Transgender man wins women's 100 yd and 400 yd freestyle races.

It’s perfectly reasonable to posit lots of things, using science to address these hypotheses is precisely what it’s used for, but when there is insufficient evidence to support a hypothesis, claiming that there is evidence that not only supports the hypothesis, but that the evidence is so overwhelming that it swamps everything else, is taking liberties in order to support policies which it was already argued were necessary to maintain fairness in women’s sports. Same arguments are still being made based upon ethnicity too, but those kinds of advantages among athletes are overlooked, whereas the idea of portraying transgender athletes as a threat to women is a much easier bogeyman to sell to the public.

I don’t know that it’s true most trans people are on hormones these days either tbh as the waiting lists for just for diagnosis through the NHS run into thousands, just in the UK alone, and those are only the people who are willing to be diagnosed (some people aren’t only self-diagnosing, they’re self-medicating with hormones bought online). No idea how many people among the population in any country could actually be transgender, but it’s a fair assumption to suggest that there are more people who are transgender in some countries than others, and with cultural variations and values and so on, they may not even recognise or acknowledge the concept of gender or what it means to be transgender from a Western perspective.

In India for example, the concept existed for millennia in literature and religion, but it was only in recent times that the idea of people who don’t fit in with traditional ideas about the roles of men and women in society, being recognised in law and given protection, became a national issue, and a Supreme Court decision meant the introduction of similar legislation to Ireland… sort of -

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/12/04/784398783/india-just-passed-a-trans-rights-bill-why-are-trans-activists-protesting-it?t=1648025183368

https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/12/05/indias-transgender-rights-law-isnt-worth-celebrating

You can see now why the IOC were keen to wash their hands of any association with having to determine an actual policy, and instead chose to issue guidelines instead to national organisations and federations, let them look like they’re not being inclusive and fluffy and all the rest of it.

I’ve no doubt you know how science works, no need to be snippy about it. I’ve no doubt you also know how medical ethics and laws and national selection committees work too in order to arrive at a favourable outcome in terms of who should join a team to participate in international sports competitions, as opposed to the idea that the only criteria that is relevant is biology.

That’s why an athlete studying an academic discipline in the US loses out on a position on the team because they fail to meet the qualifying time in the heats, but they can still compete in the Olympics and represent their country, Hungary in this case, whereas the athlete who is born in the US, is excluded from competing in the US, and cannot represent another country at the Olympics, effectively ending their athletic career before it’s even begun.

Science can’t determine fairness in sports, which is the crux of the issue for ALL athletes, not just current athletes, but those young athletes who will hope to participate in competitions and represent their countries in the future. In America, being regarded in sports as an All-American athlete is kind of a big deal.

Btw the proposition is that a different set of rules applies to a particular subset of athletes, while there is insufficient scientific evidence to support what is regarded as discrimination which is unfair to them and a disproportionate measure which inhibits their participation in sports. Science doesn’t decide a person’s gender either. For that the only thing that is relevant is the law, and upholding their rights to autonomy and to participate in sports.

You're asking for my opinion. My preferred solution would be to have an Open category rather than a male category, and allow everyone of every sex and gender to compete there (Subject to standard PED rules, which could potentially cause an issue for Transmen if Testosterone usage is not covered by TUEs). I absolutely wouldn't want to see anyone prevented from taking part in sports as long as the rules are fair to everyone. Some sports events already do this. Some sports event results are de-facto treated this way.

You're missing the point of the sports segregated by sexes, females can already compete in the "male" category of most sports if they are good enough, it typically isn't a male category at all, any human can enter it.

They can’t though, it’s absolutely a male only category. That’s why Chris Mosier was worried about their future in sports and why they campaigned to have the IOC change their policies regarding the participation of transgender athletes.

And that’s not the point of the sports segregated by sexes either. The point of sports segregated by the sexes is so that the prestige and status in sports traditionally only played by men (and even then only a certain type of man), is maintained.

There’s no testing to determine whether or not it’s fair that men with either low or high natural testosterone levels have a biological advantage over other men for example, because however hard it has been tried, deductive reasoning is not definitive proof of an advantage so great that it necessitates a policy to exclude a whole group of people on the basis of being within a specific encdocrinological range - fancy a pork burrito if you’re a man? Enjoy. Fancy a pork burrito if you’re a woman - that’s a paddlin’, and no amount of blaming it on Mexican immigrants hygiene standards is going to be accepted as an explanation.

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/15/1006622129/an-olympic-hopeful-says-her-burrito-is-to-blame-for-her-positive-drug-test

Arguing about the capabilities of a list of top 100 runners in the world all being men are nothing more tan than specious nonsense. The top 100 cheerleaders in the world are women. I know you’re interested in scholarship opportunities, so not to disappoint -

https://www.ncsasports.org/cheerleading/cheerleading-scholarships

Nobody is arguing that anyone be forced to participate in any sport they don’t want to. It’s the fact that they shouldn’t be able to determine whether or not anyone else has the same opportunity as they do to participate in sports without discrimination as to their sex or gender.

Maintaining that the restrictions are to protect integrity and fairness in womens sports is nonsense, there’s been little interest in protecting the integrity or fairness of women’s sports up to now, apart from when the physical examination was disregarded for the pseudoscientific nonsense it is, chromosome testing was disregarded as unreliable, and hormone testing is also regarded as an insufficient scientific standard to determine sex for the purposes of competing in competition.

Imagine if the same resources which are put into sex testing women were put into actual protecting athletes from abuse and actually promoting women in sports what could be achieved? Crazy idea I know, better to promote pseudoscientific nonsense as legitimate when comparing apples and oranges to deduce the nutritional value of grapes 🙄

I'm sure you didn't come down in the last shower and believe the "pork burrito" excuse from a competitive athlete :)

(I'm sure these type of mistakes happen, but nowhere near as often as the effected athletes end up claiming).

And not sure where you're going on cheerleading, cheerleading squads who compete have a mix of genders, male and female cheerleaders can get scholarships, which gender has the advantage in cheerleading? The scoring criteria also matches the fact that it's mixed gender (unlike gymnasts where the skills are differentiated due to these differences).

(you really need to cut down on the whataboutery, burrito case was a particular reach, it doesn't add anything to your posts, I'm guessing most will skip over it entirely)

Unsure of the point you're actually trying to make here other then males being great at running? (the top 100 female runners are pretty good too but will be about 10% off the top 100 people).

Anyone can play any sport they want to, if you want to compete and earn recognised medals, you need to follow the rules.

It sounds like we're past the point where self-affirmation is enough (we are, aren't we?)

Which means we're actually at the point of what level of disadvantage leads to a level playing field or finding out that the level playing field is impossible from a practical standpoint.

You're right that the current number is too small for it to have any meaningful effect at the macro level, but it can have a big impact at the micro level, particuarly on female competition right at the time when we want more females participating in sports (as there is a huge drop out when they hit puberty leading to lower levels of fitness for a lifetime) it's also when some female sports (soccer being one) are finally getting increased sponsorship and exposure (the big problem is still that females don't tend to watch other females play sport so it's primarily male viewership being targeted where there is only so many eyeballs to go around).

Right, at least you’re not still trying to convince yourself that it had anything to do with biology.

That’s the REAL point - sports competitions aren’t just based upon biology, they’re purposely configured, by humans, who make up rules and regulations as to who can and cannot participate. It doesn’t matter that the 100 best runners in the world are men, it doesn’t matter that the one million best runners in the world are men, that has nothing to do with prohibiting anyone from participating on the grounds of either gender or sex, they can still participate, and they do.

They’re just paid a lot less, and they aren’t held in the same esteem as the mens games, because men are permitted to do things women aren’t - the rules for men and women are different, whereas there’s nothing to stop the rules from being the same for all participants regardless of their sex or gender.

They don’t even have to have the same training or diet regime, and many of them don’t. They don’t even have to be amateur or professional, and many of them aren’t, so the idea that the 10000000000 best athletes in the world are men? Who gives a fcuk?