4 ms·

How are you going to have sports, many of which have a substantial male/female performance difference between the distributions? Either everyone's lumped toget

How are you going to have sports, many of which have a substantial male/female performance difference between the distributions? Either everyone's lumped together and you have sports that exclude the vast majority of women, or you do away with individual sports and force (force... that doesn't sound gender-neutral to me) 50/50 split for teams. Gender identification may not be directly relevant to narrow performance in a lot of other areas, but it is relevant to overall human behavior, which affects personal choices that end up affecting things (like work and hobbies) even when performance on specific tasks is not directly affected by gender differences. Just because corner cases cause problems doesn't imply we should do away with any attempt to identify anyone as anything. Not identifying people according to easily discernible (in the vast majority of cases) characteristics causes its own problems.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> Either everyone's the same and you have sports that exclude the vast majority of women Most sport, at any serious level, exclude the vast majority of people regardless of gender, gender identity, or biological sex, and sports with a significant sex-associated performance difference offer substantially fewer and poorer paying opportunities for the lower-performing sex whether or not they are sex-segregated. What does fixed legal gender buy you there?
- harshreality 8y ago
  It means you get to choose whether to watch men's tennis or women's tennis; men's gymnastics or women's gymnastics; men's track and field or women's track and field. It means you don't have to deal with as much social and sexual drama between team members for team sports, which I suspect (but don't have data because I don't think adequate studies have been done) distracts from practicing the sport. This is a similar problem to mixed-sex infantry squads. You can wish for all the equality you want, but you won't get it. It means you have many varieties of sports with women competing that girls and other women can look up to as role models or inspiration or motivation to participate in sports.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    No, it doesn't mean any of that because sports governing bodies can divide up divisions irrespective of legal gender (e.g., the Olympics handles this, and their standard isn't “look at the legal gender of the athlete and stop there”.) There may be a good reason to segregate some sports by some traits linked to sex (but “genitals at birth” probably isn't the best standard for that), but even if there is it doesn't require immutable legal gender to do that.
    - harshreality 8y ago
      So are you saying we should do away with legal gender only to have de-facto legal gender used for all sorts of things like sports or insurance policies? Who's going to standardize those determinations if it's not the government? If the government's standards aren't good, and are in fact simply "genitals at birth", then that needs to be fixed, but as far as I can tell that's not true, at least federally or for the state I checked. If you transition, you get a court document with a doctor's statement certifying it, and you update your gender on your official documents. Right? There probably need to be different legal standards based on the purpose the gender is being used for, too. Being a trans woman shouldn't allow you to compete in women's MMA, for instance; there's already been an instance of that happening and it was a disaster. What concrete problem or injustice are you trying to correct? That people can't decide to change genders for a day, or decide they want to be officially recognized as the opposite gender before they transition? Is that a problem? People seem to want [biological] sex labels to mirror how they present themselves to others, instead of mirroring (as closely as possible, based on the reason the gender label is being requested) the underlying sex characteristic / hormonal physical reality of their body. That strikes me as a problem. In the limited situations and cases where people are asking for [biological] gender and need to know, how you present yourself ceases to matter. If they don't need to know, they you can use whatever label you want. Same with your name, or your date of birth, or anything else. But it's almost always pointless to informally declare your gender, because anyone interacting with you is going to pick up on what gender you present yourself as (whether verbally, in temperament, or physically). Labelling yourself other than your biological gender isn't needed for enlightened, tolerant people, and will only antagonize people who aren't comfortable with the whole trans/non-binary thing.
- Steel_Phoenix 8y ago
  It gets women in the Olympics. We can either keep gendered sports and tell people of ambiguous gender where they aren't allowed to compete, or we can have an Olympics that is 99% male(ish) by birth or hormone adjustment. I don't think women are going to like that. Sure, there are a few sports where there is some parity, but not many, at least among the elite.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > > What does fixed legal gender buy you there? > It gets women in the Olympics. No, it doesn't. Even to the extent segregation on a fixed biological definition of sex might do that, the IOC can (and does!) regulate standards for that gender segregation (and keeps tweaking details of the rules, which aren't based on fixed-at-birth sex), it isn't constrained to using legal gender as the basis. So fixing legal gender around some biological traits at birth doesn't get you anything in that regard. Which should be obvious, even aside form knowing the Olympic rules, just from the fact that many participating nations (including the current US) don't have immutably fixed-at-birth biologically-based legal gender, and are well represented by women in the Olympics.
henrikschroder 8y ago
> Just because corner cases cause problems doesn't imply we should do away with any attempt to identify anyone as anything. That's a complete straw-man argument, no one is arguing for the complete abolition of gender categories. They are there, they are useful, they fit 99% of humans, and 99% of humans can be correctly categorized at birth. It's perfectly fine. The argument is that legal gender shouldn't be compulsory or immutable. As for sports, which still doesn't have anything to do with legal gender, it's obvious that trans women could have an unfair advantage over cis women in sports that require strength or reach or bulk, therefore they shouldn't be able to compete professionally as women. And for sports where there isn't any noticeable difference between genders, it's to whatever governing sports association to decide on their own rules, if they want to allow trans women - fine, if they don't - fine. Whatever.
- harshreality 8y ago
  Without legal gender, based on something other than "what do you feel like today?", how do you prevent exactly the situation you identify: a trans woman, or worse, a man identifying as a woman for a day, insisting she is a woman for all practical and legal purposes and demanding to compete against women? Without mandatory, biologically-informed, legally meaningful gender labels, how can the discrimination provisions of Title IX and employment law be enforced reasonably and fairly? Anyone choosing to identify as the opposite of their biological gender will be discriminated against. How do you determine whether the discrimination was due to their gender identity or due to the fact that someone doesn't want to deal with someone who has gender dysphoria? And if gender ceases to be mostly-immutable and ceases to have stable legal meaning, how do you conduct a legal proceeding accusing someone of discrimination based on gender? What is it that you hope to accomplish? Are you trying to find ways to reduce discrimination? I think what you're proposing won't do that. Are you trying to allow everyone to "be themselves" and damn the consequences? (We just need to fix society to be compatible with people being themselves, naturally.) Maybe if your goal were clearer... What you said, doing away with compulsory or immutable gender labelling, would do away with any (government or gov't-regulated, which encompasses quite a lot) attempt to identify anyone as anything, so what I wrote might be an improper generalization, but I can't see how that harms the argument, and calling it a straw-man is quite a stretch.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> Either everyone's the same and you have sports that exclude the vast majority of women Most sport, at any serious level, exclude the vast majority of people regardless of gender, gender identity, or biological sex, and sports with a significant sex-associated performance difference offer substantially fewer and poorer paying opportunities for the lower-performing sex whether or not they are sex-segregated. What does fixed legal gender buy you there?

harshreality 8y ago
It means you get to choose whether to watch men's tennis or women's tennis; men's gymnastics or women's gymnastics; men's track and field or women's track and field. It means you don't have to deal with as much social and sexual drama between team members for team sports, which I suspect (but don't have data because I don't think adequate studies have been done) distracts from practicing the sport. This is a similar problem to mixed-sex infantry squads. You can wish for all the equality you want, but you won't get it. It means you have many varieties of sports with women competing that girls and other women can look up to as role models or inspiration or motivation to participate in sports.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  No, it doesn't mean any of that because sports governing bodies can divide up divisions irrespective of legal gender (e.g., the Olympics handles this, and their standard isn't “look at the legal gender of the athlete and stop there”.) There may be a good reason to segregate some sports by some traits linked to sex (but “genitals at birth” probably isn't the best standard for that), but even if there is it doesn't require immutable legal gender to do that.
  - harshreality 8y ago
    So are you saying we should do away with legal gender only to have de-facto legal gender used for all sorts of things like sports or insurance policies? Who's going to standardize those determinations if it's not the government? If the government's standards aren't good, and are in fact simply "genitals at birth", then that needs to be fixed, but as far as I can tell that's not true, at least federally or for the state I checked. If you transition, you get a court document with a doctor's statement certifying it, and you update your gender on your official documents. Right? There probably need to be different legal standards based on the purpose the gender is being used for, too. Being a trans woman shouldn't allow you to compete in women's MMA, for instance; there's already been an instance of that happening and it was a disaster. What concrete problem or injustice are you trying to correct? That people can't decide to change genders for a day, or decide they want to be officially recognized as the opposite gender before they transition? Is that a problem? People seem to want [biological] sex labels to mirror how they present themselves to others, instead of mirroring (as closely as possible, based on the reason the gender label is being requested) the underlying sex characteristic / hormonal physical reality of their body. That strikes me as a problem. In the limited situations and cases where people are asking for [biological] gender and need to know, how you present yourself ceases to matter. If they don't need to know, they you can use whatever label you want. Same with your name, or your date of birth, or anything else. But it's almost always pointless to informally declare your gender, because anyone interacting with you is going to pick up on what gender you present yourself as (whether verbally, in temperament, or physically). Labelling yourself other than your biological gender isn't needed for enlightened, tolerant people, and will only antagonize people who aren't comfortable with the whole trans/non-binary thing.
Steel_Phoenix 8y ago
It gets women in the Olympics. We can either keep gendered sports and tell people of ambiguous gender where they aren't allowed to compete, or we can have an Olympics that is 99% male(ish) by birth or hormone adjustment. I don't think women are going to like that. Sure, there are a few sports where there is some parity, but not many, at least among the elite.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > > What does fixed legal gender buy you there? > It gets women in the Olympics. No, it doesn't. Even to the extent segregation on a fixed biological definition of sex might do that, the IOC can (and does!) regulate standards for that gender segregation (and keeps tweaking details of the rules, which aren't based on fixed-at-birth sex), it isn't constrained to using legal gender as the basis. So fixing legal gender around some biological traits at birth doesn't get you anything in that regard. Which should be obvious, even aside form knowing the Olympic rules, just from the fact that many participating nations (including the current US) don't have immutably fixed-at-birth biologically-based legal gender, and are well represented by women in the Olympics.

henrikschroder 8y ago

> Just because corner cases cause problems doesn't imply we should do away with any attempt to identify anyone as anything. That's a complete straw-man argument, no one is arguing for the complete abolition of gender categories. They are there, they are useful, they fit 99% of humans, and 99% of humans can be correctly categorized at birth. It's perfectly fine. The argument is that legal gender shouldn't be compulsory or immutable. As for sports, which still doesn't have anything to do with legal gender, it's obvious that trans women could have an unfair advantage over cis women in sports that require strength or reach or bulk, therefore they shouldn't be able to compete professionally as women. And for sports where there isn't any noticeable difference between genders, it's to whatever governing sports association to decide on their own rules, if they want to allow trans women - fine, if they don't - fine. Whatever.

harshreality 8y ago
Without legal gender, based on something other than "what do you feel like today?", how do you prevent exactly the situation you identify: a trans woman, or worse, a man identifying as a woman for a day, insisting she is a woman for all practical and legal purposes and demanding to compete against women? Without mandatory, biologically-informed, legally meaningful gender labels, how can the discrimination provisions of Title IX and employment law be enforced reasonably and fairly? Anyone choosing to identify as the opposite of their biological gender will be discriminated against. How do you determine whether the discrimination was due to their gender identity or due to the fact that someone doesn't want to deal with someone who has gender dysphoria? And if gender ceases to be mostly-immutable and ceases to have stable legal meaning, how do you conduct a legal proceeding accusing someone of discrimination based on gender? What is it that you hope to accomplish? Are you trying to find ways to reduce discrimination? I think what you're proposing won't do that. Are you trying to allow everyone to "be themselves" and damn the consequences? (We just need to fix society to be compatible with people being themselves, naturally.) Maybe if your goal were clearer... What you said, doing away with compulsory or immutable gender labelling, would do away with any (government or gov't-regulated, which encompasses quite a lot) attempt to identify anyone as anything, so what I wrote might be an improper generalization, but I can't see how that harms the argument, and calling it a straw-man is quite a stretch.