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@MajorPom said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
@paremata said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
You don’t have a problem with her competing? You’re not the one who’s going to miss out on prize money , scholarship opportunities or sponsorships or medals. Women who have no chance to compete with her because she has internal testes are though . Having male hormones is nothing like Ian Thorpes feet .
Would you feel comfortable with her competing against women in a combat sport ?
It’s obviously a shit situation for her and other intersex female athletes , I think the women who aren’t intersex deserve a level playing field though.
Zero sympathy for her for the reasons I’ve already mentioned.Yeah, I think the case is very tricky and I don't see a solution which is fair. Woman aren't missing out because Caster Semenya is a woman. She's not an ex-dude which is the crux of the Trans issue.
Ultimately, not everybody can be a top level athlete & they do have certain genetic things that put them there. I've never seen Caster naked (and have no desire to) but as she was female at birth, then I have to assume that, if you put science aside, then she is in actual fact, a woman.
Combat sports? I'd feel pretty comfortable that Rhonda Rousey, Serena Williams would take her down, no problems.
Honestly can’t tell if you’re trolling.
First you say having internal testes is similar to having big feet now you say you’d be comfortable with her competing in combat sports because Rhonda Rousey could take her down? So because you think one of the top athletes in mma could beat her all the women she’d have to beat along the way to get to a title fight should just deal with competing against what is effectively a man strength wise?
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@MajorPom said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
Ok, so what signal are we sending re CS? That despite being an athlete she can’t really compete as she’s too male for female and too female to stand a chance against men?
And this is exactly at the heart of it. Women's sport is a protected class, but male/female characteristics (in a very very few individuals) are more shades of grey than black and white. And the issue is that defining 'eligible to compete in elite protected classes' may be a different classification to 'live your life as you choose, male or female'. The other point is that those inbuilt advantages are like being really tall; if yuo're 7 foot in America, you have something like a 1 in 16 chance of playing in the NBA. Likewise, if you are intersex presenting female, I suspect yoru chance of being at the elite end of Women's competition is very very high.
Somewhere you have to draw a line, and somewhere someone with talent and work ethic and inbuilt advantages will fall on the wrong side. One of the fundamental issues is there is not a lot of research on this historically - and it's suddenly become a massive headache. The Indian sprinter Dutee Chand rightly challenged her exclusion as there was no science behind the testosterone limits adopted. Once the science came in, it generally support IAAF's position - but you actually have to go and do the work.
For what it's worth, I think sports are starting to get to a 'fair' place. IF you go through puberty with high testosterone, or produce high levels of it, you can't easily compete in protected classes (called 'women' at the moment)
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@paremata said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
So because you think one of the top athletes in mma could beat her all the women she’d have to beat along the way to get to a title fight should just deal with competing against what is effectively a man strength wise?
Not trolling, but can you put some grammar into that as I really don't understand it and would like to!
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@Victor-Meldrew said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
@booboo said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
Just have men's and women's categories. It's objective, measurable and logical. Everything else is subjective.
But in what category do you put an athlete with all the external, physical attributes of a female athlete and has been registered and regarded as female since birth?
The argument re Semenya is that "she" is actually male. I'm reading that "her" affliction only affects males. Apologies for the quotation marks. One case I'd not object to they/them pronouns ...
Do you give all female athletes a mandatory chromosome test to ensure there are no XY's there? Do you do mandatory testosterone checks before deciding and allowing people to compete in women's events?
Thet already do at elite level.
I think the issue in a small number of cases it's problematic and related to a genuine medical condition. It's a situation which is unfair on everyone, sadly. Seems to me the IAAF have made a genuine attempt to resolve this but it clearly needs more work.
DSDs are an outlier, even so I'm reading that people/athletes are still either male or female. It's still objective and measurable.
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@MajorPom said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
@antipodean said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
@MajorPom said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
@antipodean I’m not going to lie and say I know what all of those mean and the advantage they give.
Everyone just talks about testosterone but what about all the other factors that make her female? And where does the testosterone levels produced stand on the male or female graphs?
Emma Hilton is an expert - she's a developmental biologist. The point her and Sharron Davies are making is that Caster is a male, competing unfairly against females.
Carol Hooven post is far more supportive of your views in my opinion. That does make me think.
We diverge tho as you call Caster male, which doesn’t seem to support her (external) genetalia.
It's irrelevant if Caster produces enough testosterone to compete professionally against men because Caster is competing against females who don't have the benefit of testes providing testosterone. And the science is clear about the benefits to athleticism that brings.
Woman do produce testosterone, hence why the question is valid and why the discussion of these levels / advantages vs other natural benefits is worth having.
I agree it's not the same as mentally ill, second rate male athletes taking the piss, but we either make female sport sacrosanct, or we send a very disturbing signal to young women everywhere.
Ok, so what signal are we sending re CS? That despite being an athlete she can’t really compete as she’s too male for female and too female to stand a chance against men?
As I read it, Semenya is male. There are lots of males who are not competitive at elite level. Semenya is one of them.
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@booboo said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
@MajorPom said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
@antipodean said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
@MajorPom said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
@antipodean I’m not going to lie and say I know what all of those mean and the advantage they give.
Everyone just talks about testosterone but what about all the other factors that make her female? And where does the testosterone levels produced stand on the male or female graphs?
Emma Hilton is an expert - she's a developmental biologist. The point her and Sharron Davies are making is that Caster is a male, competing unfairly against females.
Carol Hooven post is far more supportive of your views in my opinion. That does make me think.
We diverge tho as you call Caster male, which doesn’t seem to support her (external) genetalia.
It's irrelevant if Caster produces enough testosterone to compete professionally against men because Caster is competing against females who don't have the benefit of testes providing testosterone. And the science is clear about the benefits to athleticism that brings.
Woman do produce testosterone, hence why the question is valid and why the discussion of these levels / advantages vs other natural benefits is worth having.
I agree it's not the same as mentally ill, second rate male athletes taking the piss, but we either make female sport sacrosanct, or we send a very disturbing signal to young women everywhere.
Ok, so what signal are we sending re CS? That despite being an athlete she can’t really compete as she’s too male for female and too female to stand a chance against men?
As I read it, Semenya is male. There are lots of males who are not competitive at elite level. Semenya is one of them.
This. Sometimes you just have to accept stuff is not going your way. In Semenya’s case it really is an outlier, sucks to be that one person but that’s the reality.
I reckon, even at my age I could dominate at girls under 10 rugby and in truth there are loads like me. But where is our voice?
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@Catogrande said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
in truth there are loads like me. But where is our voice?
See, case of the outlier again. All the others that think that, actually could.
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@paremata there is no need to suggest somebody is trolling because they disagree with you. The point of debating is to look at each others side. I quite often on TSF take “the other side” to learn more about perspectives. This is not the case here. I’d be lying if I said I was 100% comfortable with CS, but I am ok with her as I can’t see why she’d be assigned female if there isn’t obvious reasons to suggest so.
If we are drawing a straight male/female line (which I agree with) then if CS is female with male traits, how much are these traits advantageous for her?
My point with Rousey / Williams is that I think there are superior female athletes to CS (I didn’t bring up MMA, others did).
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@Bones said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
@Catogrande said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
in truth there are loads like me. But where is our voice?
See, case of the outlier again. All the others that think that, actually could.
The first step is to admit your problem.
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@booboo said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
The argument re Semenya is that "she" is actually male. I'm reading that "her" affliction only affects males. Apologies for the quotation marks. One case I'd not object to they/them pronouns ...
Thet already do at elite level.
Been chatting to an elite athlete and told it's anything but simple with intersex people. (Colour me surprised). It's interesting stuff.
They abandoned chromosome testing a couple of decades ago as intersex people can have both XX and XY chromosomes at the same time in different cells. Even hormone testing is complicated as an intersex person can have unambiguous XX chromosomes but high testosterone levels....
IAAF don't regularly test for Testosterone levels and similar per se but for changes in levels as that indicates PEDs - they use something called a Blood Passport. There are protocols in place for people like Semenya who show unusual performance increases which look at a whole range of things (other than PEDs) like development of testes to ensure there's no advantage and, say, testosterone levels are lowered. They take medical history into account and it's regarded a bit like a medical condition.
Tricky situation for everyone. From what I heard, there's a fair bit of sympathy for people like Semenya as they are in a difficult situation thru no fault of their own.
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@MajorPom said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
@booboo if she’s male, why was she assigned female at birth?
You'd have to ask the medical staff at her birth.
I'd be guessing but may have something to do with lack of visible genetalia, due to testes being internal.
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@Victor-Meldrew said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
@paremata said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
So because you think one of the top athletes in mma could beat her all the women she’d have to beat along the way to get to a title fight should just deal with competing against what is effectively a man strength wise?
Not trolling, but can you put some grammar into that as I really don't understand it and would like to!
He used the example of Rhonda Rousey being able to take down CS.
To get to a title fight against someone of her calibre she’d have to beat a lot of other women along the way . The real point isn’t whether she’d beat Rousey but that she’d have an unfair advantage against the other contenders.
We already have the example of Fallon Fox , born male , fathered two kids then gets a couple of bolt ons tells no one he’s a man and competes in mma. Apparently he wasn’t actually that good technique wise but he had superior strength to women in his weight class and dominated them even crushing the skull of one of them . Eventually he came up against a woman who was a much better fighter and he got his balls handed to him . So yeah maybe RR could beat CS , a lot of women have to compete with her though for to get to that fight.
His Wikipedia page actually covers it quite well, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallon_Fox
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@MajorPom said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
@booboo if she’s male, why was she assigned female at birth?
The term “assigned at birth” is based around external genitalia obviously. It’s a recent turn of phrase the trans community have adopted along with gender identity to muddy things.
Because of her testosterone she has male bone density and male strength . She’s intersex but presents as female .
For what it’s worth her school principal thought she was a boy till she was 16 .
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@paremata Actually my over arching point is not to compare the likes of Fallon Fox to CS. They are completely different scenarios. One is a dude, always been a dude who is now completely taking the piss. The other is a born female, who science has decided isn't actually female. They aren't the same.
I don't think you have a point re Rousey, as we are talking about top level sport. Rousey had to beat those same people as well, thus the contenders have already had to face somebody far superior. The advantages CS has over them is kind of what my point is all about - Is testosterone the be all and end all? It could well be, and one of the readings that antipodean sent through makes a rather compelling case.
@paremata said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
The term “assigned at birth” is based around external genitalia obviously. It’s a recent turn of phrase the trans community have adopted along with gender identity to muddy things.
Because of her testosterone she has male bone density and male strength . She’s intersex but presents as female .
Yes, I agree with the first part. But the reality is that doctors assign at birth based on what they see. Thus, it's clear to me that CS has female genitals. And as i firmly agree with a straight female/male divide sport, I struggle with saying CS needs to be in the male. Yes, she has advantages over a lot of females, but how much do they change things? As let's be clear, the female traits has her a long way behind the men, and no training she could ever do would change that.
For what it’s worth her school principal thought she was a boy till she was 16 .
I genuinely didn't know that. If this is the case, then why was she competing at youth level in the female division? (rhetorical question)
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@MajorPom said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
The other is a born female
Isn't that it though? Someone incorrectly decided SC is a female because no dick. When in actual fact, they're a bloke. Without a dick.
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@Bones said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
@MajorPom said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
The other is a born female
Isn't that it though? Someone incorrectly decided SC is a female because no dick. When in actual fact, they're a bloke. Without a dick.
That is exactly it. Genetalia says she's female. Science says she's not.
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@MajorPom said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
@Bones said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
@MajorPom said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
The other is a born female
Isn't that it though? Someone incorrectly decided SC is a female because no dick. When in actual fact, they're a bloke. Without a dick.
That is exactly it. Genetalia says she's female. Science says she's not.
Wait a fucking minute. Genitalia isn't science? Testes aren't male genitalia?
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@Bones said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
@MajorPom said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
@Bones said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
@MajorPom said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
The other is a born female
Isn't that it though? Someone incorrectly decided SC is a female because no dick. When in actual fact, they're a bloke. Without a dick.
That is exactly it. Genetalia says she's female. Science says she's not.
Wait a fucking minute. Genitalia isn't science? Testes aren't male genitalia?
Wait a fucking minute yourself. Are you saying she doesn't have female genitalia at all?
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@MajorPom said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
@Bones said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
@MajorPom said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
@Bones said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
@MajorPom said in Transgender debate, in sport, in general:
The other is a born female
Isn't that it though? Someone incorrectly decided SC is a female because no dick. When in actual fact, they're a bloke. Without a dick.
That is exactly it. Genetalia says she's female. Science says she's not.
Wait a fucking minute. Genitalia isn't science? Testes aren't male genitalia?
Wait a fucking minute yourself. Are you saying she doesn't have female genitalia at all?
No.
I consider biology science though, so probably best we don't discuss that bit.
Transgender debate, in sport, in general
