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Comment by locknitpicker | Hacker News Reader

> The attention this topic receives is disproportionate considering how rare we are, especially close to the Olympics level.

We all remember state-sponsored doping scandals from the 60s where iron curtain nations invested heavily on medical research and experiments on prospective athletes to try to get medals. It's not hard to understand how badly this would turn out to be if the same sort of unscrupulous regime could just abuse this loophole to seek the same benefit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_in_East_Germany

As far as I see, this issue is only tangentially related to transgender rights.

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> It's not hard to understand how badly this would turn out to be if the same sort of unscrupulous regime could just abuse this loophole to seek the same benefit.

Surely this is something that can be addressed if it ever becomes a problem. Surely we don't need to write rules for scenarios that aren't causing issues...

> Surely this is something that can be addressed if it ever becomes a problem.

You're advocating to create pressure and incentives to commit this class of abuses, which have already been committed even at an industrial stage for decades, and your strategy is to ignore history and facts until the consequences of your actions catch up to you.

And all this in exchange for which tradeoff?

Even the fight against doping is far more proactive than what you are advocating.

Trans athletes at the Olympics are causing disruptions at an industrial scale?

There's been exactly one trans woman in the Olympics, Laurel Hubbards, competing for New Zealand. She won zero medals.

I'm advocating for "there is zero documented evidence this is a problem, the IOC should use their time and energy solving actual problems like doping."

All three medallists in the women's 800m at the 2016 Rio Olympics were male. This was highly controversial, as having three male athletes take gold, silver and bronze in what should have been a celebration of female athletic excellence wasn't exactly a desirable outcome.

Although the headline of the linked article focuses on males with a transgender identity, the purpose of the IOC's new policy is to exclude all male physiological advantage from the female category, including cases like the above.

I'm aware, but those women aren't trans. They have disorders of sexual development, were assigned female at birth.

Laurel Hubbard is trans, was assigned male at birth, and competed under hormone therapy. (Which studies have shown reduces or eliminates the biological male advantage for trans women.)

We can discuss DSD AFAB athletes as well, but I was focused on trans athletes.

You don't have to go back that far.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_in_Russia

That's cis women using doping. Considering how transphobic Russia is, the chance of them using any kind of "trans loophole" is zero.

More like 100% and has probably happened multiple times already.

citation for this claim?

And china:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_in_China

I don't believe either of them have really stopped.

> As far as I see, this issue is only tangentially related to transgender rights.

It affects the rights of transgender people, so it is directly related to transgender rights. Also, I don't at all think that it's coincidence that people spreading hate about transgender people are the same ones so concerned about this particular issue?

People spreading hate and prejudice always have <reasons>.

> We all remember state-sponsored doping scandals from the 60s

We all do? People born in the 1950s or earlier might remember, making them at least 65 years old. I've never heard of it from people of any age. In any case, it's hard to connect this 60 year old issue with today's decision.

If an unscrupulous regime wanted to get medals with that method they'd just give cis women testosterone during puberty. Nothing about the new trans-exclusionary standards would deter that.

No XY chromosome no SRY gene. You're left with validating that someone's entire development was done in the absence of testosterone, which would--if even possible--require incredibly invasive and extensive testing.

That's a weird take. How bad do you imagine it going?

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