Yes, but there is some middle ground between antisemitism and following what mainstream loves the a given point of time. And right now if someone dares to stick outside mainstream views this is considered hate speech, anti-XXX, etc.
Can we discuss if overweight people should pay more for sits in a plane? Can we discuss if a trans male who identifies herself to be a woman should be allowed to take part in female sport competition (box, running)? I am afraid we no longer can discuss such "uncomfortable" topics because starting such discussion of Facebook or Twitter leads to being "flagged", shadow-banned, because this is hate speech or something-foby or hurts someone's feeling.
I see this as a problem as censorship is precisely what pushes people into bubbles that cannot communicate outside and that get more and more radical. You can't have liberal democracy in a bubble society, as there is no respect for opposite opinion, there is only pushing one's agenda as soon as a given bubble wins the election. Democracy becomes just a tirrany of those who managed to win election (which means those who has more money and who has better access to media).
> Can we discuss if overweight people should pay more for sits in a plane? Can we discuss if a trans male who identifies herself to be a woman should be allowed to take part in female sport competition (box, running)? I am afraid we no longer can discuss such "uncomfortable" topics
You can debate those things on reddit without being censored on a lots of subreddits. However, the reason these are such contentious topics is that 99% of the time they are aired it's either people using them to complain about SJW culture, or people trying to stir up shit.
The last 1% is people who legitimately care about these people and want to discuss their wellbeing and rights. But I'm putting that in to be generous, I don't think I'm ever seen these topics discussed in good faith.
You did not bring them up in good faith, for example, you just used obese and trans people to make a point. I have no reason to think you actually care about them or would ever engage in a conversation about their rights within our society.
> The last 1% is people who legitimately care about these people and want to discuss their wellbeing and rights. But I'm putting that in to be generous, I don't think I'm ever seen these topics discussed in good faith.
Or do your existing opinions mean you view all discussions on this topic as bad-faith, exactly as the parent comment describes?
> However, the reason these are such contentious topics is that 99% of the time they are aired it's either people using them to complain about SJW culture
Is that the cause of the alleged 'bubbelisation' of social media networks by "censorship", or is that actually caused by the supposed censorship?
PS: Not trying to imply anything, you still make a valid point.
> Or do your existing opinions mean you view all discussions on this topic as bad-faith, exactly as the parent comment describes?
Not likely. That in and of itself is a bad-faith claim frequently used by bigots to try and evade getting thrown out of a venue, by turning around the accusation onto those calling out bad behaviour. Unfortunately a lot of peope have taken this claim at face value, and have started repeating it.
The thing is, I have discussed these sorts of topics with people in good faith. The common factor is that those discussions were never in public venues, because someone who wants to discuss these topics in good faith realizes that they are sensitive and easily-abused.
On the other hand, every time I've seen someone "discuss" these topics in public, there were clearly identifiable signs of bad faith, independent from the topic itself. It usually doesn't take much prodding to make the mask come off, so to say.
Edit: For additional background, I'm mostly speaking with my "community moderator" hat on, here. I somewhat regularly get brought in to clean up mismoderated communities that have gotten completely out of hand, so over time I've learned how to identify bad-faith actors quickly, separately from opinions.
> Or do your existing opinions mean you view all discussions on this topic as bad-faith, exactly as the parent comment describes?
No, I'm quite clear about what would constitute a good faith argument. For example, regarding obese people on planes having to pay for extra seats, a good faith argument would involve genuine discussion about the impact on these people, whether it's prejudiced to do so, whether it's within the rights of the airlines to charge them extra, and so on.
A bad faith argument is where this topic is brought up as a strawman when the real topic of conversation is censorship or some such.
I'm fully aware that this entire comment thread, including my replies, constitutes a bad faith argument, BTW. We are not genuinely discussing the plight of obese people, we're just using their plight to further our own discussions.
"Complaining about SJW culture" could mean any of 50 things depending on who is saying it, and there's not enough context here to know what you're saying exactly, but I don't think complaining/debating it is a contentious thing. There is some absolutely bat-shit crazy stuff coming out of the extremist left. It's just not as overtly racist as the equally bat-shit crazy stuff coming out of the extremist right, and the Overton window being what it is it's not as heavily monitored/censored.
> You did not bring them up in good faith
Nobody talks about the airplane ticket thing if they care about the "wellbeing and rights" of morbidly obese people. But that doesn't detract from the facts of the point. Whether someone does or doesn't care about the wellbeing of some unnamed morbidly obese person is irrelevant to whether or not they're making a good point or argument.
Seats in planes were designed for average people. It means that myself, as an average person, have the right to be relatively comfortable in that chair. If an obese person sits next to me, I have nothing against them on a human level - but the fact that they use my space.
They are not comfortable either (certainly physically and probably psychologically) so if we accept obese people in our society (which is the case), they should have special chairs in planes, similar to the situation for disabled people. They should not, objectively, pay more for them even if I think that in the vast majority of cases obesity is a choice (I am somehow overweight and do not think that this is anybody's else fault than mine). This is akin (at least in France where I live) to the fact that they will be medically treated with my money (same as the ones that smoke cigarettes will be treated for heart issues or pulmonary cancer).
Now, should someone who horribly stinks be allowed on the seat next to mine? No, because we do not accept stinkiness, as a society. It is completely arbitrarily, but this is how life is.
The example in sports is a good one too. I think that we should not test anybody for anything because a sportman today is not a normal being anyway. They are bred to be excellent in what they do. A volleyball player will not be able to participate in a 100 m sprint and have the slightest chance. So any idea of "natural" in sports is long gone (except for purely amateur).
In that light I have no idea how to deal with the women/men separation we have today. There probably not be any because a top woman volleyball player will be eons better than the amateur man volleyball player I am now. On the other hand they have no chance against a men team.
Sports at pro level is such a commercial entity that I even wonder if we should care.
Regarding the plane seats, the solution is that airlines provide larger seats for all passengers. The problem of obese passengers encroaching on fellow passengers "space" is because airlines have consistently reduced that "space" over the last 2 decades or more.
However, either obesity is a disability, in which case, perhaps the ADA or equivalent could be used to force airlines to provide accomodation, or it is not a protected class, in which case, airlines should force them to purchase two seats.
In sports, there are leagues and classes of competition that attempt to provide a "minimum platform" for teams to compete. That's why teams move up and down from the soccer premier leagues etc.
The problem/issue of trans-gendered individuals being on teams they don't "belong" to is going to be changed over the next decades given that genetic modifications and enhancements are likely to be available via CRISPR etc.
Drugs are banned in sport to avoid people using "artifical" enhancements to their innate trained abilities. If someone gets genetic modification to enhance, say, their muscles abilities to use energy, how are you going to police that?
Have everyone playing submit their genome for examination?
> Drugs are banned in sport to avoid people using "artifical" enhancements to their innate trained abilities. If someone gets genetic modification to enhance, say, their muscles abilities to use energy, how are you going to police that?
> Have everyone playing submit their genome for examination?
My point is is that it does not matter. What is current top competition sport is not natural anymore so I do not really care about whether they take drugs (illegal today, maybe legal tomorrow) or not. Or modify they genome.
Wasn't there a case of a (South African?) athlete who was asked for a sample of their DNA to check weather they were a man or a woman? (it was not that long time ago I think)
> What is current top competition sport is not natural anymore so I do not really care about whether they take drugs (illegal today, maybe legal tomorrow) or not. Or modify they genome.
Two things:
This is a minority viewpoint. I believe most sports fans and participants want sports to remain free of exogenous performance enhancing drugs.
The second: the situation you describe would disadvantage everyone who does not engage in maximizing their use of such PEDs, and the sport in question would rapidly be transformed from what it is now into something vastly different, as the people willing to ingest these modifications would quickly displace the ones that aren't, or don't embrace the practice as fully.
That may be fine for you, but it is a big change, and many people like it the way it is now.
Personally, I agree with you. There should probably be a drugs league in various sports where people get as insanely artificially enhanced as human bodies can support, I might even watch that despite my general aversion to sports just to see the extreme tech involved. But it's absolutely silly to equate that to what is happening today because "today's athletes are not natural". It's not the same thing at all.
There is a big risk of causing permanent damage and significantly reduced lifespans by creating drug league, which has its own ethical issues. It would create incentives for people to push naive children or newly-adult into taking many drugs that will destroy the rest of their lives.
Drug league could have people dying mid competition, as they took too many drugs that they had a heart attack when trying to go all out, and that would create so much backlash and vicarious trauma that it gets shut down hard. I think it's the main reason why it doesn't exist.
As long as everyone involved consents and isn't coerced, it sounds ethical and entertaining to me.
I imagine that many of the people who would participate are already taking these things (these are not the people competing professionally today). Perhaps mainstreaming it would incentivize more research into safety and sustainability around artificially pushing humans beyond their current physical limits.
> As long as everyone involved consents and isn't coerced, it sounds ethical and entertaining to me.
Given the extreme competitive and monetary pressure already involved in sports, as well as expectations of audience, I question how much we can talk about consent and lack of coercion. If a drug league would exist, players would be pressured to take part to the very limit of what's legal, health be damned - as they already are in regular leagues.
> Wasn't there a case of a (South African?) athlete who was asked for a sample of their DNA to check weather they were a man or a woman? (it was not that long time ago I think)
In April 2018, the IAAF announced new "differences of sex development" rules that required athletes with specific disorders of sex development, testosterone levels of 5 nmol/L and above, and certain androgen sensitivity to take medication to lower their testosterone levels, effective beginning 8 May 2019. Due to the narrow scope of the changes, which also apply to only those athletes competing in the 400m, 800m, and 1500m, many people thought the rule change was designed specifically to target Semenya.
On 19 June 2018, Semenya announced that she would legally challenge the IAAF rules. On 1 May 2019, the Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected her challenge, paving the way for the new rules to come into effect on 8 May 2019. During the legal challenge by Semenya, the IAAF amended the regulations to exclude hyperandrogenism associated with the 46,XX karyotype and clarified that the disorders of sex development affected by the regulations are specific to the 46,XY karyotype. The legal case divided commentators such as Doriane Coleman, who testified for the IAAF, arguing that women's sport requires certain biological traits, from commentators such as Eric Vilain, who testified for Semenya, arguing that "sex is not defined by one particular parameter ... for many human reasons, it's so difficult to exclude women who've always lived their entire lives as women — to suddenly tell them 'you just don't belong here.'"
Semenya has appealed the decision to the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland. On 3 June 2019, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court advised that they had "super-provisionally instructed the IAAF to suspend the application of the 'Eligibility Regulations for the Female Classification for athletes with differences of sex development' with respect to the claimant [Semenya]" until the court decides whether to issue an interlocutory injunction. On 30 July 2019, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court reversed its earlier ruling that had suspended the Court of Arbitration for Sport decision and the IAAF rules. For that reason, Semenya missed the 2019 World Athletics Championships in Doha in October 2019, while continuing her appeal.
In July 2019, Semenya said that the ongoing issue has "destroyed" her "mentally and physically".
we currently ban steroids and most performance-enhancing substances in elite sports
Trans is the same thing, but on a genetic level. It alters the state of competition to give advantage to the new entrant. It follows that it would be banned on the same grounds under current rules.
Either we accept all modification in sports, or we dont
Your last sentence contains the kernel of a reality that much of the internet would rather we don’t notice: that we don’t have to care about most of the stupid shit we see on our screens every day.
We don’t need to engage in flame wars or virtue signaling or any of these asinine debates.
People got along with their lives just fine for thousands of years without feeling compelled to debate a stranger from hundreds of miles away for 10 minutes about theoreticals that scarcely affect their daily lives.
But the social media and advertising companies can’t have that. No, we as a society need to be juiced up on fear and hate 24/7 to keep the eyeballs moving and the profits flowing.
Fact is the world is full of shitty people and ya gotta pick your battles. In most cases, the winning move is not to play.
“People got along with their lives just fine for thousands of years without feeling compelled to debate a stranger from hundreds of miles away for 10 minutes about theoreticals that scarcely affect their daily lives.”
Many of those were in times when it took a serious commitment to even travel that far, let alone to wage war. It probably helped that staying put didn’t guarantee a quiet life, either.
> The example in sports is a good one too. I think that we should not test anybody for anything because a sportman today is not a normal being anyway.
This would lead to a large number of injuries and overdoses because of the drug use. IIRC this was happening in soccer with heart attacks happening because of drugs.
The distinction between men and women teams is arbitrary but fairly sensible. If you didn't separate them then you'd have men at the top and women at the bottom, which does not fun make.
That said, I have no clue how to solve the transperson distinction in sports.
> This would lead to a large number of injuries and overdoses because of the drug use. IIRC this was happening in soccer with heart attacks happening because of drugs.
Yes, but this is a choice. We still like to imagine that sports must be "natural". There is nothing natural in how the top performers are bred (my wife was a national junior champion and in the very top of Europe and did not continue despite being invited to the national team - all the fun of sports is gone).
Since we accept that we breed people that do competitive sport I see no reason why not to give them all the opportunities. This includes taking risk with their health and life.
The only problem is that sport starts at 4 years old and there is a risk of parents who would be ready for anything for their children to be sport heroes.
My children did al lot of sports and they stopped after their black belt in karate because it was not fun anymore. They were not really interested by the competition so it did not matter. They love sport. I play volleyball in an amateur team that almost always loses. But the fun is incredible.
> The distinction between men and women teams is arbitrary but fairly sensible. If you didn't separate them then you'd have men at the top and women at the bottom, which does not fun make.
I know but since it looks like the gender is becoming a mater of choice, I do not know how this will be deal with.
I was thinking the same thing when I read somewhere that the "appartenance to a racial group" in the US is by choice as well. I wonder why some, say, white people do not assess themselves as "Afro-American" to make use of the positive discrimination for admission at universities (or whatever this is called in the US)
When _some_ make this choice to be at the top, _all_ must make this choice to be at the top. At that point it's a roulette of who will dare take the most drugs and live to win.
> I see no reason why not to give them all the opportunities.
Some are way more harmful than others, and we should take that into account.
EDIT:
> I know but since it looks like the gender is becoming a mater of choice, I do not know how this will be deal with.
Apart from some radical groups thinking so, gender is not really becoming a choice.
> When _some_ make this choice to be at the top, _all_ must make this choice to be at the top. At that point it's a roulette of who will dare take the most drugs and live to win.
This is exactly what happens in sport today. Some made the choice to make it all of their life and train from dusk to dawn, eat some kind of protein powders that bring in the exact amount of nutriments etc.
The others must do the same to beat them.
I really see no difference between allowing to have a nutritionist, a personal coach, a bioengineer and access to all kind of legal substances that do not exist in nature and just let it go, grab some popcorn and see.
This is still a choice, a tough one, but a choice.
Then we will have these Roman-like competitions where some die and some survive (with the difference that they choose it knowingly) and the teams of people who instead of watching sport on TV will go to play an amateur match themselves.
I do not like competitive sport because it is made to look like something natural while it is not. The same way I do not care about boxers who get Parkinsons after repeated hits in their head or the ones who climb towers to make a selfie on the top and slip, I do not care about these who decided to modify their physiology to be the best at one specific precise action.
It ends with US universities "graduating" people who can barely write their name because they were good in basketball. The person who graduated in the same major as them and had to work (and get into the university in the first place) may not be happy. But there is money behind so who cares.
> I really see no difference between allowing to have a nutritionist, a personal coach, a bioengineer and access to all kind of legal substances that do not exist in nature and just let it go, grab some popcorn and see.
One of those has a high chance of directly killing you, the others don't, that's my point.
> Apart from some radical groups thinking so, gender is not really becoming a choice.
Transsexuality, non-binary etc. are facts. They are more or less legalized (it depends on the country) but I think that at some point it is not the genome that is going to decide but a personal choice.
I do not want to discuss whether this is good or bad, just the fact that quantitative biological data are not absolute measures anymore.
That's why it's time to stop talking about all of this as a bulk category. Different situations care about different aspect of sex/gender.
In sports, it isn't really relevant what a person thinks about themselves. Gender is used as a proxy for expected performance envelope - you don't want to mix people with radically different characteristics, because that would not make for fair competition. I'm guessing that eventually we'll stop talking about "men" and "women" teams, and figure out new terms that directly reference the relevant biological characteristics.
> That said, I have no clue how to solve the transperson distinction in sports.
It doesn’t seem that hard: just create explicit performance classes instead of using gender as a proxy for a performance class. There’s already precedent for this in at least combat sports where competitors are separated into weight classes.
> ou did not bring them up in good faith, for example, you just used obese and trans people to make a point.
You are one of the people the gp is mentioning. Those two are excellent points. There are a lot of people who are uncomfortable with those topics but are open to discussing them. Then people like you come out of the woodwork and accuse them of some nonsensical uptight bullshit and crap on their legitimate questions. Your open hostility then further cements their oppositional opinions. Instead of progress towards understanding and accepting, they dig their heels in and stay hateful because you pretty much told them to fuck off.
We live in a world where google exists, hell where scihub exists. It's extremely suspicious to show up in a forum "asking questions" when these resources exist. Getting told to "fuck off" in this context is basically being told to RTFM. You can look in my comment history to find just how easy it was to compile some sources to discredit the idea that trans women in sports is some unknown taboo.
If we spent just a fraction of the effort making spaces safer for marginalized groups as we do debating bad faith actors the internet would be a much better place in my opinion.
I think the two questions being considered are largely a matter of public opinion. You can use something of sci hub etc to justify your opinion, or try to change someone’s mind (esp in this example with the trans athletes). But unless others have already held this discussion somewhere google won’t help you gauge what people think.
(Obviously these particular topics have been done to death, but someone has to hold this discussion for the first time on a given platform).
I do actually agree that most people that most people making a fuss about these questions online are doing so in bad faith or “mostly bad faith”. But I still do think both questions are nuanced, and I think a lot of bystanders might benefit from intelligent responses to these questions from the progressive side, but maybe at some point it’s too exhausting.
The exhausting angle is real. I think there's some inheritant bad faith (even if unintentional) in asking sensitive questions to a forumn with no validations on identity or expertise. Your odds of finding someone that knows these things deeply that doesn't also have an emotional connection to them are relatively low (there aren't a lot of phds in sports medicine floating around HN for example). So instead it becomes up to someone directly effected to provide such responses and that's just a lot; save the sensitive questions for the experts or come with direct quotes from published sources.
Nobody said it’s an unknown taboo. The issue is that they have an incredible biological advantage. We should absolutely not focus on making social spaces “safer” (a misnomer, because regular adult conversations simply do not jeopardize safety), we should focus more on making people anti-fragile.
Trans folks in the LGBT movement were an inextricable part of the movement since day 1. Partly because distinctions at the time between gay men who did drag and trans women did not exist, but also partly because the overarching theme of the movement (and the hate it received) has been the sense of 'disgust' by mainstream society of its subversion of heteronormative values.
Many trans men and women lead the movement vocally when many gay men and women who could survive in the closet sat and waited.
But that's the thing, the good faith discussion happened so many times, and it has been litigated many times. For many of us, trans and non-binary folks gave us many of our rights, and they did not out of a sense of solidarity, but literally because they were fighting for the same thing (really, a revolution against gender norms and expectations).
As the gp said, however, this good faith conversation happens a few times (and has been litigated to death over and over, and continues to). But the domination in the "drop the T" movement is really dehumanizing language about trans people, accusing them of an agenda, brainwashing children, etc. It's really harmful, and it is things that gay, lesbian, and bi folks have been accused of already.
Okay well I’m a gay man and I like men with penises. Only recently does that make me a bigot. I think a vocal minority of the trans “movement” is really doing a lot of damage to themselves by trying to coerce sexual consent on a cultural level. Maybe people should be more comfortable with living and letting live. To me that is how I remember the LGBT movement pre-Twitter days.
It doesn’t make you a bigot. “You must be willing to sleep with people with any kind of genitals” is not a widespread belief system among transgender people and activists.
But referring to transgender people as “frankensteins monster” is bigoted.
So, speech about fat or trans people must be limited to "caring about their rights"? If you can't say something nice then you're not allowed to say anything at all?
> Can we discuss if a trans male who identifies herself to be a woman should be allowed to take part in female sport competition (box, running)?
Trans woman; trans men would be competing in the male competitions, and seem to be invisible in the whole trans debate anyway. The problem with this is that it's almost entirely based on prejudice and people saying things that turn out not to be true, along with vague biological determinism. Hence the Caster Semenya debacle (not trans, intersex AFAB, but high natural testosterone).
The problem with this is that it's almost entirely based on prejudice and people saying things that turn out not to be true ... Caster Semenya [has] high natural testosterone
Caster Semenya has XY chromosomes and internal testes. Semenya has "high natural testosterone" as a result of having male anatomy and hormones. The specific regulation Semenya has been fighting is explicitly "limited to athletes with ’46 XY DSD’ – i.e. conditions where the affected individual has XY chromosomes."
The idea that testosterone confers physical advantages of strength/speed is not "vague biological determinism" it's one of the most basic facts of our existence. It the primary reason sex-segregated sports exist in the first place.
"To say that an XY human can’t compete in the women’s category of professional sports unless they lower their testosterone below 5 nmol/L — a figure that is still 7.5 times the value of the average woman competing at the 2011 and 2013 track and field World Championships and a figure that not a single healthy woman born with XX chromosomes, ovaries, and producing estrogen at puberty can reach — isn’t a huge human rights travesty. It’s a protection of women’s sports."
Ignoring why the WSA chose 5nmol/L over something closer to the average cis woman's upper quartile (which is closer to 2 [45ng/dL as seen in [0]], not .6 as you're implying with the 7.5x figure), Im not sure what their reasoning is on that without more research.
Trans women don't tend to have testosterone levels that high anyway, and if they did their doctors would be worried about it. Obviously not a comprehensive study but, have the testosterone levels of a trans woman [0] (she's relatively normal, other than the fact she insists on debating strangers on the internet). That's ~.4 nmol/L (why sports and medicine use two different measures is also very confusing, unit conversion here [1]. Given the advantages testosterone gives in sports [3] I'd wager most women competing aren't hovering around the minimum levels (which is where most trans women are going to be by virtue of how anti-androgens work). Instead of unscientific blog spam, how about a study published by the National Collegiate Athletic Association [4].
Basically as the knowledge of the underlying science grows the idea of simple binary for fair sporting competition makes increasingly less sense, I wouldn't be surprised if elite institutions started to drift more toward "hormonal weight classes" (and so thinks these scientists [4])
[3] “[t]he available, albeit incomplete, evidence makes it highly likely that the sex difference in circulating testosterone of adults explains most, if not all, the sex differences in sporting performance.” https://sci-hub.tw/10.1210/er.2018-00020
Caster Semenya is not transgender and has not had testosterone blocking hormone therapy, which is what these regulations/debates are about.
I'd wager most women competing aren't hovering around the minimum levels (which is where most trans women are going to be by virtue of how anti-androgens work). Instead of unscientific blog spam
Again, Semenya is not transgender[1] and her T hormones are not hovering around the minimum levels, which is the entire reason for the ongoing debate. The "unscientific blog spam" was referencing the IAAF study of competing athletes[2]
not .6 as you're implying with the 7.5x figure ...
which indeed showed the average T level for 1332 female athletes was 0.67. 5 / 0.67 = 7.46
So, first off, that number is not the average, it's the median. Quoting from Table2 "Data are presented as median (25th percentile–75th percentile]." The paper isn't on nonfree testosterone in general, but in the opening statement the implication is the tail is rather long
"Among the 1332 female observations,
44 showed an fT concentration >29.4pmol/L.17 Twenty-four
female athletes showed a T concentration >3.08nmol/L which
has been calculated to represent the 99th percentile in a previous
normative study in elite female athletes."
The performance advantages they measured, in the events inwhich there were any, are explicitly linked to fT not non free testosterone and even then aren't being presented as causative.
"Our study design cannot provide evidence for causality
between androgen levels and athletic performance, but can indicate associations between androgen concentrations and athletic
performance. Thus, we deliberately decided not to exclude
performances achieved by females with biological hyperandrogenism and males with biological hypoandrogenism whatever
the cause of their condition (oral contraceptives, polycystic
ovaries syndrome, disorder of sex development, doping, overtraining). As a consequence, the calculated mean fT value in
the present study is higher than the 8.06pmol/L median value
previously reported in a similar female population."
They certainly don't appear to be arguing that hyperandrogenism in women should be a disqualifying condition. Especially in running events like the ones Semenya competed in since the performance gains appear most significantly in the throwing events.
"Our hypothesis is that ...androgens exert their
ergogenic effects on some sportswomen through better visuospatial neural activation."
> trans men would be competing in the male competitions, and seem to be invisible in the whole trans debate anyway.
Something that was pointed out to me recently that I thought was quite insightful. The greater societal acceptance of trans men compared to trans women seems to parallel the greater societal acceptance of cis women presenting in a masculine way compared to cis men presenting in a feminine way.
Which leads to the interesting idea that the key to societal acceptance of trans women may be widening what is considered socially acceptable for cis men.
What? How about nobody cares about trans men in male competitions because they are at the bottom, so have no visibility because they don't make it to the big competitions where real money and fame is achieved?
I think (without endorsing this position), that it's because most people assume trans men would just compete in "female" competitions.
To me the truth of the matter is that this is a very complex issue with no simple answers. People altering their physiology through hormones obviously can give them advantages or disadvantages that others don't have. As can having different hormone mixes when growing or through puberty. As indeed can a myriad of other genetic factors.
I honestly can't think of a way to make this fair. Do you have any suggestions?
>Can we discuss if overweight people should pay more for sits in a plane? Can we discuss if a trans male who identifies herself to be a woman should be allowed to take part in female sport competition (box, running)?
I challenge you to do it. You'll instantly be shadowbanned by bots from multiple subreddits, people will actively seek out your posts and point out you're an extremist on unrelated topics (again, triggered by bots pointing you out), and people will use your post history against you in arguments unrelated to whatever you said in those posts.
What are you talking about? Here's a search on r/ChangeMyView for topic of trans people and sports[1].
There's more threads than I can count, and people who say that they think trans people should be segregated have their posts gilded multiple times[2]. That last example was from 3 months ago.
There certainly is a middle ground and I agree it should be protected. In this case, though, the posters on Voat seem to be nowhere near the middle ground and instead wading around in the cesspool of racial hatred.
He's not saying they're part of the middle ground. He said extreme communities like Voat are the result of not allowing a middle ground and pushing people to one of the extremes.
All these are discussed over and over again - if you’re really after discussion go to r/changemyview do a search on your favorite topic an read until you find the argument you’d reward a delta to.
GP's is not claiming that overweight or transgender people are inhuman. That statement is exactly the type of extremist stance that is causing this debate in the first place.
Hell, they aren't even claiming that they are in favor of the points mentioned. Just that it's a bad idea for democratic society to shut down such discussion.
The problem with those discussions is that they tend to devolve in shouting matches.
Why is that? It's because this really is about people's feelings and sentiments on those topics. And those emotions range wildly from totally supportive to indifferent to deeply threatened.
While that's all completely valid, voicing your emotions unfiltered on the public Internet in front of an audience of anonymous millions comes with plenty of caveats. It's pretty much like standing up in a crowded, public town square and ranting unfiltered about how you feel personally in no uncertain terms. Or, more insidiously, taking on an appearance of reason and rationality, trying to hide an intention of eliciting an emotional response from others that validates your own feelings.
Many people don't take issue with the topic, they take issue with your behaviour. And they will show you their disapproval.
Free speech allows you to voice whatever is on your mind, but that doesn't force others to listen to you or give you a platform. Democracy doesn't imply that any and all behaviour is to be tolerated.
In real life, such behaviour is relegated to backroom clubs, shady bars and questionable small organizations. The Internet unavoidably hosts their digital equivalent. Moreover, as you can hide behind an anonymous handle on the Internet, move between different platforms fluidly, easily find a platform between thousands that will cater to you,... all of that from the comfort of your couch, really lowers the bar further.
The danger in all of this is when all of those digitally pent up negative emotions spill over in public life and starts affecting the very underpinnings that provide security and stability to each and every member society, regardless of who they are.
> It's because this really is about people's feelings and sentiments on those topics. And those emotions range wildly from totally supportive to indifferent to deeply threatened.
There's another dimension on top of even this. Nuance and shortcuts to commonly-held understanding, provided by body language and intonation, readily used in spoken discussion, are completely unavailable online. Typing out full, unspoken context for argument points takes far too long. So online discussions distill these deeply, deeply held feelings into a few sentences, which leads to oversimplification of one's own argument, and reductio ad absurdum of the other person's. So while "the internet" gives us this "wonderful" opportunity to discuss things that matter in an open and socialized way, it subtly channels such discussions into the most-hyperbolic form of "discussion" by nature of it being typed. Look no further than Twitter for the "best" example of this phenomenon. #SocialMediaIsDestroyingSociety
It's obvious to anyone who reads them that it doesn't even slightly relate to what anyone here has said (not letting someone participate in sporting events where they have a biological advantage is not exactly calling them pigs) but people post them anyway.
Is there some sort of costly signalling of membership of some social group (woke group?) going on?
Simple, I like to be solidaristic and find the _need_ per se to discuss those topics antagonistic to solidarity. I'm not signalling my virtue, but then again, you're free to call my attitude whatever you want, it just demonstrates our values are entirely distinct.
Problem is you end up forming a link in people's minds between views like yours and strawmen, causing distrust of people like you which will damage your cause.
If you want to read current psychological research on this I'd suggest this paper. It explores the personality attributes of people who virtue signal and what they have to gain from it in current society, and why that wasn't the case before. The personality types are Machiavellianism, Narcissism, Psychopathy - also referred to as the dark triad.
Reddit has plenty of discussion about violently overthrowing, imprisoning or murdering anyone anyone who is currently "too rich" like Jeff Bezos. Strangely the American redditor seem unaware that the rest of the world might also claim their wealth.
Trans people are required to be on hormones (and even maintain certain levels) to compete in elite sports. See WA and the Olympic committee's rules[0][1]
So yeah, not a transmedicalist, just we have existing frameworks for how to balance inclusion and fairness; there's no open question that needs debate around how trans people can compete in sports (unless you get all your cues from South Park i suppose). The only real debate is around what the levels should be and how to avoid retroactively excluding cis women with hyperandrogenism or related conditions.
Also just as an aside, like a lot of hypotheticals that get forced onto trans people, there isn't any evidence of this being an issue. Trans people just want to live their lives, medicinally transition if necessary, and exist as regular people. The number of people who both chose not to hormonally transition, and are competing in some kind of sporting event where that matters is small enough to be humanly addressed case by case (if there are any at all).
These comments always reek of hipocrasy. Try having a debate on the existence of God, the legitimacy of the church or even the right of gay people to exist somewhere in rural US, you often get threatened with violence (and I mean the actual physical kind) very quickly. But somehow it's the poor antisemists, or homophobes who complain about being "censored" in these discussions.
The idea that getting told to fuck off by random people is remotely comparable to getting banned from twitter or reddit is a great example of the desperation to point to some hypocrisy to distract from one's own lack of principles.
Can we discuss if overweight people should pay more for sits in a plane? Can we discuss if a trans male who identifies herself to be a woman should be allowed to take part in female sport competition (box, running)? I am afraid we no longer can discuss such "uncomfortable" topics because starting such discussion of Facebook or Twitter leads to being "flagged", shadow-banned, because this is hate speech or something-foby or hurts someone's feeling.
I see this as a problem as censorship is precisely what pushes people into bubbles that cannot communicate outside and that get more and more radical. You can't have liberal democracy in a bubble society, as there is no respect for opposite opinion, there is only pushing one's agenda as soon as a given bubble wins the election. Democracy becomes just a tirrany of those who managed to win election (which means those who has more money and who has better access to media).