A person's sex is objectively male or female or categorisable somewhere in between the two. A person's gender is wholly subjective and depends on how they feel about their body.
At the risk pf being obvious, western society typically segregates male and female in a limited number of situations, most of which have already been discussed above:
- for sports
- for schooling & in religious communities
- in prisons
- in bathrooms and changing rooms and dormitories
etc. And the reasons for this are generally to do with either protection of the weaker sex, or to avoid the distraction of inter-sex relations.
If we adopt the terminology you set out, then maybe that segregation can in future go one of four ways, being either:
- by sex
- by gender,
- by both, or
- abolished
in each case.
So maybe we should ask whether the purpose of having a female space (women's sport, girls' schools, ladies' toilets etc) is better served by:
- including in the female space those of female sex and male gender
- including in the female space those of male sex and female gender
- including neither and having alternative provision for those whose sex and gender are not the same
- abolishing the notion of female space altogether.
An aspect of Indian gender that I didn't know about, that the 'third gender' or hijras, who have existed there for centuries, were actively persecuted by British colonial authorities. Many of them were eunuchs in those days, and the British seem to have seen that as a kind of moral degeneracy.
"The British also began policing other groups which didn't fit the binary gender categories - effeminate men who wore female clothing, performed in public and lived in kin-based households, men who performed female roles in theatre and male devotees who dressed as women."
Of course, this failed, and hijras still exist in India, and some of them use the term 'transgender', although it's not clear if there is a boundary between different categories. I think Indian courts recently recognized them as a third gender, but their lives are often difficult, living in poverty and doing sex work. Some of them live in communities with a guru.
There is a new book on this by Jessica Hinchy, but it costs about 90$.
An aspect of Indian gender that I didn't know about, that the 'third gender' or hijras, who have existed there for centuries, were actively persecuted by British colonial authorities. Many of them were eunuchs in those days, and the British seem to have seen that as a kind of moral degeneracy.
"The British also began policing other groups which didn't fit the binary gender categories - effeminate men who wore female clothing, performed in public and lived in kin-based households, men who performed female roles in theatre and male devotees who dressed as women."
Of course, this failed, and hijras still exist in India, and some of them use the term 'transgender', although it's not clear if there is a boundary between different categories. I think Indian courts recently recognized them as a third gender, but their lives are often difficult, living in poverty and doing sex work. Some of them live in communities with a guru.
There is a new book on this by Jessica Hinchy, but it costs about 90$.
You mean, miserable people who were born male, but were emasculated, most of the times against their own will, and have to resort to prostitution as a living? And who are often cited by western "progressive" people as an example of how our society is backwards for inventing this silly gender binary?
You mean, miserable people who were born male, but were emasculated, most of the times against their own will, and have to resort to prostitution as a living? And who are often cited by western "progressive" people as an example of how our society is backwards for inventing this silly gender binary?
So who invented the people who belong to this group?
(Edited to tidy quoting code. BroJames. Purg Host)
Actually, the colonial eunuch category seems to have been porous, and could include cross dressers and Zenanas, classed as effeminate men. See Hinchy, ""Register of eunuchs" in colonial India", online.
Amazing really that Semenya has won an appeal in the Swiss Supreme court, against the ruling in the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which supported the IAAF rules on DSD women (intersex), that they should reduce testosterone levels. So at the moment, she can run again. Well, the lawyers must be getting rich. Apparently, the last 22 elite women's races at 800 metres have been won by DSD women.
Quote from Semenya, "I am a woman and a world class athlete". Seems correct.
Because of this: "Athletics' governing body believes DSD athletes have a competitive advantage -- findings that were disputed by Semenya and her legal team.", suspect the situation is not yet final at all. Link. The issues for athletic governance are usually about the "integrity of sport", and fair competition, considering all of the athletes and the sport as a collective among national organizing committees. Individuals come second to the collective. The issue to define is who is considered female or male for men's and women's competitions, and if amount of hormones is not the determining factor than it may return to anatomical / biological sex as qualification to compete as male or female.
This review published as a open doc via the American NIH (National Institutes of Health) seems useful: What do brain changes mean?, are they the result of behavioural and cultural change, or are the brain changes the cause of the behavioural and identity/cultural changes?
The immediately obvious problem with their hypothesis is that until recently, it was not uncommon for individuals to subjectively experience quite intense transgenderism for decades before finally coming out and transitioning - just as it was not uncommon for gay men and lesbians to spend much of their adult lives in heterosexual relationships. So you can have quite intense transgenderism for some time without any of the behavioural changes that accompany transition.
I suspect, given that they're both based in Tehran, that the authors' familiarity with the actual experience of LGBT people may be limited.
Incidentally, in relation to Semenya again, some medical associations are objecting to the idea of giving drugs to someone who is not ill. Considered unethical by many doctors, I think. It's an interesting twist as trans athletes are required to reduce testosterone, but that is happening already with many of them as part of transition. Another point is that there are quite a few DSD athletes, for example, Francine Niyonsaba, but Semenya is an exceptional athlete.
Basically they should testosterone bands / classes for sports where they feel it’s that important - then compete on that basis rather than gender.
There is quite a lot of discussion about this amongst endocrinologists, and one issue is that there are women with high T and men with low T. I think also there is just a lack of evidence about DSD women athletes. For example, Dutee Chand, who first objected to the rules, seems to be DSD, and while she is successful in the Asian games, is not at Olympic level. Possibly, Semenya is an outlier.
There is a new text from the Vatican on gender, or rather gender theory, which it seems to generally criticize as against nature, and against complementarity. It also seems to argue that modern gender theory permits people to choose their gender - this is already raising hackles.
I can't actually find the text online, but its title is "Male and Female He Created Them", which is pretty unambiguous. I am tracking through Catholic websites, but none of them give an online address.
Also upsetting some people is that it has come out during Pride Month in many countries.
It also seems to argue that modern gender theory permits people to choose their gender - this is already raising hackles.
Do you consider that "people can choose their gender" is a misrepresentation of your position ?
But you think someone's gender is determined by their reported subjective experience ?
And people can choose to report subjective experience ?
I can't think of anyone who says that we choose our gender, except in the sense of gender expression, e.g., clothing. But in terms of gender identity, how is it possible? The Vatican document seems full of straw men like this, with no provenance.
It also seems to argue that modern gender theory permits people to choose their gender - this is already raising hackles.
Do you consider that "people can choose their gender" is a misrepresentation of your position ?
But you think someone's gender is determined by their reported subjective experience ?
And people can choose to report subjective experience ?
Just because I choose to report a subjective experience it doesn’t mean I choose the experience. “It makes me sad when I hear of relationship breakdown due to alcoholism” doesn’t mean I have chosen to be sad.
“I feel I am a woman trapped in a male body” doesn’t mean I have chosen to feel like a woman.
It also seems to argue that modern gender theory permits people to choose their gender - this is already raising hackles.
Do you consider that "people can choose their gender" is a misrepresentation of your position ?
But you think someone's gender is determined by their reported subjective experience ?
And people can choose to report subjective experience ?
Just because I choose to report a subjective experience it doesn’t mean I choose the experience. “It makes me sad when I hear of relationship breakdown due to alcoholism” doesn’t mean I have chosen to be sad.
“I feel I am a woman trapped in a male body” doesn’t mean I have chosen to feel like a woman.
Another baffling phrase in the Vatican document is that gender theory "envisages a society without sexual differences". Again, one has to ask, who, when, where? The lack of attribution makes it a meaningless statement, and I can't remember anyone saying that. I suppose it's a reference to fluidity.
Also it seeks to impose "a single school of thought". That's news to me, as gender has become a very complicated discipline, with many sideshoots.
It also seems to argue that modern gender theory permits people to choose their gender - this is already raising hackles.
Do you consider that "people can choose their gender" is a misrepresentation of your position ?
But you think someone's gender is determined by their reported subjective experience ?
And people can choose to report subjective experience ?
Just because I choose to report a subjective experience it doesn’t mean I choose the experience. “It makes me sad when I hear of relationship breakdown due to alcoholism” doesn’t mean I have chosen to be sad.
“I feel I am a woman trapped in a male body” doesn’t mean I have chosen to feel like a woman.
This is so obvious I struggle to believe someone could not see it unless they didn't want to.
Another baffling phrase in the Vatican document is that gender theory "envisages a society without sexual differences". Again, one has to ask, who, when, where? The lack of attribution makes it a meaningless statement, and I can't remember anyone saying that. I suppose it's a reference to fluidity.
You can ask what is meant by it but don't expect any kind of answer, let alone a sensible one. The Vatican makes statements, it doesn't explain them.
Also it seeks to impose "a single school of thought". That's news to me, as gender has become a very complicated discipline, with many sideshoots.
It may be news to you but that's because you're a sensible person who thinks for yourself. The Vatican doesn't allow for RCs to do that: as far as they're concerned The Church will do the thinking and then tell the observant faithful what to think.
Basically they should testosterone bands / classes for sports where they feel it’s that important - then compete on that basis rather than gender.
That would be the end of elite women's sport. If "female" is taken away as a category then no one would be bothered about "T class 7" or whatever. Who would be interested in various lower classes of the 100m for instance.
Testosterone is only one thing that can affect performance, and is not the overriding factor that it is often presented as. McKinnon has I believe been quite vocal in arguing against testosterone limits. I found this article pretty helpful in understanding how they have got to the limits they have. In particular:
Dr. Vilain referenced the structure of the pelvis and the mass of certain muscle groups as anatomical differences between the male and female body that will always be somewhat different. But achieving total equality is not the point, Dr. Vilain said. The purpose of the NCAA’s rules is to, in a sense, shift the transgender female athlete’s muscle mass and physiology away from that of the average male. The goal is to create a pathway to include the transgender athlete, not create total equality.
The rules have been set to be inclusive not fair. Reading between the lines, I think that the main purpose of requiring transwomen to reduce their testosterone level is that it is a form of gatekeeping, and to prove that there is some serious intent.
I am also a bit confused about why intersex conditions are being discussed so much no here. How is it relevant to transgender issues?
(Sorry to jump in to what is obviously a pretty big and long discussion. I was a member of the old site but hadn't popped my head in for a while.)
When someone with no history of doing well in the sport as a man comes in and wins a world title as a woman it's bound to cause comment.
I think what McKinnon is pushing for is concerning for the future of women's sport. This is a recent example of her thinking. She wants trans athletes to be able to compete without any testosterone requirements. And the problem is that her argument is right to a great extent - testosterone isn't everything about why men have an advantage in sport. So the IAAF and similar groups have tied themselves in to this framework which is pretty easy to pick holes in. Add in Caster's case, which makes it look unfair to be forcing a woman to artificially reduce testosterone, and soon the pieces begin to come together that it is 'unfair' to place any restrictions on transwomen either.
Yes, Ross Tucker has argued that there is little evidence about DSD women (intersex), and testosterone. Not sure about trans.
The Olympics has a history of looking for the killer diagnostic for women, starting with genital inspection, then chromosome, so I guess T is their long lost hope. It's such a tangle now of science, politics, prejudice, I don't know how it can be unscrambled. I suppose Joanna Harper hopes to show that trans women have no advantage, and she seems to carry clout.
Oh, the thing about tallness is a moot point, I think, because tallness does not demarcate any sociologically significant categories, whereas hormones (it is claimed), demarcate men and women. Of course, there is the counter to that that it's not hormones that do that, but human thinking, that sets up such categories, and can dismantle them, (deconstruct). But that takes us into the whole subject of sex/gender, what a nightmare.
ISTM unacceptable and bizarre that the IAAF should be advocating performance reducing drugs, and any doctor administering such drugs should be struck off and probably imprisoned for a gross transgression of basic medical ethics. I think we are in danger of loosing the plot. The IAAF may be within their rights to deny her the right to compete as a woman, but they have no right to recommend medical intervention to address an issue which is not medical in nature and may well injure her physical and psychological well-being.
It also seems to argue that modern gender theory permits people to choose their gender - this is already raising hackles.
Do you consider that "people can choose their gender" is a misrepresentation of your position ?
But you think someone's gender is determined by their reported subjective experience ?
And people can choose to report subjective experience ?
Just because I choose to report a subjective experience it doesn’t mean I choose the experience. “It makes me sad when I hear of relationship breakdown due to alcoholism” doesn’t mean I have chosen to be sad.
“I feel I am a woman trapped in a male body” doesn’t mean I have chosen to feel like a woman.
This is so obvious I struggle to believe someone could not see it unless they didn't want to.
The cognitive-behaviour therapists (CBT) would disagree that you do not choose your feelings, "It makes me sad when I hear of relationship breakdown due to alcoholism” doesn’t mean I have chosen to be sad.". In this quite dominant therapy model, they'd say that you perceive things, taking them into your brain for evaluation which means that you must think about them. Then following your thinking an evaluation, you respond with a feeling. It's modelling us on information processing, and has been quite powerful in helping people. Thus feeling sad about an alcoholism cause to relationship breakdown means you have thought about it in ways, evaluated it such that sadness is the result. If you wanted to change the feeling, you're supposed to change the thought, not quite sure to what, perhaps that relationship breakdown is better for all concerned, the person who is alcoholic so they don't hurt the other, and the other because they may be able to find happiness away from the hurt. Reframing is the term.
FWIW, CBT is a useful tool, but isn't the only one. I don't think we're info processors, and I don't know that I agree that thoughts and feelings and behaviour are always identifiable as discreet entities. It's a metaphor.
That suggests I could train myself not to be sad at relationship breakdown. I’m not sure if that would be a desirable outcome, unless the sadness was disproportionate.
I don’t know enough about CBT to know if it could stop me feeling sad at feeling trapped in the wrong body, or indeed whether it could remove the feeling of being trapped in the wrong body. Nor am I really clear if either of those would be inherently desirable outcomes.
ISTM unacceptable and bizarre that the IAAF should be advocating performance reducing drugs, and any doctor administering such drugs should be struck off and probably imprisoned for a gross transgression of basic medical ethics. I think we are in danger of loosing the plot. The IAAF may be within their rights to deny her the right to compete as a woman, but they have no right to recommend medical intervention to address an issue which is not medical in nature and may well injure her physical and psychological well-being.
I think this is a big issue, and various medical groups have protested. It is clearly unethical, and possibly dangerous. You would think that the lawyers would be onto it.
Just because I choose to report a subjective experience it doesn’t mean I choose the experience. “It makes me sad when I hear of relationship breakdown due to alcoholism” doesn’t mean I have chosen to be sad.
Absolutely. We don't choose the feelings we experience. But we choose what we do with them. We can seek to banish melancholy. Or wallow in it. Hide it. Or demand that the world take notice.
Not necessarily advocating any of the above.
Just trying to be clear. Is it feelings that determine gender identity, or what we choose to do about those feelings ?
Is this some romantic notion of feelings too strong to be denied ?
“I feel I am a woman trapped in a male body” doesn’t mean I have chosen to feel like a woman.
Some days I feel like an old man trapped in a younger man's body. But no amount of feeling that gets me a State pension, an OAP discount or a free bus pass. Because the feeling is not the reality.
Don't know what world-wide organizations' rights are. There's a lot of documents on the IAAF site about doping and other forms of cheating, and their rights to take samples of blood, urine, and do some searches.
I don't think that the purposes of a individual to justify their right to compete are the priority. The priority is the fairness of competing in a sport. About all the nations and all athletes. No one cares too much about one person. Unless they look like they're winning with some advantage others don't have access too. I'd think if testosterone is performance enhancing then if levels higher than a normative female sex range are permissible that everyone could dope up to that level. And don't be naive, people will.
Another baffling phrase in the Vatican document is that gender theory "envisages a society without sexual differences". Again, one has to ask, who, when, where? The lack of attribution makes it a meaningless statement, and I can't remember anyone saying that. I suppose it's a reference to fluidity.
I sense that what they're attacking is strict social constructionism when it comes to gender, which they see transgender as arising out. I think this is misconception, but that said, it seems to be widely shared across the political spectrum - I've also seen lots of people on the left who support transgender and think it proves social constructionism.
The Olympics has a history of looking for the killer diagnostic for women, starting with genital inspection, then chromosome, so I guess T is their long lost hope. It's such a tangle now of science, politics, prejudice, I don't know how it can be unscrambled. I suppose Joanna Harper hopes to show that trans women have no advantage, and she seems to carry clout.
Joanna Harper is a physicist, not an expert in physiology. It is amazing how much weight her opinion has been given really. The main piece of research she did is so flimsy and limited, yet it is being touted as 'proof' that reducing testosterone eliminates performance advantage. McKinnon isn't an expert either, she is a philosopher. There is very little decent research being done, I suspect because why would any experts want to touch the subject when it has become such a toxic debate.
In terms of intersex conditions I don't understand why there is so much hand-wringing. For a start, the true 'debatable' conditions are very rare. (The 2% figure that is often quoted includes any deviation from 'normal', but most deviations do not mean that someone's sex is questionable.) The prevalence of women with XY chromosones is something like <0.02%.
Hyperandrogenism does not call someone's sex into question, so I think it is completely wrong for the IAAF to be excluding women on the basis of what is a natural condition, even if it confers an advantage. To my mind it is no different to other genetical advantages such as height etc.
Another baffling phrase in the Vatican document is that gender theory "envisages a society without sexual differences". Again, one has to ask, who, when, where? The lack of attribution makes it a meaningless statement, and I can't remember anyone saying that. I suppose it's a reference to fluidity.
I sense that what they're attacking is strict social constructionism when it comes to gender, which they see transgender as arising out. I think this is misconception, but that said, it seems to be widely shared across the political spectrum - I've also seen lots of people on the left who support transgender and think it proves social constructionism.
Yes, sounds likely. It's ironic that some feminists have accused trans people of reinforcing sex differences, although I don't think trans women all wear high heels and short skirts.
The Olympics has a history of looking for the killer diagnostic for women, starting with genital inspection, then chromosome, so I guess T is their long lost hope. It's such a tangle now of science, politics, prejudice, I don't know how it can be unscrambled. I suppose Joanna Harper hopes to show that trans women have no advantage, and she seems to carry clout.
Joanna Harper is a physicist, not an expert in physiology. It is amazing how much weight her opinion has been given really. The main piece of research she did is so flimsy and limited, yet it is being touted as 'proof' that reducing testosterone eliminates performance advantage. McKinnon isn't an expert either, she is a philosopher. There is very little decent research being done, I suspect because why would any experts want to touch the subject when it has become such a toxic debate.
In terms of intersex conditions I don't understand why there is so much hand-wringing. For a start, the true 'debatable' conditions are very rare. (The 2% figure that is often quoted includes any deviation from 'normal', but most deviations do not mean that someone's sex is questionable.) The prevalence of women with XY chromosones is something like <0.02%.
Hyperandrogenism does not call someone's sex into question, so I think it is completely wrong for the IAAF to be excluding women on the basis of what is a natural condition, even if it confers an advantage. To my mind it is no different to other genetical advantages such as height etc.
Good points. Definitely a lack of data on trans athletes. Opponents tend towards the anecdotal, or pure assertions, e.g., "trans women retain male musculature", or, "McKinnon looks huge". OK, but how do their performances actually compare with cis women?
The authorities seem haunted by Semenya, although there are other DSD athletes around, e.g., Niyonsaba, who has finished second to Semenya.
Hyperandrogenism does not call someone's sex into question, so I think it is completely wrong for the IAAF to be excluding women on the basis of what is a natural condition, even if it confers an advantage. To my mind it is no different to other genetical advantages such as height etc.
"Hyperandrogenism" calls the possibility of an unfair advantage into question. They have great difficulty telling people apart who have taken a hormone from those who produce it naturally. And there are many methods to take a lab-produced hormone and hide it from doping detection methods.
So it is different from genetic advantages because you can't take a drug to enhance height. You can take substances to alter metabolism. This is why blood doping is such a big deal: have blood taken from yourself over time, remove plasma and just before competition, transfuse back concentrated amounts of the red blood cells which carry oxygen. Can someone's testosterone be removed from their blood and doped back into their own body? Can this be detected if they do it? Can it be differentiated from naturally occurring testosterone?
The question we do know the answer to is whether someone can take testosterone-like hormones artificially created in a lab, and then stop for a period of time before competition such that they don't get detected as a drug cheat. The answer is a qualified "yes" while there is a battle of the scientists who help doping and cheating, and those who work on detection. What they've been doing for a while is take blood samples as soon as someone is close to qualifying for a national team and keep doing this at random intervals for the entire time the person competes. But they still miss cheating. And the thing they worry about about is cheating and unfair advantage. The testosterone level of one person being higher than the norm is enough to accuse that person of cheating in the eyes of international sport.
Naturally high testosterone women are a difficult group, and a small one. Would they sacrifice the one for the sake of the many, of the sport? Yes. And this isn't going to change much. The average viewer of a sport cares about this, and the market will dictate.
Naturally high testosterone women are a difficult group, and a small one.
It may be 'difficult' in terms of sport, but not in terms of gender identification. As far as I can see Semenya is straightforwardly cisgendered: she has been regarded by both herself and others as a girl and a woman for all of her life until athletic rivals wished to persuade us and her otherwise.
NOprophet, that's veering a bit into drugs in sport in general. And that's a rather difficult subject full stop. And is why sports like cycling have introduced bio passports to try and be able to spot what an individual's normal levels are. But it seems that drug taking is far more prevalent than the numbers of people caught cheating. Introducing an arbitrary level that some women exceed naturally is never going to stand up for long.
Good points. Definitely a lack of data on trans athletes. Opponents tend towards the anecdotal, or pure assertions, e.g., "trans women retain male musculature", or, "McKinnon looks huge". OK, but how do their performances actually compare with cis women?
It would be great if there were comparisons able to be made, but given that McKinnon didn't compete as a man in cycling it is very difficult to say. Other than it would be very surprising for a woman without a history of high level sport to take it up at her age and be winning world titles.
Or look at CeCe Telfer, who was ranked down around 200 for men, and is now posting top 3 times for women (and yes, that does include the division 1 times).
The point I'm trying to make, quantpole, is that Caster does not have a transgender problem that needs to be addressed. She was raised as a girl, grew into a woman, and neither she nor the society in which she grew up in seemed to have a problem with her sex and gender identity. She does not seem to suffer from medical or psychological problems that need to be addressed. The athletics world should just suck it up. The notion that she should be subjected to unnecessary medical intervention to satisfy sporting sponsors is sick, and should have been buried with the culture that produced Dr Mengele.
NOprophet_NØprofit: That's not how it works. The individual is only one person. And not really that important.
NOprophet_NØprofit, if the above quotation was addressed to my remarks, I would welcome clarification regarding the first sentence: What are the 'that' and the 'it' to which it refers? And why is the 'individual' seeming regarded as 'not really important'?
The questions I would want to raise re sport are: Does sport only recognise two sex/genders? Does sport recognise other sex/genders but only arranges competition for males and females? Does sport have a right to request healthy individuals to submit to gender-bending treatment? Do doctors have a right to be complicit in such treatments at the request or pressure from third parties where the subject has been content with their lot?
Comments
At the risk pf being obvious, western society typically segregates male and female in a limited number of situations, most of which have already been discussed above:
- for sports
- for schooling & in religious communities
- in prisons
- in bathrooms and changing rooms and dormitories
etc. And the reasons for this are generally to do with either protection of the weaker sex, or to avoid the distraction of inter-sex relations.
If we adopt the terminology you set out, then maybe that segregation can in future go one of four ways, being either:
- by sex
- by gender,
- by both, or
- abolished
in each case.
So maybe we should ask whether the purpose of having a female space (women's sport, girls' schools, ladies' toilets etc) is better served by:
- including in the female space those of female sex and male gender
- including in the female space those of male sex and female gender
- including neither and having alternative provision for those whose sex and gender are not the same
- abolishing the notion of female space altogether.
"The British also began policing other groups which didn't fit the binary gender categories - effeminate men who wore female clothing, performed in public and lived in kin-based households, men who performed female roles in theatre and male devotees who dressed as women."
Of course, this failed, and hijras still exist in India, and some of them use the term 'transgender', although it's not clear if there is a boundary between different categories. I think Indian courts recently recognized them as a third gender, but their lives are often difficult, living in poverty and doing sex work. Some of them live in communities with a guru.
There is a new book on this by Jessica Hinchy, but it costs about 90$.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-48442934
You mean, miserable people who were born male, but were emasculated, most of the times against their own will, and have to resort to prostitution as a living? And who are often cited by western "progressive" people as an example of how our society is backwards for inventing this silly gender binary?
So who invented the people who belong to this group?
(Edited to tidy quoting code. BroJames. Purg Host)
Quote from Semenya, "I am a woman and a world class athlete". Seems correct.
I suspect, given that they're both based in Tehran, that the authors' familiarity with the actual experience of LGBT people may be limited.
There is quite a lot of discussion about this amongst endocrinologists, and one issue is that there are women with high T and men with low T. I think also there is just a lack of evidence about DSD women athletes. For example, Dutee Chand, who first objected to the rules, seems to be DSD, and while she is successful in the Asian games, is not at Olympic level. Possibly, Semenya is an outlier.
I can't actually find the text online, but its title is "Male and Female He Created Them", which is pretty unambiguous. I am tracking through Catholic websites, but none of them give an online address.
Also upsetting some people is that it has come out during Pride Month in many countries.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48584892
https://zenit.org/articles/new-vatican-document-provides-schools-with-guidance-on-gender-issues/
Do you consider that "people can choose their gender" is a misrepresentation of your position ?
But you think someone's gender is determined by their reported subjective experience ?
And people can choose to report subjective experience ?
I can't think of anyone who says that we choose our gender, except in the sense of gender expression, e.g., clothing. But in terms of gender identity, how is it possible? The Vatican document seems full of straw men like this, with no provenance.
Just because I choose to report a subjective experience it doesn’t mean I choose the experience. “It makes me sad when I hear of relationship breakdown due to alcoholism” doesn’t mean I have chosen to be sad.
“I feel I am a woman trapped in a male body” doesn’t mean I have chosen to feel like a woman.
Exactly
Also it seeks to impose "a single school of thought". That's news to me, as gender has become a very complicated discipline, with many sideshoots.
This is so obvious I struggle to believe someone could not see it unless they didn't want to.
You can ask what is meant by it but don't expect any kind of answer, let alone a sensible one. The Vatican makes statements, it doesn't explain them.
It may be news to you but that's because you're a sensible person who thinks for yourself. The Vatican doesn't allow for RCs to do that: as far as they're concerned The Church will do the thinking and then tell the observant faithful what to think.
That would be the end of elite women's sport. If "female" is taken away as a category then no one would be bothered about "T class 7" or whatever. Who would be interested in various lower classes of the 100m for instance.
Testosterone is only one thing that can affect performance, and is not the overriding factor that it is often presented as. McKinnon has I believe been quite vocal in arguing against testosterone limits. I found this article pretty helpful in understanding how they have got to the limits they have. In particular:
The rules have been set to be inclusive not fair. Reading between the lines, I think that the main purpose of requiring transwomen to reduce their testosterone level is that it is a form of gatekeeping, and to prove that there is some serious intent.
I am also a bit confused about why intersex conditions are being discussed so much no here. How is it relevant to transgender issues?
(Sorry to jump in to what is obviously a pretty big and long discussion. I was a member of the old site but hadn't popped my head in for a while.)
I thought this thread had morphed somewhat, and so intersex began to be discussed.
I think what McKinnon is pushing for is concerning for the future of women's sport.
This is a recent example of her thinking. She wants trans athletes to be able to compete without any testosterone requirements. And the problem is that her argument is right to a great extent - testosterone isn't everything about why men have an advantage in sport. So the IAAF and similar groups have tied themselves in to this framework which is pretty easy to pick holes in. Add in Caster's case, which makes it look unfair to be forcing a woman to artificially reduce testosterone, and soon the pieces begin to come together that it is 'unfair' to place any restrictions on transwomen either.
The Olympics has a history of looking for the killer diagnostic for women, starting with genital inspection, then chromosome, so I guess T is their long lost hope. It's such a tangle now of science, politics, prejudice, I don't know how it can be unscrambled. I suppose Joanna Harper hopes to show that trans women have no advantage, and she seems to carry clout.
The cognitive-behaviour therapists (CBT) would disagree that you do not choose your feelings, "It makes me sad when I hear of relationship breakdown due to alcoholism” doesn’t mean I have chosen to be sad.". In this quite dominant therapy model, they'd say that you perceive things, taking them into your brain for evaluation which means that you must think about them. Then following your thinking an evaluation, you respond with a feeling. It's modelling us on information processing, and has been quite powerful in helping people. Thus feeling sad about an alcoholism cause to relationship breakdown means you have thought about it in ways, evaluated it such that sadness is the result. If you wanted to change the feeling, you're supposed to change the thought, not quite sure to what, perhaps that relationship breakdown is better for all concerned, the person who is alcoholic so they don't hurt the other, and the other because they may be able to find happiness away from the hurt. Reframing is the term.
FWIW, CBT is a useful tool, but isn't the only one. I don't think we're info processors, and I don't know that I agree that thoughts and feelings and behaviour are always identifiable as discreet entities. It's a metaphor.
I don’t know enough about CBT to know if it could stop me feeling sad at feeling trapped in the wrong body, or indeed whether it could remove the feeling of being trapped in the wrong body. Nor am I really clear if either of those would be inherently desirable outcomes.
I think this is a big issue, and various medical groups have protested. It is clearly unethical, and possibly dangerous. You would think that the lawyers would be onto it.
Absolutely. We don't choose the feelings we experience. But we choose what we do with them. We can seek to banish melancholy. Or wallow in it. Hide it. Or demand that the world take notice.
Not necessarily advocating any of the above.
Just trying to be clear. Is it feelings that determine gender identity, or what we choose to do about those feelings ?
Is this some romantic notion of feelings too strong to be denied ?
Some days I feel like an old man trapped in a younger man's body. But no amount of feeling that gets me a State pension, an OAP discount or a free bus pass. Because the feeling is not the reality.
I don't think that the purposes of a individual to justify their right to compete are the priority. The priority is the fairness of competing in a sport. About all the nations and all athletes. No one cares too much about one person. Unless they look like they're winning with some advantage others don't have access too. I'd think if testosterone is performance enhancing then if levels higher than a normative female sex range are permissible that everyone could dope up to that level. And don't be naive, people will.
I sense that what they're attacking is strict social constructionism when it comes to gender, which they see transgender as arising out. I think this is misconception, but that said, it seems to be widely shared across the political spectrum - I've also seen lots of people on the left who support transgender and think it proves social constructionism.
Joanna Harper is a physicist, not an expert in physiology. It is amazing how much weight her opinion has been given really. The main piece of research she did is so flimsy and limited, yet it is being touted as 'proof' that reducing testosterone eliminates performance advantage. McKinnon isn't an expert either, she is a philosopher. There is very little decent research being done, I suspect because why would any experts want to touch the subject when it has become such a toxic debate.
In terms of intersex conditions I don't understand why there is so much hand-wringing. For a start, the true 'debatable' conditions are very rare. (The 2% figure that is often quoted includes any deviation from 'normal', but most deviations do not mean that someone's sex is questionable.) The prevalence of women with XY chromosones is something like <0.02%.
Hyperandrogenism does not call someone's sex into question, so I think it is completely wrong for the IAAF to be excluding women on the basis of what is a natural condition, even if it confers an advantage. To my mind it is no different to other genetical advantages such as height etc.
Yes, sounds likely. It's ironic that some feminists have accused trans people of reinforcing sex differences, although I don't think trans women all wear high heels and short skirts.
Good points. Definitely a lack of data on trans athletes. Opponents tend towards the anecdotal, or pure assertions, e.g., "trans women retain male musculature", or, "McKinnon looks huge". OK, but how do their performances actually compare with cis women?
The authorities seem haunted by Semenya, although there are other DSD athletes around, e.g., Niyonsaba, who has finished second to Semenya.
"Hyperandrogenism" calls the possibility of an unfair advantage into question. They have great difficulty telling people apart who have taken a hormone from those who produce it naturally. And there are many methods to take a lab-produced hormone and hide it from doping detection methods.
So it is different from genetic advantages because you can't take a drug to enhance height. You can take substances to alter metabolism. This is why blood doping is such a big deal: have blood taken from yourself over time, remove plasma and just before competition, transfuse back concentrated amounts of the red blood cells which carry oxygen. Can someone's testosterone be removed from their blood and doped back into their own body? Can this be detected if they do it? Can it be differentiated from naturally occurring testosterone?
The question we do know the answer to is whether someone can take testosterone-like hormones artificially created in a lab, and then stop for a period of time before competition such that they don't get detected as a drug cheat. The answer is a qualified "yes" while there is a battle of the scientists who help doping and cheating, and those who work on detection. What they've been doing for a while is take blood samples as soon as someone is close to qualifying for a national team and keep doing this at random intervals for the entire time the person competes. But they still miss cheating. And the thing they worry about about is cheating and unfair advantage. The testosterone level of one person being higher than the norm is enough to accuse that person of cheating in the eyes of international sport.
Naturally high testosterone women are a difficult group, and a small one. Would they sacrifice the one for the sake of the many, of the sport? Yes. And this isn't going to change much. The average viewer of a sport cares about this, and the market will dictate.
It may be 'difficult' in terms of sport, but not in terms of gender identification. As far as I can see Semenya is straightforwardly cisgendered: she has been regarded by both herself and others as a girl and a woman for all of her life until athletic rivals wished to persuade us and her otherwise.
Corrected quote. BroJames Purg Host
Sorted! BroJames. Purgatory Host
It would be great if there were comparisons able to be made, but given that McKinnon didn't compete as a man in cycling it is very difficult to say. Other than it would be very surprising for a woman without a history of high level sport to take it up at her age and be winning world titles.
Or look at CeCe Telfer, who was ranked down around 200 for men, and is now posting top 3 times for women (and yes, that does include the division 1 times).
NOprophet_NØprofit, if the above quotation was addressed to my remarks, I would welcome clarification regarding the first sentence: What are the 'that' and the 'it' to which it refers? And why is the 'individual' seeming regarded as 'not really important'?
The questions I would want to raise re sport are: Does sport only recognise two sex/genders? Does sport recognise other sex/genders but only arranges competition for males and females? Does sport have a right to request healthy individuals to submit to gender-bending treatment? Do doctors have a right to be complicit in such treatments at the request or pressure from third parties where the subject has been content with their lot?