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That's a lot of moral panic about a very small group of people that don't generally win more often Do you have numbers on that? Specifically, that the average
by causi 4y ago
That's a lot of moral panic about a very small group of people that don't generally win more often
Do you have numbers on that? Specifically, that the average transwoman athlete moves neither up nor down in her rankings compared to when she was a man? My personal exposure is purely anecdotal, but I have never heard of someone performing worse against women than they did against men unless they also changed their preferred sport at the same time.
- _cenw 4y agoEven if you had this data point, transitioning usually comes with higher functioning. I'm not sure how you'd quantify this data. What I will say is that I know some trans athletes who are extremely average in their fields, and the focus on a few high performers is mostly driven by those that can gain political capital from it.
- causi 4y agoI know some trans athletes who are extremely average in their fields, and the focus on a few high performers If we can look at the data and say that transitioning and playing against women doesn't result in a relative performance increase vs the average athlete in the field, that's a strong argument that it's not unfair to let trans athletes compete against women. If we look at the data and see that "men who perform at the 60th percentile level among men perform after their transition at the 80th percentile among women" that's an indicator there remains an unfair advantage and our medical technology for transition needs to improve before trans athletes can fairly compete against women.
- _cenw 4y agoI disagree, because I do not consider being trans a factor that is usually malleable and the relative increase in performance would not displace anyone with a shot at winning. You wouldn't make this point about most other unchanging factors (i.e. genetics) that affect performance either. "Fairness" in high end sports is extremely subjective, and hard work is only a small part of how successful you can be, with time (which usually equals to wealth; poor people can't afford to not work) and genetics being the most important. It's simply not a meritocracy in the first place.
- causi 4y agoIt's simply not a meritocracy in the first place. "It's already unfair so there's no reason to care about it being unfair" is not a good argument. the relative increase in performance would not displace anyone with a shot at winning. Without data we have no way of knowing that. If that's true, we can prove it and put to rest the controversy.
- _cenw 4y agoThere is no reason to selectively care about it being unfair. The controversy only exists in the first place because it is a great way for republicans and right wing figureheads to have queer people turned into an existential threat to rally support and perhaps distract from issues more materially relevant to voters. Voters that would never care about fairness in women's sports if it didn't involve queer people to hate. You simply have to acknowledge this. Even if you were not the intended audience and now have an interest in the theoretical question through proximity, the number of people that are actually personally impacted by this is near zero and all the attention originates in anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. I refuse to acknowledge this as controvercy that requires this kind of addressing.
- causi 4y agoVoters that would never care about fairness in women's sports if it didn't involve queer people to hate. That's certainly a large percentage of the motivation, granted. I do think a salient point is that there's nobody lobbying to make it unfair in some other way. If there were groups successfully lobbying to, say, abolish weight classes or allow the use of some expensive performance enhancement like a heads-up display, people would also oppose it.