Comment by fringol__
3 months ago
I do not consider it disrespectful to state someone's sex, particularly when it's relevant to the topic.
Consider my original comment on this thread:
"Most of the actual work to stop males from competing in women's sports, through evidence-guided changes in policy, has been driven by female athletes who are directly affected by this, feminists and feminist allies, scientists that study sex differences, and experts in the philosophy of sport.
That it's become such a well-known topic of contention is because sports are a spectator event and there have been some very high-profile instances of this unfairness towards female athletes."
Followed by this reply to a user who had a different view:
"They are male, and retain male physiological advantage even if they undergo interventions like testosterone suppression. It's not the only route by which a male athlete with such advantage might compete in women's sport, nor is it an issue limited to the USA. This is a broader issue affecting the fairness of women's sport in competitions across the world.
For instance, all three medallists in the women's 800m at the 2016 Rio Olympics were male. They had been issued with female birth certificates by their home countries due to having underdeveloped external male genitalia - and therefore according to the rules at the time could enter as female - but they still benefited from testosterone-driven development."
There is no disrespect in these comments.
As to why our conversation has focused on sports and sex differences, it is because it was the original topic before you joined the discussion.
As a side note, it's pretty widely accepted that referring to humans as "male" or "female" instead of "men" and "women" in general is dehumanizing. Using it as an adjective "male athletes" isn't considered disrespectful. Your personal opinion that it is NOT disrespectful isn't super relevant, since there are obviously more respectful and relevant terms (transman, transwoman, cis, pre- and post-transition). You weren't actually referring to all "males" in general in the previous discussion, you were specifically talking about transwomen athletes post-transition competing against ciswomen. If this wasn't intentional, then that was part of the confusion.
You can take offence if you want to, but objecting to a mention of the sex of a group of people, on a topic where the fact of their sex is highly relevant, comes across more as an attempt to stymie discussion.
Note that I was very specifically talking about male athletes competing in the female category of sports. This includes both those in the category of "trans" (the Laurel Hubbard types) and those with male-specific disorders of sex development (the Caster Semenya types).
I've said everything I would like to say on all these subthreads so there's no point in repeating myself yet again, but I would urge you to pick up a couple of books on developmental biology and evolutionary biology, and read them with an open mind, so you can challenge your misconceptions around this topic that you seem to have internalised.
I'm not personally offended by the inaccurate terms, more just stating what should be fairly obvious. Using accurate terms is very important in logic and reasoning, and being generally polite and respectful is also an important part of good-faith argument and debate when the goal is learning. You not being able to use correct and accurate terms is partly why your arguments are weak and inconsistent. I've explained your logic errors in multiple previous comments. If you're interested in learning more, I've linked several of my references as well. I do agree that there's little else to talk about and we're rehashing the same arguments. You saying that you don't personally consider it offensive and suggesting that therefore it's fine for you to use the inaccurate term suggests that this isn't a good-faith debate for the benefit of learning.
I will also say that it's a common pattern for people to try to justify bigotry with "science," not realizing that their arguments don't make sense. Karl Popper is actually considered the father of modern science for his work on falsification being one of the main ways to separate actual science from pseudoscience. This has come up several times lately and I'm very curious about it.
I have read several books in multiple areas of biology. I'm a little amused you're recommending them to me, when I literally linked and referenced one of the books in a previous comment. I hope you actually read more as well. Biology is an amazing field, which is why I studied it in university. I hope you learn more about science in general. I will also mention, however, that reading all the biology books in the world won't help if there's a fundamental misunderstanding in what science actually is and how to differentiate it from pseudoscience.
Statistical Rethinking (all editions) is a great book if you're interested in how models work and how science actually works, as a personal recommendation. The author also has multiple lectures recorded on github and other platforms, such as youtube. Carl Sagan also has an excellent book on distinguishing science from pseudoscience: "The Demon Haunted World - Science as a Candle in the Dark."
Some of your comments seemed to be removed, but for clarification, transwomen are women and transmen are men. Why not just use those terms in general? Why say "males," when you are actually talking about transwomen, which is a more accurate and relevant description? Then talk about pre and post transition, since that is the whole point of the discussion surrounding sports (criteria and debates around transition).