Transgender athletes

[dimreepr]

1 minute ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

You're wrong in your thinking that such statements and questions belong in this thread.

Are you going to report me again?

That's a good excuse... 😉

[J.C.MacSwell]

27 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Are you going to report me again?

That's a good excuse... 😉

I'll probably just ignore you for the most part if the posts aren't especially bad, but still reply to some of your better posts.

I reported INow the other day for intentionally misrepresenting my position on transgenders and so far...crickets...

[dimreepr]

11 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

I'll probably just ignore you for the most part if the posts aren't especially bad, but still reply to some of your better posts.

I reported INow the other day for intentionally misrepresenting my position on transgenders and so far...crickets...

I get it, you'll just pretend the awkward questions didn't happen, so it can't be a biased reply... 

[J.C.MacSwell]

18 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

I get it, you'll just pretend the awkward questions didn't happen, so it can't be a biased reply... 

All replies here are biased Dim. Mine are no exception.

[dimreepr]

18 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

All replies here are biased Dim. Mine are no exception.

Indeed, but some are more biased than others...

[J.C.MacSwell]

2 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Indeed, but some are more biased than others...

Certainly.

[dimreepr]

1 minute ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

Certainly.

It's just a question of why...

[Phi for All]

1 hour ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

I reported INow the other day for intentionally misrepresenting my position on transgenders and so far...crickets...

!

Moderator Note

You reported it as a "personal attack", which 3 staff members judged it wasn't . If you want to report someone using a Strawman argument, please be clear. 

 

[iNow]

6 hours ago, Intoscience said:

if you have an answer for this, i'm all ears. 

My position throughout has been that it's entirely possible to design and implement sports division qualification thresholds and guidelines which allow for transgender inclusion.

This position remains entirely valid despite my stipulation that I personally lack sufficient expertise to design those  aforementioned guidelines personally myself. 

6 hours ago, Intoscience said:

It's also logical that if a any person identifying as they choose and are free with no restriction, then all restrictions are irrelevant.  

As best I can tell, you're the only one here discussing "no restrictions." I'm saying the restrictions can be amended to allow for transgender inclusion in sports, not that zero restrictions should be used. Does this help us to better align on our views?

6 hours ago, Intoscience said:

I want to be regarded as a dog, doesn't mean I am one.

The better analogy here is that the doctor mistakenly assigned you as a dog when you were born and you're trying to gain public acceptance to allowing you to more accurately identify as human... then other humans are blocking it, threatening you for seeking it, and excluding you from sports because of it. 

[J.C.MacSwell]

2 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

!

Moderator Note

You reported it as a "personal attack", which 3 staff members judged it wasn't . If you want to report someone using a Strawman argument, please be clear. 

 

Thank you. I now at least know that you made a decision. 

I don't feel the need report it as a strawman argument. I just wanted to make it clear that I have nothing against transgenders, some of whom agree with my position with regard to their inclusion in elite sports.

[iNow]

1 hour ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

I reported INow the other day for intentionally misrepresenting my position on transgenders and so far...crickets...

And I called the police on my wife for not rubbing my shoulders after a hard workout. Much like your report of a personal attack here, they laughed at me since no law was broken. 

I was simply explaining how we are differently approaching this topic. I believe guidelines can be updated to allow for inclusion in sports. You seem to believe otherwise.

If I've misrepresented you here, it's not intentional. We're nearly 70 pages into the thread and as best I can tell you are not an ally in this fight. 

6 hours ago, Intoscience said:

Can someone please define what a woman is? What a female is...?

Should not the onus of this task fall to those seeking to prevent transgender competitors from participating due to "not meeting their personal misguided, outdated, remedial 6th grade biology definition of female? "

Edited July 25, 2023 by iNow

[Phi for All]

2 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

Thank you. I now at least know that you made a decision. 

!

Moderator Note

This is a problem we probably don't deal with effectively. Staff wants you to use the Report function so the threads don't get derailed, then we're reluctant to derail a thread with reports on reported posts if it isn't actionable, but I can see it looks the same as ignoring the report.

 

[J.C.MacSwell]

2 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

!

Moderator Note

This is a problem we probably don't deal with effectively. Staff wants you to use the Report function so the threads don't get derailed, then we're reluctant to derail a thread with reports on reported posts if it isn't actionable, but I can see it looks the same as ignoring the report.

 

Okay thanks. I appreciate the comment.

[mistermack]

6 hours ago, Intoscience said:

Can someone please define what a woman is? What a female is...?

Dawkins put it quite explicitly. It's a question of semantics. While the vast majority of people on the planet knows what they mean by woman and female, the "woke" brigade are trying to change that, by repetition. 

Words can be changed by campaigns and repetition. Gay used to mean light-hearted and brightly coloured. 

But right now, woman, and female, are used by most people to describe people born with XX chromosome configuration. People might not be up with knowledge of genetics, but when they say woman, or female, those are the people that they mean. The huge majority, for whom genetic sex is not ambiguous. 

Wikipedia : Sex assignment at birth usually aligns with a child's anatomical sex and phenotype. The number of births with ambiguous genitals is in the range of 1:4500–1:2000 (0.02%–0.05%).      To extrapolate from that that human sex is some sort of a rainbow is silly.

Yes, sexuality is a rainbow, no doubt about it. But at the moment, gay men are considered men. Even though they are attracted to other men, which I would class as a hugely intersex trait. But I predict that it won't be long before that changes. Because words are pliable. 

What's not pliable, is the occurrence of the sex chromosomes. So why not abandon the words, male and female, men and women, and just refer to people as XXs and XYs?  Plus the rare variations.     

That would probably get shortened to Xs and Ys very quickly. I can live with that.               

 

 

 

[swansont]

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

Dawkins put it quite explicitly. It's a question of semantics. While the vast majority of people on the planet knows what they mean by woman and female, the "woke" brigade are trying to change that, by repetition. 

I’ll ask you to define “woke” as well.

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

Wikipedia : Sex assignment at birth usually aligns with a child's anatomical sex and phenotype. The number of births with ambiguous genitals is in the range of 1:4500–1:2000 (0.02%–0.05%).      To extrapolate from that that human sex is some sort of a rainbow is silly.

That’s not the extrapolation. Ambiguous genitalia is a subset of the intersex category. (you can read the next passage in the wikipedia article, where they discuss “other conditions”)

That wasn’t what the discussion of a spectrum was referring to.

Yes, your strawman was silly.

 

[mistermack]

2 hours ago, swansont said:

Ambiguous genitalia is a subset of the intersex category.

Really ?? In the same paragraph it's stated " the prevalence of intersex is about 0.018%".

Your maths don't add up. In any case, these tiny percentages of exceptions don't constitute a "rainbow". That's what's silly. 

[swansont]

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

Really ?? In the same paragraph it's stated " the prevalence of intersex is about 0.018%".

Your maths don't add up. In any case, these tiny percentages of exceptions don't constitute a "rainbow". That's what's silly. 

Yes, really. It says “Other conditions involve atypical chromosomes, gonads, or hormones” meaning that the ambiguous genitalia category is a subset of intersex individuals.

That’s what “other conditions” implies 

And, since this hasn’t sunk in, I will repeat: the spectrum discussion isn’t about intersex individuals. 

 

[mistermack]

43 minutes ago, swansont said:

Yes, really. It says “Other conditions involve atypical chromosomes, gonads, or hormones” meaning that the ambiguous genitalia category is a subset of intersex individuals.

That’s what “other conditions” implies 

Well, I pointed out to you that you are claiming a subset that's bigger than its superset but you ignored that for some reason. Is that a normal, or possible state of affairs? 

[swansont]

37 minutes ago, mistermack said:

Well, I pointed out to you that you are claiming a subset that's bigger than its superset but you ignored that for some reason. Is that a normal, or possible state of affairs? 

I didn’t write the wikipedia article, so I’m not claiming anything about the numbers, but if you read (and understand) what was written, you might notice that the numbers are referenced to specific descriptions, which differ. 

i.e. if you use one particular definition of intersex, you get one range of numbers. If you use another, you get different numbers.

Which is consistent with the later comment “There is no clear consensus definition of intersex and no clear delineation of which specific conditions qualify an individual as intersex”

 

 

[mistermack]

1 hour ago, swansont said:

i.e. if you use one particular definition of intersex, you get one range of numbers. If you use another, you get different numbers.

There must be some pretty creative defining going on, to try to portray the sex characteristics of the human race as anything other than binary, with an absolutely tiny minority of others. 

But if you have a motive for creative defining, you will find a way, and that's what I believe is happening. Otherwise, you wouldn't get such a divergence of numbers. 

It seems impossible to find the criteria that people are using to define intersex, to achieve these higher numbers. 

I've looked at the various genetic conditions that differ from XX and XY, and the numbers are absolutely tiny.

But of course, I could call all homosexual tendencies an intersex trait, and arrive at a hugely inflated incidence of "intersex". It's wide open for some creative defining. 

[CharonY]

As characterized throughout the whole thread, definitions vary a fair bit in various uses and precise language is needed if one wants to discuss this issue. 

21 minutes ago, mistermack said:

sex characteristics of the human race as anything other than binary, with an absolutely tiny minority of others.

Throwing something as vague sex characteristics muddies the waters even more, as especially here we actually do have a broader range of quantitative features. While highly associated with each other, there are numerous genetic traits that make this difficult. E.g. there are cases of XY karyotypes (typically male) with testosterone insensitivity which results in testosterone levels associated with human males, but with female sexual organs.

I think JCM's link shows a very nice example of a true binary classification (i.e. gamete types), but also highlights the problem to extend it beyond its specific use (i.e. if we are not exclusively classifying it based on reproductive capacity).

The main issue is really not whether there are sex-based classifications or not. There clearly are. But the issue that folks keep missing is that those are not universal.  And as such it is necessary to clearly outline the specific contexts in which they apply (or don't apply). 

21 minutes ago, mistermack said:

with an absolutely tiny minority of others. 

That is the crux here. From a classification standpoint, if the claim is universality what minority there is highlights that there is something else going on. You cannot claim that the physical world is entirely Newtonian just with some exceptions on the side. The exceptions can be ignored in many cases, but not in others. What one cannot claim is that they don't exist and hence the classification is universal.

Even if you say there is male/female and asexual/others, that is three. It is only binary (for the most part) if you specifically use it in the context anisogamic reproduction. 

[swansont]

1 minute ago, mistermack said:

There must be some pretty creative defining going on, to try to portray the sex characteristics of the human race as anything other than binary, with an absolutely tiny minority of others. 

This is intersex, so this is outside of the binary categories.

1 minute ago, mistermack said:

But if you have a motive for creative defining, you will find a way, and that's what I believe is happening. Otherwise, you wouldn't get such a divergence of numbers. 

If you read and understand the article you’ve mentioned, you’d possibly gain a clue.

I don’t see how 0.018% is all that divergent from 0.02%–0.05%. One obvious difference in the definitions (in articles 17 years apart) is that one includes hormonal abnormalities and the other doesn’t

 

1 minute ago, mistermack said:

It seems impossible to find the criteria that people are using to define intersex, to achieve these higher numbers. 

Yeah, you’d have to read the abstracts of a couple of citations in the Wikipedia article, in addition to the article. Truly Herculean.

 

 

[mistermack]

Binary, in this context, is not the same as binary in mathematics. It merely describes the status-quo, where the vast majority of humans are one sex or the other. 

To concentrate on such a tiny number of exceptions proves that you've got no substantive argument, and are reduced to nitpicking again. 

Gender on the other hand is wide open, as I've stated plenty of times. 

[CharonY]

12 minutes ago, mistermack said:

Binary, in this context, is not the same as binary in mathematics. It merely describes the status-quo, where the vast majority of humans are one sex or the other. 

To concentrate on such a tiny number of exceptions proves that you've got no substantive argument, and are reduced to nitpicking again. 

Gender on the other hand is wide open, as I've stated plenty of times. 

So it seems you are advocating to drop scientific rigor whenever you feel like it.

I am pretty sure that if you have bag with 1000 skittles and just one is deadly, you would just assume that the whole bag is safe, too. I mean, it is just nitpicking.

[iNow]

36 minutes ago, CharonY said:

I am pretty sure that if you have bag with 1000 skittles and just one is deadly, you would just assume that the whole bag is safe, too. I mean, it is just nitpicking.

Deadly? I wouldn’t classify the whole bag as safe even if it just had one of these (very real) items released today by French’s and Skittles: