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 -
All athletes are outliers from the general population.
There's no population of athletes with normal population dynamics over their athletic ability, because they're already selected to be outliers from the general population. There won't be a normal distribution of talent among athletes, they'll look like what they are, one tail of a different normal distribution (the general population).
When I talk about outliers and extremes, I'm talking about all athletes. Not just the best ones.
And my claim isn't that most cis women athletes can beat most trans women athletes. As I said a lot, no one has bothered to report on those statistics from actual competitions, so we are in a state of total ignorance on that question.
My point is just that talking about the average for the male population tells you basically nothing about what we're actually measuring here, which is outliers from the trans women population vs outliers from the cis woman population.
Ok, lets just settle on an operational definition here.
Is it your position that a world could exist in which no trans woman ever wins a single competition ever against her cis competitors, and yet it is still also true that trans women have an unfair competitive advantage that means cis women shouldn't have to compete against them?
Because that seems to be what is implied by you citing a case where trans women do not win yet still have an unfair advantage. So is this actually compatible with how you are defining fairness here?
If so, I think that's just incredibly silly.
Maybe there's some metaphysical sense in which it is unjust that a trans woman with fewer years of training can be competitive with a cis woman with more years of training (in this hypothetical).
But what actually matters for fairness is whether every competitor in an event has a reasonable chance to win.
If cis women can go to a million events and know that they will never win anything because the top spots are always trans women shattering all their records, that sucks and is unfair to them and unfun for everyone involved.
If trans women aren't over-represented among winners and cis women can easily win in competitions with them all the time, then the sport is healthy and everyone can have fun and no one is at an unfair disadvantage.
Anything outside of that fact is irrelevant, even if it annoys you.
You're stretching the definition of "outlier." In that the average person isn't very athletic at all, sure, but I'm not just talking about Olympic competitors, I'm talking about people who participate in neighborhood soccer leagues and the like.
If you were, then you'd stop making so many handwaving motions when we talk about comparing female apples to trans apples and stop pointing at female oranges.
No, we are not in a state of total ignorance on that question.
I am not sure if your phrasing is intentionally vague or not.
Do I believe it is possible that there could exist a (singular) trans woman who never wins a single competition against her female competitors, and yet it is still also true that trans women have an unfair competitive advantage that means cis women shouldn't have to compete against them?
Yes. Of course. No one claims that all trans women will be beat all women all the time.
Do I believe it is possible that there could exist a world in which no trans women ever win a single competition against female competitors, and yet it is still also true that trans women have an unfair competitive advantage that means cis women shouldn't have to compete against them?
Well, that would seem unlikely, but it's a meaningless hypothetical since we are observably not in that world.
It's not "some metaphysical sense" if their male physiology observably lets them compete at a higher level with less effort, conditioning, and training.
So if you or I competed against women, that would be fair, since women competing against us would have a reasonable chance to win? Or do you claim you would be able to beat any woman in any athletic competition?
So you believe we could only say it's unfair for trans women to compete against women if and only if trans women win every single time?
Trans women are over-represented among winners now. And women are not having fun because they're competing against men who can and have injured them (in contact sports) and are taking monetary prizes from them.
Trying to cast this as "Oh, you're just annoyed by trans women" doesn't work when you are studiously ignoring the facts you reference.
The point of hypotheticals is to get people to examine the boundaries of their ideas and see if they hold up and make sense in the least-convenient world.
It sounds like your answer is 'yes, we could have a world where no trans woman ever wins a competition but they still have a competitive advantage', but you won't come out and say that because you recognize it makes your position sound absurd.
And, yes, I do believe it is absurd for that reason.
We can't actually settle the question of whether trans women have an unfair advantage until we agree on an operational definition of 'unfair advantage'.
I've offered mine, I'm trying to pin you down on yours. But you won't do it, you jump from 'that's an unlikely hypothetical' to 'obvious physiological advantage' to 'yes they are winning more' to 'could you or I compete against female athletes' to etc. The metric switches to whichever thing is convenient in the moment, so it's impossible to address.
Forget reality. Indulge in the thought experiment.
In the abstract, what is your personal operational definition of an unfair advantage?
Once you say what it is in the abstract, we can start to discuss whether it exists in reality.
Are you saying, would it be fair for me, fat and desk-bound and asthmatic and with zero training, to join the women's olympic track and field event?
Yes, that would be fair.
I have zero chance of winning anything at all, no other competitor is at a disadvantage from including me.
Again, why do men's and women's leagues exist in the first place?
So that women have a place where they can compete and have a real chance of winning.
If including someone in the women's league doesn't alter that, then it doesn't interfere with the purpose of the league. It's fair.
And you are, what, intuiting this from 2 anecdotes across all sports and divisions in the country?
This is the central empirical question I'm saying we have no data on.
If you have data on it, by god please share with the class, it will solve this entire debate instantly.
If you're talking about 2 anecdotes where a trans woman won some competition, then no. That's not a national statistical trend demonstrating anything.
Dude. Several people have told you, in this thread and the past, that your habit of being condescending, disingenuous, and using moving goalposts and weaselly arguments, is infuriating.
To echo @raggedy_anthem, I appreciate that you are willing to stand and take on all comers with a heterodox (for this space) viewpoint, I just wish you'd stop doing it in a way calculated to piss people off (and then when they get pissed off, you blink your eyes innocently and insist you're only giving back what was served to you.)
So, to the quote above: no, dude, that is not what my answer is. And you know that.
"you won't come out and say that because you recognize it makes your position sound absurd" is, like "no matter how much it annoys you personally," a bit of rhetorical twerking to make it sound like you've just spiked the ball in the endzone and distract from the fact that you are weaseling around my actual argument.
No, I do not think we could have a world where no trans woman ever wins a competition but they still have a competitive advantage. I carefully explained that in the post from which you fabricated this position. If it were the case that no trans woman ever wins a competition, I would have to concede that this is pretty strong evidence that trans women do not have a competitive advantage. But that is not the world we're in, because trans women do win competitions.
Again, I said that clearly, you know what I said, you understood what I was saying, and yet you responded with this clearly illogical and ridiculous position and claimed that's what it "sounds like my answer is." No, it is not.
Stop. Doing. This. If you want anyone to believe you are engaging in good faith.
As I have pointed out (and other people have done in this thread, with more links and citations, because I'm lazy) there are plenty of metrics by which athletic ability is measured (muscle mass, strength, reflexes, endurance) and trans women clearly have an advantage over women on all of them. You claim you have offered your own metric, but it seems to be "if trans women won all competitions, or a disproportionate number of competitions." And when pressed on what "disproportionate" would mean, given the relative rarity of trans women athletes, you play games with pseudo-statistical arguments but in practice, it boils down to "If trans women don't win everything all the time, then they must not have an advantage."
Being biologically stronger, faster, tougher, and having more endurance on average.
I.e., the advantage men have over women that is the reason for having separate men and women's competitions, despite the fact that some women are stronger and faster than some men.
And if you lost weight and got in shape and trained, as any woman competing would? Would it be fair then, asthma notwithstanding?
If.
Far more than two anecdotes. Times like this I wish I were @gattsuru (not really), but here's the thing: I don't believe that even if I did hunt down all the links you need, it would change your mind because I don't think you are expressing genuine skepticism.
We do have data. It might not be enough data that you can't dismiss it. Like I said, with someone who doesn't have a pattern of winding people up just to skip away, maybe I'd be motivated to go hunt up everything I've read on the subject. But you know, I can't help noticing that here in this thread several people have given you links and studies, and you haven't replied to them. Curious, that.
Cool. You could have said that instead of saying that scenario sounds unlikely' and moving on to different topics, and I wouldn't have misunderstood you.
Hey, who is fabricated who's position now?
It's always really funny to me when someone accuses me of misrepresenting them in the same breath they're misrepresenting me. Like, where did I ever get the impression that this is a normal way to discuss topics in this forum?
Anyway.
People here are telling me that trans women are just men, that teh difference in average athletic ability between men and women is the whole story, that women can't possibly compete and will get wiped all over teh floor. That is the rhetoric which suggests the idea of 'trans women will win every competition ever'; if that's not happening, which it isn't, obviously that rhetoric is just wrong. That's the point of that example.
As to what counts as a 'discrepancy', try me! You offered a single hypothetical in which one trans women comes in third place, which is an anecdote and not a statistical trend, and no that one imagined anecdote would not be enough to ban all trans women from every sport everywhere forever.
But you do a statistical analysis showing me that trans women place in the top 3 at 500% the rate of cis women? That's a big discrepancy!
You do a statistical analysis showing that trans women win 65% of their 1-v-1 matches in various 1-v-1 sports? That's a big discrepancy!
You do a statistical analysis showing that trans women sink 30% more free throws than cis women in actual games and teams that pick up a trans woman increase their win rate by 20%? That's a big discrepancy!
I'm easy! Show me anything at all, and then we can discuss whether it's a big enough effect to justify banning people from a league.
But right now, I've been offered nothing in this vein, at all.
Yeah, other people in the thread have linked studies showing that's not true, there are advantages on some of those measures in some populations studied, and not in others.
And more importantly, you're again ignoring my point. Those studies are all about group averages, not about athletes. And while some of those things are important proxies for athletic ability, none of them are perfect correlates.
As I have said to the people citing those studies, those studies are Bayesian evidence in favor of an advantage. Just like the population modeling implied by a 500x smaller population throwing less extreme outliers is a Bayesian reason to lower the prior of an advantage.
We can't actually model how all those factors add up to produce real competitors in the real world. All we can do is measure their actual performance in competitions, which is what no one is offering studies off.
Probably, I don't think I have the frame or talent to be any kind of athletic athlete no matter what.
But, to that point: Yes, if I improved myself to the point where I could defeat every female Olympian easily, then it would be unfair for me to compete against them.
And if I don't improve myself to that pint, then it remains fair.
Because fairness is about whether there's a reasonable competition, not anything else.
If trans people were winning too much, it would be unfair. If they're not, then it's not.
Everything upstream of that is elliptical trees.
yeah, i you found 5 anecdotes instead of 2, that still wouldn't change my mind, you're correct.
I'm asking for a statistical analysis here.
I can find you 5 examples of right-wingers being dangerous murderous terrorists, I can find you 5 examples of people who talk about HBD being really clear uncontroversial racists, I can find you 5 examples of whatever.
You'd be an idiot to be convinced by those anecdotes alone. Me too.
Statistical analysis.
On the actual thing I'm talking about? Actual performance at actual competitions? A statistical analysis, not an anecdote?
If so, cite it.
Because you're about the 12th person to say we have that data, without presenting it. Usually when pushed, they present some study about some entirely other topic instead.
Look, we're not finding you some wide spread statistics on how well transwomen do in sports because this whole transgendered athlete concept didn't come out in force until yesterday and coincided with a global pandemic that shut down youth sports. We don't have historical data on how well transgendered kids did at sports because "transgendered kids" as a concept wasn't even widely known about and the idea that there'd be a kid who got gender affirming care and was interested in sports and was in a place that would actually have humored them was an empty set. It's an experiment that can only be done looking forward and it wouldn't even be without seismic shocks of confounders until they were allowed to compete for some time.
So we're using our experience in the world and our knowledge of male vs female anatomy to make some educated guesses. Testosterone exposure at any point in time seems like an escapable advantage. Nearly every developmental step males take away from females represents a physical fitness advantage. It would be larger than the difference of taking steroids.
I can't show you data because it doesn't exist and won't exist in any usable form for some time. But what is your actual confidence here? What odds would you place against "Natal males who at least went partially through puberty have an advantage over natal females who underwent normal puberty all other factors(diet, training regimen, genetic twins) held equal"? I can't actually believe you would get that less than 95% odds of being true.
Olympics have allowed trans athletes for 20 years. This isn't that new, and it wouldn't take a huge amount of data to do a t-test.
That said, sure, if your position is that we don't have enough data to demonstrate an actual competitive advantage and are just guessing, my response is that guessing is not a good enough reason to restrict people's actions and liberties on something like this. Not unless you have a really good reason for you guesses that makes you incredibly confident, and I've just made an argument for why people's reasons for thinking they have a good guess are miles wrong.
As you demonstrate once again:
This is not the question at hand, as I've spent thousands of words explaining.
Olympics get their competitors from some pipeline. That pipeline has not had actual trans people in it. This is ridiculous.
We're only guessing that global warming is going to be catastrophic based on the information we have. We don't have to experience something to have a pretty good idea of the results.
Of course it isn't to you. You want the question to be some impossibly nebulous thing where we have to calculate the exact advantage so you can compare it to other unearned advantages like height. And because it's impossible to actually calculate something like that you're going to keep pleading ignorance. It's all such blatant tactics.
You don't get to claim the null hypothesis on this.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You are using reductive and simplistic weakman arguments, though I can't say no one has ever expressed that. But I would say the consensus view here is that trans women may experience some reduction in physical ability due to HRT, but the available evidence strongly suggests that while it puts them at a disadvantage compared to men, they still have a significant advantage over women. Furthermore, not all sports (especially amateur leagues) even require HRT or any kind of physical transition. So no, people are not, in general, claiming "Trans women will win every competition ever." They are claiming that trans women vs. women is not fair competition in the same way (though perhaps not to exactly the same degree) that men vs. women is not fair competition.
... How would we demonstrate that, since the choices in the top 3 are "trans woman" or "cis woman"? If there is 1 trans woman competing against, say, 499 women, and she places in the top 3, the other two would be women. Maybe what you mean is that we'd have to have a large number of competitions in which a tiny percentage of trans women consistently score higher than an average distribution would predict? I.e., if in every competition of 499 women vs. 1 trans woman, the trans woman should average 250th place but instead averages 3rd place, that would be pretty significant, yes? But how many competitions would that have to happen in to convince you? How many competitions can we get with trans women in them, and would you consider winning 3rd place in frisbee soccer and winning 3rd place in cycling comparable?
And I am asking what you would consider convincing, since you seem to have reasons why all the evidence in existence currently isn't sufficient. I am pretty sure we don't have a database of 1000 athletic competitions with trans women competing in them and how well they placed. That would be convenient for statistical analysis, sure, but barring that, why does empirical evidence hold no weight whatsoever with you? Why all the biological studies presented to you hold no weight?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It's not calculated to piss people off, it's a space-claiming strategy that works in tandem with Zorba decreeing that "misgendering" is now a bannable offense (sorry, he didn't decree anything, he just reinterpreted the rules so that it has always been a bannable offense, comrade).
It's a tactic to slam the overton window left and step on people's fingers if they try to stop it. And it works.
Being an asshole is a bannable offense. You're allowed to say you don't think trans women are women. You're not allowed to make a point of "misgendering" someone to be a dick and express your contempt.
He specifically said that calling Charles Clymer a he with no other mark of disrespect is against the rules. Soon that will extend to linking articles that talk about Charle's "deadname," because that's just how this sort of thing works, and because those are the social rules in the indie game dev scene Zorba is trying to gain status in.
If you think that's unlikely, a few years ago the mods were laughing at the idea of the current rules. And look where we are now.
Darwin knows how this works too, and what "rhetorical strategies" to use to accelerate it and claim yet another space for his party.
I don't even remember who Charles Clymer is (just Googled, okay, some trans woman with a public facing job) or the thread you are evidently still butthurt about, but as for the bolded part, this is not modhatted, but for the record, if you used this line of attack in another thread, I probably would mod you for lack of charity. Not because it's Zorba, and certainly not because he asked me to, but when someone gives a reason for doing something (and agree or disagree, Zorba explained the reasons for saying "Don't be an asshole to trans people just because they disgust you"), do not drop your sneers about how the "real" reason they're doing it is because they're trying to curry favor with people who probably have no idea about the Motte. (If Zorba's concern was really looking good to woke developers, I doubt he'd want them to know anything about the Motte.)
Where are we now? What current rules are you talking about? There's one rule (singular) which to be frank, even the mods aren't entirely clear about but which almost never comes up except when someone is making a point of being an ass. I've never modded someone for referring to a trans woman as "he" and I wouldn't unless the poster was being an asshole about it.
"Don't be an asshole" is a hard rule to complain about, but if using the pronouns that you think are correct for trans people == 'being an asshole', then this amounts to ceding the field, no?
Probably not conducive to truthful discussion either.
And now you seem to be saying that sometimes this would be ok, sometimes 'being an asshole', which in some ways makes it worse -- if it's always or never assholery we could frame our discussion accordingly, but personally I have no idea where that line would be. Either you accept the framework or not.
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
More options
Context Copy link
So I am roughly on your side (in that I think trans women should be allowed to compete against women), but I'll bite this bullet. It is perfectly possible for this world to be true yes. A competitive advantage just means doing better against women than against men in this scenario. Whether you ever win, is irrelevant. An athlete who was on average 2170th against men and on average 2050th against women, is demonstrating they have a competitive advantage when competing against women than against men. The fact they never win doesn't change that. That being the case a world where no trans athlete ever wins could indeed still have them with an advantage.
What needs to be measured is not a win rate it's the comparative improvement. The change in their performance pre-transition against men, to their performance post-transition against women. This is because competition is about comparing you to your peers, we change the person (through hormones, surgery etc.) and we change their peers. If the worst man athlete transitions and is now the worst woman athlete, then who cares, nothing has changed. If the 1000th man athlete transitions and becomes the 1st top woman athlete, that might be a problem. But it's also a possible problem if they go from 2000th, to 60th. You cannot measure against winning alone because....
Again this is incorrect, it is so they have a fair chance of competing. For some that might be winning, for others it might be a fair chance of coming 20th. Winning is not everything. Imagine a race where the winner is a woman but the next 3000 positions are filled by trans-women. That is likely to indicate a potential fairness problem even if the winner happens to be an even greater outlier.
Where we agree, is that I don't really see this happening either. But limiting your argument to only looking at winners is trying to look at the best possible version of our position. And I don't think it's the position the majority of people (correctly) take. So that is the one we must engage with. If someone juices and comes 3rd, that is still a problem even if it doesn't change the winning statistics. So that must also be the case here.
Does transitioning change someone's comparative ranking enough that it constitutes a significant unfairness to other competitors whether those competitors would otherwise be coming first or 25th when weighed against the other factors involved. I think the answer appears to be no, hence why I agree with your position, even though I think your argument is wrong.
I am confused. Assuming men are better than women at these sports, wouldn't any woman competing against men rank lower than they rank against women?
IE, doesn't your test for 'unfairness' produce a positive result for literally any person you use it on?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding.
I talk about winners because the other side is predicting that men have such a huge advantage they should always win, and because they bring up examples of teh 2 or 3 trans women that won big competitions. My argument itself is not limited to winners.
If there's any statistical relationship where trans women are consistently out-performing their cis peers, whether that means coming in first or third or twentieth, that would be evidence of an advantage.
If the hypothetical data was that trans women are coming in 20th 50% more often than they should assuming a random distribution, then we might have to have a discussion about how much that's actually warping things in a way that ruins the sport for anyone, and if it's actually worth restricting rights over it.
But for a statistical relationship much stronger than that, it wouldn't have to be just winning all the time, I'll accept a lot fo things.
I just haven't seen anything, so far.
Well, it's a problem because juicing is bad for your health and we don't want to create a pressure to force everyone to do it.
It's not a problem when someone, like, trains really hard and improves to third, or has proper nutrition and improves to third, or whatever. That's normal.
The problem with juicing isn't 'did some thing and got a good outcome', the problem is the thing being harmful and us not wanting to incentivize it.
Doesn't apply here.
And here I just disagree. If no one is being hurt, it's not immoral.
Not if it's a transwoman who competed against men in a body with male advantage, but underwent a procedure that nullified the male advantage before competing against women.
Your claim is that transition is such a procedure. If that's true, we should expect the test to show no comparative advantage.
It's not an individual test for infairness like a doping test, it's a measure for judging transition as nullifier of the male advantage.
Again, no, that wasn't my argument.
One of several points in my argument was that HRT should be expected to lower performance, but I didn't claim that it magically makes relative rankings in athletic leagues exactly the same. I specifically called out limb length as a thing that doesn't get reversed. And even if it magically reversed everything perfectly, a different number of men vs women play sports,.so the relative ranking would still be different.
But those several points weren't in a causal chain with each other, they were each a directional factor that should make us expect trans women athletes to have worse performance than men athletes.
The point about a 500x smaller population leading to less extreme outliers is the biggest factor, and doesn't interact with this argument.
Fair enough, but I take it you understand now how @SSCReader's unfairness test measures comparative advantage, you just think comparative advantage isn't relevant?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
But the person who would have finished 60th is "hurt" and everyone else below that is pushed down similarly. Not very much, its true, but more than the world in which trans athletes are not allowed to compete. Now I think that is out-weighed by the positive benefits. But it is a "harm".
And thus de facto immoral by your lights at least. Now that can be ok because i think excluding trans people is also immoral, so its the lesser of two evils. We often have to trade off things by which has the smaller negative impact. But we should at least acknowledge that those affected who feel its a problem are suffering some level of "harm". Its not made up, it's real. Introducing more people into their pool, as competition is a negative for them. Just like with immigration putting pressure on peoples ability to get jobs by adding competition. Its a real problem. It's just not enough (in both cases!) to stop the changes in my opinion, because the positives outweigh the negatives. But we should accept the negatives are real, even if they are small and outweighed by the positives.
But as long as you accept it doesn't have to be an impact on winning itself before it might become a problem then i think we are pretty close in outlook. Increased competition can be bad for the people being competed against, even if some of those people still win.
Juicing is cheating in that it is getting an illegal advantage. Even if it isn't harmful its a problem, because it puts pressure on others to also juice to keep up. Its even worse if its harmful but its not the ONLY reason its a problem. A sport which allows juicing would be fine,but if one doesn't then doing so to get an advantage your competitors don't have against the rules of the competition is wrong even if juicing was net positive for your health. Part of fairly competing in a sport is agreeing to follow whatever arbitrary rules everyone else has to follow. If you don't you are morally wrong.
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
About 57% of highschool students play sports. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/statistics-on-school-sports-how-many-students-play-sports-which-sports-do-they-play/2021/07
Why do you insist athletes in general are a stastical outlier? I don't think anyone understood you were arguing this because it's really hard to realize someone is arguing that a behavior the majority of people do is an outlier.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link