GungnirSniper writes:
"CNN reports a 'transgender woman prohibited from competing in a strength competition as a female is suing' CrossFit for sponsoring the competition. The plaintiff, Chloie Jonnson, 'had sexual reassignment surgery in 2006 and has been on female hormone therapy, according to her lawsuit.' She is also 'legally recognized by California as a woman.'
CrossFit maintains that Jonnson was born as a male, so she should compete in the men's division, according to a letter from the company's lawyer to Jonnson's attorney. It also stated that the company had an 'obligation to protect the 'rights' of all competitors and the competition itself.'
'The fundamental, ineluctable fact is that a male competitor who has a sex reassignment procedure still has a genetic makeup that confers a physical and physiological advantage over women,' according to the letter from CrossFit's lawyer sent in October.
This comes shortly after the Virginia High School League changed its rules to allow transgender students to play sports. Slate has its take on 'arguable concerns of unfair advantage.'
Should the rules take into account the age the person transitioned, hormone levels, or surgical status?"
(Score: 2, Interesting) by mcgrew on Friday March 07 2014, @03:18PM
States pass some stupid laws. Kentucky once passed one making Pi equal to 3. This is just as ignorant; sexual reassignment surgery is cosmetic only. If your genes have a Y chromosome, you're a male. Period. She should compete as a man.
And personally, I don't think sports should be sexually segregated anyway. After all, any girl high school basketball player could kick my ass at basketball any day, and the military is training women for combat, including Army rangers and Navy seals. There's no reason we can't have women in professional sports as well.
IMO a woman's tee at a golf course is sexist. You're telling women they're inferior.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 5, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday March 07 2014, @03:21PM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tibman on Friday March 07 2014, @06:44PM
I wouldn't go with significant but it is more noticeable the older the person is. For pushups, guys have to do around 30 more than ladies (to max the test). Situps are identical, both genders equal. Two-mile run has guys around 13 minute max and ladies around 15 minutes. In my opinion, ladies should probably have to do more situps than guys to max their test. Running should be about equal time for both genders to max the test.
In theory there is some O3/O4 is sitting on his ass in the pentagon running statistics to justify the APFT score system. Given 1000 civilian men and 1000 civilian women who have similar physical performance and weight. When basic training is completed. Then the average APFT scores are based on the average physical capability for each gender. Bam, rewrite the regulation based on gathered facts and not supposition.
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(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday March 07 2014, @06:59PM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by tibman on Friday March 07 2014, @11:06PM
haha, i'm with you there. An extra 30 pushups can certainly feel significant. Never was able to max the run though : /
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(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday March 07 2014, @07:15PM
They were when I was in the USAF 40 years ago, they still are?
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday March 07 2014, @08:40PM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Spook brat on Friday March 07 2014, @11:04PM
I'm personally ~10 years out, but I know where to look still:
According to the list of active field manuals [army.mil] the APFT standard (FM 7-22 [army.mil], PDF warning) was last updated on 26 October 2012. DA Form 705 [army.mil] (PDF warning) is the authoritative scorecard; it's available from the Army Publishing Directorate [army.mil], current release is dated May 2010.
Here are the max scores by sex for age group 17-21:
Push-up - 71 reps male, 42 reps female
Sit-up - 78 reps male, 78 reps female
2-mile run - 13:00 male, 15:36 female
Min scores:
Push-up - 42 reps male, 19 reps female
Sit-up - 53 reps male, 53 reps female
2-mile run - 15:54 male, 18:54 female
So, still sexist, but less so on the sit-up event.
Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]
(Score: 2) by combatserver on Saturday March 08 2014, @01:21AM
Here are the max scores for HACKS (Humanoid Army Combat/Killer System) Model 4300/S(Sniper Spec):
Lifting Capacity - 1800 Kg @ Full Charge
Jump Height - 5.3 meters @ Full Load/Charge
2-mile run - 2:13 (Duration 8.4 Hrs/full loadout)
Battery Capacity - 72 Hours @ Moderate Loads
Fall Resistance - 40 Meters (Low-level, high-speed, non-chuted insertions)
Self-Destruct Damage Radius - 45 meters (standard charges, armor piercing fragmentation)
I hope I can change this later...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by velex on Friday March 07 2014, @03:27PM
See, here's the problem. Is there any evidence that a Y chromosome confers the physical advantage they were talking about? From what little I know, it seems that testosterone level is the bugbear. This individual should have 50 ng/ml, which is the female baseline, just like all the other female competitors. Has anyone sampled the female competitors to make sure their levels aren't too out of whack, perhaps over 200 ng/ml to pull a figure out of my ass?
That being said, perhaps strength competitions are different, but I concur with your other sentiment. I've never understood why we must separate the genders. So many sports involve so many other factors than any advantage that testosterone would confer. I know from experience as well. :) There are plenty of cis women who could take me to school back when I used to be a boy at you-name-it, testosterone levels and Y-chromosome notwithstanding.
Personally, I think that trans folks should form their own competitions. There is enough bile and hatred against them (us?--I can only speak for myself) among cis women that in my mind it makes no sense to attempt to participate in events that are cis woman only. I've thought about studying martial arts for both fitness and practical self-defense (they tell me it does good for self-confidence as well), and I can assure you that I would insist on being in the men's section, even if it makes some cis men uncomfortable to spar with somebody who looks and smells female and wears a sports bra under her gi. Dealing with cis women is just too much effort, and I've very rarely had problems with cis or trans men on the subject.
(Score: 2, Funny) by CoolHand on Friday March 07 2014, @03:31PM
What does "cis" mean?
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 3, Informative) by velex on Friday March 07 2014, @03:40PM
In this case, assigned the same gender at birth that one identifies as, all other biological factors notwithstanding. See also the term "womyn-born-womyn," which I've been informed I should not use when referring to cis women.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Taibhsear on Friday March 07 2014, @03:41PM
That your outward appearance and identity match what you were genetically born as. Trans being different than what you were born as. (although that loose definition probably gets tricky once you take other genetic variations into account. ie. XXY, XYY, etc) I believe it's sort of a play on trans/cis chemistry terms related to the term transgender. Basically: born male, male sex organs, male identity, male appearance = cis-male.
(Score: 4, Informative) by siwelwerd on Friday March 07 2014, @06:01PM
Trans and cis are Latin prefixes; I recall Caesar writing about transalpine Gaul (across the alps) and cisalpine Gaul (this side of the alps). Been a while since high school Latin though...
(Score: 1) by velex on Friday March 07 2014, @11:55PM
Nobody's modded this one up yet? :)
Another use of cis I came across recently was while reading Hyperion: cislunar [wikipedia.org] orbit.
(Score: 1) by tibman on Saturday March 08 2014, @12:41AM
Great series : )
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(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 07 2014, @07:38PM
So a normal person?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 07 2014, @09:12PM
In a statistical sense, yes.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mojo chan on Friday March 07 2014, @03:41PM
Gender determination for sports is a rather complex and inexact science. Single measures like what genitals a person has or what a particular hormone level is are not enough as, particularly in high level sports, there are so many outliers. The IOC does it on a case-by-case basis with a panel of experts made up of doctors and sports scientists.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 1) by tibman on Saturday March 08 2014, @12:58AM
Judo is a good martial art for fitness and is mixed gender. It's more of a sport than martial art though. You intentionally do not hurt your partner. Can't do much judo when everyone has broken arms or is unconscious. Competitions are not mixed gender though. Probably because most national sports are that way. But if you are going for fun and exercise then i think you wouldn't really care about competing. Ronda Rousey is slightly famous in MMA for breaking arms using her Olympic gold-medal winning Judo skills (or bending arms backward enough that you cringe).
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(Score: 1) by Reziac on Saturday March 08 2014, @02:58AM
So make the class divisions segregated by the ratio of muscle mass to total body weight.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday March 07 2014, @03:35PM
And personally, I don't think sports should be sexually segregated anyway.
I'm sorry, this is kinda idiotic. While you're probably right about sports like golf, with sports like soccer, football (which women don't really play anyway), basketball, hockey, etc., men have huge physical advantages over women, which would make it utterly pointless for women to bother competing. Yes, a girl high school basketball player could kick your ass and probably mine too, but what do you expect from a bunch of nerds? What kind of woman could compete against top NBA basketball players? That's just ridiculous. Women don't have the height or strength that men do. There's no such thing as a 7-foot tall woman, but the NBA is chock full of men who are at a bare minimum of 6'6".
The military does have different physical requirements for men and women, which is somewhat idiotic because in combat there's no difference, but our military is rather old-fashioned, as women aren't used in combat (except as pilots). If you want to see a modern military and its treatment of women, look at Israel. Regardless, the physical requirements are pretty dumb since lots of men never see any combat; they should have different physical requirements for combat troops vs. everyone else. Lots of Army soldiers don't even handle guns much; they drive supply trucks and do other mundane logistics tasks. Or how about Navy seamen? They don't see combat at all, they just run around swabbing decks, fixing things, and various other mundane shipboard tasks. There's not much physicality to most Navy jobs (Marines are a totally different matter).
Even with golf, men do have a lot more upper-body strength, which in theory should translate to being able to drive a ball much farther, so maybe even there it should be segregated. Yes, women ARE inferior, in this regard; to not acknowledge that women have less upper-body strength than men is to deny basic biology.
Even in sports where upper-body strength isn't needed, segregation makes sense because men's upper-body strength may be a disadvantage for them. See cycling for instance: women should have a natural advantage here (plenty of leg muscles, frequently longer legs, and less upper-body muscle to weigh them down). So if we had unisex cycling, women would probably win all the time, making it pointless for most men to bother competing. That's the whole reason we segregate by sex. (Of course, in the real world, no one seems to care about women's cycling, and we instead devote lots of attention to steroid-using male cyclists, but that can be chalked up to society's sexism because we never pay much attention to any women's sports.)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Taibhsear on Friday March 07 2014, @03:45PM
Uhhh... WNBA? [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Friday March 07 2014, @04:04PM
While I'm sure these women are very capable players, I seriously doubt they would compete evenly with men's NBA players. Men tend to be taller than women and have more upper-body strength. That gives them a natural advantage in basketball, where height is extremely advantageous.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Vanderhoth on Friday March 07 2014, @05:17PM
I'm sorry to say, but the parent is right. Unfortunately women just can't compete with men (or girls and boys). I've seen many "exhibition" matches especially hockey, where boys and girls, men and women compete and the women always get slaughtered. Go and look at Olympic records and it's very plain the best women athletes in things like track and field and team sports don't even come close to the average male equivalents. This site gives a comparison of some of the events [economist.com]
The only place where men and women competing against each other makes seance is in non-contact non-physical sports, like chess and pool.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 1) by darinbob on Friday March 07 2014, @11:33PM
Have you forgotten tennis and Billy Jean King?
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Saturday March 08 2014, @10:31AM
Yes, I did.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 1) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday March 07 2014, @03:47PM
Agree with everything you've said here. However, I think that even for combat personnel, military segregation is becoming less and less relevant as technology equalises the gender gap - after all, a bullet fired from a woman's rifle / tank / plane is just as deadly as from a man's. The days of fighting hand to hand with bayonets and marching from one country to another with half your own bodyweight on your back on end are coming to an end. Before long soldiers will have power-assisted body armour that will turn every infantry(wo)man into a mini tank, regardless of their physical strength. The body inside becomes almost completely irrelevant. In fact women would have the advantage, since they are smaller and lighter.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Friday March 07 2014, @04:12PM
Exactly; this is probably one big reason Israel has non-segregated combat forces. Women can fire an M4 rifle just as well as men. Putting women into special-ops forces is a lot more questionable, since that does involve more hand-to-hand fighting. I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to open it up to women if they really want to join, but the physical requirements shouldn't be reduced any. Not all women are the same, and some of them really are very large and muscular, while lots of men are puny like Tom Cruise.... The physical requirements (as long as they make sense for the job) should be the limiting factor. If some 0.1-percentile woman meets the requirements and really wants to do the job, she should be allowed to.
However, one big problem with foot soldiers is all the crap they have to carry around. Yes, power armor would eliminate that problem. But even now, how many soldiers carry 90 pounds of gear around all day, rather than sitting in a tent, driving a tank, flying an Apache, manning a post, etc.? The requirements should fit the job, and shouldn't be the same for the entire Army. Some guy (or girl) who sits in a tent all day operating computers (a big part of Army work these days) does NOT need to pass the same physical test as some guy who walks miles and miles every day on patrol, carrying a M249 rifle, lots of ammo, body armor, and various other crap.
(Score: 1) by cafebabe on Friday March 07 2014, @05:27PM
MIL-STD1472G [everyspec.com], Table B-X (PDF page 360) gives figures, although the selection bias for this data is enlisted personal who met legacy recruitment requirements.
1702845791×2
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Friday March 07 2014, @06:17PM
Putting women into special-ops forces is a lot more questionable, since that does involve more hand-to-hand fighting.
Dude, have you never played Street Fighter II or any of the other million and one beat-em-up games out there? Women are always fast, low damage and distracting with their sexyness. Chun Li was one of the most powerful characters in SF2. Clearly the fairer sex can hold their own in hand-to-hand combat.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday March 07 2014, @06:38PM
Yes, and every time someone is hit with a bullet from a handgun, their body flies backwards 30 feet. The entertainment industries are always extremely accurate and realistic!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by cafebabe on Friday March 07 2014, @05:19PM
The distance between the bottom of the heart and the top of the brain determines the maximum tolerance to vertical acceleration. Therefore, shorter people have an advantage as pilots and astronauts. However, to be consistent with my own arguments [soylentnews.org] and only partly facetious, the natural order of things appears to be shorter people commanded by taller people.
1702845791×2
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hatta on Friday March 07 2014, @03:59PM
While you're probably right about sports like golf, with sports like soccer, football (which women don't really play anyway), basketball, hockey, etc., men have huge physical advantages over women, which would make it utterly pointless for women to bother competing.
Yes. So? If I'm naturally so bad at something that it's utterly pointless for me to compete, I don't compete in it and focus on my strengths instead. Invent some sports where women have a natural advantage.
Why is it that "You're good at X, for a girl" is an insult for all values of X except where X is a sport. You're good at math, for a girl. Sexist. You're good at carpentry, for a girl. Sexist. You're good at basketball, for a girl. That's just fine. WTF?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday March 07 2014, @04:18PM
Why is it that "You're good at X, for a girl" is an insult for all values of X except where X is a sport.
Because women do not have the physical advantages that men do. It's basic biology. And maybe they'd like to play sports too. There really aren't any sports that women are better at, except maybe running or cycling. Not everyone wants to be a runner or cycling; maybe they'd like to play a team sport. Those all favor physical strength. So we make women-only leagues for them to play in.
All those other things (math, carpentry) do not rely on brute strength, so it IS sexist to segregate women there. But those aren't sports. No one wants to go to a stadium and watch someone do math problems or cut wood with a tablesaw.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by hatta on Friday March 07 2014, @04:25PM
There really aren't any sports that women are better at
Right, so why are we awarding them top prizes in sports when they are not the best?
Those all favor physical strength. So we make women-only leagues for them to play in.
This makes about as much sense as creating a basketball league for short people. If you can't compete, you can't compete. If you want to play for fun, that's great. Play with whoever you want. But the trophy awarded for women's sports is quite literally the boobie prize.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by jpkunst on Friday March 07 2014, @06:51PM
So different weight classes in boxing and other martial arts are also nonsensical?
(Score: 2) by hatta on Friday March 07 2014, @07:26PM
Yeah, pretty much.
(Score: 3, Funny) by cafebabe on Friday March 07 2014, @05:43PM
I would say beach volleyball but, arguably, beach volleyball is soft porn. Don't believe me? What other sport specifies the maximum amount permitted of clothing?
1702845791×2
(Score: 2, Informative) by M. Baranczak on Friday March 07 2014, @06:36PM
Pro boxing.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by quacking duck on Friday March 07 2014, @06:47PM
Off the top of my head, there's one major sport has women competing directly against men: car racing. And even there, upper body strength (or at least endurance) provide an advantage during tight cornering and high-G turns.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday March 07 2014, @06:52PM
That's a good point, but in NASCAR, where Danica Patrick competes, you don't need to worry about tight cornering, or high-G turns. The cars don't ever "corner", and they're set up to always turn left, so you don't need to really do much to stay on the oval. The only steering is to maneuver around the other cars.
(Score: 1) by quacking duck on Friday March 07 2014, @09:36PM
Yes, that's what I was inferring when I mentioned tight cornering and high-G turns. When I looked at lists of female racers, there were quite a bit more who did NASCAR, Indy 500 and 24-hour Le Mans compared to Formula 1 (just 5, and none in the last 20 years), so I should've perhaps been more direct in pointing out that observation.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday March 07 2014, @10:07PM
Oh, sorry, I missed that. I was trying to snarkily bash NASCAR racing. :-)
(Score: 1) by paddym on Saturday March 08 2014, @03:16AM
"No one wants to go to a stadium and watch someone do math problems or cut wood with a tablesaw."
Speak for yourself you insensitive clod!
On the next Iron Mathemacarpenter, in a continuation from last week's episode, a great academic mathematician from a respected university and Bob Villa compete against a relatively unknown high school genius and his woodshop teacher. As the mathematicians continue writing their proof to the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem, watch as their carpenter teammate adds more and more sections to the table they are using to write their proof. Judges will be evaluating whether the proof is correct. The secret ingredient is more trees!
(Score: 1) by krishnoid on Friday March 07 2014, @08:46PM
Why is it that "You're good at X, for a girl" is an insult for all values of X except where X is a sport.
Wow, writing your name in the snow is now a sport ? :-) I must not have been paying attention to the Winter Games this year.
(Score: 2) by kebes on Friday March 07 2014, @04:43PM
But so what? Why should we segregate by gender by not segregate by innate ability more broadly? Even within the category "men", some men will have a genetic advantage over others. Does this mean we should segregate even "man" category into different leagues: "men whose baseline muscle mass is above-average", "men whose baseline muscle mass is average", "men whose baseline muscle mass is below-average"? Does this mean we should segregate also by inherent agility? Inherent quick-mindedness? (To some extent, we do: we have different leagues for regions, for age groups, sometimes for weight classes; and of course we have different levels of competition: hobby vs. amateur vs. pro vs. worlds vs. Olympics...).
Note that I'm not actually suggesting that we sub-divide like this. Nor am I suggesting that the division between "men"/"women" is necessarily a bad one. As I note in another comment [soylentnews.org], I believe the starting-point in discussions about the rules in sports/games is that the rules are arbitrary. We can debate about which rules we like best, or which rules make the sport "most exciting to watch" or which rules make the sport "most fun to play", or which rules are "most inclusive", or which rules "promote social equality" and so on... But we have to be clear that the rules themselves can be whatever we want. So there is no context-free argument about which rules are right/fair. You have to be clear what objective you're trying to achieve with the rules. Then we can debate the best way to achieve it.
So, depending on what one thinks a given sport "ought to be about", the logical decision about whether or not to segregate by gender will change.
(Score: 1) by darinbob on Friday March 07 2014, @11:36PM
Segregate the sports them based on physical characteristics maybe. Ie, a golf tournament where those with arms of a certain length or more compete against each other and those with shorter arms have their own tournament, rather than a simplistic men's and womens's divide.
(Score: 1) by emg on Friday March 07 2014, @05:06PM
"While you're probably right about sports like golf"
I read an article a few years ago about a contest where one of the top female golfers was allowed to compete alongside male golfers. If I remember correctly, she came last.
There was another news article recently about unisex snowboarding competitions, where women are apparently being injured at rates vastly higher than men. I'm sure the solution will be to tone the courses down until women aren't being injured, which will make it trivially easy for the men.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday March 07 2014, @05:46PM
Yeah, I addressed the golf thing at the end of my prior post. At first, I thought (not being a golfer, I only play mini-golf) it might not be really different between the sexes, but after thinking about it more, I realized that with men's upper-body strength, they'd be capable of longer drives. Even so, though, lots of pro golfers aren't exactly muscle-bound men, or even young men.
As for snowboarding, I don't really know what to say there. Being a skiier, to me snowboarding just looks like skateboarding on snow, so I can't even begin to fathom what a "competition" there would look like. Who can go the highest on a half-pipe?
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Friday March 07 2014, @05:08PM
Just to quibble a bit, there is one [wnba.com] 7-footer in the WNBA. You're generally right though. Average height of WNBA players is just reaching 6'. The average height of NBA players is 6'7" according to other sources.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 08 2014, @01:28AM
Women are better at sewing. Women are better at delicate things, something to do with how their brain is structured. I used to help teach swimming and girls/women would learn all the subtle movements much quicker while men would learn the big giant/general movements faster. I taught it the same to both but for some reason the difference persisted and I'm not the only one who noticed it. All the swim instructors/assistants (male and female) pretty much said the same thing, women get subtle, detailed, delicate movements faster (and move their way towards getting the more general movements later as they get better) while men get general movements/the general picture faster moving in the exact opposite direction (getting all the subtleties later).
Another thing I noticed is that women tend to get foreign accents much better. I can say something in Arabic several times to another guy who wants to repeat it and they would still pronounce it completely wrong. I say it once or twice to a woman who wants to say it and it's pronounced perfectly. My attempts to speak Spanish have lead to such a horrid accent that people often have a hard time understanding me. Yet I know women who came to the U.S. at twenty something and, while they have a slight accent, it's not nearly as bad as males I know who came to the U.S. at like 17 or younger even.
I suspect when learning a new language women would be quick to understand the specifics but would be hard pressed to get the general idea but men would be the exact opposite. The accent is a very subtle thing to master which is why guys just suck at it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday March 07 2014, @03:35PM
Let's be clear here - no matter what people say about sportsmanship, sports are about winning. That means that, while a high-school female basketball player could beat you at basketball, things would be more competitive if you too were a high-school female with plenty of practice at basketball. I'm not that old, but I grew up back in the day when athletes had to put in some effort to win, unlike nowadays where every kid gets a medal just for showing up to the race.
But back to my point - sports are about winning, and if sports were co-ed, then naturally team leadership would recruit mostly or entirely males for their team, because they want to win. The biological differences between males and females must not be ignored, even if they are becoming less apparent nowadays due to the sissification of culture and xenoestrogens in everything we ingest.
Perhaps things are more fair than I suggested: Recently, there was controversy about a MMA fighter [yahoo.com] who was born a male but underwent sex reassignment and became a female. From looking at "her" I can see right away that she's not my ideal of traditional feminine beauty, but "she" did recently lose "her" first match against a woman who was born a woman. How's that for fairness?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by koreanbabykilla on Friday March 07 2014, @05:47PM
Sorry to go OT, But I don't know if I'm ever gonna get used to seeing you logged in lol.
(Score: 1) by velex on Saturday March 08 2014, @12:05AM
Interesting link! This is going a bit o/t, but the only non-Taekwondo place around me does some MMA recruiting, and that had scared me off. I'll probably see if I can read up more on Fallon Fox this weekend.
(Score: 2, Informative) by waximius on Friday March 07 2014, @04:56PM
States do pass stupid laws, but the Kentucky example is false. As much as this Ohio native wants it to be right.
http://www.snopes.com/religion/pi.asp [snopes.com]
And I also think that things like segregating sports based on gender and having different physical fitness requirements for each gender for the same job (see US military) are great examples of sexism that society has accepted.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday March 07 2014, @07:11PM
As another commenter pointed out to me, I got the state wrong. It was Indiana. [wikipedia.org] It appears that the law didn't pass.
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(Score: 5, Informative) by jmoschner on Friday March 07 2014, @05:08PM
That isn't true.
The Y Chromosome almost always makes a male, but not always. There are XY females some have a working SRY gene on the Y chromosome but a broken or missing AR gene. Some have both genes broken. Without both, the person doesn't develope into a male. There are also a number of other genes that play a factor in determining if someone is male or what male characteristics they exhibit.
The AR gene is what gives rise to androgen receptors. Without androgen receptor, cells don't respond to androgens or testosterone. This means that the cells won't receive the message to make male anatomy. This condition is called complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS).
While most XY females do not develope ovaries or a uterus, some have developed a uterous and even given birth to childen. There is even one case of an XY female born with completly functional female annatomy.
Also it is possible for men to only have two X chromosomes.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 07 2014, @09:20PM
Pssst! Don't let facts stand on the way of his bigotry!
(Score: 1) by tibman on Friday March 07 2014, @06:28PM
You've got the state wrong. It was Indiana who attempt to pass that law.
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(Score: 1) by darinbob on Friday March 07 2014, @11:59PM
And important to note that it did NOT pass the law. And the law never stated anything about pi, but was about squaring the circle, and this only had the side effect that implied pi was 3.2 (not 3.0 as the myth keeps repeating). And lest anyone forget, this happened 117 years ago, a mere 5 years after it was proven that one could not square the circle, so even a well educated person at the time would not necessarily realize something that we accept as fact today.
The real stupidity here is that some legislators felt that this fell within their jurisdiction.
It does bring up the idea though that it just takes one stupid legistlator to forever tarnish a state, because forever after someone will repeat the "it almost became law!" mantra. This leads to the myth of "gee, look how stupid Americans are, they even think pi equals three". And it's very common in media to hear scare mongering news articles (even on slashdot) that essentially read "Bill Introduced To Limit Your Right To Pee!" which never later acknowledge how the bill was utterly rejected before even hitting a committee. It's about as ridiculous as those who like to point out crazy lawsuits ("boy sues sister for being a poopie head") as if there were any legal consequences that arise from a mere filing.
(gee, these dumb Americans need some way to filter out dumb bills before they are introduced to a legislative committee, like some sort of pre-committee committee!)
(Score: 1) by tibman on Saturday March 08 2014, @12:37AM
Didn't know what the time-frame was, Thanks : ) You are right, it is very easy to tarnish a US State in the eyes of its neighbors.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 1) by sl4shd0rk on Friday March 07 2014, @08:07PM
FTR, that was actually Indiana, and they wanted it 3.2:2 0Level%20pages/Indiana_Pi_Story.htm [purdue.edu]
http://www.agecon.purdue.edu/crd/localgov/Second%
(Score: 2, Interesting) by marcello_dl on Friday March 07 2014, @03:18PM
There are categories in sports to level the playing field, not to arbitrarily divide. Therefore sexism or ageism accusations have no ground. Let the categories be "born man" and "born woman" next time, case closed forever.
If I were an athlete I'd want to compete in the category that is appropriate, and when in doubt in the hardest one. So my achievements are worth more.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by wjwlsn on Friday March 07 2014, @03:30PM
... or maybe divide the competition into weight divisions according to measured lean muscle mass?
I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.
(Score: 1) by slartibartfastatp on Friday March 07 2014, @03:49PM
Nope. Transgenders may be born with ambiguous genitalia, so their "gender" is determined by which surgery is easier to perform.
I think the best would be use really useful parameters to split categories, like strength, speed, and whatsoever. Being a man or a woman is like a predictor of those features, but it's not perfect.
(Score: 3, Informative) by cafebabe on Friday March 07 2014, @05:58PM
Sex is what's between your legs. Gender is what's between your ears.
And people with ambiguous genitalia are intersex.
1702845791×2
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 07 2014, @10:45PM
Why not just have a separate division where only the mutants compete?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday March 07 2014, @03:19PM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by ngarrang on Friday March 07 2014, @03:31PM
This makes complete scientific sense, but this isn't about science. Someone is trying to blur gender lines and gain an unfair advantage. A lifetime of the y chromo and male hormones that come with it has made the person a MALE in physical form. THAT is a simple fact that cannot be denied and cannot be undone. Instead, a new category could be opened up for male-to-female converted athletes so they are competing on equal ground, much like in most sports where men and women do not directly compete where the physical form confers distinct advantages to either.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by velex on Friday March 07 2014, @03:38PM
That's more true of trans women than it is of trans men. Trans men usually end up being indistinguishable from cis men and gain all the muscle-building advantages of the male baseline testosterone level of 750 ng/ml. I even met one trans man who didn't even have a need for chest surgery.
The trouble is when we draw arbitrary distinctions. My best friend dated an individual a while back who was intersexed. He was assigned the female gender at birth, received cosmetic genital surgery (mutilation?), and was raised as such, although he later transitioned to live as the male gender, which is how he was currently living when my friend dated him. Would that make my (male) friend homosexual or heterosexual for dating that person? If we privilege gender assignment at birth, that makes my friend heterosexual. If we privilege currently lived and identified gender, that makes my friend homosexual.
Furthermore, is it really necessary to take a genetic test to determine whether he was XXY or XYY or something more exotic or whatever? What if he was XX and had androgen insensitivity? I never asked what his condition was exactly. If we did know that, how would that factor into our conclusion?
(Score: 1) by velex on Friday March 07 2014, @03:43PM
Whoops! s/XX and had androgen insensitivity/XY and had androgen insensitivity/
(Score: 1) by dyingtolive on Friday March 07 2014, @03:59PM
Why on earth wouldn't you just s/XX /XY ?
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by hatta on Friday March 07 2014, @04:44PM
Because that would turn "whether he was XXY or XYY" into "whether he was XYY or XYY"
(Score: 2, Informative) by dyingtolive on Friday March 07 2014, @06:19PM
I suppose it depends on how your whitespace gets handled. Given how the OP is using whitespace, I think it'd still be okay.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by hatta on Friday March 07 2014, @06:35PM
You're absolutely right. I missed the space somehow.
(Score: 2, Redundant) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday March 07 2014, @04:12PM
Personally, I'd not let anyone compete in a gender they were not born exclusively into. Yeah, that would make me a bit of an arbitrary jackass but I genuinely do not feel that a complicated and nuanced set of rules are worth the trouble to keep an extreme minority from being disenfranchised from athletic competition. It's not like we're talking about their right to vote, speak, or bear arms here.
Let's also take it as said that I'm insensitive and you're too sensitive; should save us several paragraphs.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 07 2014, @04:20PM
Yep, you're an insensitive jackass who's perfectly willing to ignore the rights of people just because you're in the majority and they aren't.
(Score: 1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday March 07 2014, @06:46PM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Informative) by cafebabe on Friday March 07 2014, @03:28PM
I believe that the rules for professional golf is that a competitor should have a testosterone/oestrogen dominant physiology for two years or more. For male to female transsexuals, it can be a significant disadvantage to have a male skeleton and female strength.
Of course, no-one cares about competitors that lose but as soon as competitors have a chance of winning, people seek to have them disqualified. The prime example of this was Caster Semenya [thedailybeast.com] in which far too much medical information became public domain.
1702845791×2
(Score: 2, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday March 07 2014, @03:35PM
Unfortunately for the people who make up and enforce these sporting rules, gender is not a simple as plumbing or even genetics. Surgery / hormone therapy etc simply adds another large set of variables to an already very complex gender identity landscape.* There's no easy answer. I'm not sure that making up special-case rules for trans people (which covers a huge range of people from one end of the gender spectrum to the other) is really going to work - it's just too damn complicated.
Perhaps the barrier between mens' sports and womens' should be made a little more permeable - allow exceptional women (including the transgendered woman from TFA) to "move up a league" from womens' to mens' events and vice versa. Again, fraught with difficulties but like I said, no easy answer.
I suppose in an ideal world you'd just use some kind of global online ranking system to compare everyone against everyone else indiscriminately, and then let each athlete / fan / spectator decide which comparisons matter- the "unisex toilets" approach. The only comparisons that ever really matter are your immediate peers anyway - If I'm ranked 2,145th in the world, I don't much care who's at number 1 or number 2 - I'm looking at numbers 2144 and 2146. Makes it a little hard to decide who's invited to participate in any given competition though, without making all sports events almost exclusively male.
*From the point of view of the athletic committees that is - Of course it's great that these treatments are available to those who need them.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Covalent on Friday March 07 2014, @03:39PM
because they conflate sport to this level of supreme importance. IT'S A BIG GAME PEOPLE. I love sports, don't get me wrong. But I seriously couldn't give a rat's left ball about this. The reason I don't care is that there is no way to fix this problem. We created a segregated situation when there never really was one to begin with. People that don't fit into the perfect little "Male" or "Female" box show that. So we either destroy the system by letter "male" players play on teams for women, which makes it nearly impossible for girls to play many sports (or be relegated to the JV squad) or we don't allow in trans* people into the gender they identify with (which discriminates against trans people).
Either way, one group of people loses.
Luckily, it's just a game people...
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 2) by kebes on Friday March 07 2014, @04:03PM
Personally, I think it might be better to drop participant segregation rules (so, I agree with mcgrew's comment [soylentnews.org]). Just let everyone compete, regardless of gender category (perceived, self-perceived, genetic, or otherwise) or other metrics; and see who wins. Obviously for a given sport, some genders/body-types/genetic-background may turn out to be superior. That's fine. Those who can't compete at the highest level can nevertheless compete at other levels (or regionally) in the sport, or they can switch to a sport where their gender/body-type/genetic-background gives them a bigger edge.
But even so, the rules are arbitrary, so I would stop short of forcing any particular sports organization from being inclusive. They can use whatever arbitrary (even nonsensical) divisions they like. This same question arises with respect to drug-use in sports. I personally wouldn't have a problem with them allowing drugs into sports, since the exclusion of certain drugs (but allowing a myriad of other highly non-natural means of modifying an athlete's body) is totally arbitrary. (Of course there are valid downsides to allowing certain drugs, including increasing the medical risks that athletes must take to remain competitive...) But, if the arbitrary rule is that a certain drug isn't allowed, then the athletes should follow that rule (just as they should follow the rules within the game itself). The exclusion of drugs, or exclusion of people with a certain chromosome, or the requirement that you must hit the ball with this long metal club and not just throw it with your hands... are all equally arbitrary and thus all equally valid.
(Score: 1) by CoolHand on Friday March 07 2014, @06:29PM
IT'S A BIG GAME PEOPLE.
Really???? You think that to people that dedicate thousands of hours of hard work to be the best at something that it's just a big game? The people dedicate themselves to be the tops of their field (and in the case of pro's, their livelihood depends on it). To have someone attain an unfair advantage that could cheat them out of their fair chance to be the best is a BIG DEAL. That's not just a game. If you've spent thousands of hours coding to be the best programmer that you can be, then are beat out by someone with hardly any knowledge that is let to have a team of expert coders consulting with him, that wouldn't seem very fair to you I bet...
That is the same sort of competitive disadvantage that some athletes could be at with this topic. To minimize their thousands of hours of hard work by saying it's "just a game" is "just wrong". I believe Athletic competition (as a replacement for warfare) to prove ourselves superior, is just as ingrained into our genetic makeup as the need to prove ourselves smarter.
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mmcmonster on Friday March 07 2014, @06:40PM
So true. But...
For a lot of people, being good in sports is their talent or gift. Who are we to take that away from them?
This gets more and more tricky as people who are XX ("normal") females who identify themselves as females but have a little more testosterone than 99% of other females. Should we call them transgender and not allow them to play professionally?
These sort of issues is why the idea of a group of scientists, physicians, and psychiatrists making the call on a case by case basis is probably the only way to settle it fairly. Of course, for fairness to the athlete, it should not be questioned once the competition begins. Only before. This would prevent a sore loser from tainting the awards ceremony.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Friday March 07 2014, @03:42PM
If I were writing the rules, I'd just ban all hormones. Don't most sports already ban many hormones?
If a formerly-male person is taking female hormones, that doesn't seem to be much different than some dude taking extra testosterone hormones or other steroids. He's making his body into something it isn't naturally, and the formerly-male person is doing the same.
Not many people want to watch athletic events with competitors who have been artificially enhanced somehow; that's why we have all these rules against doping. It's supposed to be a competition among natural humans, not a competition of medical technology. I know the trans people will hate this, but AFAIC, once you've gone trans (in a medical sense: surgery, hormones, etc., not just "I don't identify with my biological gender"), then you have no business competing in sports against normal people. If you want to have your own trans-friendly sporting events, fine, but you can't have a bunch of medical procedures done on you, and take a bunch of hormones, and compete fairly, while simultaneously saying that other athletes can't have their own performance-enhancing medical procedures or drugs.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday March 07 2014, @03:42PM
I don't much care what you might THINK you are. Women's bodies, and men's bodies are very different. Despite the fact that some women are quite masculine, and some men are effeminate, you can't cross that line, and just become the opposite.
No matter how much you agree or disagree with gender roles, you have been trained and pushed into your role, all of your life. No matter how much you may have resisted, you still had those formative years to shape you.
Competition cannot be fair after your surgery. Compete with what you were born with - or don't compete at all.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Professr on Friday March 07 2014, @04:23PM
Thanks, bigoted peanut gallery! :D
(Score: 3, Informative) by velex on Friday March 07 2014, @04:57PM
Ok, fine. Point taken. I have to say this, so maybe somebody should mod this post down, but... erm... some trans women are quite attractive. I wouldn't call myself that attractive but I do get sexual attention from men. I've also made a few men uncomfortable when I fix my hair in the men's room, since they perceive me as a woman. I've even been "ma'am"ed quite a few times when clearly presenting as the male gender. Typically that happens when I'm tired and I forget to use the masculine body language I struggled to learn when I was younger and revert to female body language, which comes to me more naturally.
I would suggest educating yourself on the biological differences between female and male brains, the further effects that testosterone and estrogen has on that biology (might not be very much hard data here), and the social phenomenon of meeting someone new and assigning a gender to them in your own mind. (Everybody does this and it's quite natural, not something bad.) I wish there were more research into the sociological consequences of being socialized as a boy or a girl, since I have a feeling that might show some things that feminists might be uncomfortable with (e.g. that STEM and construction attracts assigned males because of socialization, not that assigned females are rejected outright; and that assigned females avoid those careers because of female privilege.)
Julia Serano's book Whipping Girl has some good information right up until the 3rd part where it lost me on the idea that feminism should accept trans women and drop the term "womyn-born-womyn."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mojo chan on Friday March 07 2014, @06:40PM
The real problem is that gender is not binary. The majority of people are very clearly male or female, but there are also a quite significant percentage who fall into a grey area in the middle. Since sports are about physical ability a lot of the top female athletes are in this area, since having some male attributes gives them an advantage in their field. It is very difficult to draw the line even for people who have no undergone gender re-assignment, and there is a legitimate argument that trans people would actually be at a disadvantage to some cis women who just happen to have somewhat masculine bodies.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by EQ on Friday March 07 2014, @03:45PM
Its rather simple - the reason for the categorization is a level playing field. There are fundamental differences despite anyone's wishes to be a different gender. Its genetic. If you have that Y chromosome, you are male in terms of physiology. You can alter the hormones, and make cosmetic changes, but physically speaking, you are still male at is very basis. Short of gender reassignment and hormone treatment well before puberty, there will be inherent bone and muscle development that is different from a female. All the wishing in the world cannot change this fact. The person in question may want to refuse to accept this reality, but it doesn't change the fact that having male genetics does allow for a physical advantage not available to other (born female) competitors. Plus what we have is a male that has been cosmetically altered to appear as female, and then large amounts of hormones applied to force the development of female characteristics. Were they to be hormone free, the person would revert to a completely male physiology quickly, albeit retaining the cosmetic surgical changes. Therefor the person is male, in terms of the physical evidence, in the absence of artificial hormone treatments. This is their natural state. This lawsuit should be summarily thrown out, and the CrossFit people should establish a category for transgendered if they wish to placate people.
(Score: 1) by Professr on Friday March 07 2014, @04:30PM
You do realize that any muscle advantage goes away after a couple years of hormone therapy, right? At that point, trans females have a disadvantage because of their joint structure. Trans men gain a huge strength bonus after a couple years of hormone therapy, but their joint structure also puts them at a disadvantage.
Your statement that "what we have is a male that has been cosmetically altered to appear as female" is inaccurate at best and bigoted at worst. Studies have shown significant brain differences in transgender people, and the fact remains that it isn't something you can "cure" with any sort of therapy that's been tried. The fact is, just because someone drew the short straw and ended up with a genetic condition doesn't mean they don't have a right to treat that condition and be acknowledged as who they are despite it.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by EQ on Friday March 07 2014, @09:40PM
"what we have is a genetic male that has been cosmetically altered to appear as female" - please explain how that is inaccurate and bigoted? That is a straight forward physical description of what is there. I am not "guessing" what is in someone's mind and what they identify as to themselves, because that is not objective data - its subjective, based on the persons perceptions and emotions. Psychologically, yes that is a completely different issue - I do not disagree at all there. But physical muscle tissue is is physical as well as bone development during puberty. The Y chromosome is there, is it not? And we are talking about intensive muscle development in an athletic contest, not the routine transgender treatments, Can we be sure the athlete has not "lightened up" on the hormone treatments? Cheating is a factor to be considered - people do try to gain an advantage in competitions. Its basic fairness that is at issue. Tansgender people present a unique challenge. For example, how do you screen for performance enhancement in a transgendered male (formerly female) who must use hormone treatments that would likely be partially illegal for male competitors to use? And please stop using a straw man by stating things that I did not say (curing? denying treatment? that came from YOUR mind, not me).
(Score: 1) by velex on Saturday March 08 2014, @12:34AM
It's inaccurate or at least misleading. Bigoted? Maybe, maybe not. A lot of people don't know a lot of things about these things and suffer from a "cis blind spot" in which the idea that the gender of one's brain might be different from the gender of one's reproductive system or blood levels of hormones is "un-possible" (not to patronize--for the longest time I had a "trans blind spot" I suppose you could call it in which I found it difficult to believe that anybody could possibly want to be a boy).
Estrogen and testosterone HRT are more than simply cosmetic unless you have a very wide definition of cosmetic that would include so-called "cosmetic neurology." There are physical differences in male and female brains, and then there are the additional effects that estrogen and testosterone have on mood, libido, and some things it's difficult to put a finger on. This is a Ranma 1/2 fanfiction, so beware, but I found that it aptly described those things that I can't quite put a finger on: http://waxwolf.com/~plucky/dew.txt [waxwolf.com]. Sure, there are changes on the outside such as breasts and a little bit more subdermal fat for trans women and facial hair and voice changes for trans men, but it really does go much more deep than merely skin deep.
One thing I don't think has been studied much is something I've experienced that other trans women have oddly experienced as well: debilitating headaches under the influence of the hormones the gonads produce that just go *poof* when HRT starts.
Physical muscle tissue changes depending on the testosterone level. For trans women, this means after a few years, they really don't have any advantage here. Bone development during puberty is a bugbear, but hell, somehow my hips developed because I started HRT close enough to my teens. I'm also shorter than most cis women.
The chromosome thing is largely irrelevant unless you're talking about genetic disorders that are recessive on X or for example green-red color blindness which individuals with XX can avoid because one copy of X has a defective copy of that gene and the other copy is intact (also leading to near but not actual tetrachromaticism when the copies of X encode sufficiently different frequencies for green receptors in the eye). Since we're talking about secondary sexual features, particularly the ease of building muscle mass, however, that's all irrelevant. The chemical that is relevant for both genders is testosterone. (Yes, cis women have a very small amount in their bodies at all times--obviously not enough normally to cause male secondary sexual characteristics to emerge.)
AFAIK the chromosome thing is really only relevant as concerns gender in the womb when the reproductive system is forming and the brain is becoming gendered. Afterwards, well, you get either a reproductive system that makes testosterone come puberty, makes estrogen, progresterone, LH, etc come puberty, or something else if you're unlucky. From there, it's mainly estrogen and testosterone that determine expression of secondary sexual characteristics, not chromosomes. If the American Family Council (I think it was them) would listen to their own advice, they would realize that every time they say that raising a child as the gender they're not is traumatic, they're absolutely correct. If only we had some kind of reliable diagnostic for children, no trans girl would ever need to grow facial hair or retrain her voice ever again, because we'd start anti-androgen before puberty, estrogen around the correct time, and she'd turn out looking and sounding just like her mother when she was her age.
Yes, we have ways of measuring these things. If the trans woman is getting her bloodwork regularly as she should be, the bloodwork will show a testosterone level around 50 ng/ml just like any other woman.
Again, we have ways of measuring these things. If he's getting his bloodwork regularly as he should be, his bloodwork should show around 750 ng/ml like any other man.
Hope that helps.
(Score: 1) by velex on Saturday March 08 2014, @12:49AM
Sorry to reply twice but tl;dr version of the above just occurred to me. It seems that what you're proposing is that trans folks are a lot like Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs in that they construct a woman (or man) suit to put over or conceal something that they "really" are. The alternative viewpoint is that a trans woman always really was a woman by virtue of the body part between her ears but merely had a medical condition that caused her testosterone level to go through the roof starting at age 12 until it was treated. Neither is strictly true, I suppose.
(Score: 1) by EQ on Saturday March 08 2014, @05:59AM
Actually, my view on that is the transgendered altered their body to fit their self identification. I'm not quite as articulate as you, unfortunately so it may have come across wrong.
(Score: 1) by EQ on Saturday March 08 2014, @06:02AM
Thanks, I was not aware that they needed that tight a control, and that the hormonal treatments actually reversed the effects of decades of "normal" physiological development. By cosmetics, I meant appearance oriented, so that their appearance matched their mental self models nothing more implied than that. Perhaps I should be a little better with my diction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 07 2014, @05:03PM
I have to agree with Professr, even though he (she?) seems a bit flamewar-ready. Have you actually looked into any of the medical research in this area, or are you just going by what you've always believed?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Rune of Doom on Friday March 07 2014, @05:24PM
Soo... should pro sports screen athletes, and ban anyone who gets an unfair advantage form their genetic background? Why are tall players allowed to get such a massive advantage in basketball over shorter players? Are we going to let athletes from first world countries who had better diet and medical care as children run riot over those from developing countries?
(Score: 2, Funny) by cafebabe on Friday March 07 2014, @06:16PM
Oh, that's easy. Its because they put the baskets so high up.
1702845791×2
(Score: 2, Interesting) by EQ on Friday March 07 2014, @09:46PM
"hould pro sports screen athletes, and ban anyone who gets an unfair advantage form their genetic background" - and there you have it. Its NOT "unfair" if they were born with it. That's your error, you have confused what is being argued here wit some other concept. Fair is competing with what your genetic potential provides you, in athletic competition. Otherwise anabolic steroids, blood doping, etc would not have been made illegal in almost all sports. See your error?
(Score: 1) by Rune of Doom on Monday March 10 2014, @05:07PM
Nope. I don't see my error. You just ignored "better diet and medical care as children" so that you could pretend your argument made sense. Like it or not, how 'good' an athlete one becomes is the result of both nature and nurture. As long as humanity continues to move towards a hyperwealthy future conundrums like this are just going to keep growing and growing. Will it be ok for a child whose genes were tweaked by his parents for optimal athletic performance to compete with 'baseline' athletes? Should athletes from be allowed to eat optimally tailored diets when their less well-of competitors cannot afford the same? Should everyone practice with identical gear at identical facilities? There are plenty of outside factors that already influence athletic performance.
(Score: 1) by EQ on Tuesday March 11 2014, @05:57AM
You just don't get it do you? Its not about equalizing outcomes. Its about equalized basis. I may have possibly had genetic basis to be an athlete beyond my freshman year of college,, but I elected not to find out. Im not arguing that natural advantage should be taken away, I am arguing that those who prepare with their baseline potential be equal competitors. If someone artificially (by ways of surgery and drug [hormones and steroids] or other artificial means such as blood doping, etc) gains an advantage, than that is unfair. Training harder? No. Eating better? No. Being inborn? No. If their childhood nutrition was tweaked by their parents? No, because it wasn't drugs or surgical - it was achieved with the natural inborn biology. Now do you see the difference? Of course unfair things happen to those with bad parent, or who live in poor economies. Athletically speaking, thats a ahsme, but not relevant to this argument. Is someone who has been artificially altered by surgery and hormone treatments, etc, able to compete equally despite having male genetics? No. They may be completely female now (and gender psychology is not the issue here), but physiologically speaking, they still have male genetics and absent continued and careful treatment, they would revert to their natural state: male physiology. There is simply not enough certainty nor equality of genetic basis for other female competitors who were born female. So that's why such a person could justifiably be denied competitor's status, absent any other means of completely erasing any and all advantages that might have been gained by developing their initial physical characteristics and physiology as a male. Now, do you understand? Execrise equipment, tailored diets, etc: these are not ARTIFICIAL - they are simply available activities that leverage existing genetic potential. Hormones, surgery, etc: these are not the same thing as diet and equipment and coaching. Or do you somehow want to lump all that together? If so, then there is no discussion with you, because you are not being reasonable. If not, then do you now understand the point: artificiality of drugs/surgery to alter potential beyond its genetic basis, versus development of basic potential by way of coaching, exercise, diet and individual willingness? If so, then you should be able to understand the reasoning for the argument that the athletic commission's decision.
Now, all that aside, if they can come up with a way to ensure that no advantage was gained, then no need to put in a ban. The problem is, unlike mental activities, physical competition based on strength, especially upper body strength, does give males a decided advantage over females, so even the development of the joints, limbs and structure as a male could be seen as an advantage unavailable to females. So even then, the advantage could be attributed by some as a male developmental thing, instead of a simple variation in development - so those females who complain would have a legit complain when they take it to court. And that is what we end up stuck with: no matter how you treat this, somebody is going to sue because they feel they have been cheated; in this case the transgendered person And there's your bottom line.
(Score: 1) by Rune of Doom on Wednesday March 12 2014, @07:52PM
You're drawing an arbitrary line and saying, "THIS side is natural and acceptable" but "THAT side is artificial and thus verboten" and that line may be very clear to YOU, but I don't happen to see it the same way. Are glasses artificial or natural? Contacts? Laser eye surgery? Eye surgery that gives you better than 20/20 vision? Google Glass? Computer-assisted targeting?
You seem to see a binary division where I see a continuum. Take a step back and look at what you're saying: that high-end exercise equipment that can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars is NATURAl, while something like Hormone Replacement Therapy is ARTIFICAL. I think that's kind of funny.
Perhaps we'll simply have to agree to disagree. I can certainly understand why someone would want to make a binary distinction though. Without one, something like the Olympics becomes almost impossible to run as is.
(Score: 1) by EQ on Sunday March 16 2014, @06:33AM
Agreed. I tend to look at things from a medical viewpoint, where medications alter body systems in ways not possible by the body itself, so thats where my line-drawing comes in (Pharmacology - especially some of the newer recombinant-based drugs and side effects they incur by artificially altering natural systems to fight a "natural" condition, things like genetically linked diseases like ALS or breast cancer). And agreeing to disagree is the right thing. Thanks for being civil, and yes it is rather difficult to run athletic contests given the wide variety of circumstances. I guess that's why auto racing has become so popular: they can draw strict limits on performance, etc, so its a level playing field that comes down to skill of the team and the driver, and some luck. Its a shame I find it so boring.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mojo chan on Friday March 07 2014, @06:45PM
The IOC did try using chromosomes to determine gender but a number of women failed the test, only to later be allowed to compete after other checks showed they were female. Basically the IOC started with nude parades, then chromosomes, then more advanced chromosomes, then gave up and now has a panel of experts to judge based on a number of factors. It turns out that deciding gender can be really difficult, especially for high level athletes.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by EQ on Friday March 07 2014, @09:53PM
Thanks - I was somewhat unaware of it. I was viewing it from a medical standpoint - where physiology is physiology, when it comes to physical medicinal treatments. For instance, sertraline does work different in females than males - and its unclear if it is due to hormonal difference, or physiology. Psychotropic drugs do seem to have different levels of effect and side effects based on gender. Whether this is due to brain structure differences (there are male-female differences, and transgenders sometime exhibit opposite gender brain structures). As for high level athletes, I am not all that surprised because that level of competition requires masculine trait physicality, and the human body dan and will adapt to stress to conform as best it can to such conditions. Plus, there may be a bit of circular cause-effect, in that someone with the capabilities for this may be drawn to it by their ability to adapt to it. Perhaps the solution of transgendered in their own category should be the solution, to be fair to all - after all male (transgendered self identity) would require the use of a lot of hormonal treatments that would be illegal for a genetic male to use in order to create and maintain muscle mass (and masculine characteristics). No easy answers, thats for sure.
(Score: 5, Funny) by dublet on Friday March 07 2014, @03:47PM
If they made performance enhancing drugs mandatory, none of this would matter. If you're a pro athlete, you should be taking every drug under the sun for my entertainment! Dance for me puppets! Dance!
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome. [dublet.org]"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by gallondr00nk on Friday March 07 2014, @03:50PM
If we're actually serious about gender equality, then surely we can add another category into sports for mixed gender competition? After all, we've established that simply having different attributes doesn't imply inferiority or superiority, why should sports be treated any differently?
I have trouble with the argument that gender in sports boils down to simple biology, and thus trans individuals should compete only as their birth gender. Like in wider society, gender identity is incredibly complex, and I don't see why sports should be exempt from that fact simply because it's a test of physical prowess.
So fucking what if a M2F trans individual's genetically determined muscle mass lends them an advantage in a segregated event? Are we going to ditch the idea that a person's gender is more than whether they have a cock or not just because they might be able to run a bit faster?
What's more important here, respecting and tolerating a person's chosen identity or preserving arbitrary gender segregation in the world of sport?
Regardless, mixed gender competition would close the issue for good.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by moylan on Friday March 07 2014, @04:03PM
the real problem is that every time they try and draw a line in the sand and say that this side is male and that side is female is that another person comes along who they can't agree on. international law isn't even sure when it usually recognises 3 genders but can't settle on what to call the 3rd/other/null gender.
so before you get all high and mighty about how once you have a y chromosome you're male or once you have 2 xx chromosomes you're female remember there are lots of people out there who would qualify for neither team by a rule that stupid.
and that's only the tests we have now. we have no idea what drives what appears to be a biological male or female to undergo radical surgery with all the risks and social stigma that entails. we have no idea what new things we'll discover as we go along.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_verification_ in_sports [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bradley13 on Friday March 07 2014, @04:28PM
Men have, on average substantial physiological advantages over women. Really, this is undeniable and just bloody obvious. Whoever remarked above about women in combat hasn't seen what a joke that is. Women are not required to meet the same physical standards, but one must pretend that they do. Fact is: Most women are not capable of meeting the essential physical standards required of ground troops.
The right thing to do - the non-sexist thing to do - is to define the standards required by the job, and accept anyone who meets them, regardless of gender.
Which leads to a proposal for sports...
The reason that women's leagues exist in many (most) sports, is because they would have no realistic chance of competing with men. However, there are exceptions. To name one example, there are a few women playing on men's teams in the National Hockey League.
Change the men's leagues to "open" leagues that anyone can compete in. Then define restricted leagues: biological females, children, leagues for people with particular handicaps, and so forth. These allow fair competition among the members of groups that cannot generally compete in the "open" leagues.
In the case of this special princess - "she" is biologically male, and therefore ineligible for the women's leagues.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Professr on Friday March 07 2014, @04:38PM
You do realize that any "physiological advantage" goes away after a couple years of hormone therapy, right? At that point, trans women are at a disadvantage because of joint structure.
About the only part of your post I can agree with is "define the standards required by the job, and accept anyone who meets them, regardless of gender"
As for your lovely jerk-ish "special princess" jab, you haven't bothered to look at the research that shows physiological and neurological differences between transgender people and cis people. "She" might have a genetic condition that requires treatment, but she shouldn't be penalized for seeking treatment any more than you would be. Show a little kindness and stop making someone's already-hellish life worse :\
(Score: 2, Insightful) by bradley13 on Friday March 07 2014, @05:19PM
I agree with most of your points. However, there have to be clear, objective definitions for things like participation sports leagues. The fact that I have less muscle mass or slower reactions that your typical female athlete doesn't mean that I should be allowed to participate in women's sports.
Defining individual exceptions defeats the purpose of having special leagues, be they for women, for children, or whatever.
The person who is the subject of the article does not meet the objective, generally accepted standard: being biologically female. She is demanding special treatment, because of her particular circumstances. That's not right, and it's the reason I referred to her a "special princess".
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 07 2014, @04:58PM
Your opinion is your opinion, and I respect that even if I disagree. Do you really have to make "special princess" comments, though? It seems kind of mean.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by codemachine on Friday March 07 2014, @05:47PM
There are no women playing in the National Hockey League. One female goalie played in a preseason game back in 1992, mostly to bring publicity to a new team. Since then, there has never been a female player in the NHL.
Haley Wickenheiser played in a pro league in Finland. It was in the 3rd Tier of pro hockey there. She managed to score 2 goals, being the only woman to ever score a goal in a pro men's league. The team got promoted to the 2nd Tier for the next season, which turned out to be too high of a level for her.
Shannon Szabados played college hockey in the Alberta men's league, and recently attended practice with the Edmonton Oilers, as they were short a goalie while waiting for their new one to arrive via trade. But the team opted to have the local university goalie be their backup for the actual game.
Allowing someone who was born male to compete in women's leagues would be incredibly unfair to the rest of the competitors.
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Friday March 07 2014, @06:16PM
(Score: 2) by LaminatorX on Friday March 07 2014, @07:26PM
That's something I thought carefully about before posting this story. The net doesn't need another Tumblr, and that kind of discussion, even for those who enjoy it, is not what we're looking for from this site.
I put this in Science in hopes of setting an appropriate tone to the discussion, and also to learn what the response would be like. If it were to turn into a Tumbler-esque flame-war, well that would tell us something. If we got a quality discussion, that would tell us something else.
We're aiming, submissions permitting, to have about 70% solidly-nerd fare, with the remainder being a variety of other topics that our community might nonetheless enjoy discussing once in a while. We've had some hits and some misses on the 30% bracket, but that's how we're learning the community's tastes as we go.
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Friday March 07 2014, @07:48PM
(Score: 2) by LaminatorX on Friday March 07 2014, @08:11PM
Another possibility is that we could easily have an annoying mess going on when viewing everything, yet an excellent and worthwhile read at score 3 or so. We've had a few threads like that, and I'm not sure how to gauge them yet in terms of success or failure as an editor. Are those instances of the moderators bailing us out of a bad choice, or is that the system functioning as designed? I'm not sure yet.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Saturday March 08 2014, @06:34AM
I may be a biased source, but I'd say the resulting thread came out pretty well, reading at 2 or 3. Considering the story got a lot of comments (122 in less than a day), it seems our fellow users like having these sorts of stories occasionally.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Boxzy on Friday March 07 2014, @07:17PM
Except, y'know, women, children, the elderly, parents, car drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, religious minorities, sexual minorities, sexuality minorities, the short, the tall, the fat, the thin, the ill, the healthy, black, white, yellow, red, locals, southerners, northerners, foreigners........... Oh yeah, we got that equality thing sewn up these days, sheesh.
Go green, Go Soylent.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by zim on Friday March 07 2014, @07:36PM
All the arguments about hormones and gender are irrevelant. It's their contest. They get to make what ever stupid rules they want.
Simple as that. In this case anyway.
Up until public money is used to run the contest... THEN you've got a mess to deal with and someone is going to be unhappy no matter how you slice it.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 07 2014, @08:43PM
Many sports ban any sort of enhancements. Just because you decided to mutilate your body to look like a woman does not turn you into one. It just means you have decided to hide what you really are. How is this any different than someone taking steroids to have an advantage over the other players?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 07 2014, @09:17PM
Troll ^
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 07 2014, @07:40PM
There's a lot of blind imposition of heteronormative standard going on here for an audience that purports itself to be enlightened and science-minded. Human sex and gender is a lot more complicated than "XY MAN, XX WOMAN!" Here, go read the Wikipedia article for "intersex" [wikipedia.org]. Go ahead, I'll wait.
See? Not so black and white, is it? Where do all of those people fit? Trans people are in pretty much the same boat. Just because science doesn't currently know what makes trans people feel the way they do doesn't mean they should be shoehorned into. Binary definition of sex or gender any more than intersex people should.
As other posters have pointed out, much of the physical advantages granted to men are a result of their high testosterone levels, and much of that advantage is removed when the testosterone is removed as well. And do trans men really belong on women's teams? I would argue not. There's so much hormonal and skeletal variation within the heteronormative binary, that trying to build a definitive criteria based on non-chromosomal characteristics is difficult at best.
Trans people are just like everyone else. They want to live their lives the same way cisgendered people do, including playing sports and without being ostracized and relegated to second-class status.
Chances are you know at least one trans person and you don't even realize it, because they're mostly just like everyone else. That's right. We're already everywhere, and you don't even realize it.
(Score: 1) by naubol on Friday March 07 2014, @08:33PM
Maybe they don't fit. I'm as "pro queer" as it gets, although after reading my comment you may disagree. However, we, queers that is, are less common than non-queers. A lot less common. The truly "enlightened" individual should have no problem recognizing this fact. Also, I find it unenlightened to begin to proselytize your point of view by calling the other side unenlightened. You are not a saint, yourself, and I strongly believe this tactic tends to backfire. Also, you sound really arrogant and angry. Most people don't want to believe arrogant and angry people.
Given that we're much less common, and given that the whole concept of sports is to make a show of being a level playing ground* where people can fairly compete to show off intrinsic qualities and hard work**. The illusion of this level playing field is destroyed when you take someone who has an "obvious" genetic advantage. You may not believe this is so, but most do.
Now, do they necessarily have a genetic advantage? Being an enlightened person myself, I say show me the evidence. But, also being an enlightened person, I say empirical evidence of the personal kind seems to suggest that this is highly plausible. It is not sufficient to say that androgens are lowered in an MTF through the use of drugs, because androgens have a non-trivial influence on fetal and adolescent development before the drug regimen was introduced, usually as an adult.
You have a very large bias for saying that only the current level of androgens is relevant, which, being an enlightened person, you should acknowledge this bias. Empiricism demands it of you. Now, you could still be right, but you haven't made a convincing argument, which should also be obvious, since you stated something without providing any support, and many people's personal experience seems to contradict you.
Here is a prompt I consider illustrative: The average male is taller than average female. Do you believe that reduction of androgens leads to a reduction in height in an adult? Do you believe that height is a non-trivial advantage in nearly all sports? My answers are, obviously not enough to be significant and yes, I do, respectively.
So, the problem seems to me to be that the illusion of fairness in sports is hard to maintain under the circumstances of an MTF competing with cis women. I still think it is an illusion, that sports are fair, and so I scoff at the idea of sports***. But, if the sports interested people are right that this is a non-trivial advantage, and I still maintain it is quite plausible, then we have a situation where a majority of individuals want to create a system that works quite well* and a small number of individuals can't participate.
Why is this so morally wrong? Why is it unenlightened? We have lots of systems like this. This is different situation than public use of restrooms, where the original intent of the law was to handle heternormative sex issues and is badly applied to MTFs wanting to use the women's room. It is not important that we are treated as fair in all things, being untenable, impractical, and patently ridiculous. It is important that we are treated like people. I don't find sports excluding intersex from participating as their desired gender a violation of the latter principle. I do find the bathroom issue to be a heinous violation of the second principle.
* hahahahahahahahahahahah
** like unusual levels of testosterone due to rare genetic variance, access to great quantities of money, serendipitous access to other resources, etc.
*** I'm just a resentful nerd, damn those jocks!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 08 2014, @12:12AM
Sounds to me what it all boils down to is thinly veiled discrimination masquerading as a call for fairness. If it was anything else, all sports would either be calling for all abnormally advantaged people (height, strength, what have you) to be excluded, or all sports would have height/weight classes like in boxing.
(Score: 1) by krishnoid on Friday March 07 2014, @10:11PM
That way, people can look at all the results however they want, and an athletic governing body doesn't need to tie arbitation of gender distinctions to the mechanics of running athletic competitions.