We've beat that horse to death and that argument boils down to:

Group 1 : trans individuals deal with severe depression and high suicide rates and other challenges due to exclusion thus denying them access to sport might contribute to bad outcomes for them including some killing themselves

Group 2 : great. We get that. We are sympathetic. I think accommodating Trans athletes in Recreational SPort works. Those sports are based on the principles of inclusiveness, fun, and a lack of judgement. Where they want to compete in Competitive sport they still can but must do so by biological sex for the womans division to ensure a level playing field exists for cis girls to still compete and where the Trans athlete can compete against them as an equal on a Level Playing Field.


Group 1 - No. Denying transwomen that choice to compete against CIS women again might lead to increased severe depression and suicides. Thus the concept of a level playing field must be sacrificed as this is the greater good. Trans individuals must get full access to Competitive sport in the gender choice they make as the highest priority. CIS women having a Level playing field just is not a priority.



And quite frankly if the majority of society decides that it is a higher priority to sacrifice the 'Fair Playing field' for cis women so transwomen can compete against them, then that is how it will be.

I have laid out my reasons why I think that is 'dangerous' and will cause even more harm in the long run, but in this battle of opinion, I recognize others feel differently.

What is not in dispute is that CIS women will no longer have a place to compete in a Fair Playing Field if transwomen are given full access. The only time and reason a CIS woman might find herself on a Level Playing Field is simply because the number of Trans participating today is low. Not because rules ensure them a level playing field.

Do you see how people could think that maybe you're having your cake and eating it here?

I've presented a real world problem, and your stance is that you don't have to "solve" that because it's an edge case. On the other hand, you get to set extreme hypotheticals because "that's the first thing you learn in a debate class in university".

I'll be honest, I never had a "debate class" at university. But what happens in a "debate class" isn't really my concern. I certainly didn't shy away from the combative elements of my tutorial discussions, but I'm not looking to win a debate here. I'm looking to discuss the impact of policies and practices on people here in the real world.

I think if you read back your last post you'll see that my previous criticism holds true that you're willing to write a lot more about why you don't even have to address a real world issue than you are to engage in them. I'll give you another example, maybe I missed it, but I put it to you several times about "level playing fields" and technology that it isn't even a principle that applies to all sports. That's why I mentioned F1 several times.

You even impugned me before for supposedly giving you extreme examples, even though all mine have been taken from the real world, and yours are imagined up and plucked from the ether.

Has anyone itt taken this position?

Uke's come closest, but he was very keen to distinguish he only intended it for low-level youth sports.

It is not universally true that you should look to extreme examples to solve problems. I don't know what university you learned this from, but it's useful not to be too rigid in how you approach the real world.

Sometimes, possibly such as in this case, it's most reasonable to figure out what works for nearly every situation we will really run across. If we can't find a good solution that handles every extreme example, then possibly we just do what's right for most examples and deal with the exceptions on a case-by-case basis as they come up.

I focused on low-level youth sports because I think the arguments are absolutely clear and compelling here. It is the place where we are most likely to find common ground, and where the harm to denying trans inclusion in sport is the greatest. However, I have never said that is the only place it applies. For example I agree with the NCAA that trans women should be able to compete in college basketball if they have been on 12 months of hormone suppression. But there is no need to focus on that when people can't even agree with just the basic human dignity of allowing a trans girl on the local schools baseball team. It's pretty ****ing disgusting.

I am not saying to 'solve' but I am saying for methodology it is important to ALWAYS consider the most extreme cases and outcomes. You can then decide if they are acceptable.


That means in this Trans debate where one of the main arguments being repeated is 'this is a non issue because there are very few Trans people', one must consider (yes MUST) the potential of the impact if those numbers grow to a point where it 'is an issue'.

If it sheer foolishness and poor Management and decision making to not contemplate that, and just stumble forward, it happens and then say 'Oops, I guess we should have considered that'.

Once considered the decision can rightly be 'we think this is so low probability' or 'we think it is still worth it', but at least you considered the 'unintended potential consequences' of a decision that allows for them to be possible.


I think anyone in a logic or debate class fails that class if they do not take this approach.

I'm sorry to hear you have such a diminutive view of the value of sport. I hardly think that it is "co-opting" sport to consider the values of teamwork, and community, and leadership, and integrity, and building active livestyles, indeed this is much of the value of youth sport. We're not just trying to rank people. If that was the only point, I'd say cut most of the funding for youth sport. But instead youth sport is so incrediably valuable to our young people for many reasons and I don' want to exclude some of them because they are a little different.

Unfortunately, the transphobic GOP bills that are being passed right now in states like Arkansas profit ALL forms of trans inclusion in sports including down to extracurriculars at the elementary level. So no, very tragically the door is being absolutely shut in the noses of these poor trans kids, and no wonder the suicide rates are off the ****ing chars. It's a real tragedy.

I think I'm more or less in agreement with you. Even then I'm up front that my reading of the information on trans athletes and how hormones affect performance is pretty limited. I'm interested in it but the reality is I'm not qualified to make a judgement on it. What I have seen is enough to make me think that there is a general case to be made that it's a lot more complicated than a blanket solution for all trans people. Which is in part why I pursued the blades issue in paralympic runners. It's not a matter to be decided on my gut feelings about who has what advantage. It's a matter for science and medicine. What I think is telling though is that people were much more open to the idea of settling blades on actual research, and certainly more comfortable with the aim of inclusivity, than they ever are about trans people getting, at the very least, the attempt of that generosity.

Right. The well known legal cliche is the exact opposite; Hard cases make bad law

Exactly. The Supreme Court exists and hears cases every year for a reason. You shouldn't expect laws to unambiguously decide every possible case from day 1. The system is already in place for the difficult ones that need to be dealt with case by case.

The great flaw of not considering unintended consequences and trying to rule by simply being 'nice' or 'accommodating'.


This is a very real debate and fight in the courts right now.

Disabled persons fought for the right to compete against abled bodied persons in their sports arguing they had no advantage and thus should be accommodated.

In an attempt to accommodate the initial rulings were 'yes' based on examinations of the technology "at that point in time' and finding they did not have an advantage. Heck you could see it on the field and they were losing. So 'proven' right. Accommodate them and let them compete.


A consideration of 'what if the technology changes... gets better' was not factored in as tech went from...




to




And the fight is on.

Currently blade runners have seen vast improvements in the tech of their prosthetic legs and they are within site of bettering all able bodied peoples times.

But they fight to keep competing anyway.. after all the best Olympian able bodied athletes still beat them so they argue in court 'they have no advantage' and thus should be accommodated.

Those who take the wrong approach to logic stop there. They do not think about the extreme case.

This despite the FACT that the way for these guys to get faster is NOT to simply train their cardio, reflexes, etc in the same way an able bodied athlete does and is to go back to their engineer and say 'I need lighter stronger, better engineered prosthetics. I need you to engineer something that has twice the function it does today'.

Many, many people argue it is fair to let them compete as they only look at today, thinking what is the harm, they cannot even win and they are incapable of seeing how this destroys the concept of a level playing field. And perhaps some do not care about that.

I honestly think a significant percent of people think competitive sports are just trivial and silly anyway and they do not understand or value what is at stake in the competition provided by a level playing field.

They may not understand why a 20 year old beating an 8 year old in a sprint might not matter to the kid but another 8 year old beating him in competition will. And perhaps that bridge cannot be connected.

If I only plan to use the dam to 1/3rd capacity, i should not consider what happens if it fills right up or over flows.

Considering the cases that consider and test potential outcomes =/= setting the law or rules at the most extreme outcomes. It is about being aware and not oblivious.

As i said, fine if you decide they are low probability or not a concern but the worst managers in any company are the ones who have never even consider the possibility of a potential failure point.

You can see my blade example above and what can happen when short sighted people make rules for all.

We can regulate technology though. In fact, we already do. In fact, I gave you a real world example of that. Remember how I told you different rule sets have different gloves? The fact that someone can make a Fallout style Power Fist in the future doesn't matter if the rules are "10oz padded gloves".

So maybe it would be difficult to incorporate or regulate blades. I don't know. I'm happy to remain agnostic on that front. What I can say is that if there are blades for which there is no advantage/disadvantage, and if we could regulate that easily enough, then it really doesn't matter if in 50 years time RoboCop is on the streets. RoboCop might be banned, but someone like Pistorius might be fine.

I think inclusiveness and openness are great sporting ideals. I also, like you, think fairness is an ideal. I can even grant for sake of argument that fairness is the most important one of all and cannot be compromised on. Your position still doesn't follow from it.

We can still regulate gloves from slips to full weight boxing gloves even if in the future someone thinks of this:

The argument we can 'regulate technology' makes my argument and does not harm it which you seem to have not got prior.

What you are saying is 'if an advantage in the blade legs is found, we can cap it technology wise'. We can make sure it is competitive to an able bodied runner by just making it slower. We can 'rebalance the playing field'.

Put aside how that distorts competition and destroys the idea of skill based competition if we just manipulated technology to get a result... but ok.

we cannot regulate or tilt the playing field back to 'fair' if a transwoman brings an inherent advantage to the playing field. There is no technology or anything else to tweak. It is simply 'tilted' and 'unfair'.

This situation is also a particularly bad one for the "extreme cases" way of thinking about things. As in, the focus in my view should be on the broad lowest levels first like youth participant in their schools sports teams. Worrying about the most extreme hypotheticals of what happens during the trans-apocalypse when all the gender fluid people switch identities half way through the 100m dash to win the scholarships to the martian olympics...like **** off with these extremes while trans people are literally dying today. Or less hyperbolically, things that are analyzed through a balance of competing factors like these cases aren't well informed by considered extreme hypotheticals.

Yes I'm quite happy with allowing the respective governing bodies of the top sporting competitions make their own decisions based on their own reads of the science on hormone suppression or whatever and not trying to arm chair that.

Great episode! But this whole conversation is pretty tired and has been solved. It's completely analogous to PGA Tour vs Martin 20 years ago. Because disabled people are't part of the conservative cultural wars like transgender people, nobody really talks about it anymore unless you're big into golf or the law. But it sets up exactly what should happen, let two parties go to court over it. Really, this situation is even more extreme because in the Martin case you had an existing law on inclusion that the PGA thought went too far, where here you have peremptory exclusionary proposals that simply aim to set up extra barriers for trans children. If this starts having an impact on NCAA, the Olympics etc I'd much rather hear from those groups than jackass republican politicians on their behalf.

That case is not analogous nor should it be considered precedent. That is about creating a completely arbitrary rule that has no impact on the sport or the athlete either with the rule in or out.

The current Blade Runners case going through the courts, which they are losing has far closer analytic components as they both deal with the idea of 'what is a fair playing field' and 'does this impact a fair playing field'.

Right, which is why I've never once argued that the technical/medical process of sex verification itself is a big issue.

Um, it involves a lot more than deep depression.

No, I've never argued that, and I don't know if anyone else really has either. I actually would suggest that a small number of trans kids in sports today makes your suggestion more tolerable in the short term. It's the fact that this is likely to become a growing phenomenon that will make it a big problem.

I've also never suggested this. What I have suggested is that at the highest levels of competition, this might be needed. And if you were to ask me about timing, I would suggest the sooner they can resolve this, the better, before they have trans people training for their Olympic dreams for 5 or 6 years only to have it all taken away from them. The same for CIS women.

I, um, I hardly even know what to say to this. I'll come back to it at the end.

Given how often you try to summarize people's positions in your own words, and get it wrong, maybe you shouldn't jump to the "lies" declaration when someone gets your own position wrong.

This is what can be difficult about discussing things with you sometimes, this belief that so many discussions on here are debates that need to be won. And admittedly it's hard to criticize, as we all do it sometimes in this forum. But it seems more prevalent with you than others, that you get into a complex topic, find what you think is a logical answer, and then your entire involvement in the discussion is all about "winning the debate". And I guess that if you're certain you're right, I shouldn't fault that as I probably come off the same way myself sometimes. I just hope that your mind still remains open, even when you come into a discussion certain that you have it right. Maybe I shouldn't even have commented on this, IDK - your assertion that you have the correct answer reminded me of this.

So, back to your 8 year old comment that, honestly, blew me away. No hyperbole. Earlier on, I almost came back to you with an example of a kindergarten kid at sports day, but decided that was silly, and of course we wouldn't be disagreeing on kids in that age range. Well, apparently I was wrong. I hardly even know where to start with this. The idea that we have to start this with kids in grades 2 or 3 (or maybe younger...I don't know if there is a limit for you) is ridiculous. I think it demonstrates that you are in way, way over your head when it comes to the impact this black-and-white thinking would potentially have on kids in school. While I think I know a little more about the subject than you do, I'm also out of my depth on this topic so I'll just say that I'm confident that worrying about this at the age of 8 has far more potential for harm than good.

And if you're worried that if we don't set this rule at a young age, it will be harder to later on, your fears are unfounded. The way we handle school sports for kids already changes dramatically as they get older. When you're 5, or even 8, everyone's doing everything together. As they get a little older, you start having teams, but everyone's welcome. Older still, everyone's still welcome, but now there might be "A" and "B" teams. Into high school, there's only going to be one or two teams for far more kids, which often means there's simply no space for most kids. I don't see any reason that if one were to have a "sex verification" rule, it would have to be with 8 year olds, rather than coming much, much later.

Yeah. The American's With Disabilities Act was so great not because it let somebody who can't walk a course play pro golf but for the millions of people who can now work a job, go to a movie etc bc of simple things like wheelchair ramps. And these insane Republican bans are evil because they limit the options of a young trans girl who's having problems making friends and might benefit from being outside and running around with other kids. It's no big deal if future court cases arise at the NCAA or Olympic level because we are unwilling to accept the Draconian bans....that's exactly what the judicial system is for.

What I'm saying is something more like this: if we came up with some kind of blades which we'd determined only allowed an amputee to run at the speed they would have as a natural runner then I'd be okay with including them.

And that's a question I would leave to the scientists. If it's a question they can't reasonably determine then, okay, I guess we're stuck leaving the paralympians to themselves.

Which, because I keep grounding my examples in the real world, is exactly what we've attempted to do and are currently attempting to settle.

So if we could determine that some trans people, as a result of medical intervention, are performing at the level they would have were they cis then I have no problem with them competing in that division. That's an empirical question. One that we may or may not be able to answer. All I'm saying is if we could determine it, then I'm open to it.

Let's go back to the gloves again. Just because Moe might invent The Stinger it doesn't mean we have to ban gloves from the sport. There's regulations on gloves, on what golf balls you can use, what studs soccer players can have, any equipment you can think of has a rule set to prevent people from simply implementing new technology on a whim. Although, as I've mentioned enough times, we do have sports like F1 where even that's not entirely true.

Which is just silly. It speaks to what I think is a main difference between us.

You see zero value in sport and as such destroying 'competitiveness' for inclusiveness means nothing to you.

Of course we can hone and turn back technology once it becomes too advanced.

What you are saying here is that as long as the technology is sub par, let them compete but as soon as they get better get the engineers in so they can only 'tie' the fastest runner or 'tie' the world record. You are arguing for a competitive sports future where engineers determine who wins by a simple decision of "i will only dial it back so it is close but he still wins' or 'I will dial it back so he comes in behind the winners best time and thus in the pack'.


Can you clarify.

Would you get the engineers to dial back the technology based on the 'best runner competing that day' so they only tie them for first but have no chance at the National Record?

Or would you always allow the technology to be dialed up so the person could break the record but just barely?

Because we absolutely WILL get to a point where cyber enhancements will ensure no able bodied human can compete. Heck we already pretty much there with cybernetic lift enhancement suits that allow normal humans to lift weights like a fork lift does.

So please, very carefully explain how much you think the Engineers need to dial back the ability of these robotic bodies that disabled people are now starting to wear to keep it fair?

I specifically want to know if you would deny them participation in chasing and achieving world records by dialing it back that far?

I think when you call it destroying the sport you're begging the question at this point. It's not at all clear to me how the kind of scenario I laid out would destroy the sport. If you think it's simply the presence of disabled runners that would destroy things then that's a premise you do need to motivate for me.

The scenario I laid out would be if we'd been able to empirically determine what speed Pistorius would have run at had he not lost his legs, and if there were some blades that allowed him to run at that speed, then that I think would be fine to me.

And to bring this back to the real world, that's something like what they tried to determine in his case: did the blades allow him to run faster than if he still had his legs? If the answer's no, then we're all good. There's no competitive edge there, there's only his running speed.

So rather than go through yet another of your thought experiments, I'm going to stick with the real world here.

If your response is going to be something like "We can't empirically determine that" then FINE. It's a matter for the science. If your response is going to be "But what about this list of weird cases I imagined up" then my answer is going to be "I'll take a similar approach". I'm willing to go case by case in the future. I'm willing to bit the bullet and say "No" to some things and not others. Just like I'm okay with 14oz gloves but not if you add a Stinger to them.

I've found this particular narrative from you really weird. Those of advocating for including all girls in youth sport are ones that really see a LOT of value in sport. Here, for instance, is a great post of mine elaborating on precisely that value that you sadly ignored.

Fwiw, my username is a reference to my tragic dedication to Sheffield United. I've also mentioned that I competed in martial arts in various categories. I still train in it and I teach a bit too, mostly helping out with the kids' classes. So not only do I very much value sport, I put a fair bit of my time into propagating it.

I am not sure what you are asking or suggesting here.

It is FACT that technology like the blades, and technology like the 'lifting suits' will only improve.

Fact as far as the entire history of such tech when it becomes a focus for other needs. All sorts of private sector and military applications demand that they keep improving the tech.

They are testing all sorts of new composite advanced materials like nanotech that will make the tech, lighter, stronger and much more functional achieving greater results.

SO do you have any answer, other than assuming that for the first time in man's history with such tech, that we might not improve it that much?


I want you to answer how you would handle it IF and WHEN they do improve the tech beyond man's ability to compete?

So i will requote this and ask you to answer very specifically how you would deal with these questions other than blinders...