Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I disagree. Science faces a similar problem with homogeniety, specifically in regards to funding usually coming from the state and in general state influence in research.

To take an obvious example, the debate on the impact of sex and physical ability. It's obvious that males have an advantage over women on most physical tasks. I can't find a single event with an objective comparable scoring (e.g. how fast you finished, how high you jumped etc) where males don't outperform at every level by a significant degree. For instance, high school boy records beat pretty much all female world records in track [0]. And this is fine. We adapt societally by having women's leagues. And every scientist would admit this up until maybe 5 years ago. But now there is a growing "scientific consensus" that really it's some other societal effect.

Humans knew this to be true for thousands of years, but in the last 5 years we're beginning to upturn that for some reason. So maybe some deference to the past is warranted. If thousands of years from now the "consensus" still says sex doesn't really matter, then I'll grant you that. But for now the "scientific consensus" doesn't make something true

[0] https://boysvswomen.com/

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/to-understand-sex...

The problems of homogeneity among hard sciences is in no way bettered or solved by introducing quackery and conspiracy theories to the mix.

The rest of your post is insane, "War on Christmas"-style. No one reputable is claiming men and women are biologically equivalent in all things.

Is scientific American not reputabl? Here are a number of articles suggesting various arguments that there is no physical advantage of males in sports

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trans-girls-belon...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hormone-levels-ar...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/to-understand-sex...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the...

None of those articles argue that men and women are biologically equivalent in all things.

If I might summarize, they mostly argue that hormonal arguments towards unfair advantages in certain sports understate the already existing disparities in hormonal distribution in a given sex. That a given trans athlete might be less hormonally advantaged than a cis woman who competes uncontroversially.

The latter articles are even less supportive of your point, and mostly discuss the uncontroversial point that binary biological sex is an incomplete model of humanity as a whole.

These are reasonable and evidence-based discussions to have.

> the uncontroversial point that binary biological sex is an incomplete model of humanity as a whole.

Why does sex have to be a complete model of humanity? It's real and useful. For instance as a male I don't bother getting mamograms. Sex tells you more about predisposition of health conditions than any other factor apart from maybe age and weight. Let's not pretend it doesn't exist

> Let's not pretend it doesn't exist

This is a common straw man. No trans advocate I've heard pretends that sex doesn't exist. Indeed, what would be the point of medically transitioning if one thought sex wasn't real? Instead it seems like trans opponents like to pretend that sex is the only thing that exists or that gender identity and expression do not exist.

Additionally, sex is more complicated than a binary m/f - the obvious examples of intersex individuals or androgen insensitivity[1] come to mind. So yes, sex exists, it's not a binary state, and it's connected to but not fully descriptive of gender identity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgen_insensitivity_syndrom...

You seem to have missed these sections:

"It turns out that when transgender girls play on girls’ sports teams, cisgender girls can win. In fact, the vast majority of female athletes are cisgender, as are the vast majority of winners. There is no epidemic of transgender girls dominating female sports. "

"The Olympics have had trans-inclusive policies since 2004, but a single openly transgender athlete has yet to even qualify."

etc.

If trans people have such an obvious advantage why aren't they dominating every single category of every single strength-involving event?

> If trans people have such an obvious advantage why aren't they dominating every single category of every single strength-involving event?

Because there are fewer of them competing. Not every man is more athletic than every woman, but the most athletic men are more athletic than the most athletic women.

If me, as a man, tries competing in a women's weightlifting competition, I wouldnt do well, but I wouldn't do well in the male category either. But if you take competitive male athletes and have them compete against females, they will be incredibly competitive.

So trans women arent doing well vs other women because there are fewer of them competing, but also women arent doing well vs other men because there are fewer of them competing. If your only issue is the potential that a person has based on their testosterone, then maybe we should have no gender division, but testosterone categories instead. It seems it would make more sense than preventing both cis women and trans women from competing in a sport just because their hormone levels are too high (a trait we're apparently already directly pre selecting for)

Male performance advantage remains even for those males who choose to lower their testosterone levels; they retain muscle mass and strength above women, and their overall skeletal structure remains intact too: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7846503

In fact, the difference between male and female athletic performance is so stark that even the most elite female athletes are at a disadvantage compared to teenage boys: https://boysvswomen.com

> If trans people have such an obvious advantage why aren't they dominating every single category of every single strength-involving event?

Because there aren't that many trans women who compete in women's sports.

Neither of your quotes is close to a good argument. If you want to answer this question empirically, look at statistics (race times, lbs lifted, etc) and women's competitions where trans women competed.

It's also notable what a small number of people we're talking about. States have passed laws aimed at addressing this that affect literally a handful individuals living in that state. The amount of smoke this issue is generating is way out of proportion to its actual impact. Meanwhile, PED use among athletes and the general public is increasing[1][2] with little public pushback.

[1] https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/2021/0215/p203.html

[2] https://www.usada.org/spirit-of-sport/education/use-performa...

> If trans people have such an obvious advantage why aren't they dominating every single category of every single strength-involving event?

Athletes who dope don't always dominate, but it still gives them an unfair advantage. Same as when males compete in women's events.

That said, in some women's sporting leagues these males are actually dominating - see https://shewon.org for a list of the many hundreds of women who have been denied their place on the podium by trans-identifying male athletes.

I feel like we're just getting more precise. It's not actually true that all men are physically stronger than all women. Some men are physically stronger than some women, and some women are physically stronger than some men.

In the past, we were generalizing and that created falsehoods. Now we're able to be much more precise to the actual true reality.

It's also true that social factors play a role. We've never properly accounted for that, so it's much more true today to caveat with the fact that we don't know how much social factors play a role. It's probably not the most influential factor, but it's probably a part of the equation.

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not science and an encyclopedia is not a collection of all human knowledge, it's not an archive. Fringe stuff goes out the same way page-for-every-pokemon-evolution goes out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com