Originally Posted by
Heathpack
Is it “discrimination” to disallow men from racing in women’s fields? No. Of course not. That would be a silly thing to believe.
There’s a physiologic basis for these distinctions. A very valid physiologic distinction.
It’s not about wins. It’s about the fundamental core concept of racing and competition. The idea of setting race fields up such that prepared competitors have a shot a winning, or doing well, is absolutely imperitive. Without that, people start to see racing or competing as invalid. And when it’s invalid, people lose interest.
Would my life crumble and fall to pieces without bike racing? Nope. I’d just do something else. But if you care about there being a sport of bike racing, whether as a spectator or a participant, you have to care about fairness in the sport because if you don’t, the sport will fade into irrelevancy.
I am about as liberal in my social views as people come. But I also have a brain and the ability to consider the paradigm of different groups and weigh multiple factors and then form a judgement. I support transgender rights and also women’s right and human rights in general. I am sympathetic to the plight of the suicidal. But that doesn’t mean that you wreck sport for the 99.9% of women who are not transgender. In the same way that the able-bodied are excluded from the paraOlympics, men are excluded from women’s fields, and adults are excluded from children’s fields.
But sport isn't being wrecked for "99.9%" of women. No doubt the woman that would have otherwise finished first is likely frustrated, but even for her I doubt very much the sport is wrecked. Her quest for a master's world championship is wrecked, but I hope that she does not define her entire sporting experience by one result. I'm sure the 2nd and 3rd place finishers would have been happy to be one spot higher but, again, I highly doubt their whole sporting experience is wrecked. The rest of the women, in all the other events and age categories were unaffected.
Balance that with the fact that someone gets to compete (and in this case experience the joy of winning) in a sport against people of their own gender. And competing, as you no doubt know better than me, encompasses the entire journey not just the actual competition itself.
Originally Posted by
Heathpack
Gender is a complicated thing. If you’re an outlier on the gender spectrum, that’s a tough lot in life. All kinds of people have a tough lot in life, though, in varied ways. As a society we should do what we can to mitigate that tough lot for as many people as we can, to the greatest extent possible. But not to the extent that we harm society in general. Is sport for women and girls a positive thing? Yes. Is that something worth preserving? Absolutely yes.
It may be difficult to come up with an elegant solution as to where transgender women should compete in sport. It may be that in track sprinting they compete with men but in pursuit they compete with women. But you’ve got to accept that transgender people are outliers on the physiology scale and as such the reality of life is that they may not fit elegantly into any race field. This is not the fault of society, its just biology.
I agree with everything except the implication that women's sport is under some kind of existential threat. It isn't currently.
Originally Posted by
Heathpack
The issue is about the *magnitude* of the genetic advantage. In most sports, the male physiology is recognized to be enough of an advantage that there’s no point in men and women competing together. There is of course variation in the genetic advantage that one woman has over another, but the magnitude of the difference generally is not as large. Potentially that difference can be overcome with training, practice and preparation to an extent that the difference between male physiology and female physiology cannot.
So: not a joke. Just some coomon sense understanding of the reality of life.
There are plenty of genetic factors that are far, far greater than male vs female. The top female cyclists are more genetically gifted (including any "penalty" they get from being female) than the vast majority of males. Despite being an above average male cyclist, my VO2 max will never come close to Annemiek van Vleuten's. And the gap between us is far, far larger than the typical male/female gap. She has, straight up, far more natural ability than 95% of male cyclists. If we were dividing people based purely on genetic ability, she, along with just about every female pro, would be racing in the tougher division.
We divide between male and female because it's convenient, socially acceptable, and is pretty obvious (or at least it was until we started to learn more about genetics). Humans are visually driven in many cases (hence why we get ignorant people posting pictures here as though that tells the whole story). There is a value in having women see a woman standing atop the podium. But for most sports, the difference between the sexes, while large relative to the difference between one elite athlete and another, is quite small compared to the difference between an elite athlete and a typical person or even from a pretty good athlete to an average one.
Sport has never been, nor ever will be, fair from a genetic perspective. But I believe we can achieve a solution that allows trans women to compete in a way that is pretty close to fair. Certainly more fair than the 5'2" girl who gets cut from the JV volleyball team in favour of the 6'3" one. The current solution isn't perfect. I suspect Dr McKinnon had a fairly significant advantage. But we won't get there without starting somewhere.