Well, in your example, carpentry isn't about winning or being the best, it's about creating a house to sell (or flip, where you could actually frame a better argument about doing the worst possible job the fastest).

We have ceded too much ground in this debate. When I say "trans women are women" I mean that, ontologically, it is really true that trans women are a subcategory of the general class "women."

Like you say, we are searching for outliers. We don't cut women that are too strong or too tall. We shouldn't cut out women that happen to be trans. If all the top levels of women's sport end up dominated by trans athletes (something I don't see occurring, and that isn't supported by the data), then good, outliers found. We love to see women succeed.

(To avoid perverse incentives, though, the HRT requirement is critical. Otherwise you have trans women having to choose between being more competitive and receiving necessary medical care.)

The issue is that “woman’s sports” is itself intentionally discriminatory. That the issue of discrimination comes up is to be expected.

The idea of competitive sports exists in a framework of discrimination means that you will always have unhappy people.

The good news is that sports, for the most part, is mostly symbolic, and rarely affects ones livelihood.

> and some high-performing female athletes show signs of intersex, which has caused this entire hysteria about checking for penises.

This is a gross (literally) misunderstanding of the entire topic

The ruling covers a lot of the nuanced cases, including rare DSDs that may never even apply to Olympic athletes

The tests DO NOT check for genitals, and that is irrelevant to the decisions! It's a cheek swab that checks genetics.

Seems to me like the obvious answer is to categorize these events by weight division rather than gender, but this will never be considered because the hysteria is the point.

The solution is to develop relative skill rating systems like Elo.

It seems like we are creatively bankrupt if we can’t think of any solution. I think many of us could think of a good solution in literally seconds.

And there’s a really good argument that a solution isn’t actually needed.

Does the NBA need a solution for Steph Curry being the best 3 point shooter of all time and dominating his competition? Did the NFL need a solution for Tom Brady winning the Super Bowl 30% of the seasons he played in his career? Did Ohio high school basketball need a solution for LeBron James only losing 6 games in his entire high school career?

Athletes dominating their league happens all the time without the issue of transgender and intersex players.

If there is some kind of mass influx of men playing women’s sports to win easy championships that’s when we can deal with the problem. But as of now there is no such problem on any kind of significant scale. E.g. there has never been a time when washed up NBA player that decided to try and join the WNBA. We don’t need to solve problems that do not yet exist.

But let’s say we have to solve this problem to make everyone shut up about it. Here’s one I just thought of off the top of my head:

Anyone who performs at a level of play at an abnormally high gap between themselves and their competition (a set statistical percentage better) can be forced to seek a higher league of play if it exists and they are eligible if and only if other competitors in the league request they do so with a strong consensus.

Is this a perfect solution? No, but I thought of it in literally ten seconds, it doesn’t even involve gender, and I didn’t resort to sitting on my hands and saying “aw shucks there’s no solution” or “I guess we’ll just have to ban trans people from sports.

One solution is to have more categories. Then people can compete in their relevant categories.

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>This is one of the rare problems where there exists no good solution to the issue.

similar problem in boat races - different boats have different characteristics, thus PHRF rating. Not perfect, yet it works.

The same thing i expect to happen with human sports too - analyze DNA, assign handicap score, and let everybody run. Of course that wouldn't work for say boxing or judo - though even here with time we can come up with exoskeletons (or some drugs) equalizing your DNA-based advantages/disadvantages.

Or we can just have competitions in 3 categories - "only those assigned male at birth", "only those assigned female at birth", "anybody can choose to compete in that category". The 3rd category may just naturally become most competitive and interesting without any "males in female sports" issues we currently have.

at the highest levels are the most rigorous standards and testing. this is where it makes the most sense to allow trans athletes to. compete. trans women who have been on hormone replacement do not have an advantage over cis women. this is discrimination plain and simple and creates an atmosphere of misunderstanding, mistrust, and misinformation towards trans people (which incidentally also affects non-gender-conforming cis women).

> then I lost to a woman twice my age.

We are not talking about elite athletics here. If someone is upset about a transwoman finishing 150th in the local 10k race they need to work that out with a therapist or something.

I'm not an athlete, but here's my understanding.

Being on feminine hormones pretty much removes any advantage if you've been on them for a while. There are typically rules about that for (at least) high level competitions. You can't just walk in and state your gender for that kind of thing.

Honest question, you say you're generally open minded in comparison with people you encounter but have you considered you're generally not?

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This kind of argument was not persuasive when Alito deployed it for his pedantic dissent in Bostock v. Clayton County [0, specifically p. 17], and it remains not persuasive now.

[0] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/17-1618_hfci.pdf

If you were required to compete with people of a gender you do not identify with, even when event organisers recognise you as more fitting among the other group, that's a ban. There are trans masc people. Requiring them to compete with women is unfair and disrespectful. Requiring trans fem people to do so is the same. The rules around gender identification in regulated sports require proof of medical treatment yada yada to accept that people are 'trans enough', which is itself discriminatory. Trans people are a lot less distinct and separate from everyone else than you'd be led to think.

> As far as I see, this issue is only tangentially related to transgender rights.

It affects the rights of transgender people, so it is directly related to transgender rights. Also, I don't at all think that it's coincidence that people spreading hate about transgender people are the same ones so concerned about this particular issue?

People spreading hate and prejudice always have <reasons>.

> We all remember state-sponsored doping scandals from the 60s

We all do? People born in the 1950s or earlier might remember, making them at least 65 years old. I've never heard of it from people of any age. In any case, it's hard to connect this 60 year old issue with today's decision.

If an unscrupulous regime wanted to get medals with that method they'd just give cis women testosterone during puberty. Nothing about the new trans-exclusionary standards would deter that.

No XY chromosome no SRY gene. You're left with validating that someone's entire development was done in the absence of testosterone, which would--if even possible--require incredibly invasive and extensive testing.

You don't have to go back that far.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_in_Russia

That's a weird take. How bad do you imagine it going?

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No it's because in almost every sport, male sex development bestows significant performance advantages.

This is easy to see even with a casual glance. Look at the world records for any sport with measurable and comparable metrics, like times for swimming, running, etc. The difference between the most elite female and male athletes is stark.

I'm pretty sure there are folks involved in doing drug testing for many sports so saying are doing nothing seems hyperbolic. Are there specific things you think the bodies in charge of drug testing should be doing but aren't? Genuinely curious.

Organizations are large and not everyone works on the same things.

Doping is a problem which offers offenders unfair advantages -the IOC combats that and looks like they are looking at other unfair advantages as well. It's a cat-and-mouse game. As of yet there is no perfect doping detector (it can have false positives) but just because it's imperfect doesn't mean they should ignore the advantage it offers these offenders.