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

"There are no rules in nature".

That's basically a denial of science. It's saying that when a fetus has the SRY gene you can't predict with a high level of confidence it will turn out male.

"'The whole sex verification testing is done in anything BUT good faith, it’s done on the presumption that it’s capable of confirming suspicions that athletes are cheating."

Cheating implies intent and testing can't prove that. All it proves is whether the rules are being observed or not. Athletes are certainly capable of cheating as the drug testing regime proves, though it's clear in many DSD cases there was no intent to cheat. And the New York Times article you quoted does acknowledge that several Russian athletes dropped out when sex testing was introduced. Those Russians would never cheat would they? So, the tests technically never detected any imposters, it just prevented them which is the same outcome.

As I said before, chromosome testing is a more humane and less invasive test. It was abandoned already in the vain hope that rules could be put in place that are inclusive and fair to everyone. It's questionable whether that is possible with DSDs. It's definitely not possible with trans women unfortunately.

By the way, I see you posted about the technological advance in running shoes and regard it as "a funny story". I don't see what's funny about it. World Athletics had to react one way or another. The Vaporflys have a proven advantage. They either have to try and ban them or regulate them in a way that levels the playing field, such as by making sure they are on the market for long enough that everyone (who can afford them) can buy them and you don't have a situation where eg. only the US team is using them at some big championships.

"I might as well add that if anything should be considered meandering, it’s the attempts by some people falling over themselves to invent new terms such as “biological males”, “biological females”, “trans identified males”, “trans identified females”, in an attempt to distinguish between men and women according to their own personal beliefs. I prefer to keep things simple and just say men and women, but for the purposes of being reasonable, I’ll make accommodations for people who don’t refer to people using basic terminology."

I think that's a good example of how this is nothing more that a battle of wills over controlling the every day words we use. I could just keep things simple and say men and women with the meanings they have had for centuries, but that doesn't capture what the debate is about, and hence the need for qualifiers like biological or trans. So, posters here aren't falling over themselves to make distinctions merely according to their beliefs. They are trying to engage with the topic with clear language. But, it's good of you for being "reasonable" to accommodate this.

Right so basically now the level of discussion is that trans women just dont exist 🤣

No rules in nature then. What about all the rules listed on the page below?

Science is more than "the tool by which we observe natural phenomena". It encompasses theories that explain these phenomena too.

Bolt doesn't run competitively anymore, his concern was about his records being broken (and they will, probably by someone with better shoes, just as Bolt had better shoe technology than those running in the 80's or 90's, about the only certainty is that the person who breaks them won't have been born female).

As pointed out above, sports regulate equipment so that everyone can have access, it's one of the reasons the swimsuits were banned (along with their ridiculous single use nature), however today's more accessible swimsuits have a lot of the same advantages anyway, the technology has matured and more people can access it.

I'm quite serious. It's an extraordinary thing to say there are 'no rules in nature'. And then say this claim is consistent with science. What about Newton's laws, or the laws of thermodynamics? Aren't they real?

So, take Rapoport's Rule (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapoport%27s_rule) off that page for example, which states:

"that the latitudinal ranges of plants and animals are generally smaller at lower latitudes than at higher latitudes."

If that is a rule of science which clearly refers to nature. How can it not be a rule in nature?

How can it be a rule in nature, when by your own admission, it’s a rule that refers to a phenomenon observed in nature? It’s a rule based upon observation, much like laws, principles, theories, etc, all observations in the life sciences which refers to phenomena in nature. Like, the explanation is right there in your previous link:

From the birth of their science, biologists have sought to explain apparent regularities in observational data. In his biology, Aristotle inferred rules governing differences between live-bearing tetrapods (in modern terms, terrestrial placental mammals). Among his rules were that brood sizedecreases with adult body mass, while lifespan increases with gestation period and with body mass, and fecunditydecreases with lifespan. Thus, for example, elephants have smaller and fewer broods than mice, but longer lifespan and gestation.[3] Rules like these concisely organized the sum of knowledge obtained by early scientific measurements of the natural world, and could be used as models to predict future observations. Among the earliest biological rules in modern times are those of Karl Ernst von Baer (from 1828 onwards) on embryonic development,[4] and of Constantin Wilhelm Lambert Gloger on animal pigmentation, in 1833.[5] There is some scepticism among biogeographers about the usefulness of general rules. For example, J.C. Briggs, in his 1987 book Biogeography and Plate Tectonics, comments that while Willi Hennig's rules on cladistics "have generally been helpful", his progression rule is "suspect".

That’s what I mean when I say that science is a tool, it was developed by humans and has it’s origins in philosophy, as a means of explaining phenomena observed in nature. To go back to the earlier example you gave and at least make it somewhat relevant to the thread - science can be used to predict with a high degree of confidence the progression of human development, and based upon these observations, the observers formulate their ideas of how the process of human development should go.

Because there’s no conscious agent involved in nature, it would simply be incorrect to suggest that nature has the capacity to determine how anything about human development should go. Nature just doesn’t have a set of rules to follow. Humans came up with the rules, and we’re pretty rigid about them, to the point where we suggest that any phenomenon which doesn’t conform to our expectations is classified as a disorder. That’s not nature determining that whatever phenomenon is a disorder. It’s humans who are choosing to classify their observations the way they do.

Where it gets dodgy is who gets to determine what is or isn’t classified as a disorder, and how they determine it should be addressed. Scientific history is littered with examples of how pseudoscience was used to justify discrimination against people who didn’t conform to other peoples expectations, or rather - the rules that those people invented and upheld which gave them the greatest advantages in terms of being able to dictate social norms or rules which everyone in society would be expected to adhere to, and everyone who couldn’t, was aware of the negative consequences of violating social norms and non-conformity.

It was easier then to make an example of the few who made themselves known, as a signal to anyone else not to get ideas, and faced with the choice of either suffering in private, or suffering in public, many chose the former over the latter, for fear of the consequences.

Men who want to live as women exist. Women who want to live as men exist. They always have. But as you can’t “transfer” biologically from being a man to a woman or vis versa then where does the “trans” element come into it?

The trans element comes into it, in the form of having no choice in the matter, analogous to the way in which people have no choice in their sexual orientation.

There are still people who believe that homosexuality isn’t a thing and anyone who is homosexual is just putting it on to peeve them off, but that idea is based upon their own egocentric perception.

Trans-women both want to be seen as women and to be seen as unique from women. Part of the oppression olympics, you have to outrank all the others.

I appreciate the warning, but it’s not necessary seeing as I didn’t say gender identity and sexual orientation were the same thing in the first place. I made the point that where trans comes into the idea of gender is that it is analogous to sexual orientation.

You’re even acknowledging how it’s analogous when you’re making the point about young people experiencing gender incongruence who later determine that they are homosexual, as if the two concepts are related to each other, and it’s not possible to experience gender incongruence and be homosexual, or heterosexual, or bisexual, or whatever the case may be.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise but the same sorts of correlations you’re making about people on the basis of gender, are the same correlations that are made about people on the basis of sexual orientation. Homosexuality confined to adolescence is a fairly well studied phenomenon among people who later realise they’re heterosexual. Same sort of correlations apply. Most adolescents who express homosexuality in adolescence, will later become heterosexual as adults.

That doesn’t say anything about adults who are gay any more than any correlations based upon the idea that among the majority of adolescents who experience gender incongruence, and their sexual orientation as adults. The whole point of patients being referred to the Tavistock in the first place is to determine whether or not they meet the medical criteria of a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, and whether or not they experience it to the degree that it requires treatment. The puberty blockers are to buy time to determine whether the identity persists in adolescence, and it does. That’s why the vast majority of children prescribed puberty blockers will go on to be prescribed cross-sex hormones.

And besides, trans people don’t have a choice any more than anyone else has a choice. You didn’t decide to be female any more than anyone else did. None of the above has anything to do with being predisposed to engage in criminal activity as if there is any biological basis for criminal behaviour. That’s just silly.

I’m not trying to beat anyone into submission at all, no need to be so dramatic. I’m simply pointing out that I didn’t say that gender identity and sexual orientation were the same, I said they were analogous, and they are, on the basis that both concepts are based upon innate feelings about oneself -

https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/analogous

I also never said that a diagnosis of gender dysphoria is necessary for gender transition. I’m aware that it’s not. I don’t know were you aware that a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria is necessary in the UK to avail of treatment provided by clinics under the auspices of the NHS. It’s why the waiting lists for a diagnosis are as lengthy as they are - because most people simply cannot afford private healthcare (which also requires a medical diagnosis), and can’t afford to purchase the drugs over the Internet, and many people simply don’t want to take the risk of buying the drugs they need online.

It certainly has not been proven to persist as a consequence of puberty blockers. The point of puberty blockers as I suggested already is to buy time. Puberty isn’t a remedy for anything, and in the majority of cases the process can exacerbate dysphoria, as opposed to any nonsense that puberty relieves their distress. The reason that patients are advised to wait until puberty is because puberty causes the reproductive system to start kicking in, and producing sperm which can then be extracted and stored. Girls experiencing gender dysphoria aren’t under the same pressures as their eggs can still be extracted and stored even with the introduction of cross-sex hormones.

In any case, a predisposition to criminal behaviour has nothing to do with gender, sexuality or sexual orientation, or any of the rest of your nonsense. It’s very easily refuted by the fact that the vast majority of men do not engage in criminal behaviour. You’re hardly unique in valuing the safety of women, everyone does, generally speaking, and they value everyone’s safety, which isn’t threatened by anyone on the basis of gender or sex.

Even then, civil law has nothing to do with criminal law - it’s why nonsense about people being a threat to children on the basis of their sexual orientation had nothing to do with whether or not people were entitled to the same rights as everyone else in society. 30 years later the exact same arguments which were used to try and deny people equal rights as everyone else on the basis of sexual orientation, are being used to try and deny people equal rights on the basis of gender.

Sexual identity and sexual orientation are based upon one’s own feelings about oneself. The idea that in the past people were more usually considered to have engaged in homosexual activity as opposed to being homosexual, is just complete nonsense. People were, and still are, subjected to all sorts of discrimination and prejudice, purely on the basis of being gay or lesbian or bisexual, anything that wasn’t heterosexual, basically.

I know for a fact you’re familiar with the Catholic Church’s position on homosexuality, and I know you’re familiar with Irish law prior to 1993 which specifically didn’t make being homosexual a criminal offence, but made homosexual acts a criminal offence. In practice the effect was, and still is to some extent- the same thing.

Your argument about being transgender is predicated upon the idea that people are raised in some sort of isolation, and we actually do know that’s just not true. Being transgender doesn’t require that anyone who is transgender knows anyone else’s mind, the feelings of gender dysphoria arise from within their own mind, as a consequence of the cognitive dissonance between their mind and their body. It doesn’t require anyone to know the mind of every other woman or man in the same way you or I aren’t required to know the minds of every other woman or man to know ourselves.

Be honest, did you insist on a Yorkie Easter egg too? 😂

https://www.thechocolatefavourbox.co.uk/blog/41_yorkie-sexist-chocolate-bar.html

You're wrong. There's lots of evidence that in the past engaging in homosexual acts was not considered to define the person in the way we now tend to.

The word ‘homosexuality’ began to be used in the late 19th century to designate a newly created concept, a type of identity, just as, for instance, a ‘housewife’ or a ‘prostitute’ in this period. Prior to this, there did not exist a specific category to define the sexual identity of a person attracted to their own sex.

http://cle.ens-lyon.fr/anglais/civilisation/domaine-britannique/the-perception-of-male-homosexuality-in-great-britain-from-the-19th-century-to-the-present

Or this: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170315-the-invention-of-heterosexuality

Your second bit is just guff. As usual.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that religion and culture pre-dates modern psychology by at least a couple of millennia.

I’ll be honest, initially I thought you might be referring to the popular view of how homosexuality was regarded in Ancient cultures like Greece and Rome, where the idea was based upon the roles of each of the participants. I figured you probably weren’t referring to the recent phenomenon on Snapchat and the likes of young men who claim to be straight while claiming to be having sex with other men, that’s out there even by my standards 😒

But even before the popularity of modern psychology, arguments against punishing people for being gay were based upon the idea that God, the Creator, didn’t make mistakes -

Tomlinson argued, from a religious perspective, that punishing someone for how they were created was equivalent to saying that there was something wrong with the Creator.

"It must seem strange indeed that God Almighty should make a being with such a nature, or such a defect in nature; and at the same time make a decree that if that being whom he had formed, should at any time follow the dictates of that Nature, with which he was formed, he should be punished with death," he wrote on January 14 1810.

If there was an "inclination and propensity" for someone to be homosexual from an early age, he wrote, "it must then be considered as natural, otherwise as a defect in nature - and if natural, or a defect in nature; it seems cruel to punish that defect with death".

https://www.bbc.com/news/education-51385884.amp

Just to be clear, I wasn't saying that was an ad-hominem against me. It was against Jesse Singal because you responded by attacking his credibility rather than the thing he was talking about, and which was said by someone else.

Ha, I'm always impressed by the even and genial tone of your posts. I guess we all have buttons that can be pressed though 😀

The thing was literally published in Scientific American