Algerian Imane Khelif wins boxing gold medal after her gender was wrongly questioned
Algerian Imane Khelif wins boxing gold medal after her gender was wrongly questioned
Khelif and another boxer, featherweight Lin Yu-Ting of Chinese Taipei, have been fighting under a cloud in France after the Algerian’s opening victory over Angela Carini, who quit after 46 seconds.
You're viewing part of a thread.
My argument is that if testosterone is considered an advantage in a sport, then athletes shouldn't be banned for their anatomy, but instead the sport should adapt and sort athletes by T levels if it truly matters. Men shouldn't be getting hurt by other men with higher testosterone, either. And we should be MORE inclusive of athletes who don't fit the gender binary by getting rid of these men's/women's categories that aren't really helpful or accurate anyway.
If a sport included both men and women at the higher level, then they will compete at lower levels. It's not like we'd be asking women to box men for the very first time in an Olympic setting, if we organized the groups by testosterone and some women and men ended up competing.
Some sports including fighting sports can have rule changes or be redesigned to give women advantages. If we look at those warrior challenges, many of that has to do with center of gravity. If women can get their hips over stuff, they are good, but for men it's often their shoulders. If women run the course a little differently, they can often do really well. That's not because they are "worse" athletes, they are just athletes different than men.
but instead the sport should adapt and sort athletes by T levels if it truly matters
I may even agree with you here, but I think this is going to be a nightmare. Continuous testing, plus, while sex is a proxy for many attributes at once, testosterone is only one. Then you need many more parameters to compare and create categories, on a global scale. This assuming we actually understand such parameters well enough.
Men shouldn’t be getting hurt by other men with higher testosterone, either.
I guess the difference between low testosterone men (assuming there are many in high competition levels) and high ones is smaller than high testosterone women and low testosterone men. So yes, I agree, but this is hardly a problem in practice.
If women can get their hips over stuff, they are good, but for men it’s often their shoulders. If women run the course a little differently, they can often do really well.
I really don't see how you could do this in most sports and make it fair and interesting. Sure, you jumped 20cm lower, here is your gold medal because there is an estimated disadvantage for you of 25cm. Yes, you arrived 45s after, here is your gold medal. It seems like a terrible idea and even harder to implement in sports with points (football, tennis, volleyball etc.). Considering the relative low amount of "corner cases", keeping sex as a category seems more reasonable imho, although with its limits. I am interested in what women athletes think.
That’s not because they are “worse” athletes, they are just athletes different than men.
There is nothing moral behind "worse". There are differences that simply provide advantages to men and make them faster/stronger/taller which is an advantage in many sports.
So which is it that's an issue? Is it sex or is it testosterone? And how do you define sex? What if someone has testosterone but isn't responsive, in the case of people who are XY and appear to be cisfemale and are simply nonresponsive to testosterone?
We weigh people continously.
We aren't asking for other parameters. Stop strawmanning. I asked for testosterone and weight for combat sports.
Why must this fully be accurate and correct when you're completely fine with the less precise heuristic we have currently going based on gender?
It's not a problem in practice because we force a false gender dichotomy that literally disqualifies these specific athletes.
They are only "corner cases" because you define gender as red and yellow and thus leave out orange, green, and purple.
Women athletes think a variety of things because they are a variety of people.
There are advantages to men when the only men allowed to represent men are high testosterone and the only women allowed to represent women are low testosterone.
Are you misunderstanding my argument on purpose?
You and I both know that testosterone is not the only thing. There are people who have different sensitivity (low reception) to it, for example, then there is the problem that testosterone (and probably other stuff too!) has an historical effect on development that is not captured by a snapshot in time. I am not strawmanning, I simply assumed that since both of us know that testosterone level at time T is insufficient data, you would need at least more parameters to make fair categories. If that's not the case and you actually meant just using testosterone level and weight, than I think this is a bad idea. Actually, I think this is worse than the sex categorisation. This way you are 100% bundling together people with high T and low reception (I.e. didn't get most of the benefits) with people with low T and high reception. You are also exposing yourself to men artificially lowering testosterone levels after having gotten all the historical developmental advantages to compete in "lower" categories (similarly to how it happens today with weight).
They are only "corner cases" because you define gender as red and yellow and thus leave out orange, green, and purple.
No, I don't. They are corner cases because we can look at the reality and observe that this is a problem with a relative small incidence. I think your proposal will present way more corner cases and problematic situations.
Did you read the article I linked? I am aware of these issues with testosterone. But this is the issue people have with men competing against women - testosterone. It's what they do blood tests for.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240731-the-sports-where-women-outperform-men
So your solution to this issue is to be regressive and keep the bad gender heuristic which forces an arbitrary gender binary on us and excludes otherwise legitimate athletes from competing because they don't fit this arbitrary mold? Tell me what's ideal here. What's fair?
I don't have a solution. I started this whole conversation by simply answering "why being intersex is different from having scoliosis", and we are at this point where you proposed a completely alternative way to slice competitions in sports. In my opinion your solution is impractical at least, let alone there might be tens of scientific issues that I am not aware of. A quick search shows that your idea has been suggested already in informal conversations, and even in a non-scientific forum received objections of missing advantages deriving from hemoglobin, reaction times, biomechanical advantages and sizes, all properties for which sex is a good proxy. This should be addressed somehow, and I am not in a position to do that, I am simply not an expert. That said, I am not against finding a better way to make sport both inclusive and fair/entertaining in principle. I simply believe, based on some reading and a basic understanding that your suggestion might not be it.
Okay so you're just here to be regressive, got it.
You cannot address any of the problems around this situation, you cannot debate a scientific answer, you do not even know what a scientific answer for this might look like, you neglect how this incorporates into a greater discussion about what we define as "ableism" (I didn't ask ONLY about how it is different than scoliosis, but also about any other difference in biology).... Like not only are you unable to debate the science of it, which you admit, but you are also so sure I'm wrong, even though you don't know anything about this topic.
So I take it you're here in bad faith.
That is simply because you moved the topic of the conversation to something else. You changed topic twice, and now you are burdening me with providing a solution, when I was barely acknowledging the existence of a problem. Not sure why you are so unnecessarily confrontational, but I am arguing in good faith, laying down exactly what I mean and what I don't. I am not going to search stuff on the fly I am not competent about to entertain a conversation you are forcing.
Let's also remember the other shameful thread in which you were claiming something objectively false (Phelps swims slower than Ledecky on distance), and after 3 comments of bad faith arguments you simply disappeared without ever acknowlding the mistake in your argument. Who is arguing in bad faith? You are the one that after being shown that your argument was bases on comparibg times when Phelps was 15 yo answered "being a teenager is an advantage in some sports".
So please, I don't think you are in any position to moralize anybody. Including in this case, where I clearly said that even though I am not an expert, a quick search showed some objections to your proposal. Instead of addressing any of that, you just wrote this meta-comment about how I didn't "debate the science". So yeah, you want to call me regressive to support status quo vs the impromptu proposal of a random internet user who is not an expert in this either, with the proposal having no general support (I found one article having the same idea in addition to that reddit post)? Sure, I am regressive then.
I didn't change it. Aren't we discussing the arbitrary nature of the gender binary and the intersection of biology, genetic diversity, and ability?
I didn't force a conversation. You are free to leave. Amd I'm pretty sure you are the one who started the confrontation.
You won't do research to further your knowledge on this subject because you aren't competent enough to do so. Idk why you're even attempting to argue at all here.
Per the source, Ledecky beat Phelps.
Yes, regressive like fascists and every other terrible person who can't fathom a better world so they make us all miserable with the status quo. Thanks
Aren't we discussing the arbitrary nature of the gender binary and the intersection of biology, genetic diversity, and ability?
No. You are, maybe. I am discussing the way certain characteristics relate to categories currently used in sport. You started from here to then contest categories themselves, which in have no problem with, recognizing they have obviously limits and they are simply ok-ish proxies.
Amd I'm pretty sure you are the one who started the confrontation
I started a discussion. You turned every single topic of conversation in a polarizing discussions between two opposite sides, despite me being fully open to a lot of your ideas (like for example that categories are arbitrary, that limits are mostly arbitrary especially considering genders are a spectrum, etc.). You constantly force a me vs you fight, which pushed you to actually misrepresent my opinion a couple of times (remember when you claimed I am gender deterministic and see it as fully binary, few comments down from when I said the exact opposite?).
Per the source, Ledecky beat Phelps.
Bad faith 100%. You just made a rant of few lines about how I refuse to make research to further my knowledge (brb, taking a biology degree in between comments), and yet you deny reality about something so simple that doesn't even require research, it requires basic math and a pinch of common sense.
Yes, your source shows the the personal best for Phelps for a race he did once, when he was 15 is (few seconds!) slower than Katie Ledecky peak performance record. I told you, I run faster the 100m than Bolt when he was 5, so I am faster than Bolt. I actually also outrun my mom's car when it was without fuel, so I am faster than cars and I ride faster than the winner of the Tour de France when he was learning to bike, so I am faster than him! You can prove anything if you use a shitty enough comparison!
I won't even try to convince you, because it's clear you are not here with the intellectual honestly to say "yep, my claim was bullshit", I will just lay it out as it is to show how ridiculous your argument is. In fact, the source you showed could be used by anybody with a bit of honesty to prove the opposite: if Phelps at 15, without it being his specialty, could swim only a few seconds slower than Ledecky in her main specialty at peak performance, it is clear that men have advantages in swimming!
Yes, regressive like fascists and every other terrible person who can't fathom a better world so they make us all miserable with the status quo.
Yes, exactly like that, it makes perfect sense. It's obvious that anybody who didn't welcome without questions your proposal (which is based on solid science and of course deep, deep understanding of all sports - see above for example swimming!) is a regressive fascist who hates a better world. That's how the world works!