4 ms·

> I'm honestly not familiar with the literature on this issue at all But you've accepted at face values the claims this woman is making? https://www.outsports

by DanBC 5y ago

> I'm honestly not familiar with the literature on this issue at all But you've accepted at face values the claims this woman is making? https://www.outsports.com/2018/6/14/17458696/trans-athlete-connecticut-high-school-ban-petition https://www.outsports.com/2018/6/14/17458696/trans-athlete-c... > When you look at the results, it might be easy to understand why some people, like Soule, are upset. On the face of the results, it looks like two trans athletes have suddenly come along and raced into state titles and decades-old records > Yet when you look a little deeper, there’s more to the story. > First, Miller and Yearwood aren’t “beating everyone.” > Yearwood finished seventh in the 200-meter. Five girls, other than Miller, beat her in that race. > Miller, in addition to her two big wins, also ran the 400-meter and finished fourth. > Both of these trans girls were beaten by cisgender girls at the state meet. > The idea that they are unbeatable, or that any advantage they may experience as trans athletes is “unfair,” are undermined when you look beyond the headlines of state titles and records. The idea people are struggling with is that some advantages are fair, while others are cheating. This is incoherent. Should we ban rich children who get private coaching from sporting competitions? Why not?

injb 5y ago
>>The idea people are struggling with is that some advantages are fair, while others are cheating This idea is the very basis of all human competition. The fact that we can't identify exactly which things are fair and which things are not doesn't make it incoherent.
caddemon 5y ago
Just because someone doesn't win literally every event every time doesn't mean they don't have an unfair advantage. The trans women did slash up the recordbooks in the 55m dash, per even that source. Different race types favor different physical attributes, the fact that they didn't win longer races doesn't say much about whether there was an advantage in the shorter dash. How many trans women even compete in Connecticut high school track? The odds of the top two finishers on the entire state level being trans women are extremely low if they had no advantage. I can certainly believe that trans women do not have any advantage if they began transitioning before puberty, but there are no restrictions on these details when looking at high school level athletics in most states.
jfengel 5y ago
It's very odd that the author chose to lead with an event which she won. If there were other events that she lost, why not tell about one of those? Unlike bathroom panics, women's sports feels like a thing where there could actually be a "there" there. There has always been controversy of who exactly qualifies as a "woman". (The Wikipedia article is pretty horrifying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_verification_in_sports https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_verification_in_sports.) With bathroom panics, it was a trivial refutation to say "Show me the incidents where men are using the new understanding to harm women". Here, there are enough instances of trans women being over-represented at the higher ranks to raise the questions of what it is we wish to accomplish with women's sports as a separate institution. If we reach a state where increasing trans representation diminishes the ability of cis women to play, that would be a genuine problem. Instead, we get somebody saying, "Well, I should have won... and then I did." I can't figure out if this is a genuine (but poorly-expressed) gripe, or an athlete understandably grumpy about losing something some time, or anti-trans prejudice trying to masquerade as one of the other two. I feel like there could be a real issue some day, but this isn't it. And while it's understandable that somebody might try to solve a problem before it actually becomes one, it's going to be really hard to do that sincerely if it takes the same form as prejudice.

by DanBC 5y ago

injb 5y ago

>>The idea people are struggling with is that some advantages are fair, while others are cheating This idea is the very basis of all human competition. The fact that we can't identify exactly which things are fair and which things are not doesn't make it incoherent.

caddemon 5y ago

Just because someone doesn't win literally every event every time doesn't mean they don't have an unfair advantage. The trans women did slash up the recordbooks in the 55m dash, per even that source. Different race types favor different physical attributes, the fact that they didn't win longer races doesn't say much about whether there was an advantage in the shorter dash. How many trans women even compete in Connecticut high school track? The odds of the top two finishers on the entire state level being trans women are extremely low if they had no advantage. I can certainly believe that trans women do not have any advantage if they began transitioning before puberty, but there are no restrictions on these details when looking at high school level athletics in most states.

jfengel 5y ago

It's very odd that the author chose to lead with an event which she won. If there were other events that she lost, why not tell about one of those? Unlike bathroom panics, women's sports feels like a thing where there could actually be a "there" there. There has always been controversy of who exactly qualifies as a "woman". (The Wikipedia article is pretty horrifying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_verification_in_sports https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_verification_in_sports.) With bathroom panics, it was a trivial refutation to say "Show me the incidents where men are using the new understanding to harm women". Here, there are enough instances of trans women being over-represented at the higher ranks to raise the questions of what it is we wish to accomplish with women's sports as a separate institution. If we reach a state where increasing trans representation diminishes the ability of cis women to play, that would be a genuine problem. Instead, we get somebody saying, "Well, I should have won... and then I did." I can't figure out if this is a genuine (but poorly-expressed) gripe, or an athlete understandably grumpy about losing something some time, or anti-trans prejudice trying to masquerade as one of the other two. I feel like there could be a real issue some day, but this isn't it. And while it's understandable that somebody might try to solve a problem before it actually becomes one, it's going to be really hard to do that sincerely if it takes the same form as prejudice.