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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.
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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?
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