Women's Cycling Champion is a Man

[Brainster]

I debated putting this in sports, but it seems to be more appropriate for a social issues and current events thread.

Rachel McKinnon, a Canadian-born philosophy professor, just beat every women (sic) aged 35-39 at this year’s Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) Masters Track Cycling World Championships ... despite being a biological male.

Note that in the photo accompanying the article, McKinnon does not appear to be presenting himself as a female, and the text makes it clear that he's operating with testosterone:

But while pro-LGBT groups such as PinkNews are celebrating the news as a milestone for “equality,” critics argue that letting men who merely declare “womanhood” compete with actual women puts the latter at an unfair disadvantage. McKinnon spent part of his Sunday disputing the point on Twitter, arguing that “there's no relationship, in any gender, between endogenous testosterone and performance.”

So all those radio ads have been lying to me?

My take? This is going to be a thorny issue for sports and society. I don't doubt that elite male athletes can defeat elite female athletes in virtually every sport. You may think that few men would compete in a women's event; to a large degree that depends on the money involved. Women's tennis players make as much as men; some guy ranked 700th in the world on the men's side would probably vault easily into the top position on the women's tour. Especially if it doesn't require you to do any surgical changes or have hormone treatments.

To me, the whole point of having women and men compete separately is so that the women can experience the joy of winning or at least having a chance to win.

 

[TragicMonkey]

In the greater scheme of things exactly how important are sporting competitions? What is the downside to Person A winning Event B instead of Person C? These are games, aren't they? By definition recreation, not work?

 

[Pterodactyl]

In the greater scheme of things exactly how important are sporting competitions? What is the downside to Person A winning Event B instead of Person C? These are games, aren't they? By definition recreation, not work?

Well, they are work for some people. The elite of the sport, which is I think what's being talked about.

That and a key component of sport is fairness. This seems unfair.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Well, they are work for some people. The elite of the sport, which is I think what's being talked about.

Some people make careers from singing, playing video games, or performing magic tricks. That doesn't make those things terribly important activities for everyone.

That and a key component of sport is fairness. This seems unfair.

Very likely. Unfortunately fairness is not guaranteed in life. A competitor with 0.02 percent better lung capacity has an unfair advantage over one who does not. Who decides where the lines of fairness should be drawn?

 

[crescent]

Some sports allow trans women (born biologically male) to compete as women, but require blood tests for testosterone. They set an upper limit. Depending on when the person began using hormones to transition, there may still be residual effects such larger muscles and higher bone density, not to mention height.

It's not clear if that happened here.

The article does not state whether or not McKinnon was tested for testosterone levels or was using hormones to maintain the transition. That makes a huge difference in the role of trans women competing in sports, and the article fails to mention it at all.

 

[Pterodactyl]

Some people make careers from singing, playing video games, or performing magic tricks. That doesn't make those things terribly important activities for everyone.



Very likely. Unfortunately fairness is not guaranteed in life. A competitor with 0.02 percent better lung capacity has an unfair advantage over one who does not. Who decides where the lines of fairness should be drawn?

The deliberative body that oversees the sport I assume.
I think everyone understands that fairness isn't guaranteed. The heart of the debate is to whom do you award the fairness?

The transgender who wants to be treated as a female, or the female who wants to compete against only other females.

 

[GlennB]

Very likely. Unfortunately fairness is not guaranteed in life. A competitor with 0.02 percent better lung capacity has an unfair advantage over one who does not. Who decides where the lines of fairness should be drawn?

At the point where biological females would struggle to win any damn event at all if we took this example/trend (?) to its limits?

 

[TragicMonkey]

At the point where biological females would struggle to win any damn event at all if we took this example/trend (?) to its limits?

Suppose your doomsday scenario occurs, and women don't win these contests.

And? What's the harm in that? Aside from hurt feelings?

Every time someone comes up with a 'valid' reason to discriminate it always turns out to be over some trivial activity. Beauty contests. Acting jobs. Winning at sport contests.

 

[Ziggurat]

Very likely. Unfortunately fairness is not guaranteed in life. A competitor with 0.02 percent better lung capacity has an unfair advantage over one who does not. Who decides where the lines of fairness should be drawn?

There are three primary relevant groups when it comes to determining what is fair. The first is whoever runs the competition. They set the rules, they define what is fair under those rules.

The second group is the competitors. If they don't think the rules are fair, they can appeal to the first or third group, or they can simply choose not to compete.

The third group is the fans. What they consider fair matters too, because they're ultimately the ones who pay for the competitions. If they don't think the rules are fair, they will stop watching. If the athletes competing aren't of high enough caliber, they will stop watching.

The first group has obviously concluded that a man competing in a nominally woman's competition is fair. Most of the second group likely feels otherwise, but social pressure can constrain their ability to voice their opinions. The third group is where the real action is going to be, since you can't really use social pressure to make people watch a sporting event that they aren't interested in.

How will the third group feel about letting men compete in a women's event? They will probably not feel it is fair. If you are watching a women's cycling event, then chances are you want to see women competing, not men pretending to be women. If you want to see men competing, then just watch the men's competition.

This decision will likely cause a decline in the sport until the organizers change it. Whether or not they do change it depends on how much the prosperity of the sport matters to them. Maybe virtue signaling to their peers is more important, so it's by no means guaranteed that they will change course.

 

[Ziggurat]

Suppose your doomsday scenario occurs, and women don't win these contests.

And? What's the harm in that? Aside from hurt feelings?

The potential harm is that spectators will lose interest, and the sport will basically die, with neither female nor transgender athletes able to make a living from it.

Every time someone comes up with a 'valid' reason to discriminate it always turns out to be over some trivial activity. Beauty contests. Acting jobs. Winning at sport contests.

You say that like people shouldn't be allowed to have preferences about those things.

 

[TragicMonkey]

The potential harm is that spectators will lose interest, and the sport will basically die, with neither female nor transgender athletes able to make a living from it.

And the continued existence of a particular sport is important why? And so is the ability of some people to make money from it?

You say that like people shouldn't be allowed to have preferences about those things.

On the contrary, they can have as many preferences as they like. That doesn't make their preferences or the activity itself important.

 

[Cavemonster]

In the greater scheme of things exactly how important are sporting competitions? What is the downside to Person A winning Event B instead of Person C? These are games, aren't they? By definition recreation, not work?

They are entertainment, and entertainment is business. It's also a part of culture. Are you suggesting only the stock market and medical research are worthy of comment? Arts, entertainment, a million other things are part of our lives and economy in important ways.

People pay their rent with income from entertainment jobs just the same as people who sit behind desks. Massive amounts of money and people's livelihoods flow through entertainment. Which makes how things are handled just as important as how any other industry is handled. Just because the end product in enjoyment, doesn't make running the business any less serious

As entertainment, the whole purpose of women's events is to appeal to an audience who wants to watch women compete and acknowledge that women won't generally reach the highest levels of sport competing against men.

If there is no barrier, the entire entertainment basis of women's sport collapses. The perception of a certain type of fairness is the basis for the stability of the industry of women's sports.

And aside from the economic concerns, sports have value in a lot of ways. They help children learn the value of exercise and teamwork, and those are driven in part by admiration of professional athletes. Women competing at professional levels help young girls who admire them develop fitness habits by playing sports themselves.

 

[River]

Do feminists support this?

 

[TragicMonkey]

They are entertainment, and entertainment is business. It's also a part of culture. Are you suggesting only the stock market and medical research are worthy of comment? Arts, entertainment, a million other things are part of our lives and economy in important ways.

People pay their rent with income from entertainment jobs just the same as people who sit behind desks. Massive amounts of money and people's livelihoods flow through entertainment. Which makes how things are handled just as important as how any other industry is handled. Just because the end product in enjoyment, doesn't make running the business any less serious

As entertainment, the whole purpose of women's events is to appeal to an audience who wants to watch women compete and acknowledge that women won't generally reach the highest levels of sport competing against men.

If there is no barrier, the entire entertainment basis of women's sport collapses. The perception of a certain type of fairness is the basis for the stability of the industry of women's sports.

And aside from the economic concerns, sports have value in a lot of ways. They help children learn the value of exercise and teamwork, and those are driven in part by admiration of professional athletes. Women competing at professional levels help young girls who admire them develop fitness habits by playing sports themselves.

If women can't win bicycling races the entire sex will cease riding bicycles? If a recreation is enjoyable people will participate in it, even if there are no contests or professionals at all. I do not see it as necessary for the existence of a sport that an industry exist to make gobs of money off of it, or that anybody on earth should make a living from doing it.

 

[MikeG]

In the greater scheme of things exactly how important are sporting competitions? What is the downside to Person A winning Event B instead of Person C? These are games, aren't they? By definition recreation, not work?

Pretty damned important to the people taking part. Like all-encompassing. More hours and effort than anyone in a normal job ever puts in. The one expectation that they all have is that they'll be competing on an equal footing. That there'll be fairness.

 

[JoeMorgue]

The potential harm is that spectators will lose interest, and the sport will basically die, with neither female nor transgender athletes able to make a living from it.

//This might "broaden the topic" too much and go too far outside this particular case. Anyone wants this spun off into a new thread I won't be bothered.//

There are, I think, some legit questions to be asked as to how concepts like inclusions work in the concept of entertainment where personal enjoyment is a determining factor in success.

Someone's personal enjoyment of something is not (generally) something that you can argue them out of in the context we are discussing.

I once used, in radically different context, the, what i call, the IBS in the pool metaphor. I want to take a nice swim in a local community pool. While swimming in the pool I see a nice big turd floating in the water. I get out of the pool. Someone comes up to me and explains, in perfectly polite and 100% valid terms that another person in the pool has IBS, that they are completely unable to control it, that they mean me zero harm or discomfort, and that they have every right to be in the pool. I agree with that 100%, I have nor offer any counter argument or disagreement.

Here's the kicker that gets lost in the discussion some time. I'm still gonna leave the pool. I'm gonna leave because my purpose in going to the pool was enjoyment and I no longer enjoy it because there's a turd in the water and my enjoyment or not enjoyment of something isn't something that can be over ruled by procedural compliance or a technicality.

And this does create a no-win scenario some of the time. Yeah the guy with IBS gets to enjoy the pool but everyone else leaves, you can't support a pool on one customer, the pool shuts down and now nobody gets to enjoy the pool.

Now is that an extreme and rather silly hypothetical? Yeah but there's a point in there somewhere. If being inclusive causes an entertainment venue to loose customers to the point it either shutdowns or reduces operation to the point that it can't entertain anyone, including the people it was trying to include, is that really a net win for anybody?

Now I get that it's a short drive from this to "I can't hire a black waitress because it will scare the white customers away" nonsense, but I don't think there's no legit issue anywhere in that spectrum.

 

[GlennB]

Suppose your doomsday scenario occurs, and women don't win these contests.

And? What's the harm in that? Aside from hurt feelings?

It means biological females don't even bother to compete, as they can't win. That's more than 'hurt feelings' in my book - it deprives them of partaking in something significant.

If your viewpoint is "all sport is nonsense" then why not train dolphins to win all the swimming races? Train gorillas to win the wrestling competitions? Allow parents to compete against their kids in the first school races on sports day?

Very silly.

 

[cullennz]

Suppose your doomsday scenario occurs, and women don't win these contests.

And? What's the harm in that? Aside from hurt feelings?

Every time someone comes up with a 'valid' reason to discriminate it always turns out to be over some trivial activity. Beauty contests. Acting jobs. Winning at sport contests.

For a lot of people sport is their job

It is their chosen professional field

Your argument could just as easily be applied to any other profession

"Who cares if all the CEO's are men?

What difference does it make?

Fairness? Get over it women, life isn't fair"

 

[Ziggurat]

And the continued existence of a particular sport is important why?

This is a stupid question trying to masquerade as a clever question, and failing.

It's important to the people who enjoyed watching the sport because people value enjoyment. It's important to the people who make a living from the sport because that's how they earn the money they need to live. No deeper answer is necessary.

The fact that it may not be important to anyone else doesn't stop it from being important to them. This should be obvious, it shouldn't need explaining. If you are indifferent to the issue (and I make no claim that you shouldn't be), then the logical choice is to not participate in the discussion. Crapping on others for having an interest in something you have no interest in isn't enlightened.

 

[WingerII]

Some sports allow trans women (born biologically male) to compete as women, but require blood tests for testosterone. They set an upper limit. Depending on when the person began using hormones to transition, there may still be residual effects such larger muscles and higher bone density, not to mention height.

It's not clear if that happened here.

The article does not state whether or not McKinnon was tested for testosterone levels or was using hormones to maintain the transition. That makes a huge difference in the role of trans women competing in sports, and the article fails to mention it at all.

Here's a link to a CBC article, for those who would rather not give clicks to anti-gay outlets like LifeSiteNews. It says she's had to suppress her testosterone to what she considers to be an unhealthy level.