Facebook Follies of Friends and Families

[DGuller]

Here is a hypothetical question: if Novak Djokovic (name randomly picked, I have no idea what his beliefs are) decides to identify as a woman just to prove a point and enter a women's tournament, is he now a trans-woman?  Is someone's claimed identity so unimpeachable that there is literally nothing objective underpinning it?  And can you even call him out for being an asshole for doing this, or would that be transophobic?

[Razgovory]

I can't imagine there would be many men who would be willing to face the repercussions of becoming a transwoman simply to win a sporting event.

[DGuller]

I can't imagine there would be many men who would be willing to face the repercussions of becoming a transwoman simply to win a sporting event.

You just need one asshole who thrives on controversy.  Someone ranked 200th on men's side would still be an overwhelming favorite to win the women's tournament.  If someone does it, then that's okay, nothing wrong with it, she won it fair and square?

[Admiral Yi]

Yes, and Larch's logic is:

If someone is self-identifying as female, they were admitted.

Someone who is cis-male does not identify as female, by definition. If someone with a cis-male physiological characteristics self-identify as female, they are not cis-male but a trans-woman.

So no, cis-males could not enter those competitions.

That's not Larch's logic.  His logic is that because there were no gender idenfitication tests there were no barriers for trans women to play.

By this same logic since there were no sex identification tests either, there were no barriers for cis men to play on the women's side.

As DGuller points out, when everyone subscribes to the same conventions you don't need rules.  Back then they didn't need explicit rules on vaginas and penises because all the penises undeerstood they only played with other penises.  And vice versa.

The fact there was no explicit rule doesn't mean trans women were allowed to play.  No trans women did play.  Renee Richards tried to play and they made the convention explicit by adopting a rule.

[Razgovory]

I can't imagine there would be many men who would be willing to face the repercussions of becoming a transwoman simply to win a sporting event.

You just need one asshole who thrives on controversy.  Someone ranked 200th on men's side would still be an overwhelming favorite to win the women's tournament.  If someone does it, then that's okay, nothing wrong with it, she won it fair and square?

I don't know.  If I read Larch's thing about case in the 1970's than this transsexuals participating in sports has been legal for nearly 50 year.  It hasn't caused a big enough of a problem that I would actually notice it so far.

[Razgovory]

I'm still trying to process women's wrestling.  How could you do that without every male student coming to watch?

[Jacob]

So let's say he just lies,  signs up to the women's competition and say he identifies as female. Does that turn him into a trans-woman?

We are talking about the past, not hypotheticals. Did this happen? If not, then it didn't happen in which case Larch is correct. If it did happen, we can look at what actually did happen.

[DGuller]

So let's say he just lies,  signs up to the women's competition and say he identifies as female. Does that turn him into a trans-woman?

We are talking about the past, not hypotheticals. Did this happen? If not, then it didn't happen in which case Larch is correct. If it did happen, we can look at what actually did happen.

But when it actually will happen, people would be pointing out that it wasn't illegal all these years, so obviously this is just transophobia.

[Jacob]

You are literally defining away an argument without doing anything in the slightest to honestly address it.

No, I am correcting an error in definitions leading to an erroneous conclusion. It is important to have the definitions correct when formulating an argument.

A cis man pretending to be a woman is not the same as a trans woman. That is factual, not defining away the argument.

If you want to argue that a cis man could have pretended to participate in the past, then that's a matter of the the record. Did anyone do that? What happened?

If Larch is saying trans-women participated with no issues since the 1970s until recently, then no number of hypothetical bogeymen or bogeywomen who trolled the competitions changes that fact. What you have to show if you want to counter that argument is an actual issue that occured. Similarly, Yi's argument that cis men could pretend to be trans and participate doesn't counter Larch's argument at all (that trans women participated with no issues), though if you can find cases of it happening I suppose that would counter Larch's argument if you think that's an issue.

If you want to argue that cis men going forward are going to pretend to be trans women for trolling purposes or to abuse the immigration process or for whatever other reasons, you can do so. And, IMO, we have to balance policy to deal with that (to the extent we want to) against the likelihood of it happening and against impact it has on trans people who are not cis folks "pretending". And ideally we do so in a way that is fair and humane.

Because if the suggestion is "hey let's harm trans and intersex people right now to deal with jerks and process abusers that might show up in the future" I argue that a better course of action is "let's not harm trans and intersex people right now, and at such a time as jerks and process abusers start being a problem let's deal with that then."

Being trans or intersex is not - as I understand it - something that accrues a whole bunch of benefits and additional social benefits right now. I doubt very many people are going to be pretending to be either for very long. It sucks too much. Kind of like how not that many people pretend to be gay for extended periods of time (especially back when homophobia was socially acceptable) just to cash in on the sweet benefits of being perceived as gay.

[Jacob]

No they most certainly typically don't. But if you are a poor 3rd world guy and winning that olympic might set you and your family up for life?

Or, you know, just a crazy competitive athlete who can rationalize anything on the way to victory. I mean most cis males don't willingly take drugs that make their testicles shrink either...

Yeah, what if...?

If these hypotheticals start showing up, maybe we should consider a process to deal with them. Until then, I think we should err on the side on not making it any more sucky to be trans or intersex. Or maybe, consider a process to deal with these potential abuses in the specifics rather than excluding trans and/or intersex folks across the spectrum.

Because while in theory this argument may be about that clever 3rd world guy trying to improve the life of his family (the nerve), in practical application it's going to be about excluding trans Jenny from playing soccer with the other girls on the high school team.

[DGuller]

I think the reason people are particularly interested in the women's sports angle for this is for two reasons: 

1)  That's the one area where you really have to define who does and doesn't qualify as a woman, you can't wiggle your way out of it with endless pages of noncommittal bullshit.  At some point someone has to pass down a decision on some borderline case.
2)  Just like with other similar matters, people on the wrong side of the, ahem, progressive consensus risk having an outrage machine deployed against them merely for participating in the debate over the question above.

I think the reason that probing around the hypotheticals around the first questions results in testy "has this actually happened at any time" non-answers is that it gets at the heart of intellectual inconsistencies around the current thinking on sex/gender/*some third concept to be invented in the future* issues.

[Eddie Teach]

I'm still trying to process women's wrestling.  How could you do that without every male student coming to watch?

Having the participants be unattractive and trying to win instead of dry humping each other. Oil wrestling it ain't.

[Jacob]

That's not Larch's logic.  His logic is that because there were no gender idenfitication tests there were no barriers for trans women to play.

By this same logic since there were no sex identification tests either, there were no barriers for cis men to play on the women's side.

As DGuller points out, when everyone subscribes to the same conventions you don't need rules.  Back then they didn't need explicit rules on vaginas and penises because all the penises undeerstood they only played with other penises.  And vice versa.

The fact there was no explicit rule doesn't mean trans women were allowed to play.  No trans women did play.  Renee Richards tried to play and they made the convention explicit by adopting a rule.

Okay, fair enough. If not a single trans woman ever played (not sure how you can ascertain that, though) then yeah. Conversely - and this is how I took Larch's argument - if trans women and intersex individuals played without causing a stir, because no one thought to check and they didn't conveniently identify themselves as such to the public, then they played without incident compared to the proposed situation now where intrusive tests would identify them and prohibit them from playing.

All that said, that still doesn't make a cis man pretending to be a woman a trans woman. DGuller putting on a dress doesn't make him trans. It's just cis guy Dguller in a dress (unless of course DGuller is trans, in which case I apologize. Not putting on the dress wouldn't make her any less trans, though).

[Berkut]

All that said, I think the scenario of "regular dude dresses up as chick just so he can win" is up there with "so now any guy can go into womens' washroom to oogle our daughters just by saying 'I'm really a girl, lol' " as being a constructed scenario (or deliberate trolling action) primarily used to fuel culture war positions.

I think this will definitely happen, and is not at all a constructed scenario.

I think if given the chance, there will always be assholes willing to ruin things for everyone else.

And if there was no rule against men playing in women's sports, it is very much the case that someone will do just that.

If people want to propose new rules to reflect a better understand of gender realities, then it behooves them to also come up with ways of dealing with the completely foreseeable results of those new rules. And I think people can express concern about that in perfectly good faith.

You're missing the fundamental point that this isn't a case of new rules being introduced to allow trans people to compete. Trans and intersex people being allowed is the default situation.
It's those who are claiming to have concerns about niche scenarios which want to introduce sweeping new rules to change this.

I don't think the current rules at all state any such thing. I suspect in most places the rules are simply nothing other then "Men/boys cannot play in womens/girls sports" and there isn't any particular definition of what those terms mean, because in 99.999% of cases it simply has never even been under question that those men the gender you were assigned at birth, with the assumption that such assignment was obvious and without even worthy of mention.

I am all for the science behind suggesting that perhaps those assignments in reality are not nearly so clear cut, or immutable, in all cases.

But that does mean we need to think about what that actually means for a society designed around the incorrect assumption that such things are clear cut and immutable.

Simply demanding that the rules include a bunch of people in categories they previously did not, and then insisting that anyone saying otherwise is doing so in bad faith, is arguing in bad faith.

There are things here that need to be worked out. I don't know what the answer is, but I am pretty sure there is a legitimate question to be asked.

Note: I am also sure plenty of people will exaggerate the question and act like assholes about it because they don't want there to be an answer. That is inevitable.

[Jacob]

I think the reason people are particularly interested in the women's sports angle for this is for two reasons: 

1)  That's the one area where you really have to define who does and doesn't qualify as a woman, you can't wiggle your way out of it with endless pages of noncommittal bullshit.  At some point someone has to pass down a decision on some borderline case.

Agreed. It's complex, and lines have to be drawn somewhere because either someone is going to be able to participate or not. I'm not sure where or how I'd draw the line myself, but like I said I'd prefer to err on not harming already vulnerable people. On the other hand, I'm not super keen on being hard trolled by alt-right lolstronauts either.

2)  Just like with other similar matters, people on the wrong side of the, ahem, progressive consensus risk having an outrage machine deployed against them merely for participating in the debate over the question above.

Do you think that's happening here right now? Or are you more worried about the larger internet environement?

I think the reason that probing around the hypotheticals around the first questions results in testy "has this actually happened at any time" non-answers is that it gets at the heart of intellectual inconsistencies around the current thinking on sex/gender/*some third concept to be invented in the future* issues.

I think when it comes to public policy impacting people's lives and potentially causing harm it is pertinent - and indeed logical - to ask yourself what problem you're solving for. Furthermore, it's pertinent and logical to ask yourself how prevalent and how serious the problem you're solving for is and make sure your proposed response is proportional.

Let me preface the next bit with saying I know you're interested in finding a logical, sound conclusion, that this is an interesting intellectual problem to engage with for you, and that you're not making any of your arguments to be disingenuous or anything like that. But when I ask "where has this actually happened" when faced with hypotheticals used to justify rules that will be used to make the lives of intersex and trans people shittier, to me that is very much the same as asking GOP folks enacting voter suppression laws if the types of fraud they're allegedly countering has actually happened (when co-incidentally it suppresses the vote of demographics who tend not to vote for them).

So I can tell you what I'm prioritizing. I'm prioritizing giving young trans and intersex people as much support as possible and removing tools for regressive bigots to socially bludgeoning them with. Kicking trans Jenny off the high school basketball team is shitty, and will hurt her, not kicking her off is not going to result in an arms race of pretend trans girls joining high school teams across the nation preventing cis girls from playing the game. Telling Jalal the transman (this guy here, with a beard and a girlfriend and all) that he can't use the men's changeroom is going to cause direct harm to him (not to mention potentially freak out a bunch of cis women when he uses their changeroom - or more realistically, just keep him away from any activity that requires a gender segregated change room).

Personally I'm less worried about the trolls and the scammers. This is because I think they won't be particularly prevalent (it's a lot of work, it will come with social consequences that are mostly undesirable) and because I think it can be dealt with as the cases manifest themselves (which also will have the benefit of allowing us to target to responses to things that actually happen, rather than hypothetical ones which may not and which may cause collateral damage). It may take a bit of adjustment and some cases of getting it wrong, but over time we'll be able to distinguish between someone who is trans and someone who's merely pretending to make a point or scam the system.

That doesn't mean it's not an interesting discussion to figure out exactly where the lines should be drawn in sports, and how to address intellectual inconsistencies. But "has this actually happened" is extremely relevant in determining whether any given proposed solution should be applied.