NYT Article: What people will and won't say on LGBTQ+ Issues

[Analytics]

14 minutes ago, Amulek said:

When transgendered youth see other transgendered athletes competing and winning they will be inspired to do the same, and in the Connecticut case that I linked to previously that is exactly what happened. It started with one trans-athlete, and her success inspired other trans-students to want to compete as well.

No, that isn't exactly what happened. What actually happened in Connecticut is that there was a federal lawsuit about allowing two girls to compete. A year ago, the case was dismissed on procedural grounds:

Quote

[U.S. District Court Judge Robert] Chatigny stated that because the two transgender athletes, Terry Miller of Bloomfield and Andraya Yearwood of Cromwell, have graduated and the plaintiffs could no longer identify any other transgender female athletes, there was no further dispute to resolve. 

If Connecticut is full of elite male athletes who want to dominate female track and field and are inspired by Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood to do so, how come the plaintiffs in this lawsuit can't find any of them?

The truth is that there are very few transgender girls in Connecticut, of those there are very few who are athletes, of those there are very few, if any, who compete at an elite level. It's hard for me to imagine why an elite transgender female athlete would want to compete when there is so much fear and hatred. 

14 minutes ago, Amulek said:

According to this chart, the fastest time in recorded history for a female in the outdoor Women's Mile is 4:12.33.

Now, change the gender drop-down to Male and select the Men's Mile for the event and you should see the chart refresh with new data. Guess what happens? It cuts off at the 4 minute mark with over 1,400 men on the list with better times than a 4 minute mile. In other words, running the mile in 4:11 makes you either (1) the fastest woman in recorded history or (2) not even on the list of fastest men because you are not even remotely close to guy number 1414. Heck, even the fastest boys in High School last year are capable of beating that time.

That proves my point. Of the billions of males who have lived since 1899, only a few thousand have ever run as fast as the top female track stars. 

Few men are capable of competing with elite women. Very few women are transgender. A transgender women with the desire to do this and the ability to do so at an elite level is necessarily a rare thing. 

14 minutes ago, Amulek said:

If she is on hormone blockers during puberty then I see no reason why she should be barred from competing against other girls. I have no problem with recognizing transwomen as women and including them in competitions, so long as they aren't entering as superwomen.

I agree. It's too bad the Utah State legislature chose not to allow USA Swimming and UHSAA to handle this in the fair and inclusive way that you would.

[california boy]

4 hours ago, Calm said:

Yeah, like that is a sincere curiosity question that is going to lead to an open discussion about people’s feelings…

Are you threatened by someone publicly disagreeing so that you have to inflate the meaning of a downvote?  Does that sound like a reasonable question to ask you?
 

Lots of people use upvotes to express agreement, saves posting and is nice as it allows people to respond even if they don’t want to express in detail their opinion.  Makes sense if someone wants to use the downvotes frequently in the same way for disagreement.  There is no need to jump all the way to “threatened” first instead of simply asking what is the person using the downvote expressing first.

I guess I look at down votes differently.  If I gave a down vote for every post I disagreed with you would be seeing a lot of red  coming from me. If I disagree with someone I will actually respond to their post and state why I disagree with what they posted. This is after all a discussion forum. I expect to see different points of view. I have only given down votes when I felt the post was totally inappropriate.  
 

So maybe I have it wrong   I value your opinion   Do you think I should be giving down votes to every post I disagree with?

 

 

[Calm]

7 minutes ago, california boy said:

I guess I look at down votes differently.  If I gave a down vote for every post I disagreed with you would be seeing a lot of red  coming from me. If I disagree with someone I will actually respond to their post and state why I disagree with what they posted. This is after all a discussion forum. I expect to see different points of view. I have only given down votes when I felt the post was totally inappropriate.  
 

So maybe I have it wrong   I value your opinion   Do you think I should be giving down votes to every post I disagree with?

 

 

I think people should be able to choose why they downvote.  I don’t care in the least how you decide to use downvotes.  There are no board rules on upvotes as far as I know, so why should there be for down?  My only request to anyone is to be consistent so if someone wants to figure out how you really care about a downvoted post, they can look at past voting behaviour to figure it out.

Edited April 19, 2022 by Calm

[Stormin' Mormon]

41 minutes ago, Analytics said:

That proves my point. Of the billions of males who have lived since 1899, only a few thousand have ever run as fast as the top female track stars. 

Few men are capable of competing with elite women. Very few women are transgender. A transgender women with the desire to do this and the ability to do so at an elite level is necessarily a rare thing. 

 

The rarity of elite transgendered athletes is dependent on the size of your sampling population.  Among the millions of athletes at all level of play, elite transgendered athletes are a tiny tiny tiny almost-unnoticeable fraction.  

But if you're looking at just the Top Ten in a sport, the best of the best of the best, that proportion could easily be 100%. And that does not require a hypothetical flood of new interest by transgendered youths signing up for the sport.  It's simple math. 

According to a quick Google search, 0.6% of U.S. adults identify as trans. 

Had modern trans rules been in effect for track events like the 1 mile since 1899, and all else being equal, 8 of the fastest 1400 men would have been trans women and able to compete as women.  And since the men's records cut off after 4 minutes, and the fastest women's record is currently 4:12.33, there's actually even more trans runners who, even though they don't show up in the male "best of" list, still ran faster than the fastest biological female.

That would mean that the Top Ten (at least!) fastest women in history would have been male-bodied athletes. 

That doesn't strike you as fundamentally unfair to female-bodied athletes?   

 

[Amulek]

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Few men are capable of competing with elite women.

This is simply untrue.

Go back and look at the graphic I posted earlier in the thread - the one that marks the individual lifetime bests of three well-known female Olympic Champions in the 400 meters - Sanya Richards-Ross, Allyson Felix, and Christine Ohuruogu - in the sea of male-bodied performances run just in the single year 2017.

It shows that these elite women would lose to the very best senior men that year by about 12%. But it also shows that even at their absolute best, they would go on to lose to literally thousands of other boys and men. None of those female Olympian's lifetime best performances would be considered elite in men's events either on the collegiate or the international stage.

So, no, it is simply not the case that "few men are capable of competing with elite women."

You know what is true though? That there are zero women capable of competing with elite men.

 

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

I agree. It's too bad the Utah State legislature chose not to allow USA Swimming and UHSAA to handle this in the fair and inclusive way that you would.

I find it fascinating how different our opinions are on some of the issues that (at least in my view) seem fundamental to this debate, yet we both appear to end up approximately at the same place in the end.

 

[longview]

4 hours ago, Analytics said:

Would you say you understand girl swimming more than the Board of Directors of USA Swimming? Do you think you care about the sport more than they do? Do you think we need a big-government solution where the state legislature makes these decisions rather than USA Swimming?

Just curious.

Irrelevant.  If giant corporations want to go "woke" and many elite universities will fire their administrators and professors for the misfortune for having a small "slip of the tongue" in expressing opinions contrary to politically correct dogma, then there is way too much coercion being placed on most institutions.  Including USA Swimming.

I am opposed to "big-government".  The solution is the Tenth Amendment where most of the Feds (giant departments) must be dismantled and power returned to the States or the grass-roots.  I think there is too much abuse thru the mandates of Title IX.  There should be many more private governing boards that will make their own rules.  Which will allow more students and athletes to have freedom of choice in the kinds of associations, culture, levels of competition, academic standards, etc.

[Calm]

25 minutes ago, Amulek said:

That there are zero women capable of competing with elite men.

I think even you disagree with that as phrased since you mentioned sailing and shooting. I am adding horse racing and I believe other equestrian sports. 
https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2021/10/06/the-gap-between-male-and-female-jockeys/amp/

 

[Amulek]

Just now, Calm said:

I think even you disagree with that as phrased since you mentioned sailing and shooting. I am adding horse racing and I believe other equestrian sports. 
https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2021/10/06/the-gap-between-male-and-female-jockeys/amp/

Quite so - though, I believe it may have been Stormin' or someone else who listed those other events.

I mean for it to be understood in the context of the sort of athletic events where there is a performance gap which can be attributable to innate biological differences between male and female bodies (read: testosterone).

There are, in deed, several sports where this gap doesn't come into play. Curling would be another such example.

But for the majority of sports that we have been discussing in the thread (e.g., track and field, swimming, basketball, soccer, tennis, etc.), it is absolutely true.

 

[Stormin' Mormon]

13 minutes ago, Calm said:

I think even you disagree with that as phrased since you mentioned sailing and shooting. I am adding horse racing and I believe other equestrian sports. 
https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2021/10/06/the-gap-between-male-and-female-jockeys/amp/

 

I know I mentioned sailing and shooting in a recent post.  Maybe Amulek did, too, though. 

But yeah, equestrian sports seems to be one of those sports that's less dependent on a body's strength, speed, or endurance and could possibly be unisex. 

edited to add: Ninja'd!

Edited April 19, 2022 by Stormin' Mormon

[Calm]

11 minutes ago, Amulek said:

Quite so - though, I believe it may have been Stormin' or someone else who listed those other events.

Oops.  Your avatars aren’t even the same color, how did I manage that?

Quote

Curling would be another such example.

My mind went there too, but I wasn’t sure and wasn’t interested enough to look it up like I was for horses. 

Edited April 19, 2022 by Calm

[Calm]

Looks like there may be a biological sex based difference in curling after all.  They are still researching:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/in-olympic-curling-men-and-women-are-not-created-equal/2018/02/06/af74bf5e-0b37-11e8-8890-372e2047c935_story.html

Quote

It’s not simply that Canada’s top male skips (the chief strategist of a curling team) are more aggressive play callers than the top female skips. The difference is more nuanced, according to Kyle Paquette, director of sports science for Curling Canada, suggesting to some that top male curling skips may see angles better and anticipate three or four shots ahead better than their female counterparts….

Let’s say we have a half-dozen rocks in play,” said Paquette, who holds a doctorate in human kinetics. “Male skips will just sometimes see shots that top female skips won’t see at times. I would [like to] say that works vice versa, to a certain degree. But we’re not certain at this point.”

According to Paquette, Canadian curling officials had the country’s top men’s team plays its top women’s team 15 or 20 years ago. The result wasn’t close. They repeated the experiment 10 years ago and got the same lopsided result.

Nonetheless, he believes that strategy plays a more significant role in curling success than strength. That’s why Curling Canada is working to develop a metric that assesses the curling IQ or curling savviness of a skip, Paquette explained, equating it to an NFL quarterback rating. The ideal curling metric would capture the myriad factors behind successful skips and help coaches close any performance gap.

Also one already demonstrated which was the one I was wondering about (pushing rocks around even on ice takes some strength, the more distance the more strength plays in).  Was wondering if women could compensate using their own body weight without making it much more complicated. 

Quote

For starters, men would have the edge in a curling battle of the sexes because core muscle strength affects the speed with which curlers propel themselves from the “hack” (akin to a starting block) and reach the point where they are required to release the stone. A top male curler can cover that distance in about five seconds, whereas a top female takes about seven seconds. 

Power also is an asset as stones accumulate near the bull’s-eye-like target at one end of the ice and the roughhousing begins. Curling teams amass points by placing stones in concentric rings on the ice and knocking opponents’ stones out of scoring position. When it’s essential to send a rival’s stone flying, strength helps.

“If the other team has a couple of rocks in the rings [scoring position], generally the male curler is going to be able to move more granite, so to speak, and throw a little harder,” said Matt Hamilton, 28, of McFarland, Wis., a 6-foot-2 curler who is on the men’s team and will compete with his sister Becca, 28, in the inaugural Olympic mixed doubles event.

 

Edited April 19, 2022 by Calm

[Amulek]

19 minutes ago, Calm said:

Quote

Curling would be another such example.

My mind went there too, but I wasn’t sure and wasn’t interested enough to look it up like I was for horses. 

Interestingly, there seems to be a belief that sex makes a difference in curling (see, e.g., here).

Some of the ideas sound a little dubious - like men being more aggressive; that seems more like a tactical thing that could be trained. Other ideas, however, sound quasi-plausible - though maybe I am biased.

The one about men seeing shots that women don't see makes me instantly think of studies I've read on gender differences between men and women with respect to spatial reasoning. And the bit about being able to throw the 40-lb. stone harder / faster is likely true, but is only going be advantageous under certain circumstances - though, when the situation arises, I suppose that could conceivably win you the game.

ETA: I see you already beat me to this.

 

Edited April 19, 2022 by Amulek

[Calm]

And this was much more interesting then I expected:

 

[Calm]

6 minutes ago, Amulek said:

see you already beat me to this.

Love to go down those rabbit trails, lol

[Calm]

12 minutes ago, Amulek said:

And the bit about being able to throw the 40-lb. stone harder / faster is likely true, but is only going be advantageous under certain circumstances - though, when the situation arises, I suppose that could conceivably win you the game.

Quote

capital_elle •10 yr. ago…

There's quite a bit of an advantage for men. The difference in sweeping power is quite significant - the fact that they can drag the rock further helps in two key ways: 

They can simply pull it farther giving them a larger window to get the rock to the right spot 

They can wait longer before sweeping giving them the ability to bury rocks a little bit better 

Also, the fact that they can simply throw the up weight shots more easily does come into play. Because the big bailing-out shot is always a possibility, it lets the men typically play a little more aggressively, and make shots that (since they're lower percentage shots) aren't tried as often. 

Despite the fact that curling doesn't always look like an athletic sport - it is, and the strength differences do come into play more than a lot of people expect

From Reddit.  Another poster said this difference isn’t present at amateur levels and that is why they don’t segregate by biological sex for junior or child levels in most clubs. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Curling/comments/oicxz/do_men_have_any_advantage_in_curling_over_women/

 

Edited April 19, 2022 by Calm

[Analytics]

2 hours ago, Stormin' Mormon said:

The rarity of elite transgendered athletes is dependent on the size of your sampling population.  Among the millions of athletes at all level of play, elite transgendered athletes are a tiny tiny tiny almost-unnoticeable fraction.  

But if you're looking at just the Top Ten in a sport, the best of the best of the best, that proportion could easily be 100%. And that does not require a hypothetical flood of new interest by transgendered youths signing up for the sport.  It's simple math. 

According to a quick Google search, 0.6% of U.S. adults identify as trans. 

Had modern trans rules been in effect for track events like the 1 mile since 1899, and all else being equal, 8 of the fastest 1400 men would have been trans women and able to compete as women.  And since the men's records cut off after 4 minutes, and the fastest women's record is currently 4:12.33, there's actually even more trans runners who, even though they don't show up in the male "best of" list, still ran faster than the fastest biological female.

That would mean that the Top Ten (at least!) fastest women in history would have been male-bodied athletes. 

That doesn't strike you as fundamentally unfair to female-bodied athletes?   

 

It's a half-full, half-empty kind of thing, I suppose. Using those numbers, eight times in the last 120 years, an elite miler would be transgender. That means perhaps 1 year out of 15, a transgender woman would win it all.

Yes, that strikes me as "fundamentally unfair." But on the other hand, who the fastest woman in the world is, she will have "fundamentally unfair" advantages over the 99.99% of the people born with genes that are closer to average. What about athletics is fair?

But I will grant that with the Title IX mentality that is engrained into our collective psych, and it isn't fair for men to compete against women, by definition (even though it is somehow considered fair for women with superior genes to compete with women of inferior genes). But perhaps identifying the people with those genetic advantages who take advantage of it through hard work and luck is the entire point.

In any case, I do agree with the sensibilities of USA Swimming, and if doctors can identify specific chemical or physiological advantages from being or having been a man, then I have no problem if they are excluded.

That said, when I think of girls sports, I tend to think of the 99.99% who aren't competing on anything close to an elite level. If a transgender girl fits in with a girls team at that level, let her run. That's all I'm saying.

[Analytics]

2 hours ago, Amulek said:

This is simply untrue.

Go back and look at the graphic I posted earlier in the thread - the one that marks the individual lifetime bests of three well-known female Olympic Champions in the 400 meters - Sanya Richards-Ross, Allyson Felix, and Christine Ohuruogu - in the sea of male-bodied performances run just in the single year 2017.

My point is it's relative. The best runner at most large high schools can't run 400 meters in less than 50 seconds. The 400 meter specialist at a typical high school isn't on that chart. The guys we are talking about here are the ones who are competitive at state meets and are competing for college scholarships.

Ultimately I concede that there are thousands who can compete with elite women. But there are tens of millions that cannot.

But be all that as it may, my focus is on the average athletes, not the super elite. When I think of "girls swimming" I think of the girls my daughter swam with. I don't think of the Olympics. Likewise, when I think of a transgender athlete, I imagine a kid who would be an average male athlete at typical high school events--not the kid who wins all of those events and strongly competes at state.

2 hours ago, Amulek said:

I find it fascinating how different our opinions are on some of the issues that (at least in my view) seem fundamental to this debate, yet we both appear to end up approximately at the same place in the end.

Totally agree.

[california boy]

3 hours ago, Calm said:

I think people should be able to choose why they downvote.  I don’t care in the least how you decide to use downvotes.  There are no board rules on upvotes as far as I know, so why should there be for down?  My only request to anyone is to be consistent so if someone wants to figure out how you really care about a downvoted post, they can look at past voting behaviour to figure it out.

I didn't mean to imply that everyone shouldn't be able to choose why they downvote.  I was just curious why Raingirl choose to downvote Analytics post simply because he wrote about a different experience about this issue.  Basically I was asking why she didn't want to hear a different perspective.  She still hasn't answered, which is fine.

[Calm]

2 minutes ago, california boy said:

Basically I was asking why she didn't want to hear a different perspective

Maybe she just disagreed with it. Disagreement doesn’t mean you don’t want to hear something, at least not to me. 
 

If so many downvotes caused a post to disappear like I saw in a couple of places in the past, a downvote might be taken as a preference not to have to read a post, but even then someone might just want to express disagreement without posting and doesn’t care what happens to the post since they don’t plan on reading it again. 

Edited April 20, 2022 by Calm

[cinepro]

On 4/18/2022 at 8:27 PM, Analytics said:

I think the real reason we generally separate sports by gender is culture.

 

That reminds me of the joke in the recent Suicide Squad movie, where one character asks another if his name is a real name or a made-up name. To which he replies "All names are made up."

We're talking about sports. Sports are an entirely cultural construction, so of course anything we do in sports (or any meaning we give them) is because of the culture. The question is why our culture does this.

The obvious answer (to me) is that we do it because girls and women of all ages are generally slower and weaker than boys and men.

That's why, coincidentally, I've never seen anyone complain about a biological woman playing on a men's team. I've been involved with youth soccer for over 10 years as a coach and referee, and and seen dozens of games where teenage girls opted to play on a boys' team (usually because there was no girls team at that age). And no one ever had a problem with it. And those girls are usually very strong players, but are usually not huge playmakers in the game. I've coached may daughters for many years, and early on, I thought it might be a fun activity to challenge a boys team to a scrimmage. It always ended in an embarrassing massacre, no matter how good my daughter's team was and how bad the boy's team was. So I stopped doing that.

From what I can tell, girls playing on boys teams has gone on for decades, with no objection or comment (as your own flag-football story supports). So it isn't an issue with people feeling strongly about segregating the sexes in sports. It's because people understand what the data supports: boys are just generally stronger and faster than girls. They have a physical advantage.

We accept that some people are just taller, stronger or faster than others. That kids mature at different rates. That's just the way the cookie crumbles. But the physical advantages for boys and men are so inherent and consistent that it is simply unfair to girls and women to have them compete against biological boys.

The solution of saying "trans-women can compete against natal women only if they are terrible athletes" seems like an odd compromise. This is an odd issue where good intentions and warm feelings bump up against data, science, biology, and what I suspect is a severely underestimated sense of fairness that many people have.

 

[Calm]

14 minutes ago, cinepro said:

girls playing on boys teams has gone on for decades, with no objection or comment

There was definitely some when it started appearing in the news which was possibly back in my high school years (girls on varsity boys teams), mainly parents complaining the girl was going to get hurt.  Might have been earlier for other teams and I wasn’t aware of it.  But it hasn’t been newsworthy for decades as far as I know, but I avoid sports news as much as possible.

Interesting section:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_American_football_players#High_school

Anyone remember this (never saw it, remember commercials or posters or in flipping channels; I think I have sat through maybe 4 sports films in my life)?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarterback_Princess

Edited April 20, 2022 by Calm

[Analytics]

7 hours ago, cinepro said:

We accept that some people are just taller, stronger or faster than others. That kids mature at different rates. That's just the way the cookie crumbles. But the physical advantages for boys and men are so inherent and consistent that it is simply unfair to girls and women to have them compete against biological boys.

For many sports, one could just as easily and correctly say "the physical advantages for tall people are so inherent and consistent that it is simply unfair to short people to have to compete with biologically tall people." While that's true, we don't feel a need to create basketball leagues for short people. There simply must be more to it than trying to set up leagues for disadvantaged athletes. 

7 hours ago, cinepro said:

The solution of saying "trans-women can compete against natal women only if they are terrible athletes" seems like an odd compromise. This is an odd issue where good intentions and warm feelings bump up against data, science, biology, and what I suspect is a severely underestimated sense of fairness that many people have.

As far as I can tell, USA Swimming has done an excellent job of coming up with a compromise. The vast majority of athletes are more-or-less "terrible," but they participate anyway. And the experience of participating on a girls team is socially different than participating on a boys team--and its not just because on average, the girls are a little bit slower. USA Swimming says:

Quote

USA Swimming firmly believes in inclusivity and the opportunity for all athletes to experience the sport of swimming in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity and expression.

They understand the reality of why people participate, and understand that for average athletes, having a transgender girl swim with the girls doesn't hurt anybody. 

They say:

Quote

USA Swimming has and will continue to champion gender equity and the inclusivity of all cisgender and transgender women and their rights to participate in sport, while also fervently supporting competitive equity at elite levels of competition.

The development of the elite policy therefore acknowledges a competitive difference in the male and female categories and the disadvantages this presents in elite head-to-head competition. This is supported by statistical data that shows that the top-ranked female in 2021, on average, would be ranked 536th across all short course yards (25 yards) male events in the country and 326th across all long course meters (50 meters) male events in the country, among USA Swimming members. The policy therefore supports the need for competitive equity at the most elite levels of competition.

While recognizing the need for the aforementioned guidelines in elite competition, sport is an important vehicle for positive physical and mental health, and, for this reason, USA Swimming remains steadfast in its continued commitment to greater inclusivity at the non-elite levels.

In order to balance these two priorities, specific guidelines have been developed for both non-elite and elite athletes and elite events. At the non-elite level, an inclusive process has been established by which an athlete can elect to change their competition category in order for them to experience the sport of swimming in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity and expression. At the elite level, a policy has been created for transgender athlete participation in the U.S. that relies on science and medical evidence-based methods to provide a level-playing field for elite cisgender women, and to mitigate the advantages associated with male puberty and physiology. 

Elite athletes shall include any athlete who has achieved a time standard and desires to participate in elite events as defined in the policy.

The elite athlete policy will be implemented by a decision-making panel comprised of three independent medical experts and eligibility criteria will consist of:

1. Evidence that the prior physical development of the athlete as a male, as mitigated by any medical intervention, does not give the athlete a competitive advantage over the athlete’s cisgender female competitors.
2. Evidence that the concentration of testosterone in the athlete’s serum has been less than 5 nmol/L (as measured by liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry) continuously for a period of at least thirty-six (36) months before the date of application.

[Stormin' Mormon]

51 minutes ago, Analytics said:

For many sports, one could just as easily and correctly say "the physical advantages for tall people are so inherent and consistent that it is simply unfair to short people to have to compete with biologically tall people." While that's true, we don't feel a need to create basketball leagues for short people. There simply must be more to it than trying to set up leagues for disadvantaged athletes.

Is being short really comparable to being a woman?  Is a woman no different than a disadvantaged man? 

A short person may easily compete against tall people in other sports.  Skiing.  Gymnastics.  Skateboarding.  Surfing.  Some types of martial arts.  They may not excel against tall people in basketball, but there are plenty of options out there where they can use their lack of height to their advantage.

Are there sports where female-bodied athletes would be at an advantage when playing in mixed-gendered events? We've noted several sports in this thread where male-bodied athletes would not have an advantage (shooting, sailing, equestrian events), but that's not the same as sports where female-bodied athletes have an advantage.   

 

[Stormin' Mormon]

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

For many sports, one could just as easily and correctly say "the physical advantages for tall people are so inherent and consistent that it is simply unfair to short people to have to compete with biologically tall people." While that's true, we don't feel a need to create basketball leagues for short people. There simply must be more to it than trying to set up leagues for disadvantaged athletes.

 

I think I've lost the thread of your argument.  Are you arguing that male-bodied athletes ought to be able to compete in leagues that have traditionally been reserved for female-bodied athletes?  Or are you arguing that leagues for female-bodied athletes ought not to exist?  Because I'm seeing you hinting at both arguments, and I don't think the two notions co-exist very easily. 

I'm not trying to put words in your mouth; I'm simply trying to understand your arguments. Seeing an incongruity in your arguments does not make me automatically leap to a conclusion that you are making arguments in bad faith.  Rather, I am jumping to the conclusion that there's SOMETHING here I'm not understanding about your position. 

 

[Amulek]

12 hours ago, Analytics said:

My point is it's relative. The best runner at most large high schools can't run 400 meters in less than 50 seconds.

If you mean to say that the majority of high schools don't have an athlete who can run the 400 in under 50s, that's probably true.

But I attended a track meet to support one of our youth earlier this month and there were half a dozen guys (from half a dozen different schools) who did just that.

Two of the top three finishers at that particular meet outpaced Sanya Richards-Ross' lifetime best.

Had Allyson Felix competed in the same event and performed at her lifetime best, do you know what place she would have earned? Seventh!

 

12 hours ago, Analytics said:

The 400 meter specialist at a typical high school isn't on that chart. The guys we are talking about here are the ones who are competitive at state meets and are competing for college scholarships.

Well of course that's who we are talking about. So what? I never said that we weren't talking about gifted athletes.

However, the point of the illustration is to demonstrate that one doesn't have to be an elite male athlete in order to surpass even the very best female athletes.

 

12 hours ago, Analytics said:

Ultimately I concede that there are thousands who can compete with elite women. But there are tens of millions that cannot.

If it makes you feel better, I will happily concede that you are 100% correct on this (rather obvious) point.

There are, indeed, millions of men and boys who are not athletes, let alone competitive athletes, who would definitely lose in a competition against elite female athletes.

I have no idea why that is pertinent to this discussion though. The fact that there are elite women athletes who are capable of outperforming large numbers of men does not rebut the fact that there is an inherent biological performance gap between men and women.

 

12 hours ago, Analytics said:

But be all that as it may, my focus is on the average athletes, not the super elite.

Fair enough.

 

12 hours ago, Analytics said:

When I think of "girls swimming" I think of the girls my daughter swam with. I don't think of the Olympics.

Okay, but there is still a sex based performance gap even at the high school level.

See, here (emphasis added):

Quote

Age-grade competitive sports records show minimal or no female disadvantage prior to puberty, whereas from the age of male puberty onwards there is a strong and ongoing male advantage. Corresponding to the endogenous circulating testosterone increasing in males after puberty [...], male athletic performances go from being equal on average to those of age-matched females to 10% to 12% better in running and swimming events, and 20% better in jumping events (8) (Fig. 1).

Corroborative findings are provided by a Norwegian study that examined performance of adolescents in certain athletic events but without reference to contemporaneous circulating testosterone concentrations (107). The striking postpubertal increase in male circulating testosterone provides a major, ongoing, cumulative, and durable advantage in sporting contests by creating greater muscle mass and strength. These sex differences render women unable to compete effectively against men, especially (but not only) in power sports.

 

12 hours ago, Analytics said:

Likewise, when I think of a transgender athlete, I imagine a kid who would be an average male athlete at typical high school events--not the kid who wins all of those events and strongly competes at state.

And what happens when you take your "average male athlete at [a] typical high school" and throw him into the women's division?

Let's again take a look at the results from the high school track meet I attended earlier this month.

In the men's varsity 400 Meters that day, the average time from all male competitors calcs out to be 52.21 seconds. Unsurprisingly, none of the athletes had that exact time, so let's take the finisher closest to that time - erring on the slow side, just to be fair: that would be the young man who finished in 18th place, with a time of 52.45 seconds.

Now let's take a look at the results from the women's varsity 400 Meters at the same competition and see where this "average male athlete" would have landed had he competed in the women's division instead.

Well kiss my grits! It looks like he would have won - easily beating the girl who came in first in that race with a time of 55.91 seconds.

In fact, every single boy who competed (save one) would have come in first had they competed against the girls instead of boys that day.

And that's why people have a problem with trans-women competing against biological females. Because having access to testosterone is like being on a performance enhancing drug.