This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I thought I'd seen someone on the Motte making this silly attempt at a "gotcha!" argument before, and what do I know - it was you! Rather than rephrasing my point, I'll just reiterate exactly what I said to you the last time you made this lame argument:
You didn't respond to my counter-argument then, but now however many months later you're trotting out the exact same argument again almost word-for-word, treating it as self-evident that there is no other aspect of the sporting ethos which displays the remotest concern about fairness and pairing like athletes with like, except when trying to make trans people feel excluded.
In this case, Carini and Khelif were competing in the welterweight division. Simple question - would it be fair to expect Khelif to fight against a heavyweight opponent? If I was hypothetically concerned about athletes trying to circumvent weight class guidelines, couldn't you just as easily argue that I don't really care about fairness in sports and I'm just using this issue as another stick with which to beat overweight people? Sincerely - why couldn't a heavyweight "identify as" a welterweight? Why couldn't one have a "weight identity" known and knowable only to oneself, wholly distinct from the "biological mass" which was "assigned" to you? (FAHAWI - "forcibly assigned heavyweight at weigh-in"?)
If a featherweight was asked to compete against a heavyweight, the appropriate response from the featherweight is "that's completely unfair, he's twice my size". If the boxing commission replied "no you don't understand, this heavyweight is taking a regimen of drugs which reduce his performance to within two standard deviations of the expected performance of the typical featherweight boxer", the appropriate response from the featherweight is still "that's completely unfair, he's twice my size".
Please stop with the juvenile argument that no one really cares about fairness in sports and are just using the issue as a stalking horse to persecute trans women. It's tiresome and trivial to refute.
My point then and now is that it's not obvious how much of an advantage Khalif actually has. She was eliminated in the Olympic semi-finals in the Tokyo Olympics. She lost the welterweight IBA championship in 2022 to a cis-woman. The idea that she has the kind of advantage over other women the same way a heavyweight has an advantage over a featherweight is exactly what's in dispute. It is not something you can just assume, as your comment does.
No, your point then and now is that anyone claiming to care about fairness in sports is doing so in bad faith as a stick with which to beat trans women. I resent this characterisation of my opinion that it's unfair for unambiguously male athletes to compete in female sporting events. I remain agnostic on the question of whether Khalif is unambiguously female, unambiguously male, or a female with a DSD which gives them a competitive advantage.
Then let me clarify. I do not think literally everyone who talks about fairness in sports is only using it as a stick to beat trans women. But I do think there are a lot of people out there who do see fairness in sports as a stick to beat trans women.
Sure. Doesn't mean they're wrong though - that's Bulverism.
And please stop doing this unbelievably dumb thing of saying "wow, isn't it interesting how this debate about fairness in sports only comes up in the context of allowing trans women to compete? I wonder why that would be!" The very existence of weight classes, age classes etc. demonstrates, with zero room for ambiguity, that you are simply wrong.
Right now the only reason this debate only comes up in the context of sex-segregation in sports is because sex-segregation is a contested category, while weight classes are a settled matter: currently there's no broad social movement demanding that heavyweights to be permitted to compete alongside welter- or feather-weights, on the grounds that they "identify" as a body mass different from their objective bodily mass. Any heavyweight who demanded such a thing would rightfully be laughed out of the room; but when a six-foot tall swimmer who has never been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, and who has been competing as a male for years, suddenly "discovers" that he is actually a woman (barely even hiding that he is doing so to fulfil an autogynephiliac sexual fantasy) and demands to be included in female sporting events on that basis - for some reason society at large (and sporting bodies in particular) react with "of course, right this way
sirma'am".When the transfats in sports movement arrives (when, not if), I want it known both that I foresaw it, and that I promised in advance to fight against it just as stridently as I am currently fighting against the "right" of unambiguously male people to compete in female sporting events.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link