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RE: transgender women racing against women.

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Re: Re:

macbindle said:
King Boonen said:
macbindle said:
Some of Rachel (forgotten her surname)'s competitors objected to her presence. I'm not sure why you fixate on the Olympics.

Two objected when she won, they were fine with her competing when they beat her. For me, that pretty much invalidates any argument they might make.

For me it doesn't. The question of biological advantage remains win or lose. If you argument holds water then there would be a case for only banning dopers who win

The Olympics is a epitome of competition so it gives us the best marker of transgender impact. It also has the most easily accessible data. As I’ve said, if you want to pick a different area of competition we can discuss how trans women aren’t dominating that either.

The Olympics is a rarified world and is hardly representative of sport such as the vast majority of people experience it. Again, go back to my previous point about doping. It matters not a jot that trans women aren't dominating.

And we've now got to the point where people competing under the rules are being compared to cheats.

Sorry, but you keep bringing up biological advantage with no evidence. Here are the guidelines, including the people who developed them (full disclosure, I know at least one of the people on that list):

https://stillmed.olympic.org/Documents/Commissions_PDFfiles/Medical_commission/2015-11_ioc_consensus_meeting_on_sex_reassignment_and_hyperandrogenism-en.pdf

Feel free to go find the research and pull out the specific parts you have an issue with. Retired runners and swimmers complaining isn't enough.
 
The GCW said:
Sorry, I was not very clear:
King Booned quoting,
"I can go down the velodrome in Glasgow tonight and watch a 16 year old girl beating grown men in scratch, points and elimination races. She races against them because there aren't enough girls her age, or even women, to hold a race, let alone good enough to provide her with competition. This is common in many individual sports. If you are going to start arguing that sport at all levels should be split along some arbitrary gender line then I'm afraid I'm out. This would eliminate a huge amount of competition and effectively ban several female athletes from competing."


In some people's mind, that doesn't apply. Where there are limited choices, I understand and have seen that type of competition take place. People understand that.

That's not the same thing, is it?

In the future, when there are enough transwomen to have their own race category, say in a bicycle race for example & there is also a category for women born as women, there may also be women allowed to race against transgender women but unlikely to see transwomen at that time allowed to race against natural born women.

By extension:

Are the grown men allowed to sign up to race in the 16 year old girls catagory?

There is no 16 year old girl category, this is plainly obvious from my posts.
 
Re: Re:

King Boonen said:
macbindle said:
King Boonen said:
macbindle said:
Some of Rachel (forgotten her surname)'s competitors objected to her presence. I'm not sure why you fixate on the Olympics.

Two objected when she won, they were fine with her competing when they beat her. For me, that pretty much invalidates any argument they might make.

For me it doesn't. The question of biological advantage remains win or lose. If you argument holds water then there would be a case for only banning dopers who win

The Olympics is a epitome of competition so it gives us the best marker of transgender impact. It also has the most easily accessible data. As I’ve said, if you want to pick a different area of competition we can discuss how trans women aren’t dominating that either.

The Olympics is a rarified world and is hardly representative of sport such as the vast majority of people experience it. Again, go back to my previous point about doping. It matters not a jot that trans women aren't dominating.

And we've now got to the point where people competing under the rules are being compared to cheats.

Sorry, but you keep bringing up biological advantage with no evidence. Here are the guidelines, including the people who developed them (full disclosure, I know at least one of the people on that list):

https://stillmed.olympic.org/Documents/Commissions_PDFfiles/Medical_commission/2015-11_ioc_consensus_meeting_on_sex_reassignment_and_hyperandrogenism-en.pdf

Feel free to go find the research and pull out the specific parts you have an issue with. Retired runners and swimmers complaining isn't enough.

That is disingenuous. Cheats are only cheats if defined as such by rules. We are discussing definitions of rules.
 
You cant just try and evade other people's points and rock back to what you want to talk about.

You said that athletes who complain about trans women should be ignored because they only complain when trans women win.

I am giving you an appropriate hypothetical analogy with regards to people gaining an unfair advantage through chemical products. You completely ignore that this is hypothetical and apply it to current situation. When I explain this to you, your response is to try and reframe the discussion and evade.

It's really hard to get under the bonnet of this if you are being disingenuous or lacking the cognitive dexterity to deal with abstract concepts. I'm not sure which one of these is appropriate.
 
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Re:

macbindle said:
You cant just try and evade other people's points and rock back to what you want to talk about.

You said that athletes who complain about trans women should be ignored because they only complain when trans women win.

I am giving you an appropriate hypothetical analogy with regards to people gaining an unfair advantage through chemical products. You completely ignore that this is hypothetical and apply it to current situation. When I explain this to you, your response is to try and reframe the discussion and evade.

It's really hard to get under the bonnet of this if you are being disingenuous or lacking the cognitive dexterity to deal with abstract concepts. I'm not sure which one of these is appropriate.

One gives an advantage, one doesn't. I'm not ignoring it, I am asking you to go into the science and validate it. Show me where this unfair advantage for transwomen is and how this happens within the current rules. Otherwise it's just a random hypothetical analogy that has no merit. It sounds like you need to sit down and consider your last point yourself.
 
macbindle,
You're not alone in believing King Boonen tends to be disingenuous. I thought the same in today's post at 2:59... when King Boonen said,
"There is no 16 year old girl category, this is plainly obvious from my posts." THE ISSUE IS NOT Whether THERE IS A 16 YEAR OLD GIRL CATEGORY & I believe other readers SEE That.

Disingenuous -or a comment which seems to indicate King Boonen may have difficulty grasping what is described in order to comment on what is implied. -Conveniently missing the issue.
 
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The GCW said:
macbindle,
You're not alone in believing King Boonen tends to be disingenuous. I thought the same in today's post at 2:59... when King Boonen said,
"There is no 16 year old girl category, this is plainly obvious from my posts." THE ISSUE IS NOT Whether THERE IS A 16 YEAR OLD GIRL CATEGORY & I believe other readers SEE That.

Disingenuous -or a comment which seems to indicate King Boonen may have difficulty grasping what is described in order to comment on what is implied. -Conveniently missing the issue.

You asked:

"Are the grown men allowed to sign up to race in the 16 year old girls catagory?"

I answered. If you think directly answering a question is disingenuous then we can end our discussion there.
 
Testosterone limits for female athletes not backed by science, say academicshttps://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/mar/20/testosterone-limits-for-female-athletes-not-backed-by-science-say-academics

-0-

It seems people don't want to be forced to lower their testosterone.

& by the way, cycling has a substance abuse problem and now We are actually forcing athletes to take a minimum of drugs????? Really???

-0-

I'm less inclined to believe this issue is defined by rules and laws. Often it is defined by lawyers in courtrooms. Often what is right and wrong is twisted. There are so many instances of it occurring it can make a healthy person sick.

2 examples:

* Cannabis prohibition, where supposedly science has been used to rationalize caging responsible adults who choose to use a beneficial plant which is arguably less dangerous that booze.

* Minimum bike weight limits in bike racing, clearly wrong, yet rules are rules.

-JUST BECAUSE IT IS A RULE or SOME FORM OF SCIENCE is implicated has little to do with what is right and wrong.

Adults make difficult what is easy for the 12 year old.
 
I’m very clear in my mind that the reason this is coming up now is not to do with volumes of competitors but due to the GRA debate that is happening outside of cycling. It’s a very real debate and I think it’s vital that it is had without constant mischaracterisation of people as transphobic for basically disagreeing with the trans activists viewpoint.

The crux of the issue for me is that sport is segregated by sex and not by gender. The advantages of being make are not limited to those of the current levels of testosterone. The size of internal organs, the amount of fast twitch fibre, the ratio of hip to female length, all these things and more differ between biological men and women and men always seem to come out on the beneficial side. These advantages do not disappear because of the gender you proclaim or even because you alter your genitalia.

The heart of the issue is that even if you adopt the gender that is opposite to your sex then this does not alter your sex. It does not make you a lesser person. It doesn’t mean society should treat you with disrespect or that your life is ungodly (if there were such a thing as a God). It just means that being a trans woman is not the same as being a biological woman and being a trans man is not the same as being a biological man.

The issue for me is that the trans lobby appears to want to pretend that transgender people do not exist. Rather than seeking for trans people to be treated equally, to have the right to behave socially as their gender (which is surely no more than outdated social stereotypes of what a man or woman should be) would dictate and be addressed in the pronoun of their choice , the trans lobby want to say that the world has to treat gender rather than sex as the only characteristic used to differentiate between people. It leads to the utterly ludicrous situation of biological men being sent cervical smear appointment reminders. I know that’s a minor issue but it clearly demonstrates the ridiculous nature of the position.

Rather than empowering trans people to be of one sex but the opposite gender the trans lobby agenda is to deny that sex exists. It is to say that you can assume the characteristics of the opposite sex merely by adopting social norms and using medication and surgery, you can’t. Why can’t we just agree that it’s perfectly ok for somebody to be of male biology and female gender. Why can’t we then have differentiation by gender for those things that are suitable and sex for other things where biological differences matter.

On the current rules I think they are utterly ludicrous. The current T limit fir trans athletes is preposterous. It comes from dealing with an entirely separate issue of intersex competitors. That sets the extreme limit that may he naturally occurring. But trans athletes levels are not naturally occurring and to move somebody to a level which is 3 times the normal female population and say that’s fair is stupid. Biological women aren’t allowed to artificially raise their levels to this point. What would make far more sense would be to reduce the T level to closer to the norm or if the athletes t levels prior to treatment are known then to reduce them to the corresponding percentile for the female (or male) population.

As I say I still do not believe that would be fair as the other advantages, most likely from having gone through make puberty, will still exist. So instead of arguing that cis and trans women are the same why can’t we just take away the stigma of transgenderism so that people of the same biological sex compete against each other regardless of their gender, effectively make our world gender blind.
 
That’s a massive assumption on your part. It’s clearly not binary and there are clearly a small number of people who are intersex. However I don’t believe this is relevant to the discussion as we are talking about transgenderism so the fact that the persons gender and sex are in opposition is already established.

The simplest of distinction is in terms of chromosomes. For my part any deviation from XY needs to be considered very carefully for access to female competition. This is where the intersex athlete rules come in. But this is completely irrelevant for a discussion of trans athletes unless you mistakenly believe all trans people are of intersex biology.
 
You should probably word your post better then:

"why can’t we just take away the stigma of transgenderism so that people of the same biological sex compete against each other regardless of their gender"

This would seem to mean you want a separate category for intersex, I'm assuming that isn't the case?
 
If we are all going to have to explicitly mention the exceptions every time we discuss a topic then posts are going to get very tedious.

Given clarifications have you any actual observations on my post?
 
Re:

Biggut said:
If we are all going to have to explicitly mention the exceptions every time we discuss a topic then posts are going to get very tedious.

Given clarifications have you any actual observations on my post?

We are discussing exceptions though, it seems fair to have to mention them.

Most of it has already been touched on to be honest, but the overriding issue is that there is no evidence that trans athletes have the advantages that you are claiming they do. This means we are likely to end up back in the same situation this discussion has already covered.

As for the general points, I'm pretty sure transwomen just want to be treated as women.
 
Conflating intersex with transgenderism is clouding the issue. It’s a completely different topic and the two should be handled entirely separately. I’m not even sure if you are intersex it’s possible to be transgender.

I have given you several biological advantages that makes have regardless of current T values. Please don’t ignore these just because they do not fit your argument. I guess you are going to insist I trawl the journals to find papers on these things but let’s be honest here you know men have bigger hearts and you know men have bigger frames. You really don’t need a paper to show you that this is true. However I have seen no evidence provided that trans women cease to have an advantage over biological women once they reduce their T levels for 12 months. What I do see is that bob average male born athletes who simply lower their t levels to the maximum permitted become near elite level performers as women. Meanwhile elite level female athletes in east Germany treated with massive levels of hormones to the point of having to transition to being men achieved nowhere near male elite performances.

I would also like your specific opinion on the current T value. It’s clearly not been developed specifically for trans athletes. Would you agree that reducing T levels to the same percentile in the female population would be a far more equitable position? I cannot see a single reason why this is not the most appropriate measure on T values. Effectively any trans woman could go from being in the middle of the normal t range for their competitive pool to being a massive outlier in the top percentile in their new competitive pool. That’s just not fair or just in my eyes.

On your last point, regardless of athletics prowess do you agree that trans women are not biologically women? Clearly they cannot be biological women or else they could not be trans. So what is being asked is that people take biology as irrelevant. This basically eliminates sex as a meaningful characteristic and replaces it with the artificial construct of gender. It essentially deletes the sex based rights of women and grants them to anybody who feels (and in most cases this feeling is undeniably earnest) that they are female. That’s absurd.

Whilst people’s feelings are important they should not override facts. For example. If I want to live as if I am 80 years of age, behave like it and socialise with older people then that’s fine. But if I want to insist on receiving a state pension, bus pass and fuel allowance because I feel old before my time then society would be right to deny me this as despite what could be an earnestly felt position I am not actually of pensionable age.
 
No one is conflating them. You wanted to divide people in competition on biological sex. I merely pointed out that this is either impossible, or you ban lots of people from competing. I don't like the idea of denying people their rights.

I'm not going to insist you do anything, but there are certain points where you're going to have to provide evidence because you are disagreeing with the current guidelines. You've given several things that you say are an advantage, you just haven't provided any evidence for that. We already discussed height in this thread and it was clear that this is only an advantage in specific cases in combination with other traits. You'll also need to address the fact that the spread in these traits is much larger within group than it is between group. We accept these differences in populations within the current bounds as fair, so you'll need to show why a transwoman would always fall over and above this within population variation.


These part you're really going to have to expand on:

However I have seen no evidence provided that trans women cease to have an advantage over biological women once they reduce their T levels for 12 months.

You'll have to show your data for that.

What I do see is that bob average male born athletes who simply lower their t levels to the maximum permitted become near elite level performers as women.

The stats really do not show that to be true, so again, you'll have to show data for that.

I would also like your specific opinion on the current T value. It’s clearly not been developed specifically for trans athletes. Would you agree that reducing T levels to the same percentile in the female population would be a far more equitable position? I cannot see a single reason why this is not the most appropriate measure on T values. Effectively any trans woman could go from being in the middle of the normal t range for their competitive pool to being a massive outlier in the top percentile in their new competitive pool. That’s just not fair or just in my eyes.

I'm almost certain that your second sentence is wrong. transwomen are the only athletes who are required to reduce their T levels as far as I'm aware. The IAAF tried to force intersex athletes to lower their T levels last year, but CAS stopped them. Guidelines for transwomen were first introduced in 2003 and redefined in 2016.

Recent research has shown that adult T levels do not predict performance in athletes, so I don't think basing it on percentile is fair. That assumes a linear correlation which is rarely the case. For what it's worth, transwomen who have published their T levels are already below the average across all women, I think Rachel McKinnon's levels are below detection, so you will have to provide evidence that any athletes are adjusting their HRT levels to only just get below the limit.

It's not the level of T that's important, It's the perturbation. That's why doping works.

On your last point, regardless of athletics prowess do you agree that trans women are not biologically women? Clearly they cannot be biological women or else they could not be trans. So what is being asked is that people take biology as irrelevant. This basically eliminates sex as a meaningful characteristic and replaces it with the artificial construct of gender. It essentially deletes the sex based rights of women and grants them to anybody who feels (and in most cases this feeling is undeniably earnest) that they are female. That’s absurd.

Again, this falls into the trap of defining a "biological woman". What is required to define someone as a biological woman? It can't be reproduction, as many women are infertile. You may want to define it on reproductive organs, but these are also not binary and ignores intersex people. It doesn't delete sex based rights, all transwomen want is to be treated as women. That means being able to use women's toilets, refuges etc. I don't any of them want smear tests etc. and frankly we wouldn't even know about it.

Transwomen look like women, they suffer from the same gender-based discrimination as cis-women, so they just want to be afforded the same protections. There's a few ways to deal with that. You eliminate all gender based splits in society, you keep the split but give transwomen the same access rights as cis-women, or you fall in the middle and eliminate gender-based separation where it isn't necessary and give transwomen the same access rights as women where it remains.

Many of these arguments are starting to sound like the same arguments that used to be made about gay people.



I'll try and boil down my opinion. The point of competing is to be the best, ultimately in the world. Very few will attain that level so the best is usually defined as going pro, competing for your country etc. There is one pro transwoman cyclist (who can't make her national squad). There is (was?) one pro transwoman MMA fighter who has a losing record. That's all I can think of. This is not a "taking over of women's sport". If, in the future, we are in the situation where transwomen are over-represented in pro womens sport based on their population, then there will be evidence that these inherent traits remain and it should be looked at. There will also be the evidence required to assess it and define what is required. At the moment their participation is inconsequential to the competition in womens sport. All I can see in the current situation is an attempt to use an emotive issue to errode people's rights. I have a big problem with that.
 
Re:

King Boonen said:
No one is conflating them. You wanted to divide people in competition on biological sex. I merely pointed out that this is either impossible, or you ban lots of people from competing. I don't like the idea of denying people their rights.

...
I don't see how requiring competition based on biological gender is denying anyone their "rights". That is not the criteria transgender athletes would normally prefer, but it doesn't keep them from competing. It is also anything but impossible to do. A real difficulty is how to classify intersex athletes (like Caster Semenya) who are so from birth, but that is a significantly different situation.

I can understand the arguments from both sides, but I certainly don't agree with your statements of opinion as if they are facts. This is a complicated debate with, in my opinion, no obvious outcome.

I also don't see the relevance of constantly using examples of transgender athletes that don't succeed in dominating their sport.
 
Re: Re:

frenchfry said:
King Boonen said:
No one is conflating them. You wanted to divide people in competition on biological sex. I merely pointed out that this is either impossible, or you ban lots of people from competing. I don't like the idea of denying people their rights.

...
I don't see how requiring competition based on biological gender is denying anyone their "rights". That is not the criteria transgender athletes would normally prefer, but it doesn't keep them from competing. It is also anything but impossible to do. A real difficulty is how to classify intersex athletes (like Caster Semenya) who are so from birth, but that is a significantly different situation.

So you want transmen to compete against cis-women? I would think that is much more likely to damage women’s sport.

I can understand the arguments from both sides, but I certainly don't agree with your statements of opinion as if they are facts. This is a complicated debate with, in my opinion, no obvious outcome.

You’ll have to point out where I’ve done this, it’s certainly not my intention and I don’t think I have, but I’ll happily clarify/retract where appropriate.

I also don't see the relevance of constantly using examples of transgender athletes that don't succeed in dominating their sport.
Because that’s what the problem is isn’t it? Or are you saying that they shouldn’t be allowed to compete against women at any level?
 
King Boonen,

Biggut quote,
"I have given you several biological advantages that makes have regardless of current T values. Please don’t ignore these just because they do not fit your argument. I guess you are going to insist I trawl the journals to find papers on these things but let’s be honest here you know men have bigger hearts and you know men have bigger frames. You really don’t need a paper to show you that this is true."

King Boonen,
Do You disagree with that; men have bigger hearts and bigger frames?

Do You believe that's insignificant?
 
Re: Re:

King Boonen said:
frenchfry said:
King Boonen said:
No one is conflating them. You wanted to divide people in competition on biological sex. I merely pointed out that this is either impossible, or you ban lots of people from competing. I don't like the idea of denying people their rights.

...
I don't see how requiring competition based on biological gender is denying anyone their "rights". That is not the criteria transgender athletes would normally prefer, but it doesn't keep them from competing. It is also anything but impossible to do. A real difficulty is how to classify intersex athletes (like Caster Semenya) who are so from birth, but that is a significantly different situation.

So you want transmen to compete against cis-women? I would think that is much more likely to damage women’s sport.

I don't "want" anything. I am trying to understand the different points of view. It is a complicated subject, I had to google the term "cis-women" - life is a lot more complicated these days. If athletes are required to compete based on their "bioligical" gender, then I suppose that logically transmen would compete against cis-women.

I can understand the arguments from both sides, but I certainly don't agree with your statements of opinion as if they are facts. This is a complicated debate with, in my opinion, no obvious outcome.

You’ll have to point out where I’ve done this, it’s certainly not my intention and I don’t think I have, but I’ll happily clarify/retract where appropriate.
You say that "dividing" people based on their biological sex is either impossible or will lead to banning them from competing. I am not a doctor, but I don't think it is impossible to classify people by their biological sex (except for certain rare cases like intersex individuals) and in any case the trans individuals would not be banned from competition, they would have to compete based on their biological sex. This may not be acceptable to them, or yourself, but it wouldn't be impossible.


I also don't see the relevance of constantly using examples of transgender athletes that don't succeed in dominating their sport.
Because that’s what the problem is isn’t it? Or are you saying that they shouldn’t be allowed to compete against women at any level?

I personally don't see that as the problem at all, but maybe I am missing something.

:Edited for quotes by KB. Hope you don't mind, it's just easier to follow.
 
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