To clarify, the pictured poster Caroline Kwan is an ally, not a TERF. The TERFs referred to in the title are the ones ‘protecting a very specific idea of what a woman is’
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2024
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It is a complicated issue, hence the need for details. In a nutshell, rare people like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caster_Semenya have such a significant competitive advantage against vanilla females they would come to dominate some female olympic disciplines to the point it would destroy female olympics as a sport competition. I would argue they need to compete in their own class for the same reasons of fairness as female and male ligas are distinct.
This cannot be discussed rationally in the current political shitstorm unfortunately.
No matter what arbitrary divisions are in place, be that gender or weight or race or whatever, there will always be people who dominate the field. That doesn't destroy the Olympics as a sport competition, that is the Olympics as a sport competition. Competing in order to find the best of the best, the "freaks of nature" who manage to far surpass the average person.
Competition is core to human nature, but so is fairness. Which is why men and women compete in different categories. If you want to discourage women athletes to compete it would seem somewhat unfair to me, but really I only care enough to correct technical points in a discussion.
I don't know your political leanings, but this is consistent with the same people who are anti-DEI and anti-anything else that forces equality.
So what's so wrong about forcing equality literally anywhere else? Or, why is it necessary only in women's sports?
Then, going back to the original post, why is Michael Phelps lauded despite having clear genetic advantages?
As a general rule in sports, men participate in essentially "open" leagues, while women's leagues exist to protect women from having to compete against everyone else to promote women taking part. In other words, women's leagues are already a form of protectionism to encourage participation because people care about women having a "fair" environment to participate in in a way they do not for men.
This idea that sports leagues for women/girls are a form of protectionism even extends down to school sports and Title IX, which is why under current Title IX policy girls must be allowed to try out for boys teams but not the reverse.
But where are you basing your definition of "fairness"? If you exclude people with a biological advantage, since that would be unfair, then literally all current athletes would be excluded, since by qualifying for the Olympics they have proven that they have a strong biological advantage over the average person.
The only solution is to Harrison Bergeron everyone.
Please define "vanilla females."
Presumably they mean XX cis female persons with no medical disorder altering production or action of any sex-related hormone or anatomy. But that's a big mouthful to describe a large majority of female persons, and folks get real angry when you describe the by far most common set of common traits a group of humans have as "normal".
By that argument, Christianity is normal. It's the most common religion.
So I assume you think Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam are abnormal, yes?
I think when talking about what religion is "normal" you're better off to talk about within a given society or region because it is an extremely regional trait and trying to consider it globally makes it less useful. And it shows a lot in how those societies interact in the broad strokes with those religions. Including the presumption that one is at least probably familiar with it and it's broader teachings by default. For example, in India Hinduism is "normal" and you would expect a typical person to have a familiarity with Hinduism, to be aware of it, to see it's influences on culture even if a given individual isn't a devout Hindu. You see the same as regards Christianity in most of western Europe and North America, Mormonism in Utah, Islam in the Middle East, etc.
By comparison, unless you are in one of a few very particular contexts, Scientology is almost never normal.
But then you're trying to assign a moral value to being "normal." The degree to which one resembles the average or typical person of some group or social context is not a measure of their goodness or morality.
Is "christian" not a common set of common traits? Are Christians not of the largest religion?
They are, but they're not remotely as dominant on a global scale at 31% as things like "has XX chromosomes" or "has female sex organs" or "produces little testosterone and comparatively large amounts of estrogen" are for women as a group.
Because religion tends to be much more regional than that - for example the US is about 2/3 Christian and one can expect that if you grab a random person off the street they are at least passingly familiar with the broad strokes of what Christianity is, can recognize the most major Christian symbols, are familiar with Christian holidays, etc even if they themselves are not a devout Christian because of the impact the normality of Christianity has on the culture. The same thing applies to Islam in say Saudi Arabia. Or Shinto or Buddhism in Japan.
Again, normality is not morality. It's just resembling the statistical mode. Often the least normal things about people are the best parts.
...but not when it's a "masculine" woman who is good at sports that is competing against other women?
Didn't say that, my involvement in all this started with the question of what another poster meant by "vanilla women".
Personally I think the question of where to draw the lines is going to be particular to the sport, since the whole point of women's leagues in the first place is protectionism for women athletes who would otherwise just be dominated in many sports by male athletes out of a sense of fairness and no one was even thinking about trans or intersex athletes at the time.
So how intersex is too "masculine" to be a "fair" competition is going to depend on the sport, as is what guidelines are required for trans women to be "fair" competition against the protected class of cis women.
Except this is all thread about someone who, as far as we know, is just a woman. A woman who people just decided wasn't a woman because she had masculine features and was really good at boxing.
Someone said it better:
Lol, no one complain about Michael Phelps but people are suddenly making faux concerns about women's sports-- which is specifically strange considering no one says the same about men's sports. It is though this isn't motivated by misogyny and transphobia.
Yes, by all means let us abolish the artificial separation between olympic male and female sports. I personally don't care one bit, since I don't have a stake in the game. Career athletes will probably disagree, but fuck them, right?
So, would you agree that if a born male is below the certain testosterone level that the person should compete in women's category? No one seems to be railing on this but somehow everyone is up in arms when it comes to women's sports.
I do love how the people constantly white knighting women by claiming that women who are athletes should be protected from other women who are athletes, but with masculine traits, but when you flip the script and try to suggest that maybe that should apply across the board if that's how we're doing things and "feminine" men should play against women, suddenly it's "no, not like that! Our precious ~~property~~ women must be protected!"
The person we replied to is literally doing what the posted screenshot is criticising lol. It's not about fairness and equality, some folks are really misogynists and protecting their own idea of what a woman is.
Right. It's a total white knight move. I do not know of any women athletes on the level of a woman like Ms. Khelif (or any other Olympian for that matter) who have asked to be protected from having to compete against a "man."
Not really. Not a sport physiologist, but the core advantage is due to male puberty. If you prevent male puberty with blockers and afterwards keep male testosteron in low range and/or use the same regimen as in M2F transition these individuals would be better matched in a female competition.
"I'm not an expert, but here's my expert opinion."
I have studied molecular biology and researched M2F transition issues privately. I have not claimed to be an expert is sport physiology. Your comeback has no substance.
Ah yes. Privately. You did your own research. Now you're a scientician.
Are you saying some of these born males intentionally use blockers during their puberty? Let's say these born male individuals want to compete athletically in male sports but were outperformed; basically you're saying it's their fault for using blockers during their puberty?
There are now some M2F transitioners who take puberty blockers during adolescence. Some of them might become athletes.
Or, you know, one could separate athletes into brackets/categories that are better comparable and don't give certain people a huge advantage over others. Make a separate marathon category for East Africans. Make a separate swimming category for people like Phelps. Make categories for boxing based on strength or performance.
Multiple female skiers have called for a different way of doing things for example, because the shorter courses for women bore them and they aren't allowed to compete against men.
Holy fuck...
Source
So if you get good enough at a sport, you shouldn't be allowed to compete with athletes from other countries?
They're just taking the argument that Imane Khelif and others like her shouldn't be allowed to compete in the women's competition to it's logical conclusion. Pretty sure it's to show the ridiculousness of it suggesting she shouldn't be allowed to compete against women due to a genetic advantage despite being a woman.
It is so hard to tell at this point.
No, I actually think they're serious, considering their followup about female skiers. Who, I'm sure, would probably just prefer the female course be the same length as the male one ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So should someone like Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps have their "own classes"? Who would they be competing against?
They too are "rare people who have a significant competitive advantages against vanillas".
You misspelled "my own ideology isn't rational, so I can not discuss this rationally"
Fyi I don't agree with the previous commenters ideology about two separate classes for women.
I however agree that we can't discuss this rationally today because social media (including lemmee) is a terrible forum for this discussion, because, unfortunately, a person who is AFAB and has a DSD, or other naturally occurring condition, which gives them more or less testosterone/lactic acid/something else than the typical woman, and thus an advantage, gets conflated with having a trans woman compete, because then the people who feel strongly about trans people on both sides come out of the wood work and start yelling....
And then everyone gets pissed and/or understandardly triggered and nothing can be argued.
By naturally occurring I mean w/o the use of drugs/doping/surgery. Which in my understanding is what's the case with the boxer.
I don't post this to argue or convince. Just clarify what I think they're trying to say.
I won't respond to the "are they female"/"what to do" debate, only that this forum is terrible to have these debates.
Thank you for coming to my Ted talk/soap box lecture
Without discussing the sex/gender side of this argument; I don't understand why you're not applying the same logic to freakishly dominant male athletes?
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2009/02/does-michael-phelps-lung-capacity-allow-him-to-take-monster-bong-hits.html
We measured lung capacity in biology class in the ninth grade, and I had the largest of the class. Six liters. Most guys were around 5.5l.
Phelps has twelve.
And there's a ton of scientific studies about Usain Bolt.
I understand your point, but would the same logic not be applicable, even if the "unnatural" (they're very natural but you get the point, that's why the quotations) physical traits for Phelps and Bolt aren't necessarily as significant as having very high testosterone levels in a women's league?
Apologies I meant the person you were originally replying to. I can see it being ambiguous.
I agree with you, this argument is dumb, sexist, and not fair.
I'm just saying this is just not a good forum to handle it.
Yeah, okay.
It's a reasonable catchall, could have said baseline. Or define things by exclusion, which is unnecessarily technical and verbose.
It sure is a catchall. However, you don't need to be technical or verbose. The scientific term you want is phenotypical.
I still wonder how you don't think you're being intersexist at the moment though? Like, where do you draw the line? Is a woman with PCOS disallowed because it causes a slightly elevated testosterone level? What about a woman with webbed feet? They wouldn't be considered phenotypical either.
But why don't we get a little more technical and verbose for a second. The typical female testosterone range is 0.5-2.4 nmol/L (that's nanomoles per litre). The typical male range? 10-35 nmol/L. A woman with PCOS may have levels around 2.5-3.5 nmol/L. Someone with Caster Semanya's (alleged, never confirmed) condition would typically have around 3.5-5 nm/L. Still half or less than a phenotypical male. So I bring it back to the webbed feet, because they'd probably be similarly on par in terms of the advantage they provide.
Aren't the Olympics about finding the most capable athlete from whatever category the sport is separated into? Not even every event is gender segregated, there is no "female Olympics", there are simply gender segregated Olympic events.
And for those events, if the categories are separated by gender, wouldn't "rare people" like Caster Semenya be the most deserving female athletes to win Gold in those events?
And if that's a problem, maybe we need to find a different way to categorize athletes other than the current system that sorts them by their genitals.
Ugh I am still so frustrated with you for name-dropping Caster Semenya like you know what you're talking about! I have the same intersex variation that she (allegedly) has. The only reason anyone cares is that she has an XY karotype. She was born a girl, she was raised a woman. Why should she be disallowed from competing as one? Why is your solution to exclude some cis women from sports as well? Where will it stop?