Transgender athletes

[Peterkin]

1 hour ago, StringJunky said:

I think it's a case of men have had more opportunities to play sport and was less culturally acceptable until more recently.

Opportunity, access, early training, money, facilities, free time, parental and community support, societal and peer approval. It's largely a question of how children are treated. If the general assumption is that girls are good at/for some things and boys are good at other things, the scope of talent development is limited for both. 

[Intoscience]

4 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

Opportunity, access, early training, money, facilities, free time, parental and community support, societal and peer approval. It's largely a question of how children are treated. If the general assumption is that girls are good at/for some things and boys are good at other things, the scope of talent development is limited for both. 

It will be interesting to see if this premise pans out, if equal opportunity continues gaining momentum maybe we will see a shift to a more equal outcome?

I'm not sure it's just a general assumption that girls are good at some things and boys are better at others. I think that it is that way due to years of evolutionary necessity. Maybe with evolution this will change, but I think this will only happen over a long period of time if left to happen naturally.

If you consider the roles that males and females adopted from the course of evolutionary survival and environmental requirements over history (pre-to modern humans), then it is quite easy to link certain skills in modern sports back to ancient skills developed over time.      

[swansont]

1 hour ago, Intoscience said:

Or maybe males (in general) have a more natural affinity to sports than females? Much like females (in general) seem to have a more natural affinity to nurture than males?

Or maybe that's how people are brought up. When title IX went into effect and forced schools to give women equal opportunity to participate in sports (among other things) in schools that got federal funding, there was an explosion of participation. What was holding that back wasn't "natural affinity", it was opportunity.

“Since 1972, thanks to increased funding and institutional opportunities, there has been a 545% increase in the percentage of women playing college sports and a 990% increase in the percentage of women playing high school sport.”

https://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/education/title-ix-and-the-rise-of-female-athletes-in-america/

 

[Peterkin]

54 minutes ago, Intoscience said:

It will be interesting to see if this premise pans out, if equal opportunity continues gaining momentum maybe we will see a shift to a more equal outcome?

It might be interesting, if that trend were to reach sufficient momentum.  I don't really think there's time.

54 minutes ago, Intoscience said:

I'm not sure it's just a general assumption that girls are good at some things and boys are better at others. I think that it is that way due to years of evolutionary necessity.

Cars, planes, motorbikes and sailboats are not evolutionary developments. Or necessities, for that matter. No ape ever had to adapt riding or driving muscles. Where the motive power is independent of the athlete, body shape and muscle-mass are not issues. As for the psychological aspect of sex differentiation, the assumptions have been pretty just that - assumptions based on the observation of society from the POV of the observer (20th century red state American, 18th century French aristocrat, 8th century Druid priestess, 2nd century BCE Greek pedagogue or 6th century BCE Chinese civil servant) - always different, always changing. Attitudes and interests are formed early in life, and heavily influenced by the social environment. 

54 minutes ago, Intoscience said:

If you consider the roles that males and females adopted from the course of evolutionary survival and environmental requirements over history (pre-to modern humans), then it is quite easy to link certain skills in modern sports back to ancient skills developed over time.      

So easy, in fact, as to appear facile and perhaps merit a deeper examination.

I don't know; I'm merely speculating. Sports and games go a very long way back in human prehistory, but have only recently become a commercial and scientific endeavor. Many children participate at the play level; only a few exceptional athletes go on to the big money, the big trophies and fame - and they don't do it through their own individual effort. Sport in this kind of framework is not an evolutionary development; the character traits required to thrive in this kind of sport environment is not an evolutionary necessity - any more than the traits required to manipulate mechanical devices.        

https://azcaa.com/benefits-of-co-ed-sports/

Would it really be so terrible to sort child teams by size and skill, rather than age and sex?

In high school and college - mating age -  other considerations may intrude - but probably not among serious athletes.

(Of course, I'm against 'serious' sport to begin with. It's no fun anymore.) 

Edited May 16, 2022 by Peterkin

[StringJunky]

1 hour ago, Intoscience said:

It will be interesting to see if this premise pans out, if equal opportunity continues gaining momentum maybe we will see a shift to a more equal outcome?

I'm not sure it's just a general assumption that girls are good at some things and boys are better at others. I think that it is that way due to years of evolutionary necessity. Maybe with evolution this will change, but I think this will only happen over a long period of time if left to happen naturally.

If you consider the roles that males and females adopted from the course of evolutionary survival and environmental requirements over history (pre-to modern humans), then it is quite easy to link certain skills in modern sports back to ancient skills developed over time.      

100000's of years is too short for observable evolution, AFAIK. We can only measure H. sapiens existence on that scale.

Edited May 16, 2022 by StringJunky

[TheVat]

Some of the differences in skill between players at higher levels of competition may relate to sex-related factors like fast-twitch muscle fibers and reaction times.  That was discussed pretty exhaustively earlier in this megathread, IIRC.  I would speculate that, in more finesse based sport, the faster RT (visual and auditory) of males would give a slight edge where things are happening really fast.  But the RT studies I've seen also find that the differentials in RT between sedentary and active persons are greater than between sexes.  So it would seem that RT is heavily modified by training.   Historically, little boys were pushed more into sports where RT would matter, and so you'd have generations of humans where RT was modified heavily at early ages.  

[Peterkin]

19 minutes ago, TheVat said:

But the RT studies I've seen also find that the differentials in RT between sedentary and active persons are greater than between sexes. 

There is also a question of accuracy. In driving school, the faster reaction time of male students translated into a higher percentage of virtual accidents: they'd step on the brake sooner, but sometimes it was the gas pedal instead; the girls were generally (not uniformly) a fraction of a second slower, but (generally, not uniformly) more accurate.

You can see this in soccer. The MLS pro teams are painful to watch: they have a lot off-side calls and fouls, collide with each other, make sloppy passes and high, wide goal shots, can't control the ball - but they're decisive, run very fast and kick very hard. The North American women's teams are much better co-ordinated. Maybe they just have better [male] coaches?  

[Phi for All]

2 hours ago, Intoscience said:

I'm not sure it's just a general assumption that girls are good at some things and boys are better at others. I think that it is that way due to years of evolutionary necessity.

I disagree. I think it's definitely something our modern society has developed, and it seems more psychological than physiological at times. Look at your own phrasing, girls are just "good at some things" but "boys are better at others". There is a toxic competition at work here, much more ego than id.

[swansont]

5 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

I disagree. I think it's definitely something our modern society has developed, and it seems more psychological than physiological at times. Look at your own phrasing, girls are just "good at some things" but "boys are better at others". There is a toxic competition at work here, much more ego than id.

Concur. We have a number of examples where the data show that the "conventional wisdom" fails spectacularly ("girls are bad at math" as an example) so why assume that it's true in general?

[CharonY]

8 hours ago, swansont said:

Concur. We have a number of examples where the data show that the "conventional wisdom" fails spectacularly ("girls are bad at math" as an example) so why assume that it's true in general?

Obviously the more appropriate way to approach these things is first to establish the level of evidence for these kind of assumptions. While it has been mentioned already, I think it is important to emphasize again that assumptions of "natural" often conflate physiological (biological) effects learned behaviour. 

Those are often difficult to discern from low resolution data and in many cases we are only starting to gather necessary information or trying out experimental approaches. It is one of the situations where narratives are much stronger than the available data. 

Edit: not wanting to move things too astray, but there is also a big push now to remove race/ethnicity- adjusted factors for medical diagnosis, mostly because assumptions of race-based medical factors were often based on limited data and overlaid with a lot of conventional wisdom assumptions (again, imbalance between strength of data and strength of narratives). As a result, especially for black folks misdiagnosis and -treatment has been a huge issue (compared to their white counterparts).

 

[beecee]

11 hours ago, beecee said:

Practice makes perfect? Men traditionally are generally more sport oriented then women, and generally experience far more competition which has been handed down through the evolutionary ages, and obviously are generally larger and stronger.

9 hours ago, StringJunky said:

I think it's a case of men have had more opportunities to play sport and was less culturally acceptable until more recently.

I think that is part and parcel of what I was saying. 

Men will obviously be better at some sport, then women, simply because of their generally greater strength and size. They may also in other sports be more skilled, simply for the reasons I have stated in experience, and also opportunities.

Womens Rugby League, Union, and Soccer are becoming a regular thing now in Australia. In fact in junior Rugby League girls and boys play together in competition up until about the age of 10 or so.........

https://www.playrugbyleague.com/laws-of-the-game-community/junior-league-laws-6-12s/

https://www.playrugbyleague.com/laws-of-the-game-community/junior-league-laws-6-12s/

 

We also have Rugby League (the greatest game of all) played by those with disabilities......https://www.nswrl.com.au/competitions/community-and-affiliates/nsw-physical-disability-rugby-league/

[MigL]

I've resisted re-joining this discussion because it has gotten silly.
We started off comparing physical performance advantags/disadvantages of trans athletes to cis male/female athletes, and are now comparing the performance of horses, and whether it's affectd by the gender of the rider.

There are many sports which depend much more on skill than physical prowess; horse racing/riding may be one of them.
Some sports require a combination of the two. Professional golf, for example, allows women to tee off from a shorter distance, as they don't have the physical strength for the longer drives that men have. Yet, in every other part of the game, where skill becomes more and more dominant as you get to the putt, women are equal, if not superior to men.
Weightlifting and swimming, on the other hand, are examples of sports where physical prowess is much more dominant than skill.
And those are the kinds of sports where some of us felt the need for separate divisions for men who transition to women, as that would outclass cis women and negatively impact their participation in those sports.
Separate classifications for trans athletes are not needed or required for all sports, just those heavily dependent on physical prowess.
So let's keep the discussion realistic.
( and no, INow, it has nothing to do with the way you pee 😄 )

[Peterkin]

24 minutes ago, MigL said:

And those are the kinds of sports where some of us felt the need for separate divisions for men who transition to women, as that would outclass cis women and negatively impact their participation in those sports.

Try a size/skill vs sex/age categorization for five years and see what happens. If oddly gendered individuals find their way into sports from which they had been barred, good for them. If they don't fit in, think of some other way. Nobody should be prevented from doing what they love, just because of old rules, based on outmoded assumptions.  Sports and games should not be about exclusion.

Edited May 17, 2022 by Peterkin

[MigL]

10 hours ago, Peterkin said:

Try a size/skill vs sex/age categorization for five years and see what happens.

I'm glad it only took 35 pages to convince you that new classification criteria are needed, as male and female don't work, no matter what you identify as.
Keeping only male/ female without separate option for trans athletes, would disadvantage most all cis women, and you'r not misogynistic, are you ?

[Phi for All]

52 minutes ago, MigL said:

I'm glad it only took 35 pages to convince you that new classification criteria are needed, as male and female don't work, no matter what you identify as.

There goes another irony meter. Don't you know things are getting too expensive to be replacing them so often?

[MigL]

Maybe you should stop buying cheap Chinese irony meters that give false positives. My Candian made one only goes off occasionally, when reading posts like the above.

Or possibly, you should recalibrate your meter by reading the first couple of pages to see what people's concerns actually were. It could be, that this whole time, you've been needlessly replacing meters, and tilting at imaginary windmills.

From my third post on this topic ( my first two were regarding accusations and lack of discussion ), March of 2021 ...

On 3/7/2021 at 10:38 PM, MigL said:

Are you saying any of what you posted is any reason NOT to inteelligently and respectfully discuss different classes in certain sports, and how to best apply them fairly to the transgendered ?

Ironic, isn't it ?

[Peterkin]

2 hours ago, MigL said:

'm glad it only took 35 pages to convince you that new classification criteria are needed, as male and female don't work, no matter what you identify as.

No pages 'convinced' me. My two basic opinion on sports: They should not be segregated or commercialized. 

It's unlikely that I'll see either of those desiderata come to pass, but I have certainly never advocated keeping the old system of classification. All I suggested here was a side-by-side comparison study of the old system with a new one.

 

2 hours ago, MigL said:

Keeping only male/ female without separate option for trans athletes, would disadvantage most all cis women, and you'r not misogynistic, are you ? ,

What are you on about? I'm for scrapping all categorization (whether by sex, gender, race or age.) and adopt leagues based solely on skill level and physical type (size, weights, shape, muscle mass - whatever applies in a given sport) If small, weak women can't find a male opponent in their class, they'll have to play against kids, or however it works out that everybody gets a chance a play. It is supposed to be play, not this crippling, life-consuming, objectifying grist-mill of a business. 

I'm not mis-anything-istic by policy, although I do have mis-feelings about some persons at some times.

Edited May 17, 2022 by Peterkin
omitted words: 3

[MigL]

3 hours ago, Peterkin said:

although I do have mis-feelings about some persons at some times

Yup. 
I know what you mean about Phi.
( 😃 😄 😂 )

[Peterkin]

53 minutes ago, MigL said:

I know what you mean about Phi.

I don't appreciate being implicated in people's personal feuds.

[zapatos]

24 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

I don't appreciate being implicated in people's personal feuds.

He was joking.

[beecee]

5 hours ago, Peterkin said:

No pages 'convinced' me. My two basic opinion on sports: They should not be segregated or commercialized. 

It's unlikely that I'll see either of those desiderata come to pass,

Of course they need to segregate, when the skills of that sport, favour the male, such as strength muscle etc. And of course we have and always will have professional and amateur sport. People, men and women, with the necessary skills to take them to the top of their game/sport, deserve and rightly chose to make a living out of it.

Have you ever played sport? 

[Peterkin]

1 hour ago, beecee said:

Have you ever played sport? 

yes

2 hours ago, zapatos said:

He was joking.

thanks

[beecee]

2 hours ago, Peterkin said:

yes

Then you would agree that like science, it has been shown to bring mankind together in friendship as well as competition.

[Peterkin]

3 hours ago, beecee said:

Then you would agree that like science, it has been shown to bring mankind together in friendship as well as competition.

no

Relevance to gender?

[beecee]

1 hour ago, Peterkin said:

no

Yes, I remeber you expressing that erronious opinion in another thread.

1 hour ago, Peterkin said:

Relevance to gender?

As I expressed more fully earlier.....

10 hours ago, beecee said:

Of course they need to segregate, when the skills of that sport, favour the male, such as strength muscle etc. And of course we have and always will have professional and amateur sport. People, men and women, with the necessary skills to take them to the top of their game/sport, deserve and rightly chose to make a living out of it.