Sure, like examples of thoughtless at least are probably in this thread.
Edit: whoops the replied to on this post is wrong.
A lot of anti-trans policies do throw cis women under the bus. If you are policing who plays in sports or who uses bathrooms, how do you police that? How do you make sure that no trans women get in without hurting some cis women in the process?
I am a âbiological womanâ, and I think that I would pass any criteria for being a âwomanâ according to your standards. I was assigned female at birth: that is what is on my birth certificate. I have the âcorrectâ anatomy and reproductive organs.
But I have also been afraid to use public bathrooms because sometimes I wear menâs clothes and I have short hair. I donât want to be accosted or assaulted because someone decides that I donât look enough like a woman to them.
In the past, people have used genital checks to make sure that only âbiological womenâ were competing in sports. I would pass a genital check, but I wouldnât want to submit to one. I would rather just not play a sport than have to do genital checks.
Another thing that is used is DNA testing for XY chromosomes. But, according to your definition, some people with XY chromosomes are women. So if you exclude them from sports based on their DNA, you are throwing women under the bus.
I think a lot of women who play sports would find this offensive. Their sports donât suddenly become pointless just because you arenât genital checking and DNA testing them.
I find interesting that you say you are concerned about women, but you are saying things that I (and many other women) find offensive as a woman. This is common with anti-trans rhetoric, not unique to you
Why is it an âartificial holeâ and not an artificial vagina? When you say something is an âartificial Xâ, that means that the artificial thing is a type of X, or it is acting in place of X. So this seems to reduce a vagina to a âholeâ. When people say things about women having 3 holes in their vulva area, that doesnât seem offensive, because it is only talking about the external hole part. (It is talking about how many openings there are, and differentiating that the vagina and urethra are 2 separate openings, not the same opening.) But calling the entire vagina a hole, or reducing it to nothing more than a hole, seems to imply that is its entire essence. That feels offensive to me. Part of your implication seems to be that if you take away the reproductive aspect, a vagina is just a hole.
This was already pointed out as offensive by @anonymous105, but this one seems offensive to me too. After I go through menopause, does my vagina become nothing more than a âholeâ and a glorified sex toy?
I donât actually know anything specific about this, but I think itâs incredibly unlikely that an artificial heart performs all the important functions of a heart. There are a lot of things we donât fully understand with cell signalling, and the artificial heart isnât going to be able to participate in cell signalling. There are a lot of different feedback loops and cascade effects in the body that an artificial heart is not going to be able to participate in properly.
This is relevant to the trans stuff. One of the things I have noticed about anti-trans rhetoric is that anti-trans people tend to hold trans surgeries and medical procedures to a different standard than they hold other procedures to. They are worried about people regretting trans surgeries, but not worried about them regretting other kinds of surgeries. They are worried about complications and unintended effects and medicalizing yourself with trans procedures, but not worried about that with other procedures.
So this seems related to that. You want to claim there is something fundamentally different and worse about trans surgeries compared to other surgeries, to the point that we need to use an entirely different type of language to talk about them than what is standard.
This is problematic in a few different ways. One way is related to the stuff I brought up above about genital checks. How do you propose that we restrict abortion without accidentally restricting it from rape victims too? What kind of systems should be in place to make rape victims prove that they are actually victims? Those are rhetorical questions. I donât think they have good answers.
When women (the Polgar sisters) have performed well in open chess tournaments, they have been discriminated against and pressured to go play in womenâs tournaments instead. Theyâve been denied grandmaster titles when meeting the criteria to earn them. There has been sexism in the chess world, not a welcoming attitude towards any woman capable of competing with the top men. (Of course reactions vary. Some people have been more welcoming than others.)
Also I used to watch Jennifer Shahade as part of the commentary team for chess tournaments. Iâll tell you two things about that:
Shahade normally commentated on a team with two men. Just as with other types of TV teams, different people have different roles. She was assigned the role of having charisma, being more beginner friendly, asking questions, and showing off less chess knowledge, while the men had more expert type roles. Then one day, one of the men was busy for 20 minutes or something and temporarily left the broadcast. Without missing a beat, Shahade immediately switched to doing his expert role while he was gone. Then she switched back to her usual role when he returned. She was capable of doing the expert role the whole time, and was more multi-talented and better at role switching than either of the men.
Years earlier, Shahade was sexually harassed by one of the men involved in the chess broadcasts. This came out after he started sexually harassing another woman, which Shahade took offense to, so she complained. The result has been that neither of them (Shahade or the man) has been on the broadcast team again. This happened a few years ago in the U.S.
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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 donât approve of. I think that probably biases me to be more positive towards some kind of effective opposition â conservatives â some positive bias towards republicans. This thread is challenging a lot of that (which seems good). Iâve 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 womenâs sports/prisons/changing rooms). I guess this doesnât really conflict with what you said though since it is a messy situation and (usually?) isnât as bad as actually evil agendas.
I didnât. I have a guess after thinking about it (and having read some other posts further down). Iâll go through your suggested questions first.
What is the best argument for excluding trans women from professional womenâs sports?
I think this is related to the origin of womenâs sports in general so Iâll start there.
The reason for having womenâs 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 womenâs 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 womenâs league helps that. However, having a woman succeed at a high level outside of a womenâs 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 Iâll 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 Iâm 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 donât know why more jockeys arenât female considering being light is an advantage.
One thing that might also help is to not think about trans women as âidentical to a typical man, but in a dressâ for the purpose of this thought experiment.
Trans women come in all shapes and sizes so Iâm not sure why this matters much if weâre considering the top-tier competitors. There are plenty of trans women that individually donât have a substantial advantage in that many of their relevant attributes might be phenotypical of women. I donât 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 womenâs 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 Iâd 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 âEven something like chess would crowd a lot of women out if it were combinedâ in reference to a mixed league ânot [making] senseâ. Iâm not sure thatâs what you meant by â[my] positionâ though. Iâll 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 womenâs league is also good. I was considering particularly the idea of foregoing womenâs leagues in favor of mixed, rather than having mixed + womenâs. Technically having all 3 (including menâs) 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 menâs instead of mixed and latent sexism continues). Most of the time menâs leagues seem to act like mixed leagues anyway, so having mixed + womenâs seems like the most appropriate.
My main objection to mixed leagues is where thereâs 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 womenâs 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 doesnât or shouldnât 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 Elliotâs first paragraph are a reason not to have womenâs leagues, or at least make mixed leagues the default. Maybe thatâs too much but I think that kind of sexism is bad but I donât know what else to do about it besides like proactive encouragement by organizers or penalizing players, both of which I donât think will necessarily make that much of a difference. With regards to other benefits of womenâs leagues like role models, itâs 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 womenâs 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 Iâve 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, Iâm 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.
Did you see my post Curiosity â Fundamental Philosophical Errors in Taking Children Seriously and the three more posts linked at the end? If youâre interested in kids, maybe you should discuss those topics. Iâd be happy to have more feedback/discussion about parenting. Besides TCS criticism, I also wrote about good parenting principles/approaches.
At least in the US, the right fails on every single item on your list with the exception of taxes (Edit: actually, every item on the list, I forgot about tariffs when giving right wing benefit of doubt on taxes.)
Now that the right is in power, they are explicitly big fans of digital control and limiting free speech. The president literally believes he has the authority to shut up speech he does not like. He has exerted governmental pressure to get people fired, kicked out of school, and deported for speech. They are also not reining in government spending at all.
One thing you left out here was âto avoid sexist harassment.â
This is a huge, well-known reason why a lot of women avoid a variety of male-dominated hobbies and jobs. Men make those spaces hostile to women.
Do you suppose men would make those spaces more or less hostile to trans women?
Okay, cool. So we can agree that stuff like bone & muscle density does not give men an advantage in chess.
It is a much harder to quantify difference, then. Less objective, I think youâd agree? Like, the win rates are objective, but the reasons for them are less so. Making discriminatory policies based on something that is hard to quantify seems like a bad idea.
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One other thing that might give people, men or women, an advantage in a game like chess (or E sports) could be autism. This might sound like a joke, but itâs not.
And men have higher rates of autism than women. Exact rates are highly disputed due to stuff like sexism in some diagnostic criteria. But even trying to account for that men still seem to be more often autistic.
Should there be an Autistic League?
Note: Trans people also seem to have much higher rates of autism than the general population.
I do not personally think we should make any changes to leagues based on this info. But re: chess & esports, it seems like a more relevant thing than gender.
I think if there was no womenâs league, those women would have been pressured to not compete at all. Pressuring them to go play with other women is a less bad situation (though still quite bad) than if there was no womenâs league.
I donât think getting rid of a womenâs league would suddenly make men more accepting of women.
In general, sports arenât fair. The people who win in the olympics or do well in highly competitive leagues tend to be genetic outliers.
Fairness isnât the point.
Esports and board games may arguably be fairer but still not a fair, level playing field for all.
At the top level of competition, audiences like to see people who are really fast, really strong, really tough, really smart (for chess), really entertaining, etc. They like to see people perform impressive feats that they couldnât do.
For youth sports, the points are often more about social interaction, teamwork, improvement, working with a coach, exercise, fitness, fun, learning to deal with adversity or with losing. The point usually isnât primarily about winning and thereâs generally little reward for winning.
At both the pro and youth level, things generally work better with reasonably close matches. Having womanâs sports helps with getting closer matches.
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Yes, I agree.
I think this is also visible in some really notable Olympic winners, who appear to have really specific unusual physiological advantages. Well known one that comes to mind is Michael Phelps having unusual body proportions, long arms relative to body, etc.
Weight classes in boxing is an example of this, too.
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It seems to me a lot of classifying stuff in sports basically comes down to âcreate classifications to try to make the matches closer, but allow for uncommon/niche advantages not covered by the big classifications.â â Edit: And then in some cases those niche advantages will be a deciding factor.
Something like that. Iâm not an expert on sports, though.
Yeah. Chess has youth tournaments with different sections for grade level ranges (e.g. kids in grades 6-8 play together) in addition to a gender split. Adult chess has tournaments with sections based on rating, like only people rated under 1400 can play in this section, and under 1600 for the next section up, etc. No gender split is needed with the rating-based sections. Ratings are based on past performance so theyâre just literally trying to group people together by how good they are to get closer games. Cash prizes in lower sections arenât huge but can be over $1000. Sandbagging (losing games in one event to get a low rating in order to win another event) doesnât happen a ton as far as I know since the stakes arenât very high, plus there exist some rules to put a floor on how far your rating can fall.
Sometimes some really strong young chess players choose not to play in grade-level based tournaments that they could easily win. It wouldnât be good competition and often the only prize is a trophy. So that also helps keep things competitive.
If a really strong chess player does play against weaker players, the weaker players often like the opportunity to meet and play against someone really impressive. Itâs common to have special events (that arenât competitive tournaments, just for fun) where strong players play against like 30 weaker players at once as a way to let them have a fun time playing someone better than they usually play against and meeting someone impressive. The strong player just walks in a circle around the room playing a move then going to the next board.
Recently one of the top 10 players in the world, Hikaru Nakamura, went and played in the open section at a regional tournament (the Louisiana State Championship) that was way beneath him. He played some people rated far, far below him. The second highest rated player in the tournament was objectively a very strong player but still not very competitive with a top 10 player. Some people on the internet complained about how unfair it was, but multiple people he beat were thrilled for the chance to meet and play one of the most famous and talented names in chess, and people were happy he came and visited their relatively small, local tournament.
Why did he do it? The prizes were too small for him to care and he can get better practice or competition online. He just needed to play enough rated games this year (while maintaining his high rating) to qualify for the tournament that qualifies you to compete to be world champion. Playing against weaker opponents was safer for him than playing in a more competitive tournament. The incentives here are dumb, but that is the fault of FIDE, the main international chess organization, and similar things have already happened multiple times in past years. Unlike most other top chess pros, Nakamura doesnât play a lot of rated games because heâs a full time Twitch streamer and YouTuber who makes great money that way, yet heâs still been performing well in top tournaments when he does play.
Yeah, I suppose unwanted sexual attention is also a reason. (Which I wouldnât class as harassment but can be a related problem in some contexts.)
Probably more hostile, which is the opposite of what men should do from an anti-trans perspective. That is, if theyâre against trans women playing in trans leagues, they should be welcoming in mixed leagues. But if the alternative to playing in womenâs leagues is just pressure not to be trans, well that isnât going to work very well and they (the trans women) arenât going to like it.
Yes Iâd agree. But thatâs one reason that sports exist, to quantify those differences that canât be measured. If we could just tell who would win all the time based on some other easy measurement, the sport wouldnât be that interesting.
Re: discriminatory policies, all womenâs leagues are discriminatory but Iâd guess you agree that some cases are justified. Re chess particularly, some of the issues weâve talked about motivate separate leagues. Are you saying that having separate leagues based only on the idea that there is some relevant difference between sexes is a bad idea? Otherwise it seems like this conclusion kind of contradicts other ones, so Iâm not sure what to make of it.
I donât think so (as an official thing, that is, side events or whatever are fine) but there are other reasons for that, too. Like would you have 2 leagues for slightly autistic people and severely autistic? What are the breakpoints? There isnât really an equivalent for this problem with sex, one canât be twice the maleness of someone else, for example. You could try and quantify it in terms of gender expression but that seems way too fragile and error prone to be viable in any serious way (which I suppose is why the âa woman is someone who identifies as a womanâ thing is popular).
As a note, I think dealing with intersex is different to dealing with the autism spectrum. Itâs a different kind of problem.
Right.
Do you see how this means that there is at least one big reason that womenâs leagues might be desirable (avoiding harassment) that also would have some application for trans women (who are likely to be harassed by men)?
Yes, though it feels like a misuse in some ways. The problem is with the players, not a rule segregating sexes. So itâs like the lesser of two evils, but there are better win-win solutions available which involve men not pressuring or harassing trans women.
Those solutions are not in place right now, correct?
So in the mean time, in the real world, people are harassed and mistreated. Wouldnât it be good for them to avail themselves of options that actually exist in reality now, and can help protect them from real problems?
Yes and Iâve read 1 of 3 of the linked posts at the end. Discussing more is something Iâd plan to do when in a position to have kids (i.e., long term relationship). Maybe I should be doing a bit of that sooner, though, because it might matter for who I get into a relationship with. For example:
Parents can be more influential than culture by keeping their children extremely isolated, but they shouldnât. Merely homeschooling and being anti-social isnât even close to isolating enough. I mean more like being in a cult or living off-grid with the children not having internet access or any friends with internet access.
I am concerned about culture and one idea Iâve thought about as a hypothetical is establishing communities for parents so that there can be reasonable insulation from mainstream culture especially at younger ages without foregoing decent socialization. Regarding technology, an incremental approach might work, particularly introducing tech in an old-to-new way rather than few-screen-hours-to-many. Putting aside all the issues with this like cost and difficulty, itâs an example of something that (if I were going to attempt that) would be good to figure out before finding someone to have children with because she might not agree or like that idea.
Yes, I agree. From an anti-trans + humanist perspective letting them play in the womenâs league is the right thing to do at the moment (for chess at least, probably not combat sports, though).
I added â+ humanistâ in there to reflect that I still sympathize with them as people and they deserve to be able to enjoy sports as much as anyone.
My earlier questions in my most recent post above are pretty soft and attempting to coax you along towards my position. I still think it is a good idea for you to engage with that post. (Edit: I see you just did as I was posting this.)
But being a bit more honest/direct, based on the discussion so far, it seems plausible to me that you are part of the problem. Even though you donât seem to have cruel intentions. Do you think that if more men were like you, the problem would be solved?
You mentioned watching hoe_math on YouTube. Do you think that if more men were like hoe_math, the problem would be solved?
I donât.
From my perspective, this reinforces the reality that this is not a problem that will be solved by men changing their behavior any time soon. So I think it is important for trans people to have real solutions today, and not just wait for men to be nicer.
Yeah, Iâm trying one of Elliotâs suggestions to make smaller lower effort posts instead of trying to reply to everything at once. Iâm going linearly down for bigger stuff and also replying if thereâs smaller more recent stuff. Feel free (you or whomever) to point to something though if you think itâs particularly relevant/important.
Yeah thatâs a good question. I donât.
The most positive thing I could say is maybe: I think if some specific men were more like me then the situation would improve. (And I mean a decent chunk of the population, not just like the 1% with really extreme views.)
@anonymous112 because I might be part of the problem. (Iâll reply to the other question from the quoted post later)
No, and if the same specific men were more like hoe_math I donât think the situation would be as good as if they were like me instead.
Iâm a bit torn on hoe_math atm. Like I think he has some good criticisms of some parts of modern culture. Like hypergamy seems real and demonstrable (and exacerbated by dating apps and bad for both men and women), but not all women are hypergamous like that.
However, redpill culture that encourages men to go their own way or whatever seems to also be part of the problem. So some/many of the problems he points out might be real but maybe the solutions arenât good. IDK, maybe something to discuss more in a dedicated thread.
Can you give a basic definition of hypergamy?
Your understanding of it, the version you think is real and demonstrable. Itâs okay if hoe_math or others define it differently. I disagree with them, but before I argue about it I want to verify what ways I disagree with you.
I think this is still basically on topic for feminism though maybe not this specific book on feminism, IDK, Iâll let Elliot decide if this should be a different thread.
I didnât know they were trying to ban gender affirming care. I donât think it should be banned, but I do think there needs to be some investigation(s) into bias, agendas, and medical malpractice around it. I think the left has spread a lot of highly questionable things which theyâve presented as fact and tried to ruin peopleâs lives for questioning. I think this overall harms trans people, too. (Just like bad climate research harms climate change initiatives.)
For clarity, I brought this point up. She agreed with it but not very enthusiastically.
Similar. We werenât particularly talking about what sheâd say to me but I considered it as though she had. I wrote more about it in a draft of the brain dump section but took it out.
I am glad we had the exchange and it was a moderating force on my opinions. I did not get the impression she had much empathy for people with differing views, though (but maybe that was just the direction of conversation and that we were focused more on discussing tolerance generally and her experience).
It wasnât all positive. She was wearing a necklace that read âSlutâ in blackletter for example, which I donât think does anyone any favors (trans or not), and did nothing to improve my opinion of trans women.
Maybe thatâs patriarchy speaking but even from a feminist point of view I think promiscuity is bad (often uncooperative, is short-term pleasure-seeking, associated with the spread of STIs, can harm the ability to make meaningful long-term relationships, increases social and emotional volatility, often involves objectifying the other person).