Neil deGrasse Tyson on Transgender Athletes

[MilesTRanter]

I just read this poem at The New Verse News

https://thenewversenews.substack.com/p/ ... dium=email

and thought of this:

"Split People By Categories, Not Gender!" Neil deGrasse Tyson on Transgender Athletes

[CalebPerry]

I had no idea that Tyson was so confused on this issue. He is trying to take something which is black and white and turn it into grays. He's also trying to satisfy everyone, an impossible task.

Women have an identity separate from men, and they have a right to their sports. Trans women, whatever their "identity", are men and don't belong in women's sports.

Miles, I'm guessing you posted this because of what I said to Morpheus in my poem thread.

[MilesTRanter]

Miles, I'm guessing you posted this because of what I said to Morpheus in my poem thread.

Actually, Caleb, it was because I saw that poem today at The New Verse News, which then reminded me of our conversation about transgender folks on your dream poem thread.

I've seen that interview with Tyson before, so I looked it up again and watched it. He doesn't appear to be confused. He was captain of his high school wrestling team (undefeated!), and also wrestled in college. I think he has a point about having categories — even though they can never be completely precise. Categories like weight classes (in wrestling and boxing), measures of muscle quickness or strength, or height. There are also ratings in chess and table tennis, where (other than the open category) players compete with other athletes who are in their respective rating.

He didn't mention basketball. Think about it. Most great basketball players are tall. Why not have different events where athletes who are five feet 4 inches tall, let's say, can compete with others around the same height?

And there are many kinds of sports with age categories. Take table tennis (which is my sport). There are tournaments for people over 60 or 70, etc. A 70-year-old athlete is not going to do well against a 20-year-old athlete of comparable technique.

So dividing people into male and female may not be the best way to go in the future. Yes, males and females are biologically different, but I've seen wrestling matches between a boy and a girl. They were both in the same weight class, and the girl beat the boys because she was a better wrestler. It would be different if a 200 pound person wrestled a 118 pound person. That wouldn't be fair, whether they were of the same or opposite sex.

And sex, by the way, is biological, but gender is a social and cultural (or psychological) construct. My dictionary defines gender as:

The male sex or the female sex, especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones, or one of a range of other identities that do not correspond to established ideas of male and female.

Sex, on the other hand, is defined as

Either of the two main categories (male and female) into which humans and most other living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions.

[CalebPerry]

You just like to disagree with me, Miles. I'm not even sure you believe everything you say.

Here's the point: Women have an identity, and men, who have traditionally discriminated against and oppressed women, now have the nerve to walk right into women's spaces and claim it as their own just because they have decided that they feel like women, which in their minds make them real women. I disagree with that. I side with the feminists who want to protect women's spaces.

Tyson's ideas to divide up sports according to various capabilities and characteristics would be overly confusing and chaotic. We need to keep sports divided by sex, and trans "women" do not belong to the female sex.

[MilesTRanter]

We need to keep sports divided by sex, and trans "women" do not belong to the female sex.

I agree totally that trans "women" are not actually women (female). They still have the XY (male) chromosomes. So they are not biologically women. Regarding sports, I could think of four possibilities. I don't know which would be the best option. But if you want to include trans women (which are really men in disguise), here are 4 possibilities:

1) Have a category that includes only trams-women. So they have to compete against each other.

2) Include them in sports that have categories like height or weight or muscle quickness, etc., so they can participate in any sport that has athletes of both or either sex (as Neil mentioned). As you said, that could get overly complicated. Still, many sports (weightlifting, wrestling, boxing, and others) have weight classes, and other kinds of sports have other restrictions to make things more fair.

3) Trans-women can only compete with other biological males (not with biological females).

4) Let trans-women compete with real women — which would usually be quite unfair to the real female athletes.

5 (not a good option) Ban trans-women from participating in any sport — which (as I'm sure you agree) would be extremely unfair to them, and downright prejudiced.

If you can think of other possibilities, I'd love to hear. Or which one of the above options do you think would be best? This is a complex topic and mighty controversial.

The thing I agree with you about is that whichever sex you are born is the sex you are. That's biology. (There are other animals that are hermaphrodites — like worms and slugs — but that's a whole other subject.)

[CalebPerry]

There's no good solution. The only thing I'm sure of is that trans women should not compete with real women, especially in collegiate and professional sports.

If the trans women are taking estrogen, that will make them weaker than the men, not to mention that the trans women would be embarrassed to compete with the men because it reveals that they are actually men too.

Competing with real women, though, is unfair to the women. Society is letting that happen, however, because women's needs are seen as less important than men's needs, even when those men are pretending to be women.

[MilesTRanter]

Competing with real women is unfair to the women.

I agree totally.

If the trans women are taking estrogen, that will make them weaker than the men.

That's probably true (on average).

There's no good solution.

That may very well be the case. Maybe they can compete with each other, but that would be impractical and unrealistic. So I have no answers either.

In the future (and maybe not too distant) humans will be enhanced — both physically and mentally — with the help of AI as well as genetic modification. So who knows what a world like that would look like? Homo sapiens (as we know it) will cease to exist. We will become something else (and maybe these kinds of issues will no longer be important or relevant).

[CalebPerry]

I'm reminded of a Star Trek: Next Generation episode in which a race called the Binars hijack the enterprise. The Binars were so dependent on technology that if their planet-wide central computer broke down, they were all at risk of dying.