period, would probably be most fair. I don't think categorical bans are fair in any respect, not is forcing intersex cis and trans women to compete with men (because they're likely to be much worse due to not having as much testosterone), nor is creating a third category (because it would have too few people to be truly competitive). But I'm not an expert and most likely neither are you, so I try to keep my opinions here relatively loosely held.
The muscular changes that happen during puberty are permanent. No amount of testosterone suppression will change that. In how many sports do any trans-women end up on the podium vs their numbers in that sport?
The boundaries are really not that fuzzy at all.