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But I'm not talking about a super rare event?
Trans athletes exist. More than enough to do a statistical analysis on.
In sports that are competitions between two people, the average win rate must but 50%. Do trans athletes in those competitions win statistically more than 50% of the time?
In swim meets with 2 trans and 48 cis competitors, we would expect the trans athletes to place in the top 5 ~20% of the time. Do they place that often, or more, or less?
In women's baseball, what's the average RBI of cis vs trans hitters? What's the spread?
Etc. None of this is low probability stuff, it's normal sports records of the type you could see at any moment when you turn on ESPN.
I believe the probability is actually ~0.8% (48C3 / 50C5)I assume you accidentally multiplied by 100 to get a percentage, saw "0.81..." and thought that it was a probability, and then came to 20%?EDIT: Sorry, I realise I misinterpreted what you said (I thought you meant both of them placing in the top 5) - You're right, please ignore this comment.
I should have said 'a trans athlete' rather than 'the trans athletes', sorry about that.
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Oh, maybe I misunderstood your whole original argument. There is often a trans talking point that studies one elite athletes have never been done, and that is mostly true because elite athletes are rare. Which is why I was talking about a whole rareness based argument. But in that case of just studying regular athletes, yes those studies exist (and they aren't hard to find), and yes transwomen have an advantage.
https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/55/11/577.full?ijkey=yjlCzZVZFRDZzHz&keytype=ref
Are you against transwomen participating in sports now? A ~10% advantage is nothing to scoff at. Though maybe I did this backwards and should have asked if you would pre-commit to changing your mind if you were shown a study with these results.
I don't blame you if the study doesn't change your mind. I think if the study had the opposite results I wouldn't change my mind either. I'd just be suspicious of the study and the industry of science. So don't interpret this as a "gotcha" post, I'm genuinely curious if this moves your needle at all.
So first of all, as I say in another reply, that's a measure of some specific atomic abilities, not of athleticism in general, which is the thing I specifically said we don't have a good measure of. I realize that's a mushy distinction and there's no real solid operational definition of 'athletic ability' beyond 'do they win more often at athletic competitions,' but that's my point... 'Do they win more often at athletic competitions' is the thing we actually care about here, and the data already exists in the form of actual results from actual competitions, so let's look at that.
But more importantly, my next sentence after that is
My argument doesn't hinge on the population average because that's not where competitive athletes are drawn from. It hinges on the positive tail of the distribution, which is why a lower population having a lower range of outliers is central to the argument.
We have a study. It shows trans people have a physical advantage. Physical abilities, much like mental abilities, are almost always a package deal. Just like knowledge tests can have g-loading, physical tests have an equivalent. It's why training camps for both baseball and American football often have athletes doing the same exercises for very different sports.
And this study doesn't move your needle at all?
If that's the case I just don't get the sense that a study would convince you, or anyone else really. Which is fine, I don't think I'd be convinced either by a study showing the opposite result. I would just find it too strange.
The study wasn't about the population average? The participants were people in the Air Force. Which is going to be a subset of generally more athletic people. But I've seen your objection elsewhere it's not the exact subset you claim matters. But then we come back to my seatbelt denier analogy. You can make the exact subset so tiny and specific that no study will ever convince you.
It looks like you are pretty busy in this thread. I'd say prioritize responding to anyone else over me. I mostly care not at all about this topic, it just happened to be at the top of the culture war thread today.
It's Bayesian evidence towards your side, of course. I'm explaining why it's not enough evidence to tip my model entirely, because I think the correct model is more complex than that.
I place a high threshold on taking rights away from people and restricting what they're allowed to do. Stuff like this is suggestive but I'm explaining why the model is too complex for it to be definitive. I'm not confident that there's no advantage, I'm confident there's not enough evidence of one to justify bans at this stage.
And again, I'm saying that there's a simple and direct measure we could be looking at instead -win/loss records - and pointing out that I'm not very persuaded by any arguments that don't involve referring to or caring about that.
Its not strictly taking away anyone's rights. As far as I know these athletes are still allowed to compete on the male side of the sport. If you object that obviously they aren't competitive, then I could point to everything you've argued above and flip the argument on its head. Has the exact study you want been done on the male side of things? If not, you have an isolated demand for rigor.
Part of why I don't care very much about this issue, is I'd be fine with the ending of gender separated sports. Tough shit if women can't compete, the world ain't fair. I say that with daughters who will very likely compete in high school and possibly college sports competitions. Still don't care. I understand I have a minority view on that point, and if you want to have female sports it makes sense to actually try and preserve them.
I caught my first (and only) ban from you (I'm pretty sure) for saying the same, albeit in a far less charitable way. As far as I'm concerned, women's sports are fundamentally less interesting, the competitors are worse, the action less exciting. They've been grandmothered in as "societally acceptable", but in most cases, they're about as popular in terms of viewership as the Paralympics. I cynically suspect that even the relatively popular ones, like tennis or swimming, gain most of their appeal from the voyeuristic pleasure of watching skimpily clad fit women.
In some cases, a specific carve out or female only league is outright ridiculous, why should there be a separate leaderboard or league for female chess players? The original justification, if memory serves, that it helps them find a foothold in a misogynistic and unfriendly environment, has negative relevance now. It's a test of pure skill that doesn't even need more physical effort than moving pieces on a board.
I go even further into the minority by advocating for almost all restrictions being removed from sports in general. Hell yeah, let's allow anabolic steroids and sketchy Russian PEDs, and as a Twitter wag once said, find out high humans can really jump. Olympic athletes are often mutants who are gifted, from birth, with better muscles and cardiovascular systems. I see no reason why they can get away with being blessed by the roll of the RNG while intentional attempts at self-improvement are verboten.
If I can't get that, sadly, then I demand that standards be applied fairly. Biological women should be disbarred from "Men's" sports, which are, almost always, open to anyone who cares to participate, not that it'll make any difference in practise.
Yeah it's not uncommon for me to have to ban people I agree with for saying things in an uncharitable way.
There are legal reasons why the US has so many female sports leagues. There is a law requiring colleges to have equal treatment of men and women, and one of those requirements has said you need an equal number of female sports scholarships.
I see. Well, my tiny residual dissatisfaction with the ban I received is much ameliorated when I discover that you were doing much the same thing I later found myself compelled to do for Astragant, arguably the FarRight dude.
Certainly it taught me that tone and phrase matters, when the topics of discussion are contentious, which likely made me a more careful and considerate mod, as well as what I can only hope is one that does his best to stop that bias leaking through when trying to be impartial!
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I remember the people who said 'Gay men aren't missing any rights, we both have the same right to marry a woman' back when gay marriage was on the docket. It wasn't convincing then, either.
Of course, we're in early days on this question, too. I expect a lot less variance and a lot more knowledge in another 10 years, and a lot more in another 50. I'm just looking at history on these types of fights and saying 'lets hedge towards giving the people the rights they want so long as we don't see any clear harm in doing so'.
Anyway. My post was full of proposed mechanisms that are directional, towards trans athletes being worse than cis male athletes. The 'uncertainty' is about whether all those negative factors on trans women bring their performance down to match cis women, or not. Not uncertainty about whether their performance is moving away from teh cis male mean, or in which direction.
Is there a right to "win at sports" that you are defending? This doesn't really seem like the same level of importance as gay marriage. I was also never one to say that about gay marriage. My stance has been and still is that the state should never have been involved in approving marriages. The original purpose of that was to prevent mixed race couples.
You seem certain that trans people aren't winning a bunch in the female leagues, so can't they also just lose in the male leagues?
I'd say the harm is a lesser or possibly equivalent version of just eliminating women's leagues altogether. Depends on entry requirements. The most permissive entry requirements would be the same as just eliminating the women's leagues. Super super strict entry requirements would make the harm non-existent, but probably only at the point where they are banning most trans athletes anyways.
Yet you've also spent a bunch of time denying the existence of directional effects that point to trans athletes being better than female athletes. You accept directional evidence when it suits you and deny it when it suits you. This is isolated demands for rigor.
I could also make up directional effects for why trans athletes might be better than cis gendered male athletes. The experience of being trans might give them more grit, having a trans community could give them a better support structure than most individual male athletes, and the increased awareness of their bodies might make them better at body awareness sports. The magnitude of these directional effects is about as well studied as the directional effects you mentioned. And I could again follow your line of arguments and say that without the win/loss ratio study we can't possibly know how things actually shake out.
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