The end of women's sports

[Barry Charles]

USAPL Powerlifters Time Out Their Attempts in Protest of Transgender Ban - BarBend

It appears that USAPL will be pressured to conform to the ideology that inherent biological differences between men and women don't affect athletic performance. Or maybe Minnesota is just an outlier. I am surprised that virtually no women have weighed in on this thread. As a masters female who competes in both the USAPL and USPA, I am dismayed by this turn of events. I can foresee having to compete against men in their mid-life crises, feeling unfulfilled, who have transitioned to female. At that point, I will bow out.

There is something odd about the report in the article.

If you miss all your squats, you bomb out of the meet and are not allowed to “attempt” bench and DLs. At the discretion of the head ref (or meet director?) you can participate in the remaining lifts but not compete.

It seems unlikely the people running the meet wouldn’t have removed them from the rotation after missing three squats.

Maybe, maybe not, but had they been removed after squats, their protest would have failed early in the meet and been less disruptive.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Is there any evidence that them meet director was in on the protest? Why allow it go on so long? Don't all federations remove competitors that fail to make a an attempt on the first movement (squat)?

Excellent point. They all bombed out after the 3rd squat, yet they were allowed to continue disrupting the meet. Meet Director was culpable, absolutely no doubt.

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

Sometimes meet directors will allow a lifter who bombs out on the squat to switch their registration to “Push/Pull” or Bench or Deadlift only in order to keep lifting (if those categories are available). But I would think that only applies to lifters actually trying to lift. This type of shit wastes the time of competitors and spectators who paid to their money to compete and watch competition. Typical entitlement mindset.

[Mark E. Hurling]

At least one woman athlete is already being unpersoned by the People's Ministry of Truth for breaking ranks with The Chosen. Martina Navratilova dropped by LGBTQ nonprofit after "transphobic" comment

[Mark Rippetoe]

This is how they will handle it:

based on a false understanding of science and data,

The SVJ data has merely been misunderstood, you see. And this is an amazing example of "journalists" controlling the language in which we are all supposed to think:

This is not the first time Navratilova has made controversial comments regarding transgender women competing in women’s sports. In December, she took to Twitter and wrote, “You can’t just proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women. There must be some standards, and having a penis and competing as a woman would not fit that standard.”

I've always liked Martina, and I'm glad she has the "balls" for this particular curve. Women had better get behind her, NOW.

[Michael Wolf]

A sane perspective from a liberal journalist.

[JFord]

I've always liked Martina, and I'm glad she has the "balls" for this particular curve. Women had better get behind her, NOW.

I've always felt the same way about Martina. Unlike most of the simpering professional victims we see today, she really DID pay a price for being who she was. I remember seeing an interview of her (I believe on 60 minutes) where, at the height of her career in women's tennis, she said that she had ZERO endorsement deals. THAT was out and out prejudice.

Now, she's being "othered" for speaking the truth. Where were her women colleagues back then when she faced real injustice? Why would we expect them to get behind her now? I remember people complaining that she "played like a man" as though that was an insult.

Guess what? She was always "all woman". Moreover, she really is a true sports hero who's earned our respect.

[Corrie]

A sane perspective from a liberal journalist.

I like Tim Pool a lot but I thought his point about the trans person not winning every time was a bit off the mark. No one is arguing that a trans person will win every time. We just know based on statistics that biological women will not be able to compete at the highest levels if men choose to be trans for the sake of "glory". That being said it's still a good video.

[Brodie Butland]

The Ultimate Answer (from https://mk0usastrength8hfai8.kinstac...les-2.3.19.pdf)

6. Divisions:
a. Open: Congenital male, transgender, non-binary, and intersex lifters
b. Women: Congenital females
c. Masters: Lifters who turn 40 years or older during the calendar year in which the
event is held
d. Juniors: Lifters who turn between the ages of 14 and 20 years old during the
calendar year in which the event is held. Lifters under the age of 14 may guest lift in
a USSF sanctioned event, with a parent or guardian singed waiver form, and preapproval from the Event Director.

Lifters must choose Division a or b, and may add c or d: Open, Open Masters, Open Juniors,
Women, Women Masters, or Women Juniors. Any lifter may opt to lift in the Open Division
instead of their alternative division.

This is absolutely the ultimate answer, and one that I have been advocating for a while. There are two unrelated concepts here that we need to keep distinct.

First is the notion that non-binary gendered people exist, and they should be treated with the same dignity as every other human being. Some people do not biologically fit into the male/female dichotomy, due to genetics (e.g. XY females, XXY, etc.) or due to their biological organs (e.g. intersex, who have characteristics of both male and female reproductive systems, or people with no sex organs at all). Other people do not conform to societal gender norms to such an extent that they do not psychologically identify as their birth sex. Just as human sexuality is on a continuum, human gender identity also is... just as the large majority of people will fit neatly into the gay/straight dichotomy with a small amount of gray area in the middle (bi-sexual, pansexual, etc.), the large majority of people will fit neatly into the male/female dichotomy with a small amount of gray area in the middle. People in the gray area should not be ridiculed, discriminated against, harassed, or be the subject of hate. Period...no exceptions.

Second is the notion that sports divisions exist to account for the fact that certain competitive advantages and disadvantages tend to manifest across populations, as opposed to individuals. Men tend to be stronger, faster, and more explosive than women on average, and in the far-right tails (i.e., the strongest men are going to all be stronger than the strongest woman)--as a result, men and women have traditionally competed in different divisions, since otherwise women would never have a chance of being on the podium. Older individuals tend to be weaker, slower, and less explosive because that's what aging does--as a result, older individuals and younger individuals have traditionally competed in different divisions, otherwise older people would never have a chance of being on the podium. Kids who have not completed puberty tend to be weaker, slower, and less explosive than their counterparts who have completed puberty--as a result, kids have traditionally competed in junior divisions separate from their older peers. People who weigh more tend to be stronger than their less heavier counterparts--as a result, competitions use weight classes or other adjustments (e.g. Wilks scores) to allow comparison between two people of different weights.

Sure, these distinctions are ultimately arbitrary. You can find examples of women being stronger than most men, or a 40-year old being stronger than most 30-year-olds (you may even have a 40-year-old set a record in open once in a while). Joseph Pena was not a typical junior lifter. People in one weight class may set a record that is larger than even the next two weight classes above it. But the divisions don't exist for the exceptions, they exist for the generalities. Just because a 40-year-old MIGHT be stronger than all other competitors doesn't mean that the master division is automatically invalid. Just because a 155 lbs person MIGHT be stronger than a 175 lbs person doesn't mean that weight classes are automatically invalid. The divisions are created because of general observations across populations, not individual examples inconsistent with the general rules.

This is the difficulty with competitors who don't fit neatly into the male/female dichotomy. What do you do, for example, with an intersex person who generally presents female, but has some male biological characteristics? What do you do with competitors who went through puberty as a male, but then transitioned to female through hormone therapy and surgery? The science shows that there is an innate biological advantage to going through puberty as a male when it comes to certain athletic traits, and at best, the evidence is conflicting as to whether this innate biological advantage can ever be removed, even after completion of therapy.

So I think the solution is to eliminate the entire male/female dichotomy as outdated based on our greater knowledge of biology, and instead use the dichotomy of "open" versus "exceptions." Everyone gets to compete in open no matter what, so long as they follow generally applicable rules like costume requirements and doing the lifts correctly. Then each organization, based on its own views of what constitutes "fairness," can decide what exceptions to create. USSF has created exceptions for congenital females and age (masters and junior). I could see a larger organization deciding that there should be a transgender/non-binary division that would allow intersex, transgender, etc. to compete in their own division--or even make further subdivisions below that. Other organizations may decide that they aren't worried about male-to-female people competing against congenital females provided that certain requirements are met.

I actually think this approach is more consistent with how other divisions are created. Weight classes are completely arbitrary and always change based on arbitrary notions of fairness...indeed, the Olympics just approved new weight classes for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Age requirements also vary--weightlifting has numerous classifications of masters that generally begin at 40 years old (for Masters I), whereas other sports use different numbers based on their own ideas of fairness (I believe, for example, that boxing uses 35 years old as the masters cut-off, and Crossfit Games uses numerous age categories). With the plethora of diverse attempts to account for age and weight, it seems like there should be equally diverse attempts to account for gender...or at least that should be an option.

tl;dr - Let's stop talking about "male" and "female" divisions, because those divisions don't make sense anymore. Let's instead talk about "open" versus "exceptions," let federations create whatever exceptions they deem to be needed to promote fairness and competitive spirit, and let people vote with their feet. And while we talk about those issues, let's not be assholes to people simply because they don't fall into our personal notions of male and female.

[Mark Rippetoe]

This is the difficulty with competitors who don't fit neatly into the male/female dichotomy. What do you do, for example, with an intersex person who generally presents female, but has some male biological characteristics? What do you do with competitors who went through puberty as a male, but then transitioned to female through hormone therapy and surgery? The science shows that there is an innate biological advantage to going through puberty as a male when it comes to certain athletic traits, and at best, the evidence is conflicting as to whether this innate biological advantage can ever be removed, even after completion of therapy.

It's actually more profound than pubertal considerations: the majority of the neuromuscular effects of testosterone occur in utero. The system is "primed" for puberty in the pre-natal portion of human development, just as the changes to the sexual morphology of the developing human are so profoundly influenced by testosterone at the same time. The sexual infrastructure and the neuromuscular infrastructure develop at the same time, under the same in utero environmental influences of testosterone. The people yelling about the supposed fact that there are no differences between men and women that hormone therapy can't fix right up are studiously ignoring this. They are quite wrong, everybody actually knows this, and politics are going to lose this round.

The problem here is that an whole bunch of people have never learned the most important lesson of life -- that you don't always get to do what you want to do, and that things will not always be the way you want them to be, and that you don't always get your own facts. It's hard to stop being assholes to people who insist on having everything their own way.