Good thing those aren't the only factors liberals consider when talking about trans issues, or else they'd look like real rubes!

It’s great to see conservatives having good-faith concerns about the integrity of women’s sports!

It does entertain me that the biggest injustice associated with trans rights that some conservatives seem to be able to come up with is unfair competition in sports.

Dudes grifting for that sweet, sweet women’s athletics money is a serious problem and not just an excuse to trivialize trans rights issues.

Just like game journalism before it.

On the contrary. I welcome the great unification of sporting events. If Danicka can do it, so can you.

I don't think that is true. It's not about the very top male athletes. Let's take tennis. Venus Williams made $40 million in total career prize money. Can she beat the #100 ranked male player? Did he make more or less than $40 million?
The crossover point will be different for every sport but it's very possible that the #1000 ranked male can beat the #20 ranked female who earns more than him.


Additionally it's about more than angle-shooting for monetary gain. A while ago there was some outrage about a MtF teenager winning girl's wrestling tournament. I assume she is a genuine trans-person and had no financial interest. That still doesn't make it fair for the other girls in the competition.

Such an odd coincidence that this is always the scenario imagined and not the reverse.

I believe it was a high school FtM wrestler that was made to compete in the girls division despite being on testosterone replacement therapy and having a mustache. FWIW the athlete wanted to compete in the boys division.

Even more recently there has been controversy with a MtF powerlifter who started lifting 1 year ago and has already broken women's lifting records in the state.

This has nothing to do with conservative vs liberal imo. I'm also fine with shutting up and letting women do all the talking about the issue which I think they will do when people stop trying to make it right vs left.

Letting the trans people and women have a seat at the table makes it a conservative vs. liberal issue, because the conservative dudes don't want them involved in the decision making process.

I think she did and then didn't in Rio (there have been some court cases related to this), I believe there were 3 intersex athletes in finishing in the top 3 in the women's 800 meters.

On one hand I'd be inclined to believe that because the main point of segregating sports along male/female lines is to segregate by sex because of the obvious biological advantages men have then that is undermined a bit when you have someone whose gender is female but whose sex is either intersex or male.

On the other hand it is rather unfair to someone who was simply born that way and simply wants to compete, the way Semenya's case was handled in terms of the media attention on her was a shambles.

Female is the protected category and I think, at least in running, the compromise is perhaps to ensure testosterone levels are reduced in cases where a woman who is either intersex or male(biologically) wants to compete alongside female athletes.

This perhaps isn't sufficient in some other sports - in basketball height is a big advantage and a man who transitions to female and lowers her testosterone is still going to have that bone structure/height giving her an advantage over other women. Likewise this could have an impact in things like MMA etc..

I'm not sure it is an easy thing to solve while also trying to keep things fair for both trans and intersex people who want to compete and the other people they're competing against. I suspect that in future there could be a third intersex category, though some social/cultural stigma might well prevent such a thing at the moment. Also that perhaps wouldn't solve things for trans people who simply want to be treated as the gender they identify as.

I'd be a bit skeptical about this, if you ignore male/female and segregate into two height classes then I suspect you'd end up with a class made up exclusively of tall men and a class mostly dominated by short men.

I'm not suggesting using height. I'm just pointing out it's the only aspect that would seem unique to basketball

Why would it ever be the reverse? Are you suggesting that the incidences of women committing sexual assault are somehow comparable in number or severity to incidences of men committing sexual assault?

Who said anything about sexual assault?

Why do we have gender separated bathrooms in the first place, then?

I have yet to read a definitive sociological history of bathroom separation but if I had to bet I'd guess that it has more to do with norms involving sex and patriarchal social control of women's sexuality than with any evidence-based concern about assault. I say that just because lots of other areas of gender segregation have been motivated for those reasons.

In any case, I doubt it's possible to support a claim that bathrooms are segregated primarily because of a concern about assault. That's almost certainly a post-hoc explanation.

What the conservatives want is to constantly frame the topic of transgender people in terms of dudes angleshooting so they can cheat at sports or sneak into women's bathrooms. We're not going to see an OP where Skalansky uses his formidable analytical power to find new ways to stop bullying or suicide among people with non-conventional gender identities. The unstated implication is that transgender is just something people make up and not a sincere, valid part of someone's identity.

It's a clever trick, because you inevitably have guys like well named who are happy to engage conservatives at length on their own terms. Which ultimately just reinforces the way people like Ins0 want transgender issues to be framed.

If anyone actually, sincerely gives a rip about fairness in women's sports, it seems like establishing divisions based on biological sex but not gender would be acceptable to most people. Or chromosomes, maybe, or testosterone levels, assigned-at-birth-sexuality, whatever. I don't really know much about people with non-standard gender identities, so I won't presume to speak for them, but it seems reasonable enough to me. But I don't think it's worthwhile to have this conversation with disingenuous people who are patently just using this as a way to demean the whole notion of transgender identity.

I'd never thought about it this way, but that's an excellent point. Given how lax society has been toward sexual assault, I sorta doubt many of our social constructs were set up to stop it.

I should clarify - by "assault", I also mean "unwanted looking" (which would probably qualify as minor assault under most jurisdictions - you tell me?).

In any case, my question was obviously (in the sense that you used it) rhetorical. I find it mind-numbing how someone can ask in good faith why "we talk about a problem with men going in women's bathrooms, but not the reverse". That, to me, is political correctness gone mad.

None for nothing, what exactly do you think you're gonna see if you were hypothetically allowed to use a women's bathroom? My understanding is that they generally use stalls. I guess you could try to look over the stall to sneak a peek, but that's usually frowned upon. Like, there's not much stopping a perv from just walking into a women's restroom and doing that.

I guess maybe the ladies might get a peek at your wang when you're peeing, but you've explicitly said we shouldn't worry about that.

Sorry to quote you to ask this - but it seemed the most relevant to the question.

Could someone explain how the transgender thing works? I mean, if we take an average man, he is much, much stronger than the average woman - there is just no competition (hope everyone can agree with that). So, what is it that the transgender procedure does that negates this advantage? Is it just the hormones that make him stronger, and with hormone therapy he will become weaker?

I don't get it, it does seem like an angleshoot. Bad analogy maybe, but one pertinent to this forum - if all poker games were gender segregated, and the "average pro" man could make 100b/100 in the average women's game, but 5bb/100 in the men's game, that would surely incentivise one or two of them to go for the chop, no?

It's these nuanced discussions that make special sklansky threads so great.

I'll be the first to admit I am totally clueless on this topic, I am reading this thread and posting in it out of interest and to hopefully learn something, so please don't take my comments to mean that these are dearly held beliefs. It just seems to me like there is maybe a common sense, for want of a better term, "base" reason, to segregate certain things by gender; bathrooms being one. Another one being medical care - for some purposes, I would prefer to see a male doctor (I am a heterosexual male), whereas for other purposes I would be happy with a doctor of either gender. I am sure there are other examples I can't think of right now.

It just seems to me that trying to deny the physiological differences that separate men and women is going too far, but I am not married to the opinion and I am interested to read the thoughts of all the posters in this thread on the topic.

I take issue with at most with the bolded part. This seems like semantic trickery. There is a pretty easy way to ascertain your sex or gender at birth, and they are the same thing.

What you have failed to mention in your whole analysis of this topic, is *when* the gender reassignment take place. If a 10 year old gets his weenie weenie chopped off and fed a bunch of oestrogen and a progesterone, that would have a much more marked effect than on a, say 23 year old, wouldn't you say?

I'm not suggesting there should be age limits on the surgery, but I'm also suggesting that I probably shouldn't be allowed to get my cock cut off, forge my birth certificate (by only a couple of years), and go and compete in the 150m gtd over 80s female arm-wrestling tournament.

You shouldn't have to get anything cut off to compete as your gender. Call it the new tuck rule.