iNow

That doesn’t render them contradictory. It shows that they are multifaceted and layered, not simplistic but nuanced and representative of numerous perspectives. This is an important difference of which you should take note. Thanks for sharing. I wish you well with your anxieties.

🍻

Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I am overcompensating for my own biases and trying to right various wrongs, but you know what? I’d rather overcompensate toward the side of inclusion and acceptance of those already marginalized and violently targeted on a daily basis instead of adding to the already rampant problems of needless exclusion and discrimination these marginalized groups are facing. I’d rather overcompensate and help bend the arc of history toward justice any day of the week and twice on Tuesday’s.

Sometimes the bully gets their power bc people fear them, not just bc they always win a proper fight. I believe this is about saying to diplomats, “it doesn’t matter who you are, where you live, or which country you represent… we can and will harm you whenever we damned well please.”

I’m okay with that. Tho please note that I reject the underlying premise that my advocacy for accepting trans women as women and trans men as men “demeans the very idea of diversity.” Lol Your use of the word “if” here is the sticking point for me. I agree with your basic logic, but I’m not seeing that approach in obvious display here. Instead, we seem to have lots of preconceived conclusions about trans women having advantages in sport which then go in search of data supporting those conclusions (or don’t seek that data at all, in fact). That’s different than having uncertainty on a topic then neutrally searching for data which can clarify it… with no bias toward any specific outcome. Summarized: The sense of unfairness is being assumed as a starting premise, not left as a mere hypothesis or possibility seeking rejection or reinforcement. And I know these guys with whom I’m interacting in this thread. They’re good people and it’s not my intent to besmirch their character. We’ve argued and agreed scores of times through the years. I am, however, highlighting these possible biases in their thinking and even gave them the benefit of the doubt by calling these potential biases unconscious. If that’s enough to warrant all of the neg reps, then so be it. You’ll always know where you stand with me, even if you don’t like where that is.

It might also be irrelevant since this issue reeks of unconscious transphobia and sounds absolutely nothing like warriors striving for athletic fairness.

Perhaps part of the reason this sometimes feels more like an attack on transgendered humans instead of a defense of fairness in sports is the fact that you’re not equally concerned with the lack of fairness females transitioning to males will also face when entering male sports. Food for thought.

Post-truth is pre-fascism

Anything which distracts people from focusing on real issues or standing up against tyrants by causing us to spin around the axle battling back untruths like these being repeated by bad actors and other badly confused individuals

Thank you for the follow-up. I’m completely unsurprised by your findings. Regardless, +1 for putting in the legwork on this

I’m fine with this. However, the onus of supporting / looking into that isn’t on me since I’m not the one suggesting parity lacks. My stance is plain. Treat trans women as women and let them compete accordingly. End program. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Move on. If regulations need to be updated to allow for that to be acceptable to the hordes of enlightened sports fans out there, then let’s do that, but for the love of Thor stopping standing in the way of transgendered equality in sports and otherwise. Be an ally, not an obstacle.

Again here you betray your previous denial and show the falseness of your protest by suggesting that allowing transgendered females to compete in sports as female is something which lacks parity (I.e. you think / are suggesting other people think doing so is unfair).

Perhaps you don’t realize it, but it’s embedded in your and other peoples words. I take your point that many people are concerned about fairness in sports and that is their reason for opposition. No quarrel there. However, there’s no other valid conclusion one can logically draw from that stance other than those people consider the idea of allowing transgendered females to compete in sports as female as unfair.

Oh, look! Yet another fictional narrative bogeyman with zero basis in reality. I reject your premise that allowing transgendered females to compete in sports as female is unfair. Am I the only one reminded by this comment of the “big scary black man” stereotype?

To make this more explicit since you may have missed the importance of swansonts reply, XY individuals are ALREADY included in female sports because of the way sex chromosomes are expressed. You just don’t realize it / don’t care to fight against it / don’t think the rules need changing to exclude them. The question then becomes: Since some individuals with XY chromosomes are already competing in female sports and you either don’t care or don’t notice them, then why spend so much time and energy focusing so intently on these XY chromosomes only when they belong instead to explicitly transgendered individuals?

There is literally nothing certain about that. Agreed, but we are not certain this is the most accurate way to describe what came before the BB

And is this actually happening and is there ANY evidence confirming that it’s happening, or is this YET ANOTHER fear mongering fictional narrative being baselessly spouted by the folks who hold the opposite position from me on this topic? Let me be clear. I’m not belittling the importance of female sports. I’m belittling the importance of people who think transgendered females aren’t to be treated as females. At that informal scrimmage… it’s moot anyway since we’re not talking about males playing against females in sports. Thank you for reinforcing my central point so clearly that this is about you refusing to accept transgendered females as female. And sadly you refuse to see Jill.

Is there, though?

How, indeed

While that depends entirely on how one defines free will, it’s off topic in a thread about a self-aware Internet. The same might be said about humans, though despite the chemoelectric cascades always occurring throughout our nervous system that’s obviously stretching the meaning of “electronic.”

This is a component of our disagreement, but hardly the fulcrum. Rather, the fulcrum seems to be that I accept transgendered humans as the sex they identify with. JCM, however, seems not to. He seems to see them as doing something wrong by “altering their chemistry” and “choosing to change” and even sometimes assumes nefarious motives suggesting that they’re intentionally trying to trick us so they can be more likely to win medals and plastic trophies when playing sports. Now, this lack of acceptance gets couched in terms of “protecting cisgendered females,” but that strikes me as being a smokescreen composed of horseshit, especially since it’s not being compared against the scale and scope of other existing risks cisgendered female athletes face. The fulcrum is that I and many others accept trans women as women and trans men as men, and this is subsequently why I have no problem whatsoever with them competing in women’s leagues or in men’s leagues based on how they identify. They are female and belong in the female league, and they are male so belong in the male league. They are also human and deserve to be treated as such with dignity and acceptance. It’s that lack of acceptance that they truly are who they say they are and it’s the suggestion that cisgendered fairness must be prioritized over transgendered fairness which constitutes the fulcrum of our disagreement. Incorrect. The foundation is that more trans women are being harmed by their EX-clusion than cisgendered women are being harmed by their IN-clusion. The foundation is that I reject the underlying theme here that trans women somehow aren’t women and I reject the premise that fairness in sports is the actual concern underlying the opposition. Any honest observer (honest with us and honest with themselves) can pretty easily recognize that this whole fairness in sports focus is disingenuous. Fairness in sports is merely being used as another regulatory cudgel to beat transgendered humans back into the shadows, to prevent them from getting too close to sociocultural activities that are part of our self-identities, and to remind them in yet another way (on top of the scores of other existing ways) that they are “different,” they are “other,” and they DON’T belong. I’m calling a spade a spade and suggesting it’s rather stupid and shortsighted to elevate this nebulous and arbitrary concept of athletic fairness above the very real and very meaningful concepts of social acceptance and understanding. This is about choosing to accept people for who and for what they are, even (especially?) in sports.

I don’t suspect physics has a stance on awareness, choosing instead to focus on modeling and measurement

And the larger problem is that the people we need to implement such a change are the very same ones benefiting from its absence.

That’s a fair point… it was a shorthand description from me that may have been unclear given other existing uses of the term “trans humans.” My intent was to reinforce their human-ness more than their trans-ness… and as you rightly mention, they are just human like the rest of us… just like you and me and everyone else… and yet here we are… page after page after page of thread exploring why some people are totally fine including transgendered humans in sports… and why others cannot seem to overcome their psychological opposition to letting them compete unless we first define some sort of “separate but equal” bracket to place them into… and all due to what? Due to the risk that like 6 total female athletes MIGHT not win a cheap trophy or medal if we do so? I find this all so horribly trite and narrow minded TBH, and it’s doubly frustrating when I see it coming so often from so many otherwise extremely intelligent and capable individuals like you. I understand where your head is on this, but I also feel somewhat strongly that you’re on the wrong side of this issue and will realize the same for yourself soon enough once a few more years have passed. Oversimplifying my take, this issue overlaps tremendously with historical opposition to letting blacks and whites marry, or being against school integration, or against gay marriage… this is just the latest tribalistic cultural fight and… FWIW… I would also be here equally arguing against making transgendered individuals drink from separate water fountains or forcing them to use bathrooms that don’t align with the gender with which they identify. You surely agree with me those things would be anathema to who we wish to be as a society, but can’t seem to see the same once sports get involved… specifically female sports. It’s so needlessly paternalistic. Are their differences we should consider and account for? Of course, but are those differences so large as to justify the perpetuation of discrimination and exclusion? Absolutely not. No way, and no how.