Transgender athletes

[TheVat]

3 hours ago, mistermack said:

I'm against them being considered royal, or having hereditary privilege. There are lots of people called Windsor, it doesn't imply superiority or privilege. 

 

 

But they are former Saxe-Coburgs!  Just because they decided one day that they were Windsors instead, why should we accept that?  Clearly they are still Germans, who experience some sort of Teutonic dysphoria and imagine they are Brits.  What about all these poor non-Germans who participate in beer drinking contests and then trans-Windsors come in pretending to be non-German?   These former Saxe-Coburgs will kick everyone's ass!  

 

[mistermack]

4 hours ago, TheVat said:

But they are former Saxe-Coburgs! 

As far as I'm concerned, it they were assigned Windsor at birth, and have gone through puberty as Windsors, then they are not trans Windsors, they were simply wrongly assigned at birth, like Caster Semenya. If found to have raised levels of haughtiness, and lowered sense of humour, that can be addressed with compensatory treatments. 

[studiot]

18 minutes ago, mistermack said:

As far as I'm concerned, it they were assigned Windsor at birth, and have gone through puberty as Windsors, then they are not trans Windsors, they were simply wrongly assigned at birth, like Caster Semenya. If found to have raised levels of haughtiness, and lowered sense of humour, that can be addressed with compensatory treatments. 

I must say you seem to have a very deep interest in this subject, far greater than my own, as you keep referring to people and things I have never heard of.

If you don't like it, why bother ?

Edited August 19, 2023 by studiot

[mistermack]

1 minute ago, studiot said:

I must say you seem to have a very deep interest in this subject, far greater than my own, as you keep referring to people and things I have never heard of.

If you don't like it, why bother ?

I was replying to an interesting and amusing post by TheVat. Well, it amused me anyway.

I hope that's all right by you? 

[TheVat]

I would like to think Mac and I were introducing a bit of levity to the chat.   I am certainly not advocating treating Windsors with Teutonic dysphoria before puberty and the normal acquisition of tea-sipping skills, and certainly not with radical treatments like shipping them off to Saxony or Coburg or Gotha or surgical removal of the Royal Wave.

The worst cases of monarchy, of course, can only be remedied with trips in a tumbrel to a decephalization clinic.

[dimreepr]

12 hours ago, mistermack said:

they were simply wrongly assigned at birth, like Caster Semenya.

So you think she's a man and doesn't realise, presumably because she looks a bit masculine and keeps beating the pretty women; it's certainly consistant with your version of logic.

 

[mistermack]

57 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

So you think she's a man and doesn't realise, presumably because she looks a bit masculine and keeps beating the pretty women; it's certainly consistant with your version of logic.

She's a biological male, wrongly assigned at birth and has never officially transitioned to male. And why would she, she holds two women's olympic golds and three world championships. 

However, from wiki, "Semenya married her long-term partner, Violet Raseboya, in December 2015.[122][123][124] They revealed that Violet Raseboya gave birth to their daughter in 2020.[125]"

And all the best of luck to her, being wrongly assigned at birth hasn't been a total disaster to her life, it would probably have been a lot more mundane, if she'd grown up as a male.

 

[dimreepr]

12 minutes ago, mistermack said:

She's a biological male, wrongly assigned at birth and has never officially transitioned to male. And why would she, she holds two women's olympic golds and three world championships. 

However, from wiki, "Semenya married her long-term partner, Violet Raseboya, in December 2015.[122][123][124] They revealed that Violet Raseboya gave birth to their daughter in 2020.[125]"

And all the best of luck to her, being wrongly assigned at birth hasn't been a total disaster to her life, it would probably have been a lot more mundane, if she'd grown up as a male.

 

But if he's gay, surely her partner would be a man??? 

[swansont]

18 minutes ago, mistermack said:

However, from wiki, "Semenya married her long-term partner, Violet Raseboya, in December 2015.[122][123][124] They revealed that Violet Raseboya gave birth to their daughter in 2020.[125]"

Yes, and? What significance do you think this little blurb holds? It’s not like this is the only same-sex couple to have kids.

[mistermack]

8 minutes ago, swansont said:

Yes, and? What significance do you think this little blurb holds? It’s not like this is the only same-sex couple to have kids.

Why don't you check your facts, before you come out with these silly aggressive posts? 

Caster Semenya has XY chromosomes, and 5α-Reductase 2 deficiency, 

Look that up, and you will find "The condition is rare, affects only genetic males, and has a broad spectrum." Wikipedia. 

[swansont]

Just now, mistermack said:

Why don't you check your facts, before you come out with these silly aggressive posts? 

Caster Semenya has XY chromosomes, and 5α-Reductase 2 deficiency, 

Look that up, and you will find "The condition is rare, affects only genetic males, and has a broad spectrum." Wikipedia. 

Why don’t you answer the question? What is the point of noting that this couple has a child?

(Caster Semenya is legally a woman. The “wrongly assigned” notion is your own.)

[mistermack]

3 minutes ago, swansont said:

What is the point of noting that this couple has a child?

If you can't work it out yourself, then nothing I say is going to help. I'm not going to nit pick with you till christmas.

[dimreepr]

2 minutes ago, swansont said:

Why don’t you answer the question?

He can't, he has no idea why it's so important to people he doesn't agree with... 🙄

[swansont]

35 minutes ago, mistermack said:

If you can't work it out yourself, then nothing I say is going to help. I'm not going to nit pick with you till christmas.

I can’t work it out for myself. I can’t fathom why a woman who has been artificially inseminated to have a child with her partner has any bearing on this conversation.

 

[iNow]

Seconded 

[J.C.MacSwell]

On 8/18/2023 at 11:42 AM, swansont said:

And the fairness has the be decided/agreed to by all groups. It can’t be just a majority, much like the four wolves and a sheep deciding on what’s for supper.

No. It's quite probable that the fairness won't be agreed upon, and someone or committee will be left to make a decision. In fact his seems most common at this point in time. Particularly where it's fairly clear no compromise is currently available that would be acceptable to everyone, and nothing of the sort is on the horizon.

Having said that, Zapatos mentioned a weight handicap that might work for weightlifting. So if you took the World Record (or 10 best lifts) lifts for XX athletes and compared them to the World Record for XY athletes then that would be a reasonable starting point as long as none used any performance enhancing drugs, and the elite level could be assumed to be comparable. Of course any use of drugs should only be approved by physician, be considered non performance enhancing (or non masking of same) or over the counter drugs not on the list of not allowed.

So take the difference, or difference as a percentage...and that's the handicap.

Would most transgender athletes consider that fair? I can't speak for Caitlyn Jenner, but I think she might. I also can't speak for any transgenders females currently wanting to compete in the female elite categories, but I suspect they would consider that not fair at all, given they believe themselves female.

But if you want to compare humans being the best they can be (without performance enhancing intervention), how is that not fair?

...and this is a sport that lends itself to this type of handicap. Most would be much more difficult.

 

Say for soccer, how much bigger a net would be required to allow an XY goaltender? If the teams were all XX vs all XY the XY net  requiring the complete width of the field would not be enough, you would need to increase net height as well and/or reduce number of players allowed on the field for the all XY team.

Or how many goals head start would the XX team require, given they will no doubt score none without the above or similar changes of unknown severity?

 

[iNow]

I think the rule that players on the baseball field are allowed to wear gloves and mits and better catch balls I hit their way with the bat is unfair. 

It’s sports. It’s literally a set of arbitrary rules than can be arguably changed. 

I also think it’s unfair that hockey players get to rest on a bench when lines change and penalties occur. The rules should say they must do pull-ups while they wait, otherwise it’s not fair. 

Fairness will never be absolute, but that doesn’t mean that some choices aren’t more fair or less fair than others across the most number of people. 

This is all an awful lot of handwringing and panty twisting for all 11 of those trans athletes out there actually trying to compete. 

[J.C.MacSwell]

On 8/16/2023 at 8:15 AM, swansont said:

Less than 1% also identify as transgender. 

Just making it clear what my context was in that post. The less than 1% I referred to are the intersex and the transgenders therefore almost exclusively included in the 99+%.

On 8/16/2023 at 8:15 AM, swansont said:

And only are readily categorized if you only recognize a subset of the sexual characteristics, i.e. you look at the most visible differences but ignore secondary ones. But that leads us into the circular reasoning that plagues this discussion, that there are two categories because we’ve postulated that there are two categories. 

Right. One way out of this is to start adding categories. Just keep in mind that at elite level many female sports are struggling to find the level of support they would like to have...

...yet nothing prohibits anyone that can find the means to sponsor any number of events for any number of categories...and write their own rules... 

39 minutes ago, iNow said:

 

This is all an awful lot of handwringing and panty twisting for all 11 of those trans athletes out there actually trying to compete. 

Link?

[mistermack]

1 hour ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

Link?

[zapatos]

4 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

Say for soccer, how much bigger a net would be required to allow an XY goaltender? If the teams were all XX vs all XY the XY net  requiring the complete width of the field would not be enough, you would need to increase net height as well and/or reduce number of players allowed on the field for the all XY team.

 

I used to compete in a co-ed soccer league. The way they addressed fairness was to limit the number of XY allowed on the field for a given team at one time. With 22 players on the field the XY advantage could be diluted pretty well by numbers alone in a women's league that allowed trans women to play. Men and women use the same size goals now so I don't think a change would be necessary to allow trans women to play.

[CharonY]

1 minute ago, zapatos said:

I used to compete in a co-ed soccer league. The way they addressed fairness was to limit the number of XY allowed on the field for a given team at one time. With 22 players on the field the XY advantage could be diluted pretty well by numbers alone in a women's league that allowed trans women to play. Men and women use the same size goals now so I don't think a change would be necessary to allow trans women to play.

Also, I have mentioned that many pages back, in paralympics folks have established a many scoring systems for impairments to ensure that in a given categories equivalent athletes compete. This includes team sports which have to have certain compositions in order to compete (e.g. based on available range of motions).

In other words, there are already examples for finer and more detailed categories in sports and question is not really whether it is feasible, but more what measures could be used for each athletic activity.

 

[iNow]

4 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

Link?

For someone who uses it so often in his own posts, I find it strange you’re so unfamiliar with hyperbole in those submitted by others. 

[Intoscience]

13 hours ago, CharonY said:

In other words, there are already examples for finer and more detailed categories in sports and question is not really whether it is feasible, but more what measures could be used for each athletic activity

I don't think anyone is against adding further categories or fine tuning the rules. Sports evolve and rules are often updated i see no reason this wouldn't work to include trans athletes. 

17 hours ago, iNow said:

This is all an awful lot of handwringing and panty twisting for all 11 of those trans athletes out there actually trying to compete

So you keep saying, so statistically it's easier to exclude them from the get go. Since it only takes one to dominate and thus exclude hundreds of other competitors from a chance of winning. Can't please all all of the time so best bet stick with the majority hey? 

But this is not the way forward and not what anyone is advocating. we all believe in complete inclusivity. In order to do that then something like Zaptos's idea of qualification rules through some form of data driven performance testing may work. 

On 8/18/2023 at 4:43 PM, zapatos said:

How would YOU suggest we allow trans women to fairly compete?

i said previously I don't have a clear workable solution. But I would happily support a workable system along the lines you have suggested. 

The only issue I see is that I'm told science cannot accurately determine the distinction between a male and female and if a person identifies as either then this seems to trump any physical evidence anyhow. 

[iNow]

14 minutes ago, Intoscience said:

statistically it's easier to exclude them from the get go

Statistically? Sure, of course. Morally and ethically, though? Not so much. 

[mistermack]

17 hours ago, iNow said:

This is all an awful lot of handwringing and panty twisting for all 11 of those trans athletes out there actually trying to compete. 

Maybe hyperbola, but the small number is actually relevant. If a handicapping system is brought in, and you remove their current advantage, then they're far less likely to qualify for the top level, and the already small number could shrink to nothing. So the women's sports are likely to have jumped through all of those silly tiresome and expensive hoops, only to find they still have all-women in the championships etc. And the trans women would still be complaining that the handicapping is unfair. And when one actually qualifies and wins, the females will complain that the handicapping wasn't properly assessed.