LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong

[Liquor Box]

I think a little more research needs to be done, because I think the research that's out mostly seems to say that trans women are proportionally under-represented in sports, and typically perform at or below the cis woman average. It remains to be seen WHY exactly this is; it could be just a generalized demographical disinterest in sports making trans athletes (when they're allowed to compete at all) fairly rare, but I feel like the "good" - if you can call it that - part of the general trans outrage is that if a trans woman (or women) meeting the standards already set had been blowing out records, even as a one-off fluke, we'd hear about it.

Everything I know of so far is similar to the marathon story that's being discussed. The trans woman athlete has a showing that is maybe kinda on the upper end of the record for cis women (but merely average or even below average for a male) and people blow it out of proportion.

I agree that it's something that needs to continue to be researched. I suspect that part of the problem is that the proliferation of trans persons who use drugs and surgery to change their bodies is relatively recent, meaning that current conclusions are a bit dicey.

So am I right that you support the current position of several sporting bodies, whereby trans women are allowed to compete, but must meet certain restrictions (testosterone levels etc etc), but think that exactly what those restrictions are need to be refined as better research conclusions become available. Because, if so, I think I agree.

I don't remember all of them, but there has to be a list somewhere. It's something I know has happened although it's not necessarily common. There is an example that happened in my lifetime: Zhang Shan winning the gold medal in skeet shooting in 1992:

Thank you for that. I can't understand the logic of segregating a sport like shooting.

"Uninformed" is ridiculously charitable to wide swaths of internet debate. The voices that get amplified are not the ones that are trying to exchange information in the hopes of improving their model of reality. You have a lot of people who are operating off of a completely different set of sources they consider authoritative, a lot of people who will outright lie to have "evidence" that backs their position, boatloads of people who are mostly interested in cherry-picking evidence that supports the narratives they want, and a culture that often considers annoying people until they go away in disgust as a win condition. Not to mention the sheer amount of times that people discuss certain issues as proxy issues for the point they really want to push; I'll again point out how rarely transphobes will discuss women's sports leagues when trans people are not topical, but will happily discuss any time a trans person is proximate to something bad happening. The overall focus does seem to be very much about trans people and why they're bad. (Whether that's part of a broader "trans bad because LGBT+ bad" or "trans bad because men bad" depends on the speaker.)

We could have a lot of discussion about how to defuse inflammatory voices while bringing more listeners to your own point of view. That requires a keen understanding of what proxy issues are being discussed and a willingness to go against inflammatory speakers who happen to be arguing specific points you agree with at the moment, though. Not going down a rabbit hole of whatever specific topic is being used to press the broader agenda at this particular moment.

You are talking about a different thing to me here. You seem to be talking about how to diffuse inflammatory voices. That's not the topic I'm addressing. I'm sure people on both extremes of the discussion are heavily invested and very sure they are correct, and perceive the other side as inflammatory. What I'm talking about is what the best way to address the complex and difficult issue (IMO) of trans women in women's sports. If there's a way I'm expressing my view which is inflammatory, I'm happy to address that, but talking about inflammatory things that other people might have said is notthe topic I'm on.