It also occurs to me that most of the west is under lefty governments ATM so the issues that actually affect me are more like digital control, government speech laws, increased taxes, and government spending that I don’t approve of. I think that probably biases me to be more positive towards some kind of effective opposition → conservatives → some positive bias towards republicans. This thread is challenging a lot of that (which seems good). I’ve probably been under-correcting for that.
I broadly agree. With regards to your first sentence, I do worry that some things which superficially seem pro tolerance / liberalism might be bad (like trans women in women’s sports/prisons/changing rooms). I guess this doesn’t really conflict with what you said though since it is a messy situation and (usually?) isn’t as bad as actually evil agendas.
I didn’t. I have a guess after thinking about it (and having read some other posts further down). I’ll go through your suggested questions first.
What is the best argument for excluding trans women from professional women’s sports?
I think this is related to the origin of women’s sports in general so I’ll start there.
The reason for having women’s sports at all is intrinsic differences between the sexes which can lead to: injury and/or a competitive environment in which it is much harder for exceptional women to be recognized. For an example of the second point: tennis. some relevant discussion from reddit.
Including trans women in women’s sports directly goes against both those goals. For contact sports, the risk is obvious, especially for m2f that transition after puberty. For other sports like tennis, it directly harms the second goal. That is the best argument I think.
Another thought, if we want thinks like girls to have sporting role models, having a separate women’s league helps that. However, having a woman succeed at a high level outside of a women’s league is probably even better for role models and aspirations. Chess might be a good example where this kind of general success is possible without any issues.
What specific, objectively verifiable biological advantages do trans women have over cis women in sports?
The tallest are taller, the strongest are stronger, etc. (Possibly: the smartest are smarter but I’ll comment more on that later)
Do these advantages exist in all sports equally?
No, the advantages are almost always specific to the sport. There are sports where women might have advantages, too, though I’m less confident about guessing which. Some guesses: gymnastics, diving, dancing. Things where being flexible, light, or slight help. There are maybe some exceptions to that, like I don’t know why more jockeys aren’t female considering being light is an advantage.
One thing that might also help is to not think about trans women as “identical to a typical man, but in a dress” for the purpose of this thought experiment.
Trans women come in all shapes and sizes so I’m not sure why this matters much if we’re considering the top-tier competitors. There are plenty of trans women that individually don’t have a substantial advantage in that many of their relevant attributes might be phenotypical of women. I don’t think this matters much because the tallest trans women are likely to be taller than the tallest women; same for strongest, fastest, etc.
what might be some reasons women would choose to participate in women’s sports instead of mixed gender sports?
Perceived fairness, more fun at higher levels, reaching higher levels, avoid injury, socializing, higher relative chance of doing well (e.g., making top X), social pressure or similar.
Do those reasons vary from sport to sport?
Yes. They depend on the sport.
Where does chess fit in?
The main reasons I’d guess apply are: fairness, reaching higher levels, and social pressure / latent sexism.
The first two are maybe controversial and depend on something like the Variability hypothesis applying components of intelligence that are relevant to chess.
Going back to the main question:
Do you see how bringing up gendered chess leagues actually works against your position (and the anti-trans position in general) in this topic?
My position as it related to chess was “Even something like chess would crowd a lot of women out if it were combined” in reference to a mixed league “not [making] sense”. I’m not sure that’s what you meant by “[my] position” though. I’ll discuss it anyway and the anti-trans position generally after.
In hindsight my view is a bit different to this: mixed leagues are often fine and good, but having a dedicated women’s league is also good. I was considering particularly the idea of foregoing women’s leagues in favor of mixed, rather than having mixed + women’s. Technically having all 3 (including men’s) would be good but in many cases I think that could make factors like sexism worse (e.g., all male chess players just play in the men’s instead of mixed and latent sexism continues). Most of the time men’s leagues seem to act like mixed leagues anyway, so having mixed + women’s seems like the most appropriate.
My main objection to mixed leagues is where there’s a big physical disparity that increases the risk of injury. i.e., combat and contact sports.
With regards to chess particularly, I think having a women’s league is important assuming there is some innate difference between the sexes in the distribution of top players (e.g., as predicted by the variability hypothesis). It also matters in things like tournament structure if we care about finding the best female players because tournament structures seem to be more accurate near the top. (It probably doesn’t or shouldn’t matter for ranking scores like elo. It would be interesting if there were significant differences between elo distributions in womens-only vs mixed, after accounting for any population distribution differences.)
Also regarding chess, I think latent sexism as in Elliot’s first paragraph are a reason not to have women’s leagues, or at least make mixed leagues the default. Maybe that’s too much but I think that kind of sexism is bad but I don’t know what else to do about it besides like proactive encouragement by organizers or penalizing players, both of which I don’t think will necessarily make that much of a difference. With regards to other benefits of women’s leagues like role models, it’s not clear what would be better.
Regarding the general anti-trans position as related to chess, my concern is that men/males will on the whole dominate the higher tiers. Something like 10:1. I am already part of an e-sport community where the women’s league was won (undefeated) by a trans team. It feels unfair.
The guess I mentioned earlier was to do with an assumption that the variability hypothesis was wrong or irrelevant for chess, plus the latent sexism stuff. But now that I’ve written the above out I am not sure how it goes against the anti-trans position, except in that it might advocate for mixed-by-default.
IDK, I’m not sure I really see it or where to go from here. Do you mind explaining what you meant? Hopefully the above helps you with things to point to explicitly.
Sorry for not replying as much as I earlier indicated that I would. I have acquired a head cold.