Yes, it's a problem without simple solution. One part is to understand what we mean by "fair competition," which to me seems largely a matter of social norms and customs, but maybe there are also invariant absolutes. Elite athletes are biologically abnormal almost by definition. My admittedly unsatisfactory take is that we shouldn't change rules quickly, that we should hesitate to accept currently fashionable trends, and that the most sensible rules should penalize the fewest possible innocents.
You went in a different direction with this piece than I expected. I thought that this might tie into the Whose welfare are we talking about post?
The best solutions here would find a way so that everyone can participate and no one has any downsides. As you've laid out, that is very hard to find in this situation. When you can't find a solution like that, you have to decide whose benefit you are going to favor. If you favor the median female (or even the median elite female athlete), you would ban participation for trans/DSD women to benefit the majority of women who get to compete in a more "pure" women's event. If you care for the marginalized outlier, you favor the few people who would be excluded.
This is the reminding me of the political problems that are hard to solve because they have concentrated harms and diffuse benefits. I know Semenya's name and the verdict (whatever it is) feels directed towards her. Whereas, the rest of the field of female 800m runners don't have that emotional appeal and each only gets affected a little bit (at least in comparison to getting banned from competition).
Yeah, true, I think all of the trans stuff where there’s a conflict of interests does relate to the “whose welfare” concept. In this case though, the elite female athletes are such a small population on their own that I feel like to make the case that you’re sacrificing median for outlier you need to tie in the effect on non elite athletes. So if young girls are inspired by female athletes now and wouldn’t be if trans women were included that’s a clearer case of sacrificing median for outlier. I think with the trans youth medicine there’s a stronger conflict of median vs outlier, at least assuming you think there are more gender non conforming youth who could get confused or get inappropriate treatment than you think there are “real” trans youth.
I'm a little confused by what you are saying. I don't think I'm tracking which side is which.
Say you have a field of 200 women track athletes, 5 trans and 195 cis. Favoring the median would be to ban the 5 in favor of the 195. Favoring the outlier would be keeping all 200 to the detriment of the 195.
It sounds like you are saying that to make the case for favoring the 195 you need to take into account young girls. But it's already 39 to 1 in the number of people who benefit to the number who lose out. That seems pretty strong by itself.
Yeah, no you’re definitely right, it still fits technically. But when I think of what would actually motivate the type of person I was thinking of as a “medianist” (for lack of a better term) I’d expect them to say “who cares about women’s sports and 200 elite athletes anyways? This is a distraction from what actually matters, which are things that affect all girls (or boys)”. Also, over time, based on how over represented DSD athletes are the percentage of trans athletes competing in the women’s elite division would likely be larger than 5/200. But yes, for the DSD vs non DSD women the median vs outlier at least technically fits (and would continue to since we don’t have reason to expect DSDs to become more prevalent)
Ok I get what you are saying now. My perspective is that I ran a rec sports league for a couple years so I'm thinking "what is going to be best for the people who would play in this league?" and it's basically irrelevant to the wider world, but I get that as a concern for something like the Olympics or world games where more people are going to be affected
Yes, it's a problem without simple solution. One part is to understand what we mean by "fair competition," which to me seems largely a matter of social norms and customs, but maybe there are also invariant absolutes. Elite athletes are biologically abnormal almost by definition. My admittedly unsatisfactory take is that we shouldn't change rules quickly, that we should hesitate to accept currently fashionable trends, and that the most sensible rules should penalize the fewest possible innocents.
You went in a different direction with this piece than I expected. I thought that this might tie into the Whose welfare are we talking about post?
The best solutions here would find a way so that everyone can participate and no one has any downsides. As you've laid out, that is very hard to find in this situation. When you can't find a solution like that, you have to decide whose benefit you are going to favor. If you favor the median female (or even the median elite female athlete), you would ban participation for trans/DSD women to benefit the majority of women who get to compete in a more "pure" women's event. If you care for the marginalized outlier, you favor the few people who would be excluded.
This is the reminding me of the political problems that are hard to solve because they have concentrated harms and diffuse benefits. I know Semenya's name and the verdict (whatever it is) feels directed towards her. Whereas, the rest of the field of female 800m runners don't have that emotional appeal and each only gets affected a little bit (at least in comparison to getting banned from competition).
Yeah, true, I think all of the trans stuff where there’s a conflict of interests does relate to the “whose welfare” concept. In this case though, the elite female athletes are such a small population on their own that I feel like to make the case that you’re sacrificing median for outlier you need to tie in the effect on non elite athletes. So if young girls are inspired by female athletes now and wouldn’t be if trans women were included that’s a clearer case of sacrificing median for outlier. I think with the trans youth medicine there’s a stronger conflict of median vs outlier, at least assuming you think there are more gender non conforming youth who could get confused or get inappropriate treatment than you think there are “real” trans youth.
I'm a little confused by what you are saying. I don't think I'm tracking which side is which.
Say you have a field of 200 women track athletes, 5 trans and 195 cis. Favoring the median would be to ban the 5 in favor of the 195. Favoring the outlier would be keeping all 200 to the detriment of the 195.
It sounds like you are saying that to make the case for favoring the 195 you need to take into account young girls. But it's already 39 to 1 in the number of people who benefit to the number who lose out. That seems pretty strong by itself.
Yeah, no you’re definitely right, it still fits technically. But when I think of what would actually motivate the type of person I was thinking of as a “medianist” (for lack of a better term) I’d expect them to say “who cares about women’s sports and 200 elite athletes anyways? This is a distraction from what actually matters, which are things that affect all girls (or boys)”. Also, over time, based on how over represented DSD athletes are the percentage of trans athletes competing in the women’s elite division would likely be larger than 5/200. But yes, for the DSD vs non DSD women the median vs outlier at least technically fits (and would continue to since we don’t have reason to expect DSDs to become more prevalent)
Ok I get what you are saying now. My perspective is that I ran a rec sports league for a couple years so I'm thinking "what is going to be best for the people who would play in this league?" and it's basically irrelevant to the wider world, but I get that as a concern for something like the Olympics or world games where more people are going to be affected