@SkyzykS This is really where I am. Sex isn’t fluid. Neither is gender but certain people have a political interest in stating that it is. Societies have managed with binary gender for 5,000 years and gotten along just fine. But now we upend the concept for .03% of the population with a mental illness.
Gender Desphoria/Identity disorder is a mental illness according to the DSM. Why should sporting bodies ruin fair play to accommodate the delusion? This is all about politics 100%. What other mental illness would enjoy such consideration in changing sporting rules?
Should we allow megalomaniacs to use foam plates so they truly believe they are lifting world record weights?
Should we allow sociopaths to compete using steroids because they have no conscience?
Mental illness, spiritual animal, or what ever they want to chalk it up to- I don’t care. Gender identity can be what ever someone thinks it is. I think its hilarious when some pug ugly five o’clock shadowed what ever he thinks he is primps and preens like a woman.
What is stupid is when they claim to want equality, yet do everything possible to dodge the rules as written.
Like- The rule says woman- well thats a social construct because it describes gender.
The rule says female- Well I’m a woman, therefore female.
My response would be- Go home then. These are our rules. You have a dick. You compete with other people with dicks or you go home. And since you suck at this sport as your birth sex- Just go home anyways.
If its a psychological disorder, I can have some sympathy. That goes beyond what type of pee-pee one has and into some much deeper problems. It could even be a biological anomaly- genetically female/physically male, and vice versa. But if you don’t fit into the category of the competitors, regardless of circumstance or condition- you don’t get to play. Lots of people don’t. Billions in fact.
Respectfully, y’all need to read the links.
The entire point is that sex is not a ‘binary issue’–that there are millions of people who are either intersexed (ie, biologically neither fully male nor female; this includes individuals such as Caster Semenaya, whose born biology falls well outside that of ‘legitimate female’) and transgendered (ie, those whose biological sex is legitimately male or female, but is discordant with their gender identity). From the second link:
"For most of humanity’s existence, sport was for men only. However, I would hope that it would be self-evident that one cannot have women’s equality without women’s sport. In order to make women’s sport meaningful, women must compete only against other women, as they are overmatched by men at the highest levels of most sports.
Unfortunately, biology does not neatly divide human beings into two sexes. There are tens of millions of people on the planet who don’t fit easily into our standard definition of male or female – they are either intersex or transgender. Intersex and transgender people have rights too, including the right to compete in sport. Many intersex or transgender athletes wish to compete in women’s sport, since they see themselves as women.
And this is heart of the matter. How do we support and protect women’s sport and, at the same time, honor the rights of a marginalized segment of humanity?" [emphasis mine]
(And for the record, this individual comes down on the side of protecting women’s athletics from those intersexed and TG’d individuals who would enjoy a competitive advantage.)
This is a very misleading thing to say. First, Gender Identity Disorder is no longer in the DSM. Second, the ‘illness’ component to Gender Dysphoria refers to the distress the individual feels that stems from the discordance between their biological and identified genders–not the discordance itself. This represents a sea change in the mindset of the psychiatric community regarding this issue, one analogous to the ‘de-pathologizing’ of homosexuality in the 1970s.
One day one more odd ball will step up and identify as a horse and run in the Kentucky Derby. Oh he/she won’t win but it will be the wacky left at their finest.
By the way Gender Disorder is no longer considered a mental disorder because the organization was hijacked by the left long, long ago…in the 1970’s.
See thats the thing. We don’t need to. You simply say- Penises on this side<- Vaginas on that side-> and if you don’t like it go start your own governing body or sports organization.
No one has the right to participate in a system in which they do not fit the criteria.
I wrestled at various weights from an early age. You strip naked and step on the scale. If you come in at weight- you get to wrestle. If you come in an ounce over- You go sit down.
Its that simple. You don’t have the right to wrestle at 135 if you weigh 135.1.
Here’s the females {females}. You have a penis? You go play with the boys (or go home).
No. They made the change in the DSM-5 because politics. The APA is very politically correct. The de-patholigization of homosexuality was because of lawsuits and political pressure by gay people, not the science.
For 99.97% of the population gender is binary. For the other .03% they need psychiatric care and counseling. Not hormones, surgery and enabling.
Many prominent psychiatrists disagree with the APA on transgenderism. Like the former head of Johns Hopkins:
I cannot comprehend how the only way to have women’s equality is to make a system whereby men and women are explicitly not compared. That defies the definition of equal. Equal implies comparison and finding that two things are the same.
I’ve found that anytime someone starts with something like, “I hope it would be self-evident that…” the next part of the sentence will contain something that cannot be explained logically or supported experimentally and the writer is hoping to bully the reader into not questioning the following assertion.
This is not to say that women’s sport shouldn’t exist. The point of women’s sport is to create a division where women can be competitive. But allowing men to compete in that division because they feel like women defeats the purpose of women’s sport.
If you do it that way, hyperandrenergic intersexed athletes who happen to have a vagina (eg, Caster Semenaya) will have a radical competitive advantage over non-intersexed females–an advantage roughly equivalent to that of a MTF TG person.
Agreed. But the point is, the shape of one’s plumbing does not in all cases correlate with having a competitive advantage that falls outside of the normal bell curve. In short, there are fairer criteria that can be used.
Are you suggesting that homosexuality is a mental disorder, as opposed to a normal variant of human sexuality?
Drop “many” from the above and your statement will be accurate. Dr. McHugh is an extreme outlier with respect to his opinion on this subject–so much so that his former faculty members disavowed his views.
First off, the link you provided is to the American Psychological Association, not the American Psychiatric Association (which is the organization responsible for the DSM). Second, that website is intended as public outreach, so of course its style seems tailored to “appealing to popular culture.”
Finally, if you want to look at the science behind the decision to drop GID, I suggest you wade into the reference list of the following article:
I think you misunderstand the author’s point, which was that to treat women equally from a competitive-sports perspective requires that women be allowed to compete against other women.
Absent being required to meet certain criteria concerning things like T levels, the author agrees with you on this score.
If a man feels like a woman, that on its own doesn’t prevent him from participating in sporting events with other men on a level playing field. The issue only arises if a man feels like a woman, wants to compete in sporting events, and wants to undergo procedures to physiologically change his body to be more similar to a woman’s body hormonally or physically.
But aspirations to be competitive in sports have often been at odds with other goals in a person’s life. A large part of preparing for sporting competition is undertaking processes and regimens that physiologically alter your body. If you have competing goals as to the ways in which you want to alter your body, you may find you can’t achieve both ideals. I might want to win World’s Strongest Man and the Boston Marathon, but that doesn’t entitle me to special treatment. I don’t get to compete as a woman because my conflicting goals prevent me from being competitive as a man. Same should go for Gavin Hubbard.
Thank you. Yes, if you want to talk about this, please, please go read at least the first two links I put up. The Q and A with Joanna Harper is really good if we want to raise the level of our debate here to a more educated discussion. TN has historically been better than many forums for having some posters who tried to really understand policy issues, and in this case the science of it.
Let’s try to keep this thread to the discussion about how to arrive at fairness in female athletics, and try to not take long tangents that we covered many times over in the Kroc thread, where people sounded off with their opinions about if TG ism in general, and if it’s a medical problem or a psychological one. Let’s talk about sports here.
Yes. And I agree. I was a little bit stunned to learn that the rule that made intersex individuals at least suppress their T has been temporarily removed. I’m a bit heartened to see people like Ross and Joanna taking issue with that decision.
Agree. It really is. I was surprised to see some of the reasoning about how they arrived at a T level of 10 nmo/l as an upper limit for MTF TG athletes, considering that’s low normal for men. The reasoning for 10 nmo/l? It’s very hard to get a TG athlete suppressed lower than that when they still have a pair of testes.
Currently, the activists have reasoned that intersex athletes don’t even need to suppress their T to meet the 10 nmo/l standard at this time. Why? Because males with high T don’t have to suppress their T levels to compete, so to ask intersex or TG athletes to do so is discriminatory. Yeah? Then what’s the point of having female athletics at all if the athletes can be biologically male and retain every advantage bestowed by the astronomically higher T that comes with that? I don’t think that ruling will stand. The idea that a field of the top 8 female runners in the 800m would have 5 intersex athletes in it at Rio is quite an anecdote.
For sure. I was wondering what the feminist reaction would be. I found an anonymous feminist forum talking about Hubbard. Apparently Hubbard’s father was mayor of Auckland and is some kind of wealthy cereal magnate. Hubbard herself funded a new state-of-the-art weightlifting facility to host and sponsor the OWNZ competition itself.
The feminists on that forum were mostly outraged that someone who spent their entire life as a very privileged white male from an incredibly wealthy and connected family came in and displaced a “little gal” Samoan female athlete of color.
I think this may happen, although current rules on confidentiality for intersex and TG athletes might make this difficult. For example, many of the NZ women did not know they were going to have to compete against Hubbard until they arrived at the competition, and no athlete has to be open about their status.
Yeah, I think Deb argued earlier about having a separate category, or categories. It would be one way to do it. This makes some sense if we’re going to say, “Look, this isn’t binary, even at a biological sex level.” Right now the HR activists are busy demanding that female sports accommodate TG and intersex athletes (even unaltered ones), so we’ll see how long it might take for that ship to turn.
Like this? Trying to keep a sense of humor here. It’s a little bit strange to make rules that disallow a woman with natural T levels between .5 to 3 nmo/l to “supplement” her T to at least a 10 if we’re going to allow intersex athletes to have no upper limit. Maybe we’ll all soon look like this? Funny story, I had my T tested out of curiosity last time I had a physical. I came in at 25 ng/l, but I couldn’t remember the different measurement systems, so I’m thinking WOW! What?? Nope. That translates to .9 nmo/l. Ha! Nothing to be excited about here.
Question 1: If, for the purposes of bigly athletics, we’re defining ‘female’ as having a T level below a certain number, does it follow that all female athletes (in major competitions) should have their T level checked prior to competing?
And assuming T levels will be the factor defining who can compete as a woman…
Question 2: There will be cis-women–very few, but some–who are not intersexed in any known manner, yet have T levels greater than the prescribed competition cutoff. (In a manner similar to how a very, very few men are >7 ft tall without having an identifiable medical condition as a cause.) So in short, these are ‘legit’ (I hate that term, but will go with it) cis-women who happen to have won the genetic lottery when it comes to athletic potential. What do you do with them vis a vis competing?
As I mentioned on the Kroc thread, the feminist community is divided over the issue of whether MTF TG individuals should have the ‘right’ to be considered women. Feminists who reject the female-legitimacy of MTF TGs are known as TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists).
I think I posted this link on the subject over there, but if anyone missed it:
So if a MTF athlete runs the table in women’s athletics are they a member of the patriarchy in TURF’s minds? I’d like to watch a debate between a trans activist and a radfem. That would be real entertainment.
That’s very simple. Fairness in female athletics means women get to compete with women, full stop. As @EyeDentist pointed out a woman with PCOS (high test) has a huge advantage in certain sports, but she’s still biologically a woman.
You will never remove all the advantages of being born male. It’s way more than test levels. So I don’t think you could ever find criteria that make it fair to women…
The not even testing MTF athletes is the height of absurdity. So a guy could throw on a wig and compete as a woman without suppression therapy?
Hi EyeDentist. I’ll try to address your questions as best I can by quoting the experts in the Q and A. I know you read it already, so I don’t know if this helps you think about it or not, but this might be helpful to people who haven’t had time to wade through it.
I’ll put this here just for everybody trying to get up to speed.
The history of determining if someone is female for athletics.
1940s-1966 Visual inspection of genitalia determines female status.
1966 - 2009 Chromosome Test / Barr Body Test (cheek swab to detect xx.)
1985 - Recognition that some women had Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome where they could have an xy chromosomes, but lack the receptors that let them benefit from all the additional T that cause virilization in puberty, and endow males with most of the athletic indicators. These individuals looked female, and often performed as xx with no advantages even though they tested as xy.
1980s to 2009 - The IAAF and the IOC abandoned chromosome-based gender testing, replacing it with a somewhat-ill-defined method that survived until the extremely virile Caster Semenya rocked the sports world by winning the 2009 IAAF World championship 800 meter race by an astounding 2.5 seconds while displaying no obvious strain. The media attention which surrounded the Semenya case was unrelenting and caused the IAAF to come up with a better policy.
2012 - The IAAF and IOC adopted the HA rules for hyperandrogenism, which looked at total T as the best predictor, but also looked at cases where athletes had other disorders that produced high T but where they lacked receptors for it, etc… This system continues to be supported by most scientists in the field, according to Harper. It’s more nuanced than just T, because some women don’t utilize T well, or are partial utilizers, etc… so they also look at underlying individual medical conditions in making a determination. Puff 's opinion here, This seems most fair to me, even though I’m not convinced that hormone history doesn’t matter.
2015 - CAS issued a temporary ruling suspending the HA rules of the IAAF; the federation has two years from the time of the ruling to make a better case for the HA regulations or CAS will abolish them. Meanwhile, intersex athletes do not have to suppress t at all as this undergoes further review.
Yes. That’s already happening if you’re a Div I college athlete, or lifting in a tested federation, or someone competing in the Olympics… You’re going to find yourself being tested to look for PEDs anyway. I don’t see this as a deal.
@ tall people, I just wanted to note that the sports scientist, Ross, in the Q and A talked about how height is not a good analogy. Besides, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being 5’2", it’s the perfect height.
To quote Ross about divisions -
I wish that it did not affect individuals like Semenya, but it does. It also affects many, many other women who frankly, have no chance of competing against the right athlete with an advantage that challenges the male-female division. And let me be very clear – this is not the same as tall people dominating in basketball, or people with fast-twitch fibres dominating sprints. We do not compete in categories of height, because we have decided that there is no need to “protect” short people. We certainly do not compete in categories of muscle biochemistry or neurology.
Harper on that -
I think that comparing intersex women to extraordinarily tall basketball players misses a key point. It is not important to protect shorter male “ballers” from taller ones. It is fundamentally important to protect female athletes from those athletes who undergo male-type puberty. The most essential element of women’s sport is that it is practiced by testosterone-challenged athletes. Even the CAS panel that suspended the IAAF’s HA regulations “has accepted that testosterone is the best indicator of performance difference between male and female athletes”.
To quote Joanna Harper -
… But when obvious signs of virilization are combined with unusual athletic performance, then it is reasonable to conclude that the athlete is possibly hyperandrogenic.
I would also like to note that the HA rules had a reasonable process beyond the simple determination of high T values. If an athlete was suspected of being hyperandrogenic, then a blood sample was taken. If the sample confirmed high T, then the IAAF launched a thorough medical investigation to determine the cause of the HA. The IAAF would only require the athlete to lower her T, if the investigation proved that she gained a large advantage from her high T.
… the vast majority of scientists support the HA rules.
Puff here. I’m going to assume that she’s accurate in saying that "the vast majority of scientists support the HA rules, which really supports those of us who think this new system of not holding intersex athletes to a lowered T standard is not based on the scientific facts.
Joanna Harper -
While human rights advocates are deliriously happy over the CAS ruling, those who love women’s sport are mortified. Those Intersex athletes who previously used medications to reduce their T are now off of those medications, and are running faster. Allowing these athletes to compete in women’s sport with their serious testosterone-based advantage threatens the very fabric of women’s sport.
I suspect this is true of many MTF TG athletes. I think it’s a reasonable position to say that hormone history matters in strength sports like WLing. There may need to be different rules for some sports. That is not something anyone is talking about right now. Really, they are trying to include these TG athletes on the “lets do this until proven otherwise” basis. We’ll see if it changes over the next few decades as more TG athletes transition at earlier ages.
I think we do need to have policies for the intersex athletes, Basement Gainz. Maybe that will eventually mean there is another category, or that they will at least have to return to submitting to T suppression meds. Many of the experts are saying that even a T level of 10 is too high to be fair to natal females, so I won’t be surprised to see that level be lowered. We’re going to see thinking on this continue to evolve… over the next few decades.
They will call this The Oppression Olympics. They can argue over who is most oppressed. I’m going to bet against the cis-gendered female, disadvantaged by her low testosterone. Although, maybe Ashley Judd will come on and tell the TG person how lucky they are to not have a period. Yeah, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
