Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[Valmy]

I suppose though that's the problem with taking a scientific approach to deciding who is a man and a woman and control against doping for the purpose of competition. You have to draw a line somewhere, and there'll always be advantages for those who push this line, and those who fall on the wrong side of it (whether naturally or artificially).
There's no easy answer on this one.

There is no evidence she pushed any lines. Comparing people who are just born a certain way to those who are actively cheating using artificial means seems ridiculous to me.

But if we are going to draw this line it needs to be done transparently and give athletes years to know this is the expectation that genetic testing is going to be done. You cannot wait until somebody is following all the rules and competing before you decide they should be disqualified. That is BS.

So I think the easy answer is to be fair and transparent, not arbitrary based on vibes or whatever. Every woman, both cis and trans, can be disqualified if they have the wrong genetics or hormone levels. That is pretty vicious but if established and understood and followed it would at least be transparent and everybody would know the rules. Color me skeptical it would actually stop the fear mongering and trans panic every time somebody had the wrong vibes though.

I just think it is a little absurd. Most of these top athletes, both male and female, are genetic miracles anyway.

[Josquius]

I suppose though that's the problem with taking a scientific approach to deciding who is a man and a woman and control against doping for the purpose of competition. You have to draw a line somewhere, and there'll always be advantages for those who push this line, and those who fall on the wrong side of it (whether naturally or artificially).
There's no easy answer on this one.

There is no evidence she pushed any lines. Comparing people who are just born a certain way to those who are actively cheating using artificial means seems ridiculous to me.

But if we are going to draw this line it needs to be done transparently and give athletes years to know this is the expectation that genetic testing is going to be done. You cannot wait until somebody is following all the rules and competing before you decide they should be disqualified. That is BS.

I just think it is a little absurd. Most these top athletes, both male and female, are genetic miracles anyway.

I'm not talking about the Algerian case, I'm speaking in general.
Science says in a certain sport testosterone gives an advantage, so to mthere's a rule that says you can have a max testosterone level of '5' (keeping it simple to avoid googling) then that'll mean people who naturally fall on 4.9 will have a natural advantage whilst those on 5.1 will be really screwed quite unfairly.
Put the barrier at 5.2 instead then that 5.1 person has a big advantage but its the 5.3 people missing out narrowly and being screwed unfairly.

[Norgy]

If some of you are old enough the remember the DDR's Olympic performances in any sport, also women's athletics, this would not be a big deal.

That was dope, as you Americans say.

[Sophie Scholl]

As someone with firsthand knowledge of what is involved with long-term hormone replacement theory, being a trans person, and all those things entail, the notion that *anyone* would go through it all for a possible boost in a sport is utter madness and at its root is a complete strawman/boogeyman concocted by folks who simply don't like trans folks and trans women in particular. Despite the constant outcry of the past decade or so, I still have yet to see *anything* that backs up the fears of men masquerading as trans women to win at women's sports or trans women athletes dominating women's sports. Heck, there tend to be more bills and laws introduced in states than there are actual trans youth athletes. It is, from my perspective, a totally fabricated issue used to rile up the fears of those most apt to be motivated by fear, hate, and spite.

[Gups]

Her biggest crime is apparently winning an Olympic medal.

And having fallen victim to Russian testing which people like Gups seem to think is enough to condemn or at least question her.

I'm doing no such thing. I'm condemning the IOC's failure to have a policy. Its certainly not the boxer's fault and the crap she has faced is entirely unfair.

[grumbler]

I'm doing no such thing. I'm condemning the IOC's failure to have a policy. Its certainly not the boxer's fault and the crap she has faced is entirely unfair.

AIUI, the IOC doesn't have eligibility requirements for any sport.  It defers to the international governing body for each sport.  This year's women's boxing was different because the governing body for the sport was disqualified for rampant cheating in favor of Russian athletes.  The IOC lacks the means and mandate to impose its own standards.  In any sport.

[Valmy]

Her biggest crime is apparently winning an Olympic medal.

And having fallen victim to Russian testing which people like Gups seem to think is enough to condemn or at least question her.

I'm doing no such thing. I'm condemning the IOC's failure to have a policy. Its certainly not the boxer's fault and the crap she has faced is entirely unfair.

Well this is how policies get made. Outrage happens and then institutions struggle to respond.

I am sure they, or whomever, will have to put together some sort of policy.

As someone with firsthand knowledge of what is involved with long-term hormone replacement theory, being a trans person, and all those things entail, the notion that *anyone* would go through it all for a possible boost in a sport is utter madness and at its root is a complete strawman/boogeyman concocted by folks who simply don't like trans folks and trans women in particular. Despite the constant outcry of the past decade or so, I still have yet to see *anything* that backs up the fears of men masquerading as trans women to win at women's sports or trans women athletes dominating women's sports. Heck, there tend to be more bills and laws introduced in states than there are actual trans youth athletes. It is, from my perspective, a totally fabricated issue used to rile up the fears of those most apt to be motivated by fear, hate, and spite.

Yes. I was concerned a bit about this at first but time and reality have proved both you and Buddha correct. There is no danger of over-competitive glory hound male athletes pretending to be women to win money and glory. This issue has been around for at least 20 years now and we haven't seen anything substantial like this happening.

Probably why the panic has moved on to attacking cis women who just have the wrong vibes.

[Valmy]

Science says in a certain sport testosterone gives an advantage

Yeah well all kinds of hormones and genetics give one an advantage. Look maybe we need to do something like figure out who is XX and XY or XXY or whatever variants are out there and have a policy on where each one goes. That would be annoying but maybe we have to do that to satisfy all the handwringers.

But measuring testosterone levels? If you are a XX woman and are not taking illegal PEDs what fucking sense does it make to disqualify you based on your naturally occurring hormone levels? Why not ban everybody over 190 cms in Basketball? That's fucking bullshit.

[Sophie Scholl]

I mean, Michael Phelps might as well have been designed in a lab for the express purpose of being an amazing swimmer due to all of his genetic quirks. He absolutely demolished the competition due to those quirks and yet he is celebrated as one of the greatest Olympians ever. Weird how that works. 

(For the record, I am perfectly fine with him winning as much as he did and think it was perfectly fair.)

[Josquius]

Science says in a certain sport testosterone gives an advantage

Yeah well all kinds of hormones and genetics give one an advantage. Look maybe we need to do something like figure out who is XX and XY or XXY or whatever variants are out there and have a policy on where each one goes. That would be annoying but maybe we have to do that to satisfy all the handwringers.

But measuring testosterone levels? If you are a XX woman and are not taking illegal PEDs what fucking sense does it make to disqualify you based on your naturally occurring hormone levels? Why not ban everybody over 190 cms in Basketball? That's fucking bullshit.

Trouble there is that then potentially leads back to blanket bans on trans people just because.

And having seperate rules for trans and cis women... I can definitely see how it could cover for situations like cis women with advantageous typical male features. But seperate but equal has dodgy vibes.

As I say it's a real problem as the entire idea of women's sports as a seperate thing, though originally built on prudishness, is today built up as being about letting women compete when men would just destroy them.
It inherently has quite an artificial ceiling which will hit female "freaks" (a neutral word for this?) whilst male freaks get to just do their thing.

[Sheilbh]

Don't know where the idea women's sport emerged from "prudishness" comes from. It was broadly speaking about liberation - and a breaking of social constraints placed on women. And of course there are periods when it has been crushed.

There are still areas where it's developing - for example it's the Tour de France Femmes at the moment because there's only been a version for women in the last few years. It's still a lot shorter (both in number of stages and the stages themselves), has a lot less razzamatazz than the Tour for men and (I don't know if this is just because of Olympics) is in August which feels not great (and why the men's grand tours are on either side of the hottest summer months).

More generally I think it very much depends on the sport you're talking about on whether it's about competition. For example the reasons a women's rugby team generally won't play a men's rugby team, or, for that matter, boxing between men and women is not just a matter of competitiveness.

I don't really have an issue with Valmy's solution of have clear, transparent and established frameworks (if necessary - and for certain sports they may not be) and apply them.

[Josquius]

Don't know where the idea women's sport emerged from "prudishness" comes from. It was broadly speaking about liberation - and a breaking of social constraints placed on women. And of course there are periods when it has been crushed.

Which was necessary due to the prudishness of the times and men and women existing in two quite seperate worlds with the idea of them playing sport together quite outlandish.
The stuff you hear these days about giving women a fair shot didn't really come into it.

[HVC]

I don't know if you can apply every day social realities (trans women are women and should be treated as such) and spaces like sports. Women's division exist for "fairness" in competition. Whatever that nebulous fact of that fairness entails. So I flip flop on whether person who is XY (or XXY) should be able to compete in women's events. And I agree with Sophie and  don't think a hetero male would undergo the rigours to compete at an advantage*. That's not where my reservation sit. I fall on the "wont someone think of the women" side of the equation, I guess.


*there weird outliers like the brouhaha in the Canadian women's weight lifting federation where a non transitioned and hormonally unmodified contestant participated.

[Sheilbh]

Which was necessary due to the prudishness of the times and men and women existing in two quite seperate worlds with the idea of them playing sport together quite outlandish.
The stuff you hear these days about giving women a fair shot didn't really come into it.

Right but women's sport was a liberation from that world not a reflection of it.

In the era of men and women existing in two separate spheres (which I get is not totally true even when it may have been a sort of social norm), it wasn't that men and women couldn't play sport together but that women should not and could not do sport (I mean women's dress especially in elite circles reflected that, it was to constrain, to immobilise, to ornamentalise). Women were asserting that they could and would.

[HVC]

And to the Olympian's are genetic freaks argument, sex provides advantages over an above genetic "gifts", which is why the average male would outcompete the average female (ignoring the trained male vs female). But the idea is why I do sometimes reconsider. Although, beyond like the Olympics season I don't really think about it