4 ms·

So, uh, here's a weird suggestion - have THREE categories: 1. Verifiably male 2. Verifiably female 3. None of the above This would probably spur more transgen

So, uh, here's a weird suggestion - have THREE categories: 1. Verifiably male 2. Verifiably female 3. None of the above This would probably spur more transgenders into track and field, and sports in general..

jacquesm 17y ago
I think you're going in the wrong direction with this, why not simply have one category and rank them all as 'people', the ultimate in emancipation.
- modoc 17y ago
  Works out poorly for most women who then wouldn't get a chance at the podium in the majority of sports. I mean it's fine with me, I'm a male who's not too into sports, but...:)
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    So, your average female sporter would probably blow you away in most contests then. But that should not degrade you just as it should not degrade her when competing against a more capable person, male or female. It's the personal achievement that counts, you against the clock or your sense of self worth, not you against somebody else. Unless 'racing' someone will spur you to work harder. What about number 4 then, he never gets to be on the podium either, why only 3 top spots ? And if you make 4, what about #5 ?
    - dgordon 17y ago
      "So, your average female sporter would probably blow you away in most contests then." This is irrelevant. In track and field, elite to sub-elite high school boys beat all women ever in the sprints and field events, and even in longer distances the best US high school boys beat the women's world records. In basketball, for instance, the difference is even greater because height makes a big difference -- in fact, D1 women's basketball programs apparently bring in men who are semi-serious intramural basketball players to get better competition in practice.
      - jacquesm 17y ago
        Conclusion: sports are not a (very useful) way to measure one human against any other. That was sort of the point, I thought that by comparing a non-sporter with a sporting female that had been made clear.
        pbhjpbhj 17y ago
        Sports only measure the sporting ability of a person or team against another person or team, that's it. They have some relevance to useful characteristics for combat too. Utility is not really an issue. For me, the point of sport is fun - that's why I don't watch Professional Football (soccer), it's all about money, not about fun IMO. The only way I really find fun in sport is doing it.
        jacquesm 17y ago
        > For me, the point of sport is fun - that's why I don't watch Professional Football (soccer), it's all about money, not about fun IMO. The only way I really find fun in sport is doing it. Yay :) That's it. I could play pong all day or soccer or ride a bike or swim, it really doesn't matter. But to look at the performance of my 'national team' or so doesn't translate into a % of the same feeling of actually doing something. If you want you can live your whole life second-hand today.
    - roundsquare 17y ago
      "Unless 'racing' someone will spur you to work harder." You don't think this is the case? When I was on cross country I usually just tried to pass the person in front of me... having other people to compete with is a huge part of what drives athletes, especially in sports that are directly competitive like basketball as opposed to sports that are about the clock (such as running).
- kirse 17y ago
  This sounds so intellectually deep and all, but did you even take roughly 30 seconds to think about what happens when you combine men and women in athletic competition? Hint: Men will dominate (just about) everything.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    Oh, I realize that. It will show how totally pointless measuring people by some yardstick is. So what if you can run 1 second faster than some other human on a predefined course. You are still better than 99.99% of the rest of the humans. Humanity is multi-valued, what your abilities are in one narrow (and ultimately useless) field should not in any way degrade the people lower in the 'ladder' and it should not reward those higher up. Competition sports are historically good for two things only (and 'good' is up for debate), inspiring nationalism in people and paying exorbitant salaries to the competitors because of the media spectacle. edit: Our capability to measure time is what drives this crazy competition forward, if we were limited to say 1 second intervals plenty of women and plenty of men would be able to compete just fine (only not in the same race, but for instance simply against the clock). The differences between all humans competing in these races and the 'rest of us' is essentially so small as to be meaningless.
    - unalone 17y ago
      Don't know who was downvoting you. I agree. Don't know if I'd have agreed three months ago, but I'm starting to grow increasingly weary of rankings and competition. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of human potential. When I see people performing on levels I can't think of reaching, it gives me a fuzzy feeling. But we've gone past that in society, to the point of fetishizing achievement. I think it's awesome, for instance, that Michael Phelps broke the records he did. It's what he loves doing, apparently, and the technology behind his suit was pretty cool, and the spectacle was fun. But we aren't really given a choice about what to find fun, are we, when every media station heralds it for a week at a time. I'm sure other cool things were happening that didn't involve milliseconds in an expensive pool. Then the fame gets so ridiculous that his using marijuana became a scandal in and of itself, and he had to apologize not primarily for using but for letting kids down. I'd like to see society move past these anal little obsessions. It's awesome that some people like some competitive sports, but I don't think it should be the center of our society. (I really don't think society should have any center whatsoever, but that's crazy talk.)
- Goladus 17y ago
  That's nice except that it would wind up defeating the whole purpose of gender categories to begin with, which is to give opportunity to a gender with biological disadvantages in that particular sport. For most traditional sports men have the advantages. In other words, one category would be discrimination. Splitting it into two categories allows a statistically significant number of people to compete in a fair yet meaningful context.
  - SapphireSun 17y ago
    What if instead of segmenting by a surrogate class like sex, we class people by their output. Your performance over the last season sets you in a potentially different class the next season. For instance, Mike is (height=1.7m, runs=5m/s, scored=45, etc. ) and Michelle is (height=1.4m, runs=4m/s, scored=77, etc). You could even use machine learning techniques to figure out how to initially class someone, and have an appeals board to deal with edge cases. The real problem is deciding how many classes you want to have.
    - Goladus 17y ago
      The idea has potential, but the real problem isn't deciding how many classes to have, there are multiple problems. For one, this method may be a lot of extra work to wind up with the same number of, or potentially even more edge cases. And chances are good you'll wind up with virtually the same results for everything but the edge cases. Deciding what criteria to use is also non-trivial. There are a number of intangibles that may matter. "Women's Champion" isn't the same as "Class B Champion." Saying the "best female" conveys something much different than "best in statistical category F."
      - roundsquare 17y ago
        It does now because we've never split things up this way, but it might not be so weird once we get use to it. On the other hand, I see a bigger problem. If we are using this technique for the 100 m dash (for example) then we're going to basically split people up into "best category", "second best category", etc... and we'll end up comparing between categories anyway since there is an objective measure to use (the clock).
Goladus 17y ago
That will only work if there is a sufficient number of competitors. I'm sure "none of the aboves" are overrepresented in women's olympic sports but I am still skeptical they constitute a large enough population to create a whole new category.
- hughprime 17y ago
  Also, you'll create a new problem: second-rate male athletes will try to get into the "none of the above" category, where they'll presumably be more competitive due to the low number of genuine contestants. How do you prove yourself "not verifiably male"?
zngtk4 17y ago
How do you determine "verifiably female?" What if you have a "female" with high levels of androgens? Do you just say if you are 2 standard deviations within the mean of females you are verifiably female? Which is the cutoff?
- gloob 17y ago
  Which is the cutoff? Pick one arbitrarily. It's inelegant, sure, but we use it for all sorts of other things. Significant example: are you an adult? All sorts of perfectly intelligent, rational arguments could be raised saying "It depends on the person, now doesn't it?" The law, however, says: If you have been alive for X number of years, you are an adult. Otherwise, you are not. It seems to work halfway adequately for that.
hughprime 17y ago
Why not just ban those who aren't either verifiably male or female from competing? What's that you say? It's unfair that these people, through a genetic quirk and no fault of their own, can no longer compete in international athletics? Well boo hoo, neither can I, so go get a real job like the rest of us.
- JimmyL 17y ago
  This kind of misses the point of the article - what is the definition of "verifiably male", for instance?
- Goladus 17y ago
  When the point of a contest is to discover the best at some particular skill, fairness is an essential component of the rules. While individuals may try to subvert the system for their own advancement, the spirit of competition is to win and win fairly. Winning because a challenger gets disqualified for silly reasons is less desirable than winning, as the saying goes, "fair and square."
  - pwmanagerdied 17y ago
    If they're not verifiably either, it wouldn't be "fair" to have them compete against either group, would it?
    - Goladus 17y ago
      The chance that not being "verifiably" part of either group results in a competitive advantage over both groups is essentially zero.
- kevinpet 17y ago
  There's no need to ban them. Because of what the goals are and how every sport works out, the relevant categories are "female" and "not female". The point of the article is that the sporting bodies need to come up with clear well defined rules that don't leave the athletes sitting there not knowing whether they qualify.

jacquesm 17y ago

I think you're going in the wrong direction with this, why not simply have one category and rank them all as 'people', the ultimate in emancipation.

modoc 17y ago
Works out poorly for most women who then wouldn't get a chance at the podium in the majority of sports. I mean it's fine with me, I'm a male who's not too into sports, but...:)
- jacquesm 17y ago
  So, your average female sporter would probably blow you away in most contests then. But that should not degrade you just as it should not degrade her when competing against a more capable person, male or female. It's the personal achievement that counts, you against the clock or your sense of self worth, not you against somebody else. Unless 'racing' someone will spur you to work harder. What about number 4 then, he never gets to be on the podium either, why only 3 top spots ? And if you make 4, what about #5 ?
  - dgordon 17y ago
    "So, your average female sporter would probably blow you away in most contests then." This is irrelevant. In track and field, elite to sub-elite high school boys beat all women ever in the sprints and field events, and even in longer distances the best US high school boys beat the women's world records. In basketball, for instance, the difference is even greater because height makes a big difference -- in fact, D1 women's basketball programs apparently bring in men who are semi-serious intramural basketball players to get better competition in practice.
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      Conclusion: sports are not a (very useful) way to measure one human against any other. That was sort of the point, I thought that by comparing a non-sporter with a sporting female that had been made clear.
      - pbhjpbhj 17y ago
        Sports only measure the sporting ability of a person or team against another person or team, that's it. They have some relevance to useful characteristics for combat too. Utility is not really an issue. For me, the point of sport is fun - that's why I don't watch Professional Football (soccer), it's all about money, not about fun IMO. The only way I really find fun in sport is doing it.
        jacquesm 17y ago
        > For me, the point of sport is fun - that's why I don't watch Professional Football (soccer), it's all about money, not about fun IMO. The only way I really find fun in sport is doing it. Yay :) That's it. I could play pong all day or soccer or ride a bike or swim, it really doesn't matter. But to look at the performance of my 'national team' or so doesn't translate into a % of the same feeling of actually doing something. If you want you can live your whole life second-hand today.
  - roundsquare 17y ago
    "Unless 'racing' someone will spur you to work harder." You don't think this is the case? When I was on cross country I usually just tried to pass the person in front of me... having other people to compete with is a huge part of what drives athletes, especially in sports that are directly competitive like basketball as opposed to sports that are about the clock (such as running).
kirse 17y ago
This sounds so intellectually deep and all, but did you even take roughly 30 seconds to think about what happens when you combine men and women in athletic competition? Hint: Men will dominate (just about) everything.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Oh, I realize that. It will show how totally pointless measuring people by some yardstick is. So what if you can run 1 second faster than some other human on a predefined course. You are still better than 99.99% of the rest of the humans. Humanity is multi-valued, what your abilities are in one narrow (and ultimately useless) field should not in any way degrade the people lower in the 'ladder' and it should not reward those higher up. Competition sports are historically good for two things only (and 'good' is up for debate), inspiring nationalism in people and paying exorbitant salaries to the competitors because of the media spectacle. edit: Our capability to measure time is what drives this crazy competition forward, if we were limited to say 1 second intervals plenty of women and plenty of men would be able to compete just fine (only not in the same race, but for instance simply against the clock). The differences between all humans competing in these races and the 'rest of us' is essentially so small as to be meaningless.
  - unalone 17y ago
    Don't know who was downvoting you. I agree. Don't know if I'd have agreed three months ago, but I'm starting to grow increasingly weary of rankings and competition. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of human potential. When I see people performing on levels I can't think of reaching, it gives me a fuzzy feeling. But we've gone past that in society, to the point of fetishizing achievement. I think it's awesome, for instance, that Michael Phelps broke the records he did. It's what he loves doing, apparently, and the technology behind his suit was pretty cool, and the spectacle was fun. But we aren't really given a choice about what to find fun, are we, when every media station heralds it for a week at a time. I'm sure other cool things were happening that didn't involve milliseconds in an expensive pool. Then the fame gets so ridiculous that his using marijuana became a scandal in and of itself, and he had to apologize not primarily for using but for letting kids down. I'd like to see society move past these anal little obsessions. It's awesome that some people like some competitive sports, but I don't think it should be the center of our society. (I really don't think society should have any center whatsoever, but that's crazy talk.)
Goladus 17y ago
That's nice except that it would wind up defeating the whole purpose of gender categories to begin with, which is to give opportunity to a gender with biological disadvantages in that particular sport. For most traditional sports men have the advantages. In other words, one category would be discrimination. Splitting it into two categories allows a statistically significant number of people to compete in a fair yet meaningful context.
- SapphireSun 17y ago
  What if instead of segmenting by a surrogate class like sex, we class people by their output. Your performance over the last season sets you in a potentially different class the next season. For instance, Mike is (height=1.7m, runs=5m/s, scored=45, etc. ) and Michelle is (height=1.4m, runs=4m/s, scored=77, etc). You could even use machine learning techniques to figure out how to initially class someone, and have an appeals board to deal with edge cases. The real problem is deciding how many classes you want to have.
  - Goladus 17y ago
    The idea has potential, but the real problem isn't deciding how many classes to have, there are multiple problems. For one, this method may be a lot of extra work to wind up with the same number of, or potentially even more edge cases. And chances are good you'll wind up with virtually the same results for everything but the edge cases. Deciding what criteria to use is also non-trivial. There are a number of intangibles that may matter. "Women's Champion" isn't the same as "Class B Champion." Saying the "best female" conveys something much different than "best in statistical category F."
    - roundsquare 17y ago
      It does now because we've never split things up this way, but it might not be so weird once we get use to it. On the other hand, I see a bigger problem. If we are using this technique for the 100 m dash (for example) then we're going to basically split people up into "best category", "second best category", etc... and we'll end up comparing between categories anyway since there is an objective measure to use (the clock).

Goladus 17y ago

That will only work if there is a sufficient number of competitors. I'm sure "none of the aboves" are overrepresented in women's olympic sports but I am still skeptical they constitute a large enough population to create a whole new category.

hughprime 17y ago
Also, you'll create a new problem: second-rate male athletes will try to get into the "none of the above" category, where they'll presumably be more competitive due to the low number of genuine contestants. How do you prove yourself "not verifiably male"?

zngtk4 17y ago

How do you determine "verifiably female?" What if you have a "female" with high levels of androgens? Do you just say if you are 2 standard deviations within the mean of females you are verifiably female? Which is the cutoff?

gloob 17y ago
Which is the cutoff? Pick one arbitrarily. It's inelegant, sure, but we use it for all sorts of other things. Significant example: are you an adult? All sorts of perfectly intelligent, rational arguments could be raised saying "It depends on the person, now doesn't it?" The law, however, says: If you have been alive for X number of years, you are an adult. Otherwise, you are not. It seems to work halfway adequately for that.

hughprime 17y ago

Why not just ban those who aren't either verifiably male or female from competing? What's that you say? It's unfair that these people, through a genetic quirk and no fault of their own, can no longer compete in international athletics? Well boo hoo, neither can I, so go get a real job like the rest of us.

JimmyL 17y ago
This kind of misses the point of the article - what is the definition of "verifiably male", for instance?
Goladus 17y ago
When the point of a contest is to discover the best at some particular skill, fairness is an essential component of the rules. While individuals may try to subvert the system for their own advancement, the spirit of competition is to win and win fairly. Winning because a challenger gets disqualified for silly reasons is less desirable than winning, as the saying goes, "fair and square."
- pwmanagerdied 17y ago
  If they're not verifiably either, it wouldn't be "fair" to have them compete against either group, would it?
  - Goladus 17y ago
    The chance that not being "verifiably" part of either group results in a competitive advantage over both groups is essentially zero.
kevinpet 17y ago
There's no need to ban them. Because of what the goals are and how every sport works out, the relevant categories are "female" and "not female". The point of the article is that the sporting bodies need to come up with clear well defined rules that don't leave the athletes sitting there not knowing whether they qualify.