We’re thinking the same thing.

Name is actually a hash of some of my former posts from spez’s site, before I overwrote and deleted them (and reposted on kbin.social) and left for good.

Same here. (Granted, doxxing and violence are not cool, but from the article’s reporting it’s not clear if this actually occurred or was just alleged. I’m leaning more towards the latter - at least “standards” were probably applied more strictly and harshly. Musk wouldn’t have had to personally ask for an intervention if these rules were generally and clearly getting broken…)

while Beijing is still committed to taking control of Taiwan, it’s hesitant to start a direct war.

Only “hesitant” ? It’s a bit reassuring to hear that a war isn’t wanted … but it would be better if war was renounced in stronger terms, especially because

they create a serious risk of miscalculation that could spiral into a larger conflict.

Glad to hear your daughter-in-law and her mom are safe. Fingers crossed that the brother is as well.

don’t actually consider trans women to be women

So my comment about new categories should be understood to be within the context of “trans women are women, full stop.” We have different weight classes for men in wrestling, but no one would question that the featherweight champion is a man, or that the heavyweight champion is a man, even though a heavyweight would clearly defeat a featherweight every time if they were to compete against each other.

This is why there is so much acrimony on our side. It appears that even for our allies, it’s fine for us to compete, so long as we don’t win.

That definitely seems unfair and I don’t ascribe to this. There’s generally nothing wrong with a trans women winning a sports competition when competing against other women (who may also be cis or trans).

The whole argument from the other side centers on the assumption that men obviously are better than women at sports just because, and thus it’s obviously unfair that …

Except that cis women have beaten cis men in sports before, see https://www.elle.com/culture/g30119/female-athletes-who-won-against-men/

In some sports women generally do better than men, see https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240731-the-sports-where-women-outperform-men

So the central premise that the other side tries to bring is faulty to begin with.

The issue here is that people have no problem admitting that tall individuals have an advantage over shorter ones in basketball - but when someone points out that trans women may have an advantage over biological women in terms of strength and speed,

Key word that’s often missing: “may”

The NPR article that you used as a source is pretty clear on this, that there’s a group of trans women for which this (stronger and faster than cis women) is not true.

[some] people suddenly come out of the woodwork, calling it a lie or transphobia.

FTFY.

The issue here is that …
Blanket bans are rarely the optimal solution

Actually, I suspect the issue here is that other folks - right-wing and MAGA in particular - take the a statement similar to yours, and run away with it to justify a blanket ban.

In other words, your original statement,

This isn’t about not wanting trans people in the sports and you know it.

Well, I don’t know it. Perhaps the folks on the World Olympics have loftier ideals - I sure hope that’s the case.

But there are folks that don’t want trans people to be able to use washrooms. (See https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/no-link-between-trans-inclusive-policies-bathroom-safety-study-finds-n911106 which references the belief, while pointing out that science doesn’t provide support.)

Hence some hypervigilance to keep those folks from taking over the conversation.

If instead they acknowledged the advantage but still argued for inclusion, then at least we’d be agreeing on the facts - and the discussion could focus on how to level the playing field.

True - the discussion really should be focus on inclusion, and of course a level playing field should only further the cause.

By definition that then means that if you are born a woman then you can forget all your dreams about becoming a competitive athlete because those roles are reserved for the ones that were born a male.

I think your article nails it on the head here.

One of the beauties of sport is let’s let everybody play. We just need to acknowledge the other part of the equation, which is that there’s always been inequities in sport. Somebody who’s born taller than somebody who is shorter and plays basketball, we really don’t have this conversation about the potential competitive advantage

In other words,

By definition that then means that if you are born short then you can forget all your dreams about becoming a competitive athlete (in basketball) because those roles are reserved for the ones that were born tall.

That said, we could theoretically have new height classes in basketball, the same way we already have weight classes for wrestling. Likewise, if we did need some new form of class for an Olympic sport, I’m sure we don’t have to call it out by gender, but can have some similarly gender-agnostic criteria.

If it’s not a problem why are we talking about it?

Exactly.

The competitions were open to women. All women. What is the problem if women win?

None that I can see.

What is the problem if trans women take all the records?

This would kinda imply that maybe it makes sense to start talking about new categories. Kinda like how we already have different weight classes in wrestling. But I doubt it would happen, if you look at the studies from the NPR article by the OC,

After 2 years of taking feminising hormones, the push-up and sit-up differences disappeared

transwomen still had a 9% faster mean run speed after the 1 year period of testosterone suppression

9% isn’t that much of an advantage, and it could go down further as time goes on (as the raw data sorta hints at), just maybe the study wasn’t running for long enough.

And this doesn’t apply to all trans folks. Do remember,

Dr. Bradley Anawalt, an endocrinologist and professor of medicine at the University of Washington, said there appears to be no competitive advantage between boys and girls before they undergo puberty around the ages of 11 or 12.

So a trans woman who transitioned before puberty has no competitive advantage worth talking about, and a trans woman who transitions after puberty just needs time to lose the extra muscle before the competitive advantage disappears.

Finally, keep in mind that even for those that are recent post-puberty transitions, they still don’t perform as well as cis men, so it definitely does not make sense to include them in there.

Meanwhile, transmen on average outperform cis men,

After 1 year of taking masculinising hormones, there was no longer a difference in push-ups or run times, and the number of sit-ups performed in 1 min by transmen exceeded the average performance of their male counterparts.

Everything suggests to me that there’s no problem and we’ve split up the categories in the right ways, at worst it’s perhaps just a matter of tweaking this statement, “1 year period of testosterone suppression that is recommended by World Athletics for inclusion in women’s events” to a slightly longer time period.

also interested in hearing what you think the exception is
It would be a statistical miracle if every single trans woman was stronger than every biological woman.
but I’d never claim that there’s no exceptions

Ok, that’s fair.

I’m confident in claiming that most are

Right, but that’s what the other commenters were waiting for supporting research on, I believe.

They called my claim that men have a significant advantage over women when it comes to strenght a made-up fact so I backed it up with evidence as requested.

Hmm, on re-reading I can see that as being part of what was asked. However, you wrote this,

This isn’t about not wanting trans people in the sports and you know it. It’s about the unfair advantage they have over biological women.
Men have a significant advantage over women when it comes to strenght and speed and in most (but not all) cases this applies to trans women as well.

So I think the real ask is for evidence that post-transition trans women are stronger than cis women. To reiterate, I think the points now requiring evidence are these statements (edited by me for clarity):

It’s about the unfair advantage … trans people in the sports … have over biological women.
… trans women … have a significant advantage over … cis … women when it comes to strength and speed and in most (but not all) cases

I do note that you state that this is not true in all cases btw, so also interested in hearing what you think the exception is (that is, what are those cases where trans women, particularly trans women in sports, do not have an unfair or significant advantage over cis women when it comes to strength and speed).

Actually, now I’m curious how they will handle cases of people with more than 2 chromosomes.

Me too. Actually, this is explicitly called out in the article,

World Athletics’s testing requirements would also affect small numbers of competitors who were born with atypical sex chromosomes.

But they don’t say what would happen. The easy ones: presumably, XYY is treated the same as XY and XO is treated like XX. But how would XXY be handled? Or cases where we have genetic chimerism - e.g. some cells are XY and some are XO or XX. (One way this happens is if fraternal twins of different sex are in the womb, and then one absorbs the other.)

Intersexed folks at best seem to be an afterthought in this proposal.

If the tests are sensitive enough, someone with XY gonadal dysgenesis might be counted as XX as well, though I’m skeptical on this point. Actually, this is exactly why such tests are bad - someone who presents as female in virtually every public way, and would be seen as female in terms of sex under even many forms of medical examinations, could be treated as male under these rules and forced to compete against men.

It’s the exact opposite of what the anti-trans folks say that they want to accomplish - protecting women from male athletes.

As the research doesn’t cover trans athletes, it’s of limited relevance. The onus has not yet been met.

The company said: “Any buyer will be required to comply with applicable law with respect to the treatment of customer data.”

And let’s hold them to that. There’s no way a release of someone’s DNA isn’t a violation of the GDPR, the CCPA, or something similar. And I’d expect it’d also be protected under various health regulation related laws too.