There's No Rulebook for Sex Verification
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I'm not a sports fan, so maybe I'm missing something, but it is not in any article I've read in passing.
I mean, I have no problem with men who want to identify as women, or indeed with men who want to identify as $6.99 Ikea table lamps, but the existence of such men isn't a challenge to binary human/lamp classification schemes.
prevalence of Klinefelter's syndrome (XXY male, with symptoms): 1 in 1000 men
prevalence of Transsexual men ("biological" men who identify as women): 1 in 30,000 to 1 in 4,500
(source: Wikipedia, but the references for these statistics appear to be in legitimate scientific publications)
But I don't think we were talking about transsexuality, which is something different from the intersex conditions which might make this whole business of sex testing more complicated than one might expect.
If your mother is Jewish, then the Jewish establishment would consider you Jewish. You are considered Jewish if you convert.
>That sort of makes it an ambiguous term, no? Unlike other religions, Judaism is a religion and a cultural identity. Many Jews are secular, but still have strong cultural connections.
>What if someone was born to two parents that are not of Jewish ancestry, but converted to Judaism? Is that person a Jew by birth?
That person is not a Jew by birth, but that person is a Jew by conversion.
Historically, the only real test of "Jewness" that matters is this: if the Nazis were around, would they want to kill you?
It seems sorta sad if that's what the Jewish community uses as an 'Are you a Jew?' litmus test.
Sad? It's survival. (And yes, it is sad that antisemitism exists.)
I'm talking about what the Jewish community currently uses. It seems sorta sad that they would adopt the same attitude toward 'Jew-ness' that the Nazis used... In a Helsinki-syndrome sort of way.
The Helsinki syndrome has nothing to do with this.
>Stockholm syndrome is a psychological response sometimes seen in abducted hostages, in which the hostage shows signs of loyalty to the hostage-taker, regardless of the danger or risk in which they have been placed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome]
I suppose it could be more confusing with people of mixed ancestry, but we can probably generally find a usable definition by context.
http://www.hrc.org/issues/9598.htm
The first lists the number of Jewish people in the US as roughly 6.5 million (2.2% of total), the second lists the number of transgender people as between 0.25 and 1% but warns that may be under counted.
1. Verifiably male 2. Verifiably female 3. None of the above
This would probably spur more transgenders into track and field, and sports in general..
What if you have a "female" with high levels of androgens? Do you just say if you are 2 standard deviations within the mean of females you are verifiably female? Which is the cutoff?
Pick one arbitrarily. It's inelegant, sure, but we use it for all sorts of other things. Significant example: are you an adult? All sorts of perfectly intelligent, rational arguments could be raised saying "It depends on the person, now doesn't it?" The law, however, says: If you have been alive for X number of years, you are an adult. Otherwise, you are not. It seems to work halfway adequately for that.
Hint: Men will dominate (just about) everything.
So what if you can run 1 second faster than some other human on a predefined course. You are still better than 99.99% of the rest of the humans.
Humanity is multi-valued, what your abilities are in one narrow (and ultimately useless) field should not in any way degrade the people lower in the 'ladder' and it should not reward those higher up.
Competition sports are historically good for two things only (and 'good' is up for debate), inspiring nationalism in people and paying exorbitant salaries to the competitors because of the media spectacle.
edit: Our capability to measure time is what drives this crazy competition forward, if we were limited to say 1 second intervals plenty of women and plenty of men would be able to compete just fine (only not in the same race, but for instance simply against the clock).
The differences between all humans competing in these races and the 'rest of us' is essentially so small as to be meaningless.
If we were all robots capable of performing brain intense activity all the time with no need for leisure activity, you may have a point about sports being pointless. However, we obviously are not. Sports are easy to relate to, easy to participate in, easy to admire and easy to watch. And since sports have remained popular for so long and now have such specialization, the differences amongst the most elite athletes are now only microseconds or centimeters. There is nothing wrong with measuring or finding entertainment from such small differences. I argue it makes it even more exciting.
There are good reasons to have highly competitive sports. It lets people see what our bodies and minds are capable of, and it helps gives us an identity as individuals and as humans. Not to mention that entertainment is not pointless. Unless you're only going to look at it from a philosophical perspective, then yeah, pretty much everything we do is meaningless.
Physical well-being
Mental well-being
Self-esteem, self-worth, self-satisfaction.
Pure fun
Personal motivation and accomplishment
Social interaction
Entertainment
Proxy for real violence
Most athletes are not paid exorbitant salaries because most competition does not result in media spectacle. Yet sports remain an important part of life for people in nearly every culture on the planet, as they have for thousands of years.
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of human potential. When I see people performing on levels I can't think of reaching, it gives me a fuzzy feeling. But we've gone past that in society, to the point of fetishizing achievement. I think it's awesome, for instance, that Michael Phelps broke the records he did. It's what he loves doing, apparently, and the technology behind his suit was pretty cool, and the spectacle was fun. But we aren't really given a choice about what to find fun, are we, when every media station heralds it for a week at a time. I'm sure other cool things were happening that didn't involve milliseconds in an expensive pool. Then the fame gets so ridiculous that his using marijuana became a scandal in and of itself, and he had to apologize not primarily for using but for letting kids down.
I'd like to see society move past these anal little obsessions. It's awesome that some people like some competitive sports, but I don't think it should be the center of our society. (I really don't think society should have any center whatsoever, but that's crazy talk.)
Athletes are - I'm sorry - overrated. Yes, it is great that they can do what they do, and I'm happy for them that they achieve their goals. But I'm just as happy for some local kid competing at ping-pong and winning, there is not much class difference there (in my opinion).
Sports are a means of finding your own limits, then exceeding those limits.
The media indeed messes it up, and for all those other categories you listed as well.
Lolita took all of four months to type. It took years to create. (Phelps swims 100 yards so fast because he's trained for years.)
The guinness book of records might make you believe otherwise, but it really does not matter who ran a little faster than his fellow humans.
Without Nabokov, Bach or van Gogh though, we'd all be a little poorer.
This started about a week ago, maybe a bit longer, no matter what I write, first it will go to -1 or -2, then slowly back up. Weird...
> really don't think society should have any center whatsoever, but that's crazy talk.
I don't think that's crazy at all. We value things like beauty, speed, strength and so on. But everybody has a story, and when you dig deep enough everybody has hidden strengths, all it takes is the right circumstances to bring them to the surface.
What we need to recognize is that 'spectator sports by the clock', beauty contests and so on have essentially become so meaningless that what you wear in a race (or in a beauty contest!) will make the difference between winning and losing.
I'd like to see a guy like Lance Armstrong compete on a 70's racing bike. Those bikes were plenty fast, but I highly doubt he'd make a chance.
All that drives it now is money and some weird nationalistic drive.
Let's refocus from sports to stuff that actually matters (and no in the /. sense), let's hold a competition who has done the most good for their neighbourhood. Let's have countries outcompete each other on slashing their defense budget, on minimizing their crime rates and political record.
All that energy going towards slicing .01 of some record or other it fails to excite me.
Let's have countries outcompete each other on slashing their defense budget, on minimizing their crime rates and political record.
I find it sad that Americans aren't competitive in things like that. We're, what, #37 for health care satisfaction? Push it up again! USA! USA!
This started about a week ago, maybe a bit longer, no matter what I write, first it will go to -1 or -2, then slowly back up. Weird...
That means you've made it on HN! Either there are bots, or your name is well-known enough to provoke random downvoting. When I tried using HN with a second account for several months, I was surprised that I wasn't bobbing under -1 every time I posted in a popular thread. Now it's back. Oh, well.
To answer your question, what I'd like to see is for people to realize how silly the current set of sports are -- virtually all slight variants of either "person moves an object downfield into a goal" or "person runs/jumps/lifts very fast for short distance" -- and a shift towards sports which are more equal to all people. Where are the sports that reward balance and rhythm and endurance more than speed and strength? Where are the sports for which sufficient training negates virtually any genetic luck?
For example, most of the best rock climbers and martial artists I know are not just short, but downright tiny. In races, women do better relative to men when distances are longer: I doubt I'll ever see a woman make up the 0.9 seconds to overtake the fastest man in the 100m, but I also doubt I'll ever see a man make up the 5 hours to overtake the fastest woman in the decaironman.
If you start with the set of sports for which men hold a huge relative advantage (like any professional team sport in the USA), no categorization will ever truly make up for it. The fix, then, is to change the sports. This isn't as radical as it might sound, e.g., (American) football started with a round ball which gradually got pointier as people decided they liked passing more. We get the sports we optimize for, and I don't know what we're optimizing for but it certainly isn't sexual equality. As long as we have sex categorization, that's basically impossible.
In general men's times are significantly better than women's for ultra-ironman races, including the deca. The one woman who did set a bunch of records, Astrid Benöhr, is a verified cheater.
http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/ultramentor/results/mexi... >Marco Flores reports: "During the Deca, Astrid Benöhr was disqualified due to taking shortcuts during the running trial. This was done in the middle of the night and was observed by athletes, maintenance people and support crews. Nobody reported this to the organizers until, finally, one of the members of Guy Rossi's support crew was surprised by the disappearance of the athlete on the course and reappearing very soon after Guy's arrival. This was reported. The times were checked and this gave way to suspicion, on behalf of the organizers, who stationed inspectors all night. They confirmed the occurrence and a video was taken of this athlete taking a significant shortcut of the running course, which is run in a loop. Subsequently the athlete was disqualified."
http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/ultramentor/records.html...
This link is a bit dated, but it does show records as of 1997 for ironman, double ironman, triple, quadruple, penta and deca events. Men are ahead in all of them.
In 1999, Astrid Benöhr set records in the quintuple and the deca. If her victories were legitimate, a possible factor may be that she limited herself to only about 8.5 hours of sleep for the entire 187 hours of her race. It reminds me somewhat of how a 61 year-old farmer, Cliff Young, won a grueling 875 km race from Sydney to Melbourne, despite the fact that the competition included professional athletes. He absolutely crushed the field and set a course record. Was it because old men have a biological advantage? No. It was because he was the only runner who chose not to sleep.
http://www.elitefeet.com/the-legend-of-cliff-young-the-61-ye...
Splitting it into two categories allows a statistically significant number of people to compete in a fair yet meaningful context.
For instance, Mike is (height=1.7m, runs=5m/s, scored=45, etc. ) and Michelle is (height=1.4m, runs=4m/s, scored=77, etc). You could even use machine learning techniques to figure out how to initially class someone, and have an appeals board to deal with edge cases.
The real problem is deciding how many classes you want to have.
For one, this method may be a lot of extra work to wind up with the same number of, or potentially even more edge cases. And chances are good you'll wind up with virtually the same results for everything but the edge cases.
Deciding what criteria to use is also non-trivial. There are a number of intangibles that may matter. "Women's Champion" isn't the same as "Class B Champion." Saying the "best female" conveys something much different than "best in statistical category F."
On the other hand, I see a bigger problem. If we are using this technique for the 100 m dash (for example) then we're going to basically split people up into "best category", "second best category", etc... and we'll end up comparing between categories anyway since there is an objective measure to use (the clock).
Virtually all sports rely on some level of arbitrary meta-organization. While you could write essays about why that is, it boils down to one: It's interesting that way. It's not just gender, either. Playing fields across most sports are divided by geography, age, affiliation or nationality, or simply arbitrary divisions like in the MLB. So long as the boundaries are recognized by everyone there isn't a problem.
It's the personal achievement that counts, you against the clock or your sense of self worth, not you against somebody else.
Unless 'racing' someone will spur you to work harder.
What about number 4 then, he never gets to be on the podium either, why only 3 top spots ? And if you make 4, what about #5 ?
This is irrelevant. In track and field, elite to sub-elite high school boys beat all women ever in the sprints and field events, and even in longer distances the best US high school boys beat the women's world records. In basketball, for instance, the difference is even greater because height makes a big difference -- in fact, D1 women's basketball programs apparently bring in men who are semi-serious intramural basketball players to get better competition in practice.
That was sort of the point, I thought that by comparing a non-sporter with a sporting female that had been made clear.
Utility is not really an issue.
For me, the point of sport is fun - that's why I don't watch Professional Football (soccer), it's all about money, not about fun IMO. The only way I really find fun in sport is doing it.
Yay :) That's it. I could play pong all day or soccer or ride a bike or swim, it really doesn't matter. But to look at the performance of my 'national team' or so doesn't translate into a % of the same feeling of actually doing something.
If you want you can live your whole life second-hand today.
You don't think this is the case? When I was on cross country I usually just tried to pass the person in front of me... having other people to compete with is a huge part of what drives athletes, especially in sports that are directly competitive like basketball as opposed to sports that are about the clock (such as running).
What's that you say? It's unfair that these people, through a genetic quirk and no fault of their own, can no longer compete in international athletics? Well boo hoo, neither can I, so go get a real job like the rest of us.
While individuals may try to subvert the system for their own advancement, the spirit of competition is to win and win fairly. Winning because a challenger gets disqualified for silly reasons is less desirable than winning, as the saying goes, "fair and square."