Yes! Graphing disagreements can be a very useful tool. I found myself very frustrated by the Glenn/Destiny debate partly because I find debates over definitions to be tedious, but also because it was obvious how much of the disagreement was purely on where you would draw the 'insurrection' line on the violence scale. Destiny got Glenn to admit that the battle of Fort Sumter should not count as an insurrection (!!) but he really should've done more to probe Glenn's threshold.
Would Destiny be willing to bite the bullet that certain other protests are *also* insurrections, e.g. the rioting at the Portland federal building (definitely involved violence, definitely attempting to inhibit the government) and the Wisconsin Capitol takeovers back in 2011, plus the associated “fleebagger” acts of Democratic members to prevent a quorum (less violent, but probably not zero, clearly an effort to prevent the normal operation of the government)
And regardless of whether Destiny would bite the bullet, neither of those events got called insurrections with nearly the ubiquity that Jan 6 gets that label. Why is that so? I think that’s an interesting question and I personally don’t think the answer can really be explained by having different thresholds on a distribution of “violence”.
> And regardless of whether Destiny would bite the bullet, neither of those events got called insurrections with nearly the ubiquity that Jan 6 gets that label. Why is that so? I think that’s an interesting question and I personally don’t think the answer can really be explained by having different thresholds on a distribution of “violence”.
3 reasons.
1. Trump was trying to overturn the central process by which national power is turned over between presidents (affecting everybody), the Portland riot or Wisconsin protests were far more local.
2. The capitol building is symbolically for everybody, your nearest federal court or state legislature is not.
3. Left-wing radicals and progressive rioters are, for a variety of reasons, perceived as less damaging than right-wing rioters.
I won't make any claim as to how people rank those, but I would argue that, in that order, these three reasons constitute why one would slather descriptions of Jan 6th with the word "insurrection" while not doing the same to the others.
None of those three reasons are relevant to the definition provided by Destiny.
And it only counts if it’s directed at the seat of the federal legislative branch during a session regarding the transfer of executive power? The national capitol is “for the people” but the state capitol is not? C’mon man.
I'm not talking about Destiny's definition, I'm talking about why I think people are so quick to use the word for Jan 6th, but not Portland or Wisconsin.
I'm not saying that it only "counts" if it's the federal government, but there are plausible reasons for why people jumped when they heard about Jan 6th but not as much when they heard about the Portland riot and burning of the court. For better or worse, we don't attach the same emotions and meaning to a federal court building as we do to the Capitol.
Both could be insurrections, but an attempt to circumvent the electoral process for the President of the United States is much more consequential than stopping the functioning of a federal courthouse, because Presidents have way more power to do good or bad stuff
Why is it important whether Jan 6 was an “Insurrection” or not? It’s because the “it was an insurrection” side wants to take legal action against people involved, including potentially disqualifying the likely Republican nominee for the Presidency. So the legal definition of insurrection is super important!
In a broader sense, I do think the noncentral fallacy matters, and perhaps cuts the knot. MLK Jr. was a criminal. But it would be very disingenuous to make an argument against MLK strongly predicated on the fact that he was a criminal, full stop, because when we say “he’s a bad dude, he’s a criminal” we’re basing that on the central concept of a criminal, something like a thief or violent assaulter.
So even if you can technically slot Jan 6 into a definition of “insurrection” it’s still wildly disingenuous to treat it as equivalent to taking Fort Sumter. If your definition can’t distinguish between the two, perhaps you should question both the definition AND why you care so much about whether it meets the definition.
I agree, which is why I find debates over definitions to be a waste of time *unless* you specify ahead of time why the definition matters. The clearest example for this would be discussing whether act actions meets the legal elements of a crime, and Destiny only barely hinted at that. Otherwise, yes, definition squabbles are generally an attempt at a noncentral fallacy or a form of disguised query.
I must say, I find the argument about trans athletes a bit weaselly.
Female sporting events exist because we recognise that female people (regardless of their gender identity) are systematically weaker, slower and less resilient than male people (regardless of their gender identity), but still want female people to experience the pleasure of taking part in sporting events in which success is a possibility. I don't think it's difficult to understand why many female athletes feel cheated or betrayed when a sporting event is created with the explicit purpose of being for female people only, the body governing that event then starts allowing certain male people to compete, and when challenged the body's rebuttal is "oh no, [male athlete] has actually handicapped themselves so much that they're within the normal distribution for female athletes, so no harm done". Even if this is true (and it's a big "if"), it's kind of an irrelevant objection. The sporting event was founded with the explicit purpose of "for female people only", not "for female people and sufficiently handicapped male people" or "for people who identify as women" or "for any sufficiently weak person, regardless of sex".
To continue the analogy to performance-enhancing drugs: in order to accuse an athlete of cheating by using prohibited drugs known to improve performance in sporting events, all you are required to do is provide evidence that they used those drugs. I'm not aware of any requirement that you demonstrate that their performance actually improved as a result of taking those drugs. If Bob loses a swimming race to Joe, and Bob subsequently discovers ironclad evidence that Joe was using PEDs at the time of the race, Bob is well within his rights to point out that Joe broke the rules and should be disqualified. If Joe defended himself by saying that his performance under the PEDs was within the margin of error for his performance without - this is a completely irrelevant defense *even if it's true*. The rule is "don't use these drugs", not "don't use these drugs (unless you can demonstrate that they didn't help you win, in which case knock yourself out)".
Thanks for the comment! I probably *was* being a bit weaselly because I think the broader ontological argument there is something that deserves its own lengthy essay instead of an off-hand mention.
With respect to PEDs, I don't think your extension makes sense. PEDs are presumptively unfair because we know they enhance performance -- if they didn't we wouldn't call them Performance Enhancing Drugs. Suppose there was a PED called "Musculium" that everyone thought made you more muscular. We would be justified in excluding an athlete for taking Musculium because they and everyone else believes that Musculium gives an unfair advantage. Suppose, however that future research comes out showing that Musculium has 0 effect on muscles and actually the original research was all fraudulent. We'd no longer call it a PED and athletes could ingest it if they wanted to.
I think the same is true of male/female differences in sports. It is presumptively unfair to have males compete against females because of all the advantages they have, and you would need to show extremely strong evidence that those advantages were not present. When it comes to someone like Lia Thomas, my read of the relevant research is that HRT mitigates some, but importantly not all, of the advantages associated with being male. Therefore, I'd probably be against her competing on fairness grounds, for the same reason I think PEDs are unfair:
"If it is the case that transition does not fully reduce a male performance advantage, then perhaps the analogy to performance enhancing drugs is more apt, which may bear on the fairness question" <-- a little weaselly, on re-read :)
That said, I don't think this applies in every possible case. imagine if instead of HRT, we were instead talking about puberty blockers (bracketing questions about health risks/morality of this). Suppose we could take natal males, block male puberty, and then give them female hormones to stimulate female puberty. And then we tested this subgroup of trans women against cis women and found no systematic advantage for trans women who haven't had the advantage of male puberty. If true, I don't see a principled reason to exclude them on specifically fairness grounds.
One could totally object on ontological (are trans women women?) or definitional (are women's sports for females only?) grounds, though. This is where I think people should be focusing their attention, rather than raw facts everyone can agree on, like [Lia Thomas now swims slower], [Lia Thomas is a high performer in the women's category], and [Lia Thomas was a middling performer in the men's category]. Those shouldn't be in dispute by anyone.
>One could totally object on... definitional (are women's sports for females only?) grounds
I'd be amazed if the concept of the sex/gender distinction predates the concept of female sporting events. The AAU held its first women's swimming event in 1916, Judith Butler wasn't born until 1956. For most of human history, asking someone "are women's sports for women, or for female people?" would have prompted them to look at you like you'd two heads.
>Suppose there was a PED called "Musculium" that everyone thought made you more muscular. We would be justified in excluding an athlete for taking Musculium because they and everyone else believes that Musculium gives an unfair advantage. Suppose, however that future research comes out showing that Musculium has 0 effect on muscles and actually the original research was all fraudulent. We'd no longer call it a PED and athletes could ingest it if they wanted to.
Sure, but if the IOC had a presumptive ban on Musculium pending further research, I don't think an athlete who was stripped of their medals for using Musculium could appeal the decision by pointing out that Musculium was subsequently shown to be placebo snake oil. Even if the IOC subsequently reversed their decision and allowed Musculium, they are under no obligation to "pardon" (for want of a better word) the athletes who were disqualified from competing at the time it was banned. Rules are rules: if the IOC says you can't compete while taking Musculium, then don't take Musculium, or don't complain when you're disqualified after taking it. If you thought the IOC's decision to ban athletes from taking Musculium was wrong, then you should have publicly protested the decision prior to competing, rather than taking Musculium surreptitiously hoping that no one would notice, and offering justifications after the fact. A failed attempt to gain a competitive advantage by breaking the rules is just as much poor sportsmanship as a successful attempt (or, more succinctly: cheating badly is still cheating).
But we already know that male skeletal structure, to take just one of the male/female differences, provides an advantage. So even puberty-blocked males have an advantage.
There is an an endless list of physical disadvantages, besides those wrought by estrogen intake, that could bring a male down to average female performance. Should all of these males be let in too? I'd assume you'd say no.
That leaves the trans identity as the only distinguishing factor legitimizing the acceptance of trans identified males into female sport. Trans identity is simply a way that some people feel about themselves and the world, or a mental disorder, depending on how you view it. It does not merit the elimination of sex segregation of sports.
If a group of adults identified as children and took special hormones to weaken their bodies, would we allow them to compete in youth sports leagues? No.
Have you read either of 'The Case Against Competition' or 'Punished by Rewards' by author Alfie Kohn? This conversation fascinates me; it's been a long time since I've been party to such a nuanced disagreement being discussed with such abundant mutual respect.
That being said, I can't help but feel that all of this strife might stem from a common root cause. So much of our society is predicated upon this zero-sum mentality, the hierarchical sorting of individuals by way of adversarial contest. Apologies if this is somewhat tangential, these are nascent thoughts.
I thought the graph wasn't very useful in this case, because as you say the dispute is not about individual athletes landing within a certain performance bracket. A poor male swimmer could land within the female performance bracket without any medical interventions, and that wouldn't make them eligible for female competitions.
I don't disagree with your overall outrage over Lia Thomas but I think it's important to remember that all these dividing lines are ultimately arbitrary. Sex segregation exists in sports in part because it allows females to experience the pleasure of sports competition and recognition, but also more importantly because we have a convenient sorting method that is objective enough (or at least, it used to be).
Because imagine if we couldn't rely on sex to categorize athletes and we still wanted to expand the number of people who want to experience the pleasure of sports competition, we'd have to find some other sorting method to divide participants. The reason we see age and weight classes used so often is for the same reason: it's convenient and objective enough. If we didn't have these proxy traits to anchor ourselves, it's difficult to imagine how exactly we'd arbitrarily chop up the roster of competitors.
Looping it back to this post's topic, this is one reason why graphing these disagreements is useful. When we graph the distribution of athletic ability by sex, we see a very distinct bimodal distribution between men and women. The graph highlights the benefits (two more-or-less distinct peaks) but also the downsides (do females with uncharacteristically high athletic abilities undermine the purpose of the sex segregation?).
Sure, I guess it's useful to graph out male vs. female sporting performance, but it's not like this disparity was so subtle and hard to detect that no one was aware of it until the invention of the T-distribution. It's intuitively obvious even to small children that males are much bigger and stronger than females: even little boys in primary school are acutely aware how much the insult "you throw like a girl" stings.
As a law person, I'm sure you're aware of the adage "hard cases make bad law" or however it goes. Graphing male vs. female performance is cool and all, but I think it's a mistake to base any kind of actual policy on it. Graphing the distributions shows some tiny overlap in the tails (in which the world's strongest female is stronger and tougher than some nerdy NEET who never gets any sunlight or whatever). Trans activists point to this and say "see? Some females are already stronger than some males! There's nothing at all radical about what we're proposing, sex is a spectrum, let's abolish sexual segregation in sport entirely." But obviously, when designing a policy which takes the strength disparity between men and women into account, we should be focusing on the 99% of women who'll never be able to take a typical man in a fight, not the 1% of female bodybuilders who can hold their own against a typical man (but would get obliterated by a man who spends even half as much time in the gym as they do).
"even little boys in primary school are acutely aware how much the insult "you throw like a girl" stings."
That's not a great example. First off, "throwing like a girl" doesn't mean weak throw, but to an awkward motion where most of the strength comes from the forearm. A lot of the difference between how girls and boys throw is due to social norms. This can actually be observed empirically. Australian aboriginals - who have both genders hunt using overhand throwing - have much less difference in throwing distance between boys and girls (although there's still a gap at all ages) because the girls don't "throw like a girl".
Secondly, insults are always going to be mostly determined by culture. If you were sampled athletic insults from primary school boys prior to ~2000, you'd think that gay men were also physically weaker.
Thirdly, pre-pubescent children don't have nearly the physical differences as men and women. These kids aren't really making their own observations from their peers to conclude that boys are more athletic than girls.
Anyways, that's all beside the point about whether Lia Thomas should compete with women. Schoolyard insults about "throwing like a girl" are unrelated to anything relevant to that discussion
>Thirdly, pre-pubescent children don't have nearly the physical differences as men and women.
The differences aren't as pronounced as in adults, but prepubescent boys still have a major advantage over prepubescent girls the same age in tests of strength, speed, endurance etc.
"Collectively, these studies (along with many others not listed here) indicate a consistent pattern: before puberty, boys tend to outperform girls of the same age in tests measuring muscular strength, muscular endurance, running speed, aerobic fitness, ball throwing, and kicking distance. Conversely, girls typically exhibit better performance in tests focused on flexibility."
Sure but that goes to my point that the division is arbitrary in part. We have IMO a very clear bimodal distribution between men and women for athletic ability, but what if it overlapped more? If men and women were completely equal on this front, there wouldn't be much of an argument for sex segregation. But short of that, at what level of overlap would the segregation stop making sense?
This seems like an interesting thought experiment, with limited practical application. Currently the average male is stronger, faster and more resilient than 99% of females, a state of affairs which makes me confident to assert that no mixed-sex sporting event will ever be "fair" in any meaningful sense of the term. In the counterfactual world in which he was stronger than only 90%? 80%? 70%? etc. Sure, we could absolutely have a conversation about relaxing sex segregation, and there would be no controversy about trans women athletes. But we don't live in any of those counterfactual worlds, the strength disparity between males and females gives no obvious indication of narrowing, so sex segregation is here to stay, and anyone trying to relax it can only do so via obfuscation and well-poisoning.
To further illustrate why I don't think the argument works: I have yet to encounter anyone suggesting that featherweight boxers should compete against heavyweight boxers. If a featherweight was asked to compete against a heavyweight, the appropriate response from the featherweight is "that's completely unfair, he's twice my size". If the boxing commission replied "no you don't understand, this heavyweight is taking a regimen of drugs which reduce his performance to within two standard deviations of the expected performance of the typical featherweight boxer", the appropriate response from the featherweight is still "that's completely unfair, he's twice my size".
The graphs you show for men’s and women’s swimming performance make sense if you limit it to “men and women who are competitive at a high-amateur and professional level”.
But it could be misleading if you mean for it to represent “men” vs. “women”, because Lia Thomas was already out on the high tail of performance for men prior to transitioning. Probably a 3 or 4 sigma high male swimmer.
Lia was not a top performer *among NCAA competitive men* but could clearly smoke the average man, let alone the average woman. Because the tails are long and have a lot more internal variation, it’s hard to say how much performance you have to knock off before it’s “fair”. (If a 3 sigma male transitions into a 5 sigma female, but not literally the fastest woman on earth, is that fair? How do you decide?)
At the end of the day I think the presumption though is that it *is* unfair, and plenty of other people are excluded from competitive swimming for many other reasons, so there’s no inherent right to compete that’s being denied if we say “no there’s just no way to eliminate the advantage you had by developing as a male for 20 years, you’re disqualified”.
The insurrection argument is absurd. It wasn’t one. Someone supposedly yelled ‘Kill Mike Pence’? Supposedly. Then arrest him if you think that is right. But that supposed fact, which I doubt, does not mean there was an insurrection. The election was stolen. Obviously. They protested. All protests interfere with how the US operates. We allow it. Many many protests involve some violence. We allow that. Was there any sense someone was trying to overthrow the US Government? Of course not.
The general point here is that the definition of an insurrection provided by Destiny was that an insurrection involved violence. There is no dispute that some rioters at the capitol were violent -- they smashed windows to get in, broke down barriers, fought with police, some had violent intent (which is where "hang mike pence" factors in).
Glenn then saying that it wasn't violent *enough* doesn't disprove the argument that it was nevertheless violent. Nor do examples of nonviolence at the capitol prove that the riot was nonviolent. Those are totally distinct claims.
Protests don't involve the leader of said group telling the Vice President "You're too honest" when the latter thinks he doesn't have the authority to do something, then calling the VP a coward . Protests don't involve calling congresspeople and suggesting they delay the certification of the vote. Protests don't involve telling Kevin McCarthy (Republican House Minority leader) that the rioters were "more upset about the election than you."
The people at the Capitol may have had a variety of goals, but there is no doubt that Jan 6th was an insurrection incited by Trump to reverse the 2020 election.
Oooh calling your Congressperson. Definitely a plank in any revolutionary insurrection. What you wrote is absurd. Seriously. Your hatred of Trump has taken away your sense of values. AS THAT IS WHAT HATRED DOES.
It's normal to call your congressperson. It's not normal to ask them to delay the process of certification which would oust you from power, at least not without good reason to do so. This is a dishonest tactic by people who do not want to describe what happened in any kind of realistic manner.
It's so telling that you engage with the imagery of an insurrection than some reasonable definition of it. You wanted more violence and shooting, though I can't imagine how much would be necessary in your view, since there was definitely violence involved in breaking into the Capitol building.
There's also the deep irony of you saying that hatred of Trump has taken my sense of values, given how you immediately pattern-matched my argument to the strawman you've constructed in your mind that you can immediately dismiss as Trump Derangement Syndrome. It just can't be that I could find his actions unacceptable and deserving of punishment, can it? I must HATE Trump to my core.
P.S: You also didn't address the "You're too honest" remark or telling McCarthy that the rioting mob in the Capitol is apparently "more concerned about the election" than he is points. I wonder why.
Yes! Graphing disagreements can be a very useful tool. I found myself very frustrated by the Glenn/Destiny debate partly because I find debates over definitions to be tedious, but also because it was obvious how much of the disagreement was purely on where you would draw the 'insurrection' line on the violence scale. Destiny got Glenn to admit that the battle of Fort Sumter should not count as an insurrection (!!) but he really should've done more to probe Glenn's threshold.
My jaw dropped when Glenn bit the Fort Sumter bullet
Would Destiny be willing to bite the bullet that certain other protests are *also* insurrections, e.g. the rioting at the Portland federal building (definitely involved violence, definitely attempting to inhibit the government) and the Wisconsin Capitol takeovers back in 2011, plus the associated “fleebagger” acts of Democratic members to prevent a quorum (less violent, but probably not zero, clearly an effort to prevent the normal operation of the government)
And regardless of whether Destiny would bite the bullet, neither of those events got called insurrections with nearly the ubiquity that Jan 6 gets that label. Why is that so? I think that’s an interesting question and I personally don’t think the answer can really be explained by having different thresholds on a distribution of “violence”.
If someone who labels J6 an insurrection refuses to apply that label to Portland federal courthouse riots, that's inconsistent.
> And regardless of whether Destiny would bite the bullet, neither of those events got called insurrections with nearly the ubiquity that Jan 6 gets that label. Why is that so? I think that’s an interesting question and I personally don’t think the answer can really be explained by having different thresholds on a distribution of “violence”.
3 reasons.
1. Trump was trying to overturn the central process by which national power is turned over between presidents (affecting everybody), the Portland riot or Wisconsin protests were far more local.
2. The capitol building is symbolically for everybody, your nearest federal court or state legislature is not.
3. Left-wing radicals and progressive rioters are, for a variety of reasons, perceived as less damaging than right-wing rioters.
I won't make any claim as to how people rank those, but I would argue that, in that order, these three reasons constitute why one would slather descriptions of Jan 6th with the word "insurrection" while not doing the same to the others.
None of those three reasons are relevant to the definition provided by Destiny.
And it only counts if it’s directed at the seat of the federal legislative branch during a session regarding the transfer of executive power? The national capitol is “for the people” but the state capitol is not? C’mon man.
I'm not talking about Destiny's definition, I'm talking about why I think people are so quick to use the word for Jan 6th, but not Portland or Wisconsin.
I'm not saying that it only "counts" if it's the federal government, but there are plausible reasons for why people jumped when they heard about Jan 6th but not as much when they heard about the Portland riot and burning of the court. For better or worse, we don't attach the same emotions and meaning to a federal court building as we do to the Capitol.
Both could be insurrections, but an attempt to circumvent the electoral process for the President of the United States is much more consequential than stopping the functioning of a federal courthouse, because Presidents have way more power to do good or bad stuff
Why is it important whether Jan 6 was an “Insurrection” or not? It’s because the “it was an insurrection” side wants to take legal action against people involved, including potentially disqualifying the likely Republican nominee for the Presidency. So the legal definition of insurrection is super important!
In a broader sense, I do think the noncentral fallacy matters, and perhaps cuts the knot. MLK Jr. was a criminal. But it would be very disingenuous to make an argument against MLK strongly predicated on the fact that he was a criminal, full stop, because when we say “he’s a bad dude, he’s a criminal” we’re basing that on the central concept of a criminal, something like a thief or violent assaulter.
So even if you can technically slot Jan 6 into a definition of “insurrection” it’s still wildly disingenuous to treat it as equivalent to taking Fort Sumter. If your definition can’t distinguish between the two, perhaps you should question both the definition AND why you care so much about whether it meets the definition.
I agree, which is why I find debates over definitions to be a waste of time *unless* you specify ahead of time why the definition matters. The clearest example for this would be discussing whether act actions meets the legal elements of a crime, and Destiny only barely hinted at that. Otherwise, yes, definition squabbles are generally an attempt at a noncentral fallacy or a form of disguised query.
I must say, I find the argument about trans athletes a bit weaselly.
Female sporting events exist because we recognise that female people (regardless of their gender identity) are systematically weaker, slower and less resilient than male people (regardless of their gender identity), but still want female people to experience the pleasure of taking part in sporting events in which success is a possibility. I don't think it's difficult to understand why many female athletes feel cheated or betrayed when a sporting event is created with the explicit purpose of being for female people only, the body governing that event then starts allowing certain male people to compete, and when challenged the body's rebuttal is "oh no, [male athlete] has actually handicapped themselves so much that they're within the normal distribution for female athletes, so no harm done". Even if this is true (and it's a big "if"), it's kind of an irrelevant objection. The sporting event was founded with the explicit purpose of "for female people only", not "for female people and sufficiently handicapped male people" or "for people who identify as women" or "for any sufficiently weak person, regardless of sex".
To continue the analogy to performance-enhancing drugs: in order to accuse an athlete of cheating by using prohibited drugs known to improve performance in sporting events, all you are required to do is provide evidence that they used those drugs. I'm not aware of any requirement that you demonstrate that their performance actually improved as a result of taking those drugs. If Bob loses a swimming race to Joe, and Bob subsequently discovers ironclad evidence that Joe was using PEDs at the time of the race, Bob is well within his rights to point out that Joe broke the rules and should be disqualified. If Joe defended himself by saying that his performance under the PEDs was within the margin of error for his performance without - this is a completely irrelevant defense *even if it's true*. The rule is "don't use these drugs", not "don't use these drugs (unless you can demonstrate that they didn't help you win, in which case knock yourself out)".
Thanks for the comment! I probably *was* being a bit weaselly because I think the broader ontological argument there is something that deserves its own lengthy essay instead of an off-hand mention.
With respect to PEDs, I don't think your extension makes sense. PEDs are presumptively unfair because we know they enhance performance -- if they didn't we wouldn't call them Performance Enhancing Drugs. Suppose there was a PED called "Musculium" that everyone thought made you more muscular. We would be justified in excluding an athlete for taking Musculium because they and everyone else believes that Musculium gives an unfair advantage. Suppose, however that future research comes out showing that Musculium has 0 effect on muscles and actually the original research was all fraudulent. We'd no longer call it a PED and athletes could ingest it if they wanted to.
I think the same is true of male/female differences in sports. It is presumptively unfair to have males compete against females because of all the advantages they have, and you would need to show extremely strong evidence that those advantages were not present. When it comes to someone like Lia Thomas, my read of the relevant research is that HRT mitigates some, but importantly not all, of the advantages associated with being male. Therefore, I'd probably be against her competing on fairness grounds, for the same reason I think PEDs are unfair:
"If it is the case that transition does not fully reduce a male performance advantage, then perhaps the analogy to performance enhancing drugs is more apt, which may bear on the fairness question" <-- a little weaselly, on re-read :)
That said, I don't think this applies in every possible case. imagine if instead of HRT, we were instead talking about puberty blockers (bracketing questions about health risks/morality of this). Suppose we could take natal males, block male puberty, and then give them female hormones to stimulate female puberty. And then we tested this subgroup of trans women against cis women and found no systematic advantage for trans women who haven't had the advantage of male puberty. If true, I don't see a principled reason to exclude them on specifically fairness grounds.
One could totally object on ontological (are trans women women?) or definitional (are women's sports for females only?) grounds, though. This is where I think people should be focusing their attention, rather than raw facts everyone can agree on, like [Lia Thomas now swims slower], [Lia Thomas is a high performer in the women's category], and [Lia Thomas was a middling performer in the men's category]. Those shouldn't be in dispute by anyone.
>One could totally object on... definitional (are women's sports for females only?) grounds
I'd be amazed if the concept of the sex/gender distinction predates the concept of female sporting events. The AAU held its first women's swimming event in 1916, Judith Butler wasn't born until 1956. For most of human history, asking someone "are women's sports for women, or for female people?" would have prompted them to look at you like you'd two heads.
Thank you for the detailed response.
>Suppose there was a PED called "Musculium" that everyone thought made you more muscular. We would be justified in excluding an athlete for taking Musculium because they and everyone else believes that Musculium gives an unfair advantage. Suppose, however that future research comes out showing that Musculium has 0 effect on muscles and actually the original research was all fraudulent. We'd no longer call it a PED and athletes could ingest it if they wanted to.
Sure, but if the IOC had a presumptive ban on Musculium pending further research, I don't think an athlete who was stripped of their medals for using Musculium could appeal the decision by pointing out that Musculium was subsequently shown to be placebo snake oil. Even if the IOC subsequently reversed their decision and allowed Musculium, they are under no obligation to "pardon" (for want of a better word) the athletes who were disqualified from competing at the time it was banned. Rules are rules: if the IOC says you can't compete while taking Musculium, then don't take Musculium, or don't complain when you're disqualified after taking it. If you thought the IOC's decision to ban athletes from taking Musculium was wrong, then you should have publicly protested the decision prior to competing, rather than taking Musculium surreptitiously hoping that no one would notice, and offering justifications after the fact. A failed attempt to gain a competitive advantage by breaking the rules is just as much poor sportsmanship as a successful attempt (or, more succinctly: cheating badly is still cheating).
But we already know that male skeletal structure, to take just one of the male/female differences, provides an advantage. So even puberty-blocked males have an advantage.
There is an an endless list of physical disadvantages, besides those wrought by estrogen intake, that could bring a male down to average female performance. Should all of these males be let in too? I'd assume you'd say no.
That leaves the trans identity as the only distinguishing factor legitimizing the acceptance of trans identified males into female sport. Trans identity is simply a way that some people feel about themselves and the world, or a mental disorder, depending on how you view it. It does not merit the elimination of sex segregation of sports.
If a group of adults identified as children and took special hormones to weaken their bodies, would we allow them to compete in youth sports leagues? No.
Have you read either of 'The Case Against Competition' or 'Punished by Rewards' by author Alfie Kohn? This conversation fascinates me; it's been a long time since I've been party to such a nuanced disagreement being discussed with such abundant mutual respect.
That being said, I can't help but feel that all of this strife might stem from a common root cause. So much of our society is predicated upon this zero-sum mentality, the hierarchical sorting of individuals by way of adversarial contest. Apologies if this is somewhat tangential, these are nascent thoughts.
I thought the graph wasn't very useful in this case, because as you say the dispute is not about individual athletes landing within a certain performance bracket. A poor male swimmer could land within the female performance bracket without any medical interventions, and that wouldn't make them eligible for female competitions.
I don't disagree with your overall outrage over Lia Thomas but I think it's important to remember that all these dividing lines are ultimately arbitrary. Sex segregation exists in sports in part because it allows females to experience the pleasure of sports competition and recognition, but also more importantly because we have a convenient sorting method that is objective enough (or at least, it used to be).
Because imagine if we couldn't rely on sex to categorize athletes and we still wanted to expand the number of people who want to experience the pleasure of sports competition, we'd have to find some other sorting method to divide participants. The reason we see age and weight classes used so often is for the same reason: it's convenient and objective enough. If we didn't have these proxy traits to anchor ourselves, it's difficult to imagine how exactly we'd arbitrarily chop up the roster of competitors.
Looping it back to this post's topic, this is one reason why graphing these disagreements is useful. When we graph the distribution of athletic ability by sex, we see a very distinct bimodal distribution between men and women. The graph highlights the benefits (two more-or-less distinct peaks) but also the downsides (do females with uncharacteristically high athletic abilities undermine the purpose of the sex segregation?).
Sure, I guess it's useful to graph out male vs. female sporting performance, but it's not like this disparity was so subtle and hard to detect that no one was aware of it until the invention of the T-distribution. It's intuitively obvious even to small children that males are much bigger and stronger than females: even little boys in primary school are acutely aware how much the insult "you throw like a girl" stings.
As a law person, I'm sure you're aware of the adage "hard cases make bad law" or however it goes. Graphing male vs. female performance is cool and all, but I think it's a mistake to base any kind of actual policy on it. Graphing the distributions shows some tiny overlap in the tails (in which the world's strongest female is stronger and tougher than some nerdy NEET who never gets any sunlight or whatever). Trans activists point to this and say "see? Some females are already stronger than some males! There's nothing at all radical about what we're proposing, sex is a spectrum, let's abolish sexual segregation in sport entirely." But obviously, when designing a policy which takes the strength disparity between men and women into account, we should be focusing on the 99% of women who'll never be able to take a typical man in a fight, not the 1% of female bodybuilders who can hold their own against a typical man (but would get obliterated by a man who spends even half as much time in the gym as they do).
"even little boys in primary school are acutely aware how much the insult "you throw like a girl" stings."
That's not a great example. First off, "throwing like a girl" doesn't mean weak throw, but to an awkward motion where most of the strength comes from the forearm. A lot of the difference between how girls and boys throw is due to social norms. This can actually be observed empirically. Australian aboriginals - who have both genders hunt using overhand throwing - have much less difference in throwing distance between boys and girls (although there's still a gap at all ages) because the girls don't "throw like a girl".
Secondly, insults are always going to be mostly determined by culture. If you were sampled athletic insults from primary school boys prior to ~2000, you'd think that gay men were also physically weaker.
Thirdly, pre-pubescent children don't have nearly the physical differences as men and women. These kids aren't really making their own observations from their peers to conclude that boys are more athletic than girls.
Anyways, that's all beside the point about whether Lia Thomas should compete with women. Schoolyard insults about "throwing like a girl" are unrelated to anything relevant to that discussion
>Thirdly, pre-pubescent children don't have nearly the physical differences as men and women.
The differences aren't as pronounced as in adults, but prepubescent boys still have a major advantage over prepubescent girls the same age in tests of strength, speed, endurance etc.
"Collectively, these studies (along with many others not listed here) indicate a consistent pattern: before puberty, boys tend to outperform girls of the same age in tests measuring muscular strength, muscular endurance, running speed, aerobic fitness, ball throwing, and kicking distance. Conversely, girls typically exhibit better performance in tests focused on flexibility."
https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/are-there-sex-based-differences-in
Sure but that goes to my point that the division is arbitrary in part. We have IMO a very clear bimodal distribution between men and women for athletic ability, but what if it overlapped more? If men and women were completely equal on this front, there wouldn't be much of an argument for sex segregation. But short of that, at what level of overlap would the segregation stop making sense?
This seems like an interesting thought experiment, with limited practical application. Currently the average male is stronger, faster and more resilient than 99% of females, a state of affairs which makes me confident to assert that no mixed-sex sporting event will ever be "fair" in any meaningful sense of the term. In the counterfactual world in which he was stronger than only 90%? 80%? 70%? etc. Sure, we could absolutely have a conversation about relaxing sex segregation, and there would be no controversy about trans women athletes. But we don't live in any of those counterfactual worlds, the strength disparity between males and females gives no obvious indication of narrowing, so sex segregation is here to stay, and anyone trying to relax it can only do so via obfuscation and well-poisoning.
To further illustrate why I don't think the argument works: I have yet to encounter anyone suggesting that featherweight boxers should compete against heavyweight boxers. If a featherweight was asked to compete against a heavyweight, the appropriate response from the featherweight is "that's completely unfair, he's twice my size". If the boxing commission replied "no you don't understand, this heavyweight is taking a regimen of drugs which reduce his performance to within two standard deviations of the expected performance of the typical featherweight boxer", the appropriate response from the featherweight is still "that's completely unfair, he's twice my size".
The graphs you show for men’s and women’s swimming performance make sense if you limit it to “men and women who are competitive at a high-amateur and professional level”.
But it could be misleading if you mean for it to represent “men” vs. “women”, because Lia Thomas was already out on the high tail of performance for men prior to transitioning. Probably a 3 or 4 sigma high male swimmer.
Lia was not a top performer *among NCAA competitive men* but could clearly smoke the average man, let alone the average woman. Because the tails are long and have a lot more internal variation, it’s hard to say how much performance you have to knock off before it’s “fair”. (If a 3 sigma male transitions into a 5 sigma female, but not literally the fastest woman on earth, is that fair? How do you decide?)
At the end of the day I think the presumption though is that it *is* unfair, and plenty of other people are excluded from competitive swimming for many other reasons, so there’s no inherent right to compete that’s being denied if we say “no there’s just no way to eliminate the advantage you had by developing as a male for 20 years, you’re disqualified”.
The insurrection argument is absurd. It wasn’t one. Someone supposedly yelled ‘Kill Mike Pence’? Supposedly. Then arrest him if you think that is right. But that supposed fact, which I doubt, does not mean there was an insurrection. The election was stolen. Obviously. They protested. All protests interfere with how the US operates. We allow it. Many many protests involve some violence. We allow that. Was there any sense someone was trying to overthrow the US Government? Of course not.
The general point here is that the definition of an insurrection provided by Destiny was that an insurrection involved violence. There is no dispute that some rioters at the capitol were violent -- they smashed windows to get in, broke down barriers, fought with police, some had violent intent (which is where "hang mike pence" factors in).
Glenn then saying that it wasn't violent *enough* doesn't disprove the argument that it was nevertheless violent. Nor do examples of nonviolence at the capitol prove that the riot was nonviolent. Those are totally distinct claims.
It wasn’t an attempt to overthrow a government. Therefore it wasn’t an insurrection. It was a protest.
Protests don't involve the leader of said group telling the Vice President "You're too honest" when the latter thinks he doesn't have the authority to do something, then calling the VP a coward . Protests don't involve calling congresspeople and suggesting they delay the certification of the vote. Protests don't involve telling Kevin McCarthy (Republican House Minority leader) that the rioters were "more upset about the election than you."
The people at the Capitol may have had a variety of goals, but there is no doubt that Jan 6th was an insurrection incited by Trump to reverse the 2020 election.
Oooh calling your Congressperson. Definitely a plank in any revolutionary insurrection. What you wrote is absurd. Seriously. Your hatred of Trump has taken away your sense of values. AS THAT IS WHAT HATRED DOES.
It's normal to call your congressperson. It's not normal to ask them to delay the process of certification which would oust you from power, at least not without good reason to do so. This is a dishonest tactic by people who do not want to describe what happened in any kind of realistic manner.
It's so telling that you engage with the imagery of an insurrection than some reasonable definition of it. You wanted more violence and shooting, though I can't imagine how much would be necessary in your view, since there was definitely violence involved in breaking into the Capitol building.
There's also the deep irony of you saying that hatred of Trump has taken my sense of values, given how you immediately pattern-matched my argument to the strawman you've constructed in your mind that you can immediately dismiss as Trump Derangement Syndrome. It just can't be that I could find his actions unacceptable and deserving of punishment, can it? I must HATE Trump to my core.
P.S: You also didn't address the "You're too honest" remark or telling McCarthy that the rioting mob in the Capitol is apparently "more concerned about the election" than he is points. I wonder why.
None of those things you wrote has anything to do with an insurrection. They are normal citizen interactions with government.