Allow me to be the first to say it: "nonbinary" has nothing to do with "transgender."
Because gender is binary. People are male or female and while there are conditions like Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome the men who suffer from it are still men.
I have had it up to here with "nonbinary." Everything I have seen has convinced me that this is a fad to get attention; they are too strident, too angry, too fanatic. I think that just as transvestites piggybacked on gay political advances the "nonbinary" folk are piggybacking on transgender people, real ones.
And it annoys me how so many coddle this affectation. Medium will ban you without warning if you state a refusal to use that abhorrent singular they. Educators are called up on disciplinaries because a student complains about pronouns.
As if we don't have enough real problems.
Race on the other hand is a continuum. While we define three major races only some people fit squarely into one of them and then there is (sorry) interbreeding; there was a hysterical case a few years ago where a virulent white supremacist learned that he was genetically 13% black.
It seems insane that people fight against the reality of gender, as if concave versus convex genitalia are an artifact of societal uh rigidity.
"Everything I have seen has convinced me that this is a fad to get attention; they are too strident, too angry, too fanatic."
Yeah, this conversation doesn't actually touch on non-binary people, but I agree. "Non-binary" identities aren't identities, they're personalities (or perhaps due to a lack thereof). Their adoption is almost entirely about societal misogyny and good old-fashioned teen angst.
It's interesting how they've been folded into the trans community. And it will be especially interesting to see what happens in future with "transracial" people and "MAP"s. Once you insist that an internal sense of identity trumps *everything else*, you find yourself on incredibly shaky ground.
Sorry for the mini-hijack but I don't think you can talk about "trans" (why the foreshortening?) without "nonbinary" anymore.
I think they're corrosive and destructive; they adulterate the real issues around authentically transgendered people with their attention needs and if the Democrats run on bathrooms they're going to lose big.
We are living through an epistemological crisis on many fronts. Postmodernism left good people inhibited from even the most uncontroversial value judgments, the best lack all conviction; opinion and fact have merged. The deprecation of expertise, the uncritical acceptance of preposterous absurdities, a cowed press. We're in a lot of trouble.
And nothing signifies that trouble more than the claim that gender is just "society's little boxes." Even flowers have genders.
"And nothing signifies that trouble more than the claim that gender is just "society's little boxes." Even flowers have genders."
We've gone back and forth a few times on the difference between sex and gender so I'll just remind you that flowers have *sexes* (or sexed parts) not genders. When people say gender is a social construct, at least as "gender" is used in these discussions nowadays, they're correct.
I can see you want to fight this semantic battle 😁, but I don't think this is the hill to die on. The obfuscators thrive on imprecision. Indeed, it's the only tool they have to hide how ludicrous their ideas are. Being able to point out that while gender is a social construct, sex isn't (nor are they completely separate, almost all animal species exhibit gendered behaviour), makes it harder for them not to reckon with the argument.
I'm not sure if I direct quite so much of my ire at non binary people as you do. The most vicious and disingenuous people I come across are trans activists. Though we completely agree that whoever is most to blame, they're doing real harm to genuine issues faced by genuine transgender people.
So many social justice movements at the moment seem to hold the people they're supposed to be "uplifting" in utter disdain.
No Steve I don't want to fight any semantic battle on those two words. I just have a different lifelong understanding: gender as all matters—biological and psychological— of male and female and sex as a reproductive or recreational activity that humans usually perform in a horizontal position. But, agreed, this is not the hill I want to die on either.
The singular they, OTOH, I will resist to my dying day.
But I need less conflict in my life, not more, and aside from "they" and the nasty people and their screams of victimhood, I don't have a dog in this fight.
"I just have a different lifelong understanding: gender as all matters—biological and psychological"
Yeah, I get that. For pretty much any time until the past 10 years, it was perfectly safe (though not technically accurate) to use the words sex and gender interchangeably.
But today, this is the kind of semantic misstep that will be used to distract from the point. There are all sorts of issues today where linguistic precision is so important because the postmodernists love confusing/redefining words to hide the ridiculousness of their arguments.
Precisely. I'm a woman whose into football and knows how to shoot a gun - nonbinary? I'm a man who likes the piano and French poetry - nonbinary? It's bizarre to me for people to elevate gender stereotypes from 70+ years ago just to rage against the inutility of them. The reality is for most people over 20 years of age, everyone was "nonbinary" and it was just called "having interests". The most ridiculous of all the pseudo-moralistic fads (and there's a lot of competition there).
Except it's not just a rebellion against 50s societal expectations of behavior. It extends all the way to claiming that the *biological* definitions of male and female are fraudulent.
We are decades away from working dad/housekeeper mom, from football boys and dollhouse girls. The nonbinary rebellion is a lot nuttier than that.
Of course your position on this issue is obviously the rational one. And I think your point that we would not be even having this conversation 10 years ago is an insightful and important observation. It really does show just how far over the edge we have gone as a society. It is valid fodder for conservatives to use in dismissing any and all progressives on all topics. It is quite toxic.
Still I am not sure about this back and forth. I am not convinced it served to shift anyones thinking. (A high bar, I will admit in this case. Still this should be our aim.)
I feel the key observation is to notice that anytime there is a dramatic delta in expect performance we split groups up. Male / Female. 5 year old soccer from 15 year old soccer, from collegiate, from professional. Different weight classes in wrestling, etc.
Seems one should ignore all stuff about race (even if she brings it up), and just notice that we do this splitting, and it is good that we do.
If you did want to discuss race, it occurs to me that society WOULD have separated sports if the physiologies of different races were as incompatible as the physiologies. (but I would not bring the up, it would just get twisted.)
The other observation to make is that if one really are going to allow any person to join into either gender's sports, then one MUST simply abolish gendered sports all together. That is a logical position to take on this issue. It is just not a position that many who are pushing for self determination are taking.
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Part of me just wants to allow liberal rules to be applied at this highest most visible levels of sports. Increasingly it would be used by tier two athletes to become world champions to the collective outrage of the majority of the population. This policy would destroy itself, and would also help pull the left just a bit back from its ludicrous position. But I don't wish this, because it would also do large damage to the reputation of the left and many important issues that espouses. The question is how can we constructively demonstrate the defeating aspects of these ideas, without ourselves becoming destructive. (no ideas from the peanut gallery)
"I am not convinced it served to shift anyones thinking. (A high bar, I will admit in this case. Still this should be our aim.)"
Yeah, it's not that I disagree, it's that, as I've said once or twice before, I'm mainly working through the logic on these issues for the sake of other readers who haven't had the time, or the masochistic tendencies, to research them as thoroughly as I have.
I find that, particularly on trans issues, most of the people I come across aren't the least bit interested in shifting their thinking. There's not even a vague attempt at good-faith conversation. And as she used racial segregation as the lynchpin of her argument regarding trans "segregation" in sport, I couldn't really ignore it.
So I simply pointed out how and why the conflation of "race" and. transgender identity is incredibly racist. Again, this is more for the benefit of anybody else reading. Perhaps I could shift *their* thinking.
That 99.98% I quoted? I didn't pull that out of thin air. Those are genuinely the odds that you can't tell, at a glance, whether a person is male or female (coincidentally, those are also nearly the same odds that a flipped coin will land on its edge). If the person I'm talking to is going to pretend that this 0.02% chance means that unless I've had my sex confirmed in a lab I can't tell what it is, I don't have much hope of an honest discussion.
This issue is entirely ideological. I have only slightly more hope of having a trans "ally" admit that they're wrong than I would of having a flat-earther admit that the Earth is a globe. So I'm not convinced that allowing these rules to be applied at the most visible levels would pull the left back from this ludicrous position. Some people really have embraced the that there's nothing about being a woman that isn't simply in people's heads.
I see, your writing is a leave behind for other readers. Got it. In that case, restating the central argument: humanity has chosen performance-based groupings to try to ensure that all peoples have an ok shot of winning within their performance-based groups. and this is a good thing. the complexity of the back and forth makes the messaging difficult. Still I understand you cannot leave a challenge unanswered.
I agree allies will not have their minds changed. but both the left and right have a "momentum" to ways of thinking. by showing the silly-ness of a position to the broader community it can shift the balance away from certain ideas. I expect you agree with this, and indeed AIM to do this. Having the majority of all female world records being held by trans women would certainly demonstrate in action, what you strive to express in words. Sadly it would ALSO demonstrate the irrationality of the left for all the right to see. That would be a great loss.
"Having the majority of all female world records being held by trans women would certainly demonstrate in action, what you strive to express in words. "
Again, my suspicion is that this really wouldn't be the case.
Trans women and elite athletes are both tiny categories. Their overlap is miniscule. It'll be a long time before trans women hold a majority of records. But in the mean time, lots of female athletes will lose medals or places in finals. Girls will lose scholarships or just confidence. The damage is insidious.
Plus, self ID (I'm a woman because I say I'm a woman) is already the standard in Olympic guidelines. How do you undo that? Who, pardon the pun, will have the balls to say, "Actually, trans women *aren't* exactly women are they?" after 10 years of normalisation have gone by?
I hope I'm wrong, but what I think we're seeing is a legitimate breakdown in people's ability to admit what a woman is. Younger generations will grow up not understanding they're even missing anything. If we don't stop this while there are enough of us who still know what a woman *is*, I think it's going to be a very long time before anything changes.
QJ, dont feel the need to respond... I just could not help but to respond:
WILL TRANS WOMEN WIN MANY SPORTS??
As I understand it, there are 1000+ biological-men who can run faster than the fastest biological-woman, so was imagining a future where it becomes normal for a tiny fraction (0.1% to 1%) of non-trans elite athletes to adjust their self determination specifically to BECOME a world champion. It would not take many folks to decided they had a bit of room in their life for a bit of ambiguity. The stakes would be high... millions in advertising etc. and the gold medal title. And just 0.1% would be enough.... dont know what will happen.
ON THE MEANING OF WOMEN
I think both this generation and next generation know what a biological-women and self-declared-women are. The difference will be which of these definitions is given primacy when one simply uses the generic term "woman."
I think the next generation will not be troubled. I think they will have SWITCHED the default meaning to the latter, but since they all collectively understand that "woman" now means "a person who self-ascribes a collection of stereotypical behaviors" there will be no issue. They will simply have a separate term like "biologically female" or such to refer to the physical state of a person. I think this is a fine situation, and no one will be upset that the definitions are "wrong". (those upset people will be dead)
But I also predict no one will try to connecting physiologically-female attributes to "women" any longer since it will then be understood that woman no longer means biologically female. So elite sport designations won't be tied in this way, also maternity related, and health related issues will not be tied to the term "woman" but instead will be tied to the more cumbersome biologically-female term... or maybe they will invent a distinct term for the bio case. whatever, I bet it will work out.
We are just in this weird present state where we have rules tied to the generic term "woman" which need to be tied to the "biologically female" category instead. I predict reality will eventually force this to happen.
Not so sure it would be a great loss. I think there are more left-leaning people than you might suppose who oppose the extreme thinking and who still care about fair play over orthodoxy. And it appears that more and more are coming out of the woodwork all the time. I am actually heartened by recent movements. We are far from having won, but people are starting to pay attention. The SF recall was particularly instructive. California is unabashedly liberal—particularly the urban areas—so the recall was significant.
I like the way you describe splittings and performance-based groups, though. I think these are useful terms when trying to understand this phenomenon. I will be adding them to my vocab bag for discussing this issue. Thanks!
It will not be men who bring down trans competing as women because our ox is not being gored. It will be women, athletes missing out on hard earned scholarships and professional women's sports. It's their fight and I'm uncertain that male allies are helpful.
"It's their fight and I'm uncertain that male allies are helpful."
Hmm, I couldn't disagree more strongly here. I've made this point many times in various forms, but there are vanishingly few (if any) issues that are just the concern of one group. Nor should they be thought of that way.
White allies were helpful in the fight against slavery and segregation, male allies were helpful in the fight for women's voting and workplace and abortion based rights. Straight people were helpful in the fight for the recognition of gay marriage.
It can't really be put any better than Martin Niemöller did in "First They Came..."
Perhaps my poor wording. I have always agreed with what you wrote, but I read Medium and have started to question the idea. It is a sea of expressed hatred for "allies" from within the offended tribe. They deny that it is hate and I can't read minds, but that seems to be modern thought. When someone says something to the effect of, "You are irredeemably a racist, sexist, x-phobe because you are a straight white male" aimed at me for membership in a group they despise, and then say I should join them in tearing down that group, what am I to think? Do they want my help, or do they just want to rant and criticize?
I realize that in many ways, Medium is the most toxic platform on the internet, perhaps because it goes beyond the short attention span, fits on a bumper sticker platforms like twitter so I shouldn't let that make me think it is representative of people in general. I also realize that I'm as guilty as anyone about seeing many so-called allies as disingenuous virtue signalers, so I have my issues too. I don't need the appreciation of those I wish to help, but in this day in age am I actually helpful if that is how I am viewed?
"so I shouldn't let that make me think it is representative of people in general"
Yeah, I think this rule should be applied to the internet in general.😅 It's a natural signal booster for outrage and liars. I don't worry about how I'm viewed if I'm genuinely telling the truth to the best of my ability. Often you just don't get to find out if you were helpful. As I've said before, people rarely change their minds in real time. But maybe something you say will flip a switch at some future point. I've found that numerous times.
I strongly agree. Coalitions are very much needed to turn the tide on some of these toxic ideas. Plus, it humanizes us to reach across the aisle. Helps us to understand one another better.
My head keeps swirling with labels and pronouns and ambiguous definitions! And then there you are, Steve, only 99.98 percent sure of the facts. Sigh...😉
Ya know…. I can understand the thought process of a serial killer, a thief, a scientist, or a sportsman, but no matter how hard I try, I cannot understand the thought process of people like Eve who wear the mask of an ally while being a proud hiding-in-plain-sight racist bigot.
Ooooo their outside’s a different color! For shame! *mocks clutching of pearls and dramatic fainting*. Come get me if they have wings, then we’ll talk. Not Eve and me, of course. Perish the thought. No, me and winged people. Weird has always treated me good and I’ve done the same in turn.
As for the argument on biological genders in sports. How shall I put this delicately?
Like, duh!
Grab a copy of Gray’s Anatomy and look at the musculature and skeletal differences between the genders. Same muscles and muscle groups and bones, sure but also, not the same. There’s a museum exhibit, if anyone needs it more in your face.
Nothing you said is “radical” in any way. It’s logic, it’s biology, it’s science. Transgender people have it rough in a way none of us will ever truly understand, and I, by no means, am making light of the struggles and challenges they face. However, the gender reassignment surgery changes the gender-related organs—removing some and creating others. And yes, hormones are altered, but none of it changes their underlying musculoskeletal structure. And before anyone tries to read something into that sentence that isn’t there, let me be clear—if you tell me that you are a woman or man, no matter your outward appearance, then I will treat and address you accordingly. A person’s gender is not what’s being debated, their biology however is. Those two things are not the same, no matter what sentiments, emotions, or intentions you may have.
Pick up a dictionary and a science book before you come to this debate. It’s not us who have to fall to the levels of name-calling and emotional ploys. It’s you—a generalized, multi form multicultural you to all those “Eves” out there—who has to rise to the level of educated conversations to speak with us.
The odds are that you have little to no Neanderthal DNA, while I have slightly more than an average amount of Neanderthal DNA (determined in a lab) for someone of European ancestry. Therefor you are slightly more human than me. The founders obviously didn't know about that when the opined about the 3/5. I've been waiting for this argument.
The thought that evolution is an ongoing process, and we are not a finished product is one I've often had. The idea that environmental adaptation is both cultural and that it makes its way into the genome is both fascinating and somewhat reasonable.
In keeping with the Steve's commentary article, sexual androgyny is less common than racial ambiguity since interracial reproduction dilutes race where I'm uncertain that such a path exists concerning sex, at least as quickly. At the same time people visually passing, racially and sexually is a thing for some. It is easier for passing people to enter a culture and/or subculture than for those do not pass if they choose to. It is unfortunate for those who don't when their appearance does not match their self-image.
I do think that a demand for as radical as accepting that a trans-woman is a woman where you can drop the prefix is a tough idea to sell. Especially when it comes to sports. No playing field is completely level, but the separation of men's and women's sports is an honest effort at providing women with a chance to participate in sports without facing the very large disadvantage they would face competing against men in sports where those attributes have large impact.
always appreciate the conversations - brief note to thank you for linking to the intersex piece (0.018%). it's all part of the pronoun fad as well - happy to call you whatever, but for all of human history, our innate guesses about "him" or "her" have been quite accurate. our survival depends on it to some degree - rapid assessments without a questionnaire and life history. my favorite piece of illogic is seeing pronouns in zoom calls when the interlocutors name is right there. I will call you by your *name* thank you very much lmao.
Steve, unless you left out some context around what Eve said, you kind of blew it on this one. Maybe I'm missing something, but you *are* the one who dragged race into it and I didn't get the sense she was suggesting something racist, she was turning your argument back on you - If someone can have their 'sex' tested and declared something else, can we do the same thing with race? She didn't say it had to be in the context of sports, nor did I get the slightest suggestion of less than humanism (and your use of the word 'transhuman' only confused me - if you're familiar with Dr. Mehmet Yildiz on Medium's Illumination, he writes about 'transhumanism' as a philiosophy that has nothing to do with race, unless maybe that includes moving beyond it).
Did you leave out some greater context around what Eve said?
On a sort of related note, I remember seeing a news piece on TV about how Kenyans make exceptional runners for biological reasons (maybe not all, but a lot). They, along with the Ethiopians, really dominate in running. I can't remember where I saw it but here's a little bit about it: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22634972/
There's no need to test people for race in sports, clearly, not even for the biological advantages certain Africans have over everyone else, but there are clear differences between men and women so yeah, in some fractional cases we may need to test for sex. I remember Caster Semenya; she was featured on 60 Minutes I think it was some years back, just before or around the time that 'trans' became a thing, although I don't think that was part of the story. She DOES look an awful lot like a man and I remember feeling very badly for her, that there seemed to be no place for her to engage in competitive sports because she was too female to compete with men and too male to compete with women. Don't know what she's up to now.
What Eve *may* have been doing is turning the natal female activists' accusation that transwomen are trying to 'erase women's existence' by insisting on being accepted and included as 'real women' around and claiming that what was done to Caster Semenya bodes poorly for the rest of us. It does not; she's just a really unusual sex anomaly and I wish I knew the answer for her.
BTW, the more I think about transgenderism the more I think 'transracialism' could be okay too, and I recently rewrote an article that got taken down by the Medium Woke Police last year and reworked it a bit for Vocal, and I make a case for how black people can go 'transracial' and become white. https://vocal.media/theSwamp/what-s-so-terrible-about-transracialism
I think it might be good for everyone if this was permitted. I have no desire to be anything other than the way I was born but I'd be interested in reading a book called White Like Me.
"Maybe I'm missing something, but you *are* the one who dragged race into it and I didn't get the sense she was suggesting something racist"
Nope, I don't think I "dragged" race into it at all. I simply pointed out that there are certain objective realities that one can accurately recognise, at a glance, without a lab. I gave three examples of this, she took one of them, and then used it to conflate the idea of black people competing against white people to the idea of males who identify as women competing against women. If you don't see why that's racist, especially given the delightful breakdown I included in the conversation, I'm not sure what to tell you.😅
My use of the word "trans human" (yes, I went back and forth over whether to hyphenate this or use a different term) is to point out that if she's suggesting that testing trans women to see if they're female is the same as testing people's race to see if...well, what do you think she's implying here? You seem to disagree with my conclusion that she's saying we should test race to see if they should be able to complete with "normal people" but I'm really struggling to see any other interpretation.
And no, certain Africans don't have "an advantage over everyone else". The top 1% of certain Africans have an advantage over the majority of people in a few disciplines. The holder of the fastest 60m split in history over 100m is a 5 ft 8 Chinese guy. The 4th fastest 110m hurdle time is also held by a Chinese athlete. One of the most successful distance runners of all time is an English woman. And, of course, once we look past sprinting and distance running, we see a wide range of events where black people are more or less successful than people of any other "race".
Javelin, tennis, powerlifting, swimming, curling (!!) do "certain Africans" have an advantage over "everyone else" in these sports? Do "certain Europeans" have an advantage in these sports? Yes, Eve was trying to turn my argument back on me. But in doing so, she revealed that she sees black people as outside the "ordinary" definition of people in the same way that most sane people see trans women as outside the "ordinary" definition of women.
Finally, no. I think that transracialism is a stupid idea. And like transgenderism, it locks people further into stereotypes instead of freeing them from them. The only change we need to make to our concept of race is to realise how limited and stupid it is and abandon it.
See, I felt she was trying to turn your argument back on you, and doing it poorly (no, black and white athletes aren't appreciably different like male and female) but I ascribed it to poor logic, not racism. I think I may be missing something in some of her comments that weren't quoted.
As for athletes, there does seem to be an over-representation of some Africans in some sports that has been much commented on, but clearly they don't dominate. The differences will never be enough to call for testing between races the way we MUST have them for gender differences. Maybe you're reacting to the right-wing tendency to use evolution to 'explain' how black athletes do better due to some pseudo-scientific explanation about how they're supposedly more apelike or have smaller brains or whatever. I'm pointing out that some African athletes do seem to have a slight biological edge over others, but it doesn't mean we can expect them to win every competition they're in the way we almost certainly can when a man is allowed to compete against women.
I think switching sides, via gender or race, could be an interesting experiment to see how the other side lives. I don't think it's a final answer because it's still living inauthentically, and that's one of the main reasons why I'm so skeptical of the trans movement. There really are only a *very* few people who truly feel they were born in the wrong body, and what makes us male and female is a helluva lot different from what makes us white or black or brown, which are really just evolutionary adaptations for different climates. John Howard Griffin was able to provide a view of being black that no black person in America then or now could provide: What it's like to be born into privilege and then switch sides for awhile. His greatest insight came when he sat on a public toilet in Mississippi, just to be alone for awhile, and pondered how he just couldn't do this anymore, it was too hard living like this. And of course immediately realized he had a *choice*, which black people didn't. It's why I find some transwomen TED talks interesting when they're all like, "Holy fuck, he sexism is bad, ain't it?" Yes. Thanks for telling your story. Because some men may listen to an ex-man in a way they might not when a woman talks about it.
"I think I may be missing something in some of her comments that weren't quoted."
As with all of the conversations here, there aren't any comments that weren't quoted. Do you really think I would edit out people's arguments without admitting it?! I'm actually kind of offended!😅
In the interests of complete transparency, after the final reply I posted here, Eve did reply with a link to an article in which she'd basically just posted screenshots of the above conversation. I didn't add the link here because the conversation is all *already* here and I didn't feel like sending her any traffic. But that's it. If you feel as if you're missing something, it's not because I'm hiding it from you.
Yes, we agree that she was trying to turn my argument back on me. This might even have worked if I it were *in any way not racist* to think of black people and white people in the same way one might think of trans women and women.
One of the reasons I had so much fun in my reply to her, was the paragraph about black people needing to have surgery and take hormones to "pass" as "normal people. I can't give a clearer explanation of why the idea to "turn the argument back on me" was doomed the moment it left that lonely little neutron than this.
I wasn't mistaking Eve's arguments for "right-wing" arguments (not least because right-wingers very rarely argue in favour of trans inclusion😅). I don't even mind "genetic differences" arguments, except insofar as they're usually based on Charles Murray's extremely shaky research and they always miss how much diversity there is *within* the "races". Often more than is *between* them in fact. If you group human beings by any criteria, even largely arbitrary criteria like eye colour or skin colour, you'll find data that suggests one group is smart/taller/funnier/better at kissing, than the others. I don't find this particularly interesting, but it doesn't offend me. Even if it suggests that "my" group lacks intelligence or are physiological behemoths. I'm no more or less intelligent than I was before the research was done. Nor is anybody else.
I describe Eve's argument as racist because it requires a "white people as 'normal'" view of the world in order to function. So do some of the things you say here. This isn't KKK racism, or even "purse-clutching" racism. But it's still racism.
For example, you say that there "seems to be an over-representation of some Africans in some sports." When you see a lot of white people in a sport, swimming for example, or wrestling, or most field athletics, can you honestly say that you've ever described it as "an *over-representation* of some Europeans in some sports"?
And, more importantly, what would the "testing between races" look like? As I asked Eve (notice how she avoids the hard questions?), what "race" am I? What "race" is Michael Phelps? What "race" is Naomi Osaka? Is Usain Bolt the same race as Eliud Kipchoge? Would this testing screen them both out of the same events? A lot of these gently racist ideas simply come out of a flawed understanding of what race is.
The top 1% of males beat the top 1% of females in pretty much *every single athletic discipline in existence*. In fact, the top 5% of males do. This is not true of any "race". If the "over-representation of Africans" in sport was this dramatic, or if the average advantages males have over females more closely mirrored the average advantages different "races" have in different events, we'd be having a very different conversation.
I think you made my point about switching sides; the experience of being something isn't the experience of pretending to be it.
There are absolutely insights you can gain, but a) there is no unified "experience that you peer into, b) I think the kind guy who won't take a woman seriously because she's a woman is vanishingly unlikely to take a trans woman seriously because she used to be a man, and c) I think those insights can be gained by anybody who is sincerely willing to listen and engage and honestly reflect on their blind spots.
I'm constantly learning about the perspectives of men and women and gay people and trans people and *black* people. I've learned about my blind spots on countless issues over the years, again, including some black issues. I didn't have to become something I'm not in order to do so.
I didn't think you'd edited anything out of Eve's comments on purpose; perhaps just missed something, or were careless, or something.
Okay, maybe I didn't read the bit about the surgery carefully, because now that you mention it here, yeah, I can see how that might come across badly.
As for the 'over representation' of some Africans in certain sports, yes, I do think it's noteworthy when they come from small countries who don't have the money and resources put into developing athletes and teams the way richer European countries do. That said, if athletes from small countries like Lithuania or Estonia were over-represented in certain Olympic sports I WOULD find that interesting. Especially when they don't have the money to put into sterling teams and athletes the way the US and Russia do.
Why were the Russians so damn good at bringing home more metal than a Motley Crue concert before they were banned? I think we all know the answer to that and it ain't superior Aryan genes. Slight biological differences and drugs for athletic performance are things that make me go hmmmmmm. But, I wouldn't support banning athletes for any natural slight advantages they might have, whereas I'm okay with banning dopers.
"yes, I do think it's noteworthy when they come from small countries who don't have the money and resources put into developing athletes and teams the way richer European countries do"
Yes, but they have the advantage of growing up in extremely hot, low oxygen conditions, and needing to do demanding, physical work just as a matter of course. Then they *train* in those conditions. Most distance athletes (at least now) deliberately go to environments like those to train so that competing in more Western climates and elevations is easier.
They also have a culture that specifically celebrates long distance running (or sprinting in the case of Jamaica, say), so they're far more likely to find those exceptional athletes out of the millions of less exceptional ones. Plus, their trainers have done some truly groundbreaking work in the field of running technique.
Somewhere in China, right now, there's probably a kid who, with the proper training, could win an Olympic medal in sprinting. But how much energy is being put into finding him? How interested is he in doing it? There are better explanations for these differences than race essentialism and money.
This isn't to deny that there's such a thing as biological differences of course. But to say that if you're looking for a *specific* biological difference, and try to decide who has it based on the colour of their skin, you'll usually be wrong just as often as you're right. This is not true for sex.
"This isn't to deny that there's such a thing as biological differences of course. But to say that if you're looking for a *specific* biological difference, and try to decide who has it based on the colour of their skin, you'll usually be wrong just as often as you're right. This is not true for sex."
Good point about how these athletes were raised and work, and then trained, but I was still wasn't making a race-based comparison. The observation that athletes from certain African countries seem to have a slight biological physical edge over others and why isn't about race, or at least it shouldn't be. It's about a *biological advantage* but not one worth testing over. We all agree here that men and women should compete separately for biological reasons that won't be overcome by training harder or lifting more weights. Any non-gender-related bio differences are what athletes simply must be up against; being Kenyan or Ethiopian doesn't *guarantee* they'll win the race since they do lose races too. That's the 'competitive' part of athletics. Sometimes the person next to you is just better suited to win and it's up to you to do the best you can.
Understand, Steve, I'm not arguing in favour of testing based on race; but I'm also in favour of speaking up about facts that might make others uncomfortable. Yes, I know right wingers will take that information and make racist analyses about them; the problem isn't the facts but the interpretation. Bio differences isn't the only reason why they do well, as you point out, there's a culture of success around these particular athletes that also contributes. Let's look at the whole picture.
"Young boys and men on hormone therapy can't develop properly. Puberty can't be stopped and started."
Yep, it goes beyond that too. There are all kinds of potential issues with ability to orgasm, fertility, and then there's the simple fact that many (most?) trans identifying children desist as they become adults.
I understand the arguments for helping a trans child avoid having to go through puberty. I really do. But we have to weigh those arguments against the fact that there are good reasons why we don't consider minors capable of giving informed consent. The implications of this decision are serious enough for an adult. For a child? Anybody who pretends not to see the problem doesn't deserve a say on the issue in my opinion.
Allow me to be the first to say it: "nonbinary" has nothing to do with "transgender."
Because gender is binary. People are male or female and while there are conditions like Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome the men who suffer from it are still men.
I have had it up to here with "nonbinary." Everything I have seen has convinced me that this is a fad to get attention; they are too strident, too angry, too fanatic. I think that just as transvestites piggybacked on gay political advances the "nonbinary" folk are piggybacking on transgender people, real ones.
And it annoys me how so many coddle this affectation. Medium will ban you without warning if you state a refusal to use that abhorrent singular they. Educators are called up on disciplinaries because a student complains about pronouns.
As if we don't have enough real problems.
Race on the other hand is a continuum. While we define three major races only some people fit squarely into one of them and then there is (sorry) interbreeding; there was a hysterical case a few years ago where a virulent white supremacist learned that he was genetically 13% black.
It seems insane that people fight against the reality of gender, as if concave versus convex genitalia are an artifact of societal uh rigidity.
"Everything I have seen has convinced me that this is a fad to get attention; they are too strident, too angry, too fanatic."
Yeah, this conversation doesn't actually touch on non-binary people, but I agree. "Non-binary" identities aren't identities, they're personalities (or perhaps due to a lack thereof). Their adoption is almost entirely about societal misogyny and good old-fashioned teen angst.
It's interesting how they've been folded into the trans community. And it will be especially interesting to see what happens in future with "transracial" people and "MAP"s. Once you insist that an internal sense of identity trumps *everything else*, you find yourself on incredibly shaky ground.
Sorry for the mini-hijack but I don't think you can talk about "trans" (why the foreshortening?) without "nonbinary" anymore.
I think they're corrosive and destructive; they adulterate the real issues around authentically transgendered people with their attention needs and if the Democrats run on bathrooms they're going to lose big.
We are living through an epistemological crisis on many fronts. Postmodernism left good people inhibited from even the most uncontroversial value judgments, the best lack all conviction; opinion and fact have merged. The deprecation of expertise, the uncritical acceptance of preposterous absurdities, a cowed press. We're in a lot of trouble.
And nothing signifies that trouble more than the claim that gender is just "society's little boxes." Even flowers have genders.
"And nothing signifies that trouble more than the claim that gender is just "society's little boxes." Even flowers have genders."
We've gone back and forth a few times on the difference between sex and gender so I'll just remind you that flowers have *sexes* (or sexed parts) not genders. When people say gender is a social construct, at least as "gender" is used in these discussions nowadays, they're correct.
I can see you want to fight this semantic battle 😁, but I don't think this is the hill to die on. The obfuscators thrive on imprecision. Indeed, it's the only tool they have to hide how ludicrous their ideas are. Being able to point out that while gender is a social construct, sex isn't (nor are they completely separate, almost all animal species exhibit gendered behaviour), makes it harder for them not to reckon with the argument.
I'm not sure if I direct quite so much of my ire at non binary people as you do. The most vicious and disingenuous people I come across are trans activists. Though we completely agree that whoever is most to blame, they're doing real harm to genuine issues faced by genuine transgender people.
So many social justice movements at the moment seem to hold the people they're supposed to be "uplifting" in utter disdain.
No Steve I don't want to fight any semantic battle on those two words. I just have a different lifelong understanding: gender as all matters—biological and psychological— of male and female and sex as a reproductive or recreational activity that humans usually perform in a horizontal position. But, agreed, this is not the hill I want to die on either.
The singular they, OTOH, I will resist to my dying day.
But I need less conflict in my life, not more, and aside from "they" and the nasty people and their screams of victimhood, I don't have a dog in this fight.
"I just have a different lifelong understanding: gender as all matters—biological and psychological"
Yeah, I get that. For pretty much any time until the past 10 years, it was perfectly safe (though not technically accurate) to use the words sex and gender interchangeably.
But today, this is the kind of semantic misstep that will be used to distract from the point. There are all sorts of issues today where linguistic precision is so important because the postmodernists love confusing/redefining words to hide the ridiculousness of their arguments.
Precisely. I'm a woman whose into football and knows how to shoot a gun - nonbinary? I'm a man who likes the piano and French poetry - nonbinary? It's bizarre to me for people to elevate gender stereotypes from 70+ years ago just to rage against the inutility of them. The reality is for most people over 20 years of age, everyone was "nonbinary" and it was just called "having interests". The most ridiculous of all the pseudo-moralistic fads (and there's a lot of competition there).
"It's bizarre to me for people to elevate gender stereotypes from 70+ years ago just to rage against the inutility of them."
This!!! THANKYOU!!!😁 How is this hard for anybody to see?!
Except it's not just a rebellion against 50s societal expectations of behavior. It extends all the way to claiming that the *biological* definitions of male and female are fraudulent.
We are decades away from working dad/housekeeper mom, from football boys and dollhouse girls. The nonbinary rebellion is a lot nuttier than that.
Of course your position on this issue is obviously the rational one. And I think your point that we would not be even having this conversation 10 years ago is an insightful and important observation. It really does show just how far over the edge we have gone as a society. It is valid fodder for conservatives to use in dismissing any and all progressives on all topics. It is quite toxic.
Still I am not sure about this back and forth. I am not convinced it served to shift anyones thinking. (A high bar, I will admit in this case. Still this should be our aim.)
I feel the key observation is to notice that anytime there is a dramatic delta in expect performance we split groups up. Male / Female. 5 year old soccer from 15 year old soccer, from collegiate, from professional. Different weight classes in wrestling, etc.
Seems one should ignore all stuff about race (even if she brings it up), and just notice that we do this splitting, and it is good that we do.
If you did want to discuss race, it occurs to me that society WOULD have separated sports if the physiologies of different races were as incompatible as the physiologies. (but I would not bring the up, it would just get twisted.)
The other observation to make is that if one really are going to allow any person to join into either gender's sports, then one MUST simply abolish gendered sports all together. That is a logical position to take on this issue. It is just not a position that many who are pushing for self determination are taking.
~~~~
Part of me just wants to allow liberal rules to be applied at this highest most visible levels of sports. Increasingly it would be used by tier two athletes to become world champions to the collective outrage of the majority of the population. This policy would destroy itself, and would also help pull the left just a bit back from its ludicrous position. But I don't wish this, because it would also do large damage to the reputation of the left and many important issues that espouses. The question is how can we constructively demonstrate the defeating aspects of these ideas, without ourselves becoming destructive. (no ideas from the peanut gallery)
"I am not convinced it served to shift anyones thinking. (A high bar, I will admit in this case. Still this should be our aim.)"
Yeah, it's not that I disagree, it's that, as I've said once or twice before, I'm mainly working through the logic on these issues for the sake of other readers who haven't had the time, or the masochistic tendencies, to research them as thoroughly as I have.
I find that, particularly on trans issues, most of the people I come across aren't the least bit interested in shifting their thinking. There's not even a vague attempt at good-faith conversation. And as she used racial segregation as the lynchpin of her argument regarding trans "segregation" in sport, I couldn't really ignore it.
So I simply pointed out how and why the conflation of "race" and. transgender identity is incredibly racist. Again, this is more for the benefit of anybody else reading. Perhaps I could shift *their* thinking.
That 99.98% I quoted? I didn't pull that out of thin air. Those are genuinely the odds that you can't tell, at a glance, whether a person is male or female (coincidentally, those are also nearly the same odds that a flipped coin will land on its edge). If the person I'm talking to is going to pretend that this 0.02% chance means that unless I've had my sex confirmed in a lab I can't tell what it is, I don't have much hope of an honest discussion.
This issue is entirely ideological. I have only slightly more hope of having a trans "ally" admit that they're wrong than I would of having a flat-earther admit that the Earth is a globe. So I'm not convinced that allowing these rules to be applied at the most visible levels would pull the left back from this ludicrous position. Some people really have embraced the that there's nothing about being a woman that isn't simply in people's heads.
Good points. Two separate responses.
I see, your writing is a leave behind for other readers. Got it. In that case, restating the central argument: humanity has chosen performance-based groupings to try to ensure that all peoples have an ok shot of winning within their performance-based groups. and this is a good thing. the complexity of the back and forth makes the messaging difficult. Still I understand you cannot leave a challenge unanswered.
I agree allies will not have their minds changed. but both the left and right have a "momentum" to ways of thinking. by showing the silly-ness of a position to the broader community it can shift the balance away from certain ideas. I expect you agree with this, and indeed AIM to do this. Having the majority of all female world records being held by trans women would certainly demonstrate in action, what you strive to express in words. Sadly it would ALSO demonstrate the irrationality of the left for all the right to see. That would be a great loss.
"Having the majority of all female world records being held by trans women would certainly demonstrate in action, what you strive to express in words. "
Again, my suspicion is that this really wouldn't be the case.
Trans women and elite athletes are both tiny categories. Their overlap is miniscule. It'll be a long time before trans women hold a majority of records. But in the mean time, lots of female athletes will lose medals or places in finals. Girls will lose scholarships or just confidence. The damage is insidious.
Plus, self ID (I'm a woman because I say I'm a woman) is already the standard in Olympic guidelines. How do you undo that? Who, pardon the pun, will have the balls to say, "Actually, trans women *aren't* exactly women are they?" after 10 years of normalisation have gone by?
I hope I'm wrong, but what I think we're seeing is a legitimate breakdown in people's ability to admit what a woman is. Younger generations will grow up not understanding they're even missing anything. If we don't stop this while there are enough of us who still know what a woman *is*, I think it's going to be a very long time before anything changes.
QJ, dont feel the need to respond... I just could not help but to respond:
WILL TRANS WOMEN WIN MANY SPORTS??
As I understand it, there are 1000+ biological-men who can run faster than the fastest biological-woman, so was imagining a future where it becomes normal for a tiny fraction (0.1% to 1%) of non-trans elite athletes to adjust their self determination specifically to BECOME a world champion. It would not take many folks to decided they had a bit of room in their life for a bit of ambiguity. The stakes would be high... millions in advertising etc. and the gold medal title. And just 0.1% would be enough.... dont know what will happen.
ON THE MEANING OF WOMEN
I think both this generation and next generation know what a biological-women and self-declared-women are. The difference will be which of these definitions is given primacy when one simply uses the generic term "woman."
I think the next generation will not be troubled. I think they will have SWITCHED the default meaning to the latter, but since they all collectively understand that "woman" now means "a person who self-ascribes a collection of stereotypical behaviors" there will be no issue. They will simply have a separate term like "biologically female" or such to refer to the physical state of a person. I think this is a fine situation, and no one will be upset that the definitions are "wrong". (those upset people will be dead)
But I also predict no one will try to connecting physiologically-female attributes to "women" any longer since it will then be understood that woman no longer means biologically female. So elite sport designations won't be tied in this way, also maternity related, and health related issues will not be tied to the term "woman" but instead will be tied to the more cumbersome biologically-female term... or maybe they will invent a distinct term for the bio case. whatever, I bet it will work out.
We are just in this weird present state where we have rules tied to the generic term "woman" which need to be tied to the "biologically female" category instead. I predict reality will eventually force this to happen.
Not so sure it would be a great loss. I think there are more left-leaning people than you might suppose who oppose the extreme thinking and who still care about fair play over orthodoxy. And it appears that more and more are coming out of the woodwork all the time. I am actually heartened by recent movements. We are far from having won, but people are starting to pay attention. The SF recall was particularly instructive. California is unabashedly liberal—particularly the urban areas—so the recall was significant.
I like the way you describe splittings and performance-based groups, though. I think these are useful terms when trying to understand this phenomenon. I will be adding them to my vocab bag for discussing this issue. Thanks!
It will not be men who bring down trans competing as women because our ox is not being gored. It will be women, athletes missing out on hard earned scholarships and professional women's sports. It's their fight and I'm uncertain that male allies are helpful.
"It's their fight and I'm uncertain that male allies are helpful."
Hmm, I couldn't disagree more strongly here. I've made this point many times in various forms, but there are vanishingly few (if any) issues that are just the concern of one group. Nor should they be thought of that way.
White allies were helpful in the fight against slavery and segregation, male allies were helpful in the fight for women's voting and workplace and abortion based rights. Straight people were helpful in the fight for the recognition of gay marriage.
It can't really be put any better than Martin Niemöller did in "First They Came..."
Perhaps my poor wording. I have always agreed with what you wrote, but I read Medium and have started to question the idea. It is a sea of expressed hatred for "allies" from within the offended tribe. They deny that it is hate and I can't read minds, but that seems to be modern thought. When someone says something to the effect of, "You are irredeemably a racist, sexist, x-phobe because you are a straight white male" aimed at me for membership in a group they despise, and then say I should join them in tearing down that group, what am I to think? Do they want my help, or do they just want to rant and criticize?
I realize that in many ways, Medium is the most toxic platform on the internet, perhaps because it goes beyond the short attention span, fits on a bumper sticker platforms like twitter so I shouldn't let that make me think it is representative of people in general. I also realize that I'm as guilty as anyone about seeing many so-called allies as disingenuous virtue signalers, so I have my issues too. I don't need the appreciation of those I wish to help, but in this day in age am I actually helpful if that is how I am viewed?
"so I shouldn't let that make me think it is representative of people in general"
Yeah, I think this rule should be applied to the internet in general.😅 It's a natural signal booster for outrage and liars. I don't worry about how I'm viewed if I'm genuinely telling the truth to the best of my ability. Often you just don't get to find out if you were helpful. As I've said before, people rarely change their minds in real time. But maybe something you say will flip a switch at some future point. I've found that numerous times.
I strongly agree. Coalitions are very much needed to turn the tide on some of these toxic ideas. Plus, it humanizes us to reach across the aisle. Helps us to understand one another better.
My head keeps swirling with labels and pronouns and ambiguous definitions! And then there you are, Steve, only 99.98 percent sure of the facts. Sigh...😉
Ya know…. I can understand the thought process of a serial killer, a thief, a scientist, or a sportsman, but no matter how hard I try, I cannot understand the thought process of people like Eve who wear the mask of an ally while being a proud hiding-in-plain-sight racist bigot.
Ooooo their outside’s a different color! For shame! *mocks clutching of pearls and dramatic fainting*. Come get me if they have wings, then we’ll talk. Not Eve and me, of course. Perish the thought. No, me and winged people. Weird has always treated me good and I’ve done the same in turn.
As for the argument on biological genders in sports. How shall I put this delicately?
Like, duh!
Grab a copy of Gray’s Anatomy and look at the musculature and skeletal differences between the genders. Same muscles and muscle groups and bones, sure but also, not the same. There’s a museum exhibit, if anyone needs it more in your face.
Nothing you said is “radical” in any way. It’s logic, it’s biology, it’s science. Transgender people have it rough in a way none of us will ever truly understand, and I, by no means, am making light of the struggles and challenges they face. However, the gender reassignment surgery changes the gender-related organs—removing some and creating others. And yes, hormones are altered, but none of it changes their underlying musculoskeletal structure. And before anyone tries to read something into that sentence that isn’t there, let me be clear—if you tell me that you are a woman or man, no matter your outward appearance, then I will treat and address you accordingly. A person’s gender is not what’s being debated, their biology however is. Those two things are not the same, no matter what sentiments, emotions, or intentions you may have.
Pick up a dictionary and a science book before you come to this debate. It’s not us who have to fall to the levels of name-calling and emotional ploys. It’s you—a generalized, multi form multicultural you to all those “Eves” out there—who has to rise to the level of educated conversations to speak with us.
The odds are that you have little to no Neanderthal DNA, while I have slightly more than an average amount of Neanderthal DNA (determined in a lab) for someone of European ancestry. Therefor you are slightly more human than me. The founders obviously didn't know about that when the opined about the 3/5. I've been waiting for this argument.
"The 3/5ths compromise was about representation."
Yeah, you're right. My tongue was wedged pretty firmly in my cheek. I was just having too much fun at that point. 😁
That depends upon which experts you agree with.
https://carlzimmer.com/are-neanderthals-human/
I did write that in jest, kinda sorta.
The thought that evolution is an ongoing process, and we are not a finished product is one I've often had. The idea that environmental adaptation is both cultural and that it makes its way into the genome is both fascinating and somewhat reasonable.
In keeping with the Steve's commentary article, sexual androgyny is less common than racial ambiguity since interracial reproduction dilutes race where I'm uncertain that such a path exists concerning sex, at least as quickly. At the same time people visually passing, racially and sexually is a thing for some. It is easier for passing people to enter a culture and/or subculture than for those do not pass if they choose to. It is unfortunate for those who don't when their appearance does not match their self-image.
I do think that a demand for as radical as accepting that a trans-woman is a woman where you can drop the prefix is a tough idea to sell. Especially when it comes to sports. No playing field is completely level, but the separation of men's and women's sports is an honest effort at providing women with a chance to participate in sports without facing the very large disadvantage they would face competing against men in sports where those attributes have large impact.
Thank you for that link. As I read, thoughts rushed. Hopefully a thoughtful reply will follow later.
always appreciate the conversations - brief note to thank you for linking to the intersex piece (0.018%). it's all part of the pronoun fad as well - happy to call you whatever, but for all of human history, our innate guesses about "him" or "her" have been quite accurate. our survival depends on it to some degree - rapid assessments without a questionnaire and life history. my favorite piece of illogic is seeing pronouns in zoom calls when the interlocutors name is right there. I will call you by your *name* thank you very much lmao.
Steve, unless you left out some context around what Eve said, you kind of blew it on this one. Maybe I'm missing something, but you *are* the one who dragged race into it and I didn't get the sense she was suggesting something racist, she was turning your argument back on you - If someone can have their 'sex' tested and declared something else, can we do the same thing with race? She didn't say it had to be in the context of sports, nor did I get the slightest suggestion of less than humanism (and your use of the word 'transhuman' only confused me - if you're familiar with Dr. Mehmet Yildiz on Medium's Illumination, he writes about 'transhumanism' as a philiosophy that has nothing to do with race, unless maybe that includes moving beyond it).
Did you leave out some greater context around what Eve said?
On a sort of related note, I remember seeing a news piece on TV about how Kenyans make exceptional runners for biological reasons (maybe not all, but a lot). They, along with the Ethiopians, really dominate in running. I can't remember where I saw it but here's a little bit about it: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22634972/
There's no need to test people for race in sports, clearly, not even for the biological advantages certain Africans have over everyone else, but there are clear differences between men and women so yeah, in some fractional cases we may need to test for sex. I remember Caster Semenya; she was featured on 60 Minutes I think it was some years back, just before or around the time that 'trans' became a thing, although I don't think that was part of the story. She DOES look an awful lot like a man and I remember feeling very badly for her, that there seemed to be no place for her to engage in competitive sports because she was too female to compete with men and too male to compete with women. Don't know what she's up to now.
What Eve *may* have been doing is turning the natal female activists' accusation that transwomen are trying to 'erase women's existence' by insisting on being accepted and included as 'real women' around and claiming that what was done to Caster Semenya bodes poorly for the rest of us. It does not; she's just a really unusual sex anomaly and I wish I knew the answer for her.
BTW, the more I think about transgenderism the more I think 'transracialism' could be okay too, and I recently rewrote an article that got taken down by the Medium Woke Police last year and reworked it a bit for Vocal, and I make a case for how black people can go 'transracial' and become white. https://vocal.media/theSwamp/what-s-so-terrible-about-transracialism
I think it might be good for everyone if this was permitted. I have no desire to be anything other than the way I was born but I'd be interested in reading a book called White Like Me.
"Maybe I'm missing something, but you *are* the one who dragged race into it and I didn't get the sense she was suggesting something racist"
Nope, I don't think I "dragged" race into it at all. I simply pointed out that there are certain objective realities that one can accurately recognise, at a glance, without a lab. I gave three examples of this, she took one of them, and then used it to conflate the idea of black people competing against white people to the idea of males who identify as women competing against women. If you don't see why that's racist, especially given the delightful breakdown I included in the conversation, I'm not sure what to tell you.😅
My use of the word "trans human" (yes, I went back and forth over whether to hyphenate this or use a different term) is to point out that if she's suggesting that testing trans women to see if they're female is the same as testing people's race to see if...well, what do you think she's implying here? You seem to disagree with my conclusion that she's saying we should test race to see if they should be able to complete with "normal people" but I'm really struggling to see any other interpretation.
And no, certain Africans don't have "an advantage over everyone else". The top 1% of certain Africans have an advantage over the majority of people in a few disciplines. The holder of the fastest 60m split in history over 100m is a 5 ft 8 Chinese guy. The 4th fastest 110m hurdle time is also held by a Chinese athlete. One of the most successful distance runners of all time is an English woman. And, of course, once we look past sprinting and distance running, we see a wide range of events where black people are more or less successful than people of any other "race".
Javelin, tennis, powerlifting, swimming, curling (!!) do "certain Africans" have an advantage over "everyone else" in these sports? Do "certain Europeans" have an advantage in these sports? Yes, Eve was trying to turn my argument back on me. But in doing so, she revealed that she sees black people as outside the "ordinary" definition of people in the same way that most sane people see trans women as outside the "ordinary" definition of women.
Finally, no. I think that transracialism is a stupid idea. And like transgenderism, it locks people further into stereotypes instead of freeing them from them. The only change we need to make to our concept of race is to realise how limited and stupid it is and abandon it.
See, I felt she was trying to turn your argument back on you, and doing it poorly (no, black and white athletes aren't appreciably different like male and female) but I ascribed it to poor logic, not racism. I think I may be missing something in some of her comments that weren't quoted.
As for athletes, there does seem to be an over-representation of some Africans in some sports that has been much commented on, but clearly they don't dominate. The differences will never be enough to call for testing between races the way we MUST have them for gender differences. Maybe you're reacting to the right-wing tendency to use evolution to 'explain' how black athletes do better due to some pseudo-scientific explanation about how they're supposedly more apelike or have smaller brains or whatever. I'm pointing out that some African athletes do seem to have a slight biological edge over others, but it doesn't mean we can expect them to win every competition they're in the way we almost certainly can when a man is allowed to compete against women.
I think switching sides, via gender or race, could be an interesting experiment to see how the other side lives. I don't think it's a final answer because it's still living inauthentically, and that's one of the main reasons why I'm so skeptical of the trans movement. There really are only a *very* few people who truly feel they were born in the wrong body, and what makes us male and female is a helluva lot different from what makes us white or black or brown, which are really just evolutionary adaptations for different climates. John Howard Griffin was able to provide a view of being black that no black person in America then or now could provide: What it's like to be born into privilege and then switch sides for awhile. His greatest insight came when he sat on a public toilet in Mississippi, just to be alone for awhile, and pondered how he just couldn't do this anymore, it was too hard living like this. And of course immediately realized he had a *choice*, which black people didn't. It's why I find some transwomen TED talks interesting when they're all like, "Holy fuck, he sexism is bad, ain't it?" Yes. Thanks for telling your story. Because some men may listen to an ex-man in a way they might not when a woman talks about it.
"I think I may be missing something in some of her comments that weren't quoted."
As with all of the conversations here, there aren't any comments that weren't quoted. Do you really think I would edit out people's arguments without admitting it?! I'm actually kind of offended!😅
In the interests of complete transparency, after the final reply I posted here, Eve did reply with a link to an article in which she'd basically just posted screenshots of the above conversation. I didn't add the link here because the conversation is all *already* here and I didn't feel like sending her any traffic. But that's it. If you feel as if you're missing something, it's not because I'm hiding it from you.
Yes, we agree that she was trying to turn my argument back on me. This might even have worked if I it were *in any way not racist* to think of black people and white people in the same way one might think of trans women and women.
One of the reasons I had so much fun in my reply to her, was the paragraph about black people needing to have surgery and take hormones to "pass" as "normal people. I can't give a clearer explanation of why the idea to "turn the argument back on me" was doomed the moment it left that lonely little neutron than this.
I wasn't mistaking Eve's arguments for "right-wing" arguments (not least because right-wingers very rarely argue in favour of trans inclusion😅). I don't even mind "genetic differences" arguments, except insofar as they're usually based on Charles Murray's extremely shaky research and they always miss how much diversity there is *within* the "races". Often more than is *between* them in fact. If you group human beings by any criteria, even largely arbitrary criteria like eye colour or skin colour, you'll find data that suggests one group is smart/taller/funnier/better at kissing, than the others. I don't find this particularly interesting, but it doesn't offend me. Even if it suggests that "my" group lacks intelligence or are physiological behemoths. I'm no more or less intelligent than I was before the research was done. Nor is anybody else.
I describe Eve's argument as racist because it requires a "white people as 'normal'" view of the world in order to function. So do some of the things you say here. This isn't KKK racism, or even "purse-clutching" racism. But it's still racism.
For example, you say that there "seems to be an over-representation of some Africans in some sports." When you see a lot of white people in a sport, swimming for example, or wrestling, or most field athletics, can you honestly say that you've ever described it as "an *over-representation* of some Europeans in some sports"?
And, more importantly, what would the "testing between races" look like? As I asked Eve (notice how she avoids the hard questions?), what "race" am I? What "race" is Michael Phelps? What "race" is Naomi Osaka? Is Usain Bolt the same race as Eliud Kipchoge? Would this testing screen them both out of the same events? A lot of these gently racist ideas simply come out of a flawed understanding of what race is.
The top 1% of males beat the top 1% of females in pretty much *every single athletic discipline in existence*. In fact, the top 5% of males do. This is not true of any "race". If the "over-representation of Africans" in sport was this dramatic, or if the average advantages males have over females more closely mirrored the average advantages different "races" have in different events, we'd be having a very different conversation.
I think you made my point about switching sides; the experience of being something isn't the experience of pretending to be it.
There are absolutely insights you can gain, but a) there is no unified "experience that you peer into, b) I think the kind guy who won't take a woman seriously because she's a woman is vanishingly unlikely to take a trans woman seriously because she used to be a man, and c) I think those insights can be gained by anybody who is sincerely willing to listen and engage and honestly reflect on their blind spots.
I'm constantly learning about the perspectives of men and women and gay people and trans people and *black* people. I've learned about my blind spots on countless issues over the years, again, including some black issues. I didn't have to become something I'm not in order to do so.
I didn't think you'd edited anything out of Eve's comments on purpose; perhaps just missed something, or were careless, or something.
Okay, maybe I didn't read the bit about the surgery carefully, because now that you mention it here, yeah, I can see how that might come across badly.
As for the 'over representation' of some Africans in certain sports, yes, I do think it's noteworthy when they come from small countries who don't have the money and resources put into developing athletes and teams the way richer European countries do. That said, if athletes from small countries like Lithuania or Estonia were over-represented in certain Olympic sports I WOULD find that interesting. Especially when they don't have the money to put into sterling teams and athletes the way the US and Russia do.
Why were the Russians so damn good at bringing home more metal than a Motley Crue concert before they were banned? I think we all know the answer to that and it ain't superior Aryan genes. Slight biological differences and drugs for athletic performance are things that make me go hmmmmmm. But, I wouldn't support banning athletes for any natural slight advantages they might have, whereas I'm okay with banning dopers.
"yes, I do think it's noteworthy when they come from small countries who don't have the money and resources put into developing athletes and teams the way richer European countries do"
Yes, but they have the advantage of growing up in extremely hot, low oxygen conditions, and needing to do demanding, physical work just as a matter of course. Then they *train* in those conditions. Most distance athletes (at least now) deliberately go to environments like those to train so that competing in more Western climates and elevations is easier.
They also have a culture that specifically celebrates long distance running (or sprinting in the case of Jamaica, say), so they're far more likely to find those exceptional athletes out of the millions of less exceptional ones. Plus, their trainers have done some truly groundbreaking work in the field of running technique.
Somewhere in China, right now, there's probably a kid who, with the proper training, could win an Olympic medal in sprinting. But how much energy is being put into finding him? How interested is he in doing it? There are better explanations for these differences than race essentialism and money.
This isn't to deny that there's such a thing as biological differences of course. But to say that if you're looking for a *specific* biological difference, and try to decide who has it based on the colour of their skin, you'll usually be wrong just as often as you're right. This is not true for sex.
"This isn't to deny that there's such a thing as biological differences of course. But to say that if you're looking for a *specific* biological difference, and try to decide who has it based on the colour of their skin, you'll usually be wrong just as often as you're right. This is not true for sex."
Good point about how these athletes were raised and work, and then trained, but I was still wasn't making a race-based comparison. The observation that athletes from certain African countries seem to have a slight biological physical edge over others and why isn't about race, or at least it shouldn't be. It's about a *biological advantage* but not one worth testing over. We all agree here that men and women should compete separately for biological reasons that won't be overcome by training harder or lifting more weights. Any non-gender-related bio differences are what athletes simply must be up against; being Kenyan or Ethiopian doesn't *guarantee* they'll win the race since they do lose races too. That's the 'competitive' part of athletics. Sometimes the person next to you is just better suited to win and it's up to you to do the best you can.
Understand, Steve, I'm not arguing in favour of testing based on race; but I'm also in favour of speaking up about facts that might make others uncomfortable. Yes, I know right wingers will take that information and make racist analyses about them; the problem isn't the facts but the interpretation. Bio differences isn't the only reason why they do well, as you point out, there's a culture of success around these particular athletes that also contributes. Let's look at the whole picture.
"Young boys and men on hormone therapy can't develop properly. Puberty can't be stopped and started."
Yep, it goes beyond that too. There are all kinds of potential issues with ability to orgasm, fertility, and then there's the simple fact that many (most?) trans identifying children desist as they become adults.
I understand the arguments for helping a trans child avoid having to go through puberty. I really do. But we have to weigh those arguments against the fact that there are good reasons why we don't consider minors capable of giving informed consent. The implications of this decision are serious enough for an adult. For a child? Anybody who pretends not to see the problem doesn't deserve a say on the issue in my opinion.