Those were basically my thoughts on it too (that dre was overreacting) dre has a really sensitive hair-trigger on stuff like this, but I still wanted to be sure, you know? I have a lot of trans friends and the last thing I want is to be saying transphobic shit and not even realize it/be willing to self-examine and see if maybe I'm being an assface without my own knowledge.
and that's cool too
it's never a bad thing to self-examine and question
"can I be more excellent to others?" is a question always worth asking of oneself
at the same time
sometimes the answer is
naw, you're good for now, keep being excellent
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MetalbourneInside a cluster b personalityRegistered Userregular
Anonymous said to homptalk:
If a trans person (I'm not familiar with the terminology, so for the sake of clarity say this trans person was once a man and became a woman) wanted to play in professional sports (say soccer) would they join the men's team or women's? I would think women's, but if the person's body structure was originally male, couldn't that give an unfair advantage? I guess my question is how complete structurally is the shift?
Yeah, this is a pretty hotly debated topic, and frankly it just shows how stupid separation by gender is. As far as physical performance goes, men and women actually overlap pretty far, statistically. When you take gender out of the equation it really brings up the point of why athletes aren't separated by height and weight classes instead. But on the other hand, integrating sports with our current social structures seems like it would just ruin it for women.
And how complete is the shift? You mean when it comes to hormones? There are only a few things that don't change for trans women. The size and shape of the skeleton don't, for one. We tend to lose a lot of muscle mass, though. It's also pretty hard to "get swole" through exercise, comparatively speaking.
Hello everyone! I am friends with Metalborne and she invited me/made me come to the forums, so here I am!
This topic about trans* people in sports is something I have always found quite interesting. I think many of the same points that can be made with this topic, can be made with integration in sports and society in general. I have always wondered why there has never been any (to my knowledge) integration between men and women in sports (much less trans* or non binary people). I love Metalborne's idea for height and weight class separations, or perhaps just physical fitness in general. I see no reason why anyone who is good enough to compete in a sport such as lets say American Football (what is unfortunately viewed as being solely a 'mens game' including stupid sexist bullshit like the Lingerie Bowl) should not be able to play it if they want to and have the skills regardless of their gender, sex, or anything else, and be taken seriously as both an athlete and a person.
AmieAlouette on
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MetalbourneInside a cluster b personalityRegistered Userregular
That'd be a pretty neat idea, and you'd be able to introduce someone as "the world heavyweight champion of tennis."
Two three hundred pound behemoths rocketing a tennis ball back and forth between each other, each time the racket meets the ball it sounds like a clap of thunder. The match only ends when there is a suspicious absence of a thunderclap, the camera pans down to show the shocked faces of the crowd through the smoking hole in the loser's abdomen.
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MetalbourneInside a cluster b personalityRegistered Userregular
I forgot to mention that my partner had to squeeze the last of a little bit of air out of my hook wounds.
In my mind, everyone who touches my back becomes a lover that I once spent a weekend with in a hidden retreat in the mountains. With a good Internet connection of course.
That'd be a pretty neat idea, and you'd be able to introduce someone as "the world heavyweight champion of tennis."
Two three hundred pound behemoths rocketing a tennis ball back and forth between each other, each time the racket meets the ball it sounds like a clap of thunder. The match only ends when there is a suspicious absence of a thunderclap, the camera pans down to show the shocked faces of the crowd through the smoking hole in the loser's abdomen.
I've got that DVD.
Goatmon on
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
There are problems with certain intergender sports, mostly combat sports.
Intergender MMA has a bit of a problem on the conceptual level, and I'm going to explain it.
This is Liz Carmouche:
She's a UFC fighter in the Women's Bantamweight division. She's 5'6", and has a fight weight of 135 lbs.
Liz is one of the best female MMA fighters out there. She's ranked in the top ten of female MMA fighters in the world by most ranking systems.
This is Urijah Faber:
He's a UFC fighter in the Men's Bantamweight division. He's 5'6", and has a fight weight of 135 lbs.
He's considered in the top 15 fighters in the UFC, and is ranked 2nd in his division.
Could Liz Carmouche and Urijah Faber have a fair fight? After all, they're nearly identical in height and weight, they fight in the same division in their respective genders, and they're both highly experienced, well-regarded fighters that are highly ranked in their divisions.
The answer is yes, they could have a fair fight. If you took gender completely out of the equation, and compared them purely on every other factor and said "Could these two fighters have a fair bout?" to anyone who knows anything about MMA, the answer would be yes. Urijah would be the obvious favorite, but only due to being the more experienced fighter with the more diverse range of higher quality opponents. He has the more proven record, so he'd be the surer bet, but it wouldn't be because of gender.
People might, at this point, might try to make some kind of argument about some kind of gender influence on strength, muscle mass, bone density, etc. I'm gonna go ahead and encourage them to stop before they start. Any kind of study you might have to source always gets conducted on average people. It gets conducted on a general whole. Professional athletes, by definition, are not average. They are not the norm. The way in which they train, the way in which they impact their bodies and their minds, changes them and makes that kind of factor if existent at all fairly negligible.
"But, surely, a man's muscles might..."
Look at this man. This man is Roy Nelson. He is a heavyweight MMA fighter:
He fought this man, Cheick Kongo:
Do you know what happened? This happened:
Cheick Kongo got the shit kicked out of him. He was knocked the fuck out less than 3 minutes into the first round. That is what happened.
So don't tell me about "male muscle" or any of that. It's shenanigans. Training matters. Skill matters. Yes, weight and strength do matter, which is why MMA fighters are separated by weight class (but not, notably, by height, because while it impacts reach it doesn't actually grant as much advantage in a fight as you might think)
"But wait," you might be saying, "didn't you say at the outset of this that intergender MMA has a problem?"
Yes, it does. The problem with intergender MMA isn't whether or not it can be done. It's a question of whether or not it should.
I love MMA. I'm passionate about it. I did amateur MMA for years before I accepted the reality that I was never good enough to go pro. But even though I love the sport and I'm passionate about it, I'm not fucking blind. MMA has problems. Social problems. Cultural problems. The fan-base of MMA can be fucking deplorable. There's a reason why the stereotype of douchebags in Affliction t-shirts picking fights in bars exists. It's because those dudes are real. Am I one of those dudes? Fuck no. I used to be a bouncer and having to deal with those fuckers was part of my fucking job. And a lot of those guys are misogynistic pieces of shit, and they represent a gigantic chunk of the MMA fanbase.
Make no mistake about it, even though MMA has come a long ways since it's dark days in the 90's there's still a lot of people who are only interested when there's blood out. There are people who have no appreciation of the art of it, they're in it for the violence and the bloodshed and the cheap gladiatorial thrill. They're a huge chunk of the fanbase and big companies like the UFC are very careful not to fully alienate them while trying to class themselves up for the mainstream.
These are the guys who, when one guy has another guy pinned in a full mount and is just pounding his face into bloody fucking mash, cheer the loudest. These are the guys that hope to see someone's arm get broken. These guys? They're the hardest piece of evidence to shake when rebuking claims that MMA makes society more violent and bloodthirsty, that it's more than just "human cockfighting" (a term I find super-offensive, so use in earnest at your own desire to find yourself on my personal shit-list). When I try to extol the virtues of MMA and how those awful things aren't true, it can be hard to argue with my opponent when they point to these hooting gibbons.
So let's bear their existence in mind when I touch on another part of the issue: We don't have a huge widespread cultural problem of male-on-male unarmed violence in the world. I mean, it happens. Men fight with other men. But let's face it, unarmed fisticuffs between fellows is not something I would call a serious social issue, and I say this as a guy who literally had to break those up as his full-time job.
You know what is a serious social issue? Male-on-female violence. Spousal abuse. Sexual assault. That's a pretty serious, endemic fucking problem everywhere on Earth. No part of the world is this not true. I mean, I don't want to diminish male-on-male spousal abuse and the like (this absolutely happens to queer men and they suffer in silence and it's fucking hideous) but statistically and socially, the widespread endemic problem of male-on-female violence is massive and pervasive and it's been at most less than a century in most parts of the world considered fucking illegal to hit your wife. In many parts of the world it's still not considered illegal, or is allowable under certain circumstances.
With all of that said, I want you to consider two scenarios:
Scenario A.) Liz Carmouche vs. Urijah Faber: Carmouche wins by knock-out. Clean fight, Carmouche eats some nasty strikes in the first round but recovers and lands a good roundhouse that takes Faber out.
Do you cheer? A lot of people would cheer. They would feel good about cheering. They would be okay with Carmouche winning like that. They would be alright with a woman beating a man, even by KO. That's okay.
Scenario B.) Liz Carmouche vs. Urijah Faber: Faber wins by knock-out after referee stoppage. Faber gets a double-leg takedown in the second round and gets a full mount, and starts raining strikes down on Liz's face. Liz attempts to defend herself, but she eats a lot of hits. Several times the referee considers stepping in and stopping, but Liz continues to defend herself and periodically attempt to improve her position and strike back, so he lets it continue. Her eyebrow gets cut and her nose is broken. Her left eye swells shut and her mouth starts bleeding. After about twenty seconds of this, she fully turtles up, not being able take any more strikes from Faber, and the referee stops the fight.
Do you cheer? Does anyone cheer as this woman lays on the ground for a minute and a man just hammers her face in till she bleeds and can't defend herself anymore and covers her face to stop the damage and the ref steps in to stop the fight? Because I bet you the fucking gibbons in the Affliction t-shirts cheer. That's why I brought them up. They're cheering. They're cheering this woman getting her face smashed in by a man on top of her till she can't take anymore. They think that's pretty exciting. Are you cheering? Should anyone be cheering that? Should we, as a society, be normalizing that and saying that this is okay and that people should be cheering this on?
Because that's the problem. I think when we have a society where that kind of pervasive, endemic male-on-female violence is still such a huge social issue, we need to think very carefully about how we treat intergender sports that involve full contact and especially ones that involve full on violence and striking.
There are some team sports that have requirements for different body shapes, like Rugby Union. Need some big heavy guys and some super fast guys (who also tend to be big). Not really a full spectrum of slots for all folks, but in terms of a good candidate for a sport with weight classes for a competition, it's right up there.
Hello everyone! I am friends with Metalborne and she invited me/made me come to the forums, so here I am!
This topic about trans* people in sports is something I have always found quite interesting. I think many of the same points that can be made with this topic, can be made with integration in sports and society in general. I have always wondered why there has never been any (to my knowledge) integration between men and women in sports (much less trans* or non binary people). I love Metalborne's idea for height and weight class separations, or perhaps just physical fitness in general. I see no reason why anyone who is good enough to compete in a sport such as lets say American Football (what is unfortunately viewed as being solely a 'mens game' including stupid sexist bullshit like the Lingerie Bowl) should not be able to play it if they want to and have the skills regardless of their gender, sex, or anything else, and be taken seriously as both an athlete and a person.
In the lower levels I could not tell you beyond society is stupid. As you move higher though it becomes more by force. There is a generally small statistical difference between men and women in terms of physical performance. However, that is all out the window at the very peak of performance. Men's best marathon times tend to be much lower than women's. Muscle mass is just easier to build with more testosterone. There is also a much greater level of flexibility found in ciswomen making a few sports where transmen might be able to clean up, but I am uncertain what biological process is at work to cause that discrepancy.
That's not to say it is impossible of course. Female pitchers have been coming along, and with the recent drop in batting ability due to steroids crack down there could be more development on that soon. There was recently a woman who entered into the NFL draft as a place kicker, although she did terrible for reasons not related to potential peak physical shape.
Trans individuals in pro sports are always going to have a certain level of controversy as a result of these truths. Trying to define what exactly constitutes a fully transitioned person one way or the other. Any measure creates a problem, and in some cases no measure can make it equally problematic. I suppose the best solution could be to just treat trans people as just aberrations that are no different than the ones that allow a person to throw a ball at well over a hundred miles an hour and let the chips fall where they may. It would create some issues, but I think it would all be forgotten in a generation or two.
Pony, you just showed me a picture of man with no visible abs beating a man with visible abs. While I don't necessarily disagree with your post, that isn't a convincing argument that "muscles don't matter." It's like showing a picture of a dude with a gun and another dude with his gun not clearly in the photo and being surprised the latter won.
Good post though, I'm just picking nits here.
Sterica on
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MetalbourneInside a cluster b personalityRegistered Userregular
Abs aren't really a good indicator of someone's strength or training.
Pony, you just showed me a picture of man with no visible abs beating a man with visible abs. While I don't necessarily disagree with your post, that isn't a convincing argument that "muscles don't matter." It's like showing a picture of a dude with a gun and another dude with his gun not clearly in the photo and being surprised the latter won.
Good post though, I'm just picking nits here.
The nit you're picking isn't what I'm saying, though. What I'm saying is that Roy Nelson and Chieck Kongo have completely different body types. It's not just a matter of "visible abs". Roy doesn't just have an abundance of body fat covering what would otherwise be a rockin' six pack. They have completely different muscle to body fat ratios, and that's fine because they've trained to make their bodies work for them. An argument people often make about "male muscle" has to do with body fat ratios and muscle density, that "male muscle" is higher in density and strength per pound than "female muscle" (quotation marks because these are ludicrously unscientific ideas people propagate) and that a man will have a higher body fat to muscle ratio than a woman, erego a man will be stronger and etc.
The point I was making is that even if that were true (which it basically isn't at the professional fighter level, again assessments of male vs female muscle mass and strength are based on population averages not pro athletes) it doesn't really pan out as an especially compelling argument when you're talking combat sports, because in MMA body fat and muscle mass ratios can suddenly become completely meaningless if someone knocks you the fuck out because they're a better striker than you are. There are upper limits to the values of such things.
In the lower levels I could not tell you beyond society is stupid. As you move higher though it becomes more by force. There is a generally small statistical difference between men and women in terms of physical performance. However, that is all out the window at the very peak of performance. Men's best marathon times tend to be much lower than women's. Muscle mass is just easier to build with more testosterone. There is also a much greater level of flexibility found in ciswomen making a few sports where transmen might be able to clean up, but I am uncertain what biological process is at work to cause that discrepancy.
That's not to say it is impossible of course. Female pitchers have been coming along, and with the recent drop in batting ability due to steroids crack down there could be more development on that soon. There was recently a woman who entered into the NFL draft as a place kicker, although she did terrible for reasons not related to potential peak physical shape.
Trans individuals in pro sports are always going to have a certain level of controversy as a result of these truths. Trying to define what exactly constitutes a fully transitioned person one way or the other. Any measure creates a problem, and in some cases no measure can make it equally problematic. I suppose the best solution could be to just treat trans people as just aberrations that are no different than the ones that allow a person to throw a ball at well over a hundred miles an hour and let the chips fall where they may. It would create some issues, but I think it would all be forgotten in a generation or two.
I agree with this, especially the last paragraph. I think the only way to get past this would be to have full integration. Viewing trans* people, fully transitioned or not (I would argue that there is no such thing though this is beside the point), as being not the norm, with logically cis men or cis women being the norm is the problem. There was a time where the norms in major sports leagues were only whites, with non whites playing in separate segregated leagues and over time when the major leagues were integrated it was eventual accepted. I will say that it is not exactly the same, but I think that there are definitely parallels that can be drawn between the two. If trans* or gender binary non conformists cannot play in the same leagues as everyone else, then where can they play?
Droid expressed displeasure at the term 'biologically female' and if that's an offensive way to phrase things to a lot of people I'd like to know so I could make changes to how I speak to avoid upsetting anyone. Is it best to just stick to cis/trans and avoid the word biologically? I'm assuming yes.
hey no one addressed this, so I'll just chime in that many trans and intersex people do find the "biological" qualifier objectionable. that part wasn't just your friend overreacting
With regards to trans people in sports, an interesting person in this regard is Fallon Fox. Fallon Fox is a MMA fighter who fights in CFA and XFO, and she's also the first openly trans fighter in pro MMA. She fights at 144 lbs., which puts her in Featherweight, and she has a 4-1 pro record.
A lot of controversy came about in the MMA world when Fallon Fox came out as trans. A lot of people in MMA stated that while they didn't have a problem with trans people in general, they did have a problem with Fallon Fox fighting in women's divisions. They subscribed to the notion that Fallon Fox had an unfair biological advantage, due to "male muscle" and shit like that. A lot of fighters and even some commentators (among them Joe Rogan) said something to this effect. It's unscientific nonsense, and was further cemented as such when Fallon got beat by Ashlee Evans-Smith. It's also implicitly transphobic, although the people saying it would refuse to admit that it is. They'd say "Oh, no no, we're not saying we have anything against trans people, we're just saying that it's unfair for her to fight other women". Except, the plain as day implication of that statement is that Fallon is not really a woman, she's still basically a man and is thus imbued with "male strength" and thus has all the "unfair advantage" that a man fighting a woman would have. It's still a transphobic statement, even if the people saying it would like to pretend it isn't.
One fighter in particular, Matt Mitrione, decided to go a step further and go on a toxic and incredibly transphobic bit of ranting about Fallon in an interview. It's pretty awful, so I won't go looking for it or link it here, but he was basically voicing how a certain contingent of other people in the MMA world felt; that Fallon wasn't a woman at all, that she was some dude who just got surgery done so they could beat up women.
For this, the UFC fined the shit out of Mitrione to the order of thousands of dollars and suspended him until he apologized and agreed to some mandatory community service and shit. But that was really only because he had the gall to be openly and virulently transphobic, instead of more politely dismissive and concerned about fairness like other people like Joe Rogan.
Like I said, I love MMA, but shit MMA has got problems.
Droid expressed displeasure at the term 'biologically female' and if that's an offensive way to phrase things to a lot of people I'd like to know so I could make changes to how I speak to avoid upsetting anyone. Is it best to just stick to cis/trans and avoid the word biologically? I'm assuming yes.
hey no one addressed this, so I'll just chime in that many trans and intersex people do find the "biological" qualifier objectionable. that part wasn't just your friend overreacting
not just trans and intersex people find it objectionable. There's a reason we have terms like Female Assigned At Birth, FAAB and MAAB now. Because gender/sex is such a weird concept.
The size and shape of the skeleton don't, for one.
An addendum to this:
I had read that while this was generally true, the shape of the skeleton can change if you're not so far post-puberty that your skeleton has solidified in its permanent shape. Personally I know my hips have widened since being on hormones.
And also, if you were allowed to start hormones as puberty was happening/before puberty, then your skeletal structure and size would be developping to a form more typical for the gender you're transitioning to.
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MetalbourneInside a cluster b personalityRegistered Userregular
The size and shape of the skeleton don't, for one.
An addendum to this:
I had read that while this was generally true, the shape of the skeleton can change if you're not so far post-puberty that your skeleton has solidified in its permanent shape. Personally I know my hips have widened since being on hormones.
And also, if you were allowed to start hormones as puberty was happening/before puberty, then your skeletal structure and size would be developping to a form more typical for the gender you're transitioning to.
You're right.
I guess I should have mentioned that puberty is where the male and female forms differentiate themselves on an outwardly physical level. Except for the pee pees. Those differentiate themselves (usually) before you're born.
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MetalbourneInside a cluster b personalityRegistered Userregular
I suspect I got an awesome on that poast because I used the word "pee pee"
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MetalbourneInside a cluster b personalityRegistered Userregular
Also I'm jealous to hear that a trans woman got to experience her ass getting bigger.
Ok so I thought I understood some things but it turns out that maybe I don't, so I have to ask what's probably a stupid question:
So a tiny human being comes out of a vagina. That human being has a y chromosome and a penis. Traditionally we would say "it's a boy!" and consider that person to be "biologically or maybe genetically male", differentiated from what's traditionally referred to as female by the aforementioned chromosome and organ.
So what do people want that person to be called? What pronouns do we use? Totally neutral ones, until the person is old enough to self determine a gender identity, or lack thereof?
Related question, there are diseases and genetic things that mostly happen to one set of chromosome having people or the other, due to that genetic structure, and doctors need some way to refer to those people, so can they still use male and female? Would folks prefer just "xx" or "xy" or something?
Ok so I thought I understood some things but it turns out that maybe I don't, so I have to ask what's probably a stupid question:
So a tiny human being comes out of a vagina. That human being has a y chromosome and a penis. Traditionally we would say "it's a boy!" and consider that person to be "biologically or maybe genetically male", differentiated from what's traditionally referred to as female by the aforementioned chromosome and organ.
So what do people want that person to be called? What pronouns do we use? Totally neutral ones, until the person is old enough to self determine a gender identity, or lack thereof?
but I'm gonna go with "he" and "she" and "boy" and "girl" until an individual need to reevaluate any of that comes up.
Seems to me that the words themselves are less an issue, and more the cultural significance of what we attach to those words, and that's pretty fluid anyway, so.
Ok so I thought I understood some things but it turns out that maybe I don't, so I have to ask what's probably a stupid question:
So a tiny human being comes out of a vagina. That human being has a y chromosome and a penis. Traditionally we would say "it's a boy!" and consider that person to be "biologically or maybe genetically male", differentiated from what's traditionally referred to as female by the aforementioned chromosome and organ.
So what do people want that person to be called? What pronouns do we use? Totally neutral ones, until the person is old enough to self determine a gender identity, or lack thereof?
Related question, there are diseases and genetic things that mostly happen to one set of chromosome having people or the other, due to that genetic structure, and doctors need some way to refer to those people, so can they still use male and female? Would folks prefer just "xx" or "xy" or something?
Something about that situation - It was my understanding that sex chromosome tests are only ever performed if the doctors consider the genetalia ambiguous, and most people in the world, even modern world, don't have a medical record saying xx/xy/anything else.
Personally, I think it's okay to use male/female, but you have to be willing to change your usage easily if the child so decides.
Ok so I thought I understood some things but it turns out that maybe I don't, so I have to ask what's probably a stupid question:
So a tiny human being comes out of a vagina. That human being has a y chromosome and a penis. Traditionally we would say "it's a boy!" and consider that person to be "biologically or maybe genetically male", differentiated from what's traditionally referred to as female by the aforementioned chromosome and organ.
So what do people want that person to be called? What pronouns do we use? Totally neutral ones, until the person is old enough to self determine a gender identity, or lack thereof?
Related question, there are diseases and genetic things that mostly happen to one set of chromosome having people or the other, due to that genetic structure, and doctors need some way to refer to those people, so can they still use male and female? Would folks prefer just "xx" or "xy" or something?
I mean, if we are talking the dream society of the homofascist agenda to turn the good old US of A into the People's Republic of Transistan, I would say I would like to see a society where gender roles are not pushed from birth the way they are now, by default using more neutral pronouns until the kid says differently or until puberty where a kid can better decide what they want to explore, try on, or identify as.
In terms of practical advice, I am not gonna fault a parent for referring to a kid by genital-coded pronouns. I would say the danger lies in then stopping your kid from exploring gender because you've gotten used to thinking of them by their naughty bits. In terms of talking about chromosomes with people who already identify as transgender (which, speaking as a transwoman, I do not see as relevant to anything nearly as often as one might think) I have heard the term "birth-certificate sex" thrown around, and I quite like it?
What's cool is that not only did a 19th-century frontier town tolerate an openly homosexual couple, but the local authorities apparently accorded them legal standing as such
Of course, lesbianism just wasn't taken too seriously back then (if they had been two men it couldn't have happened), and they still weren't recognized as an actual marriage, but hey look my 'murica had gays 200 years ago and the government let them be all gay with each other and the nation didn't collapse
I forgot to mention that my partner had to squeeze the last of a little bit of air out of my hook wounds.
In my mind, everyone who touches my back becomes a lover that I once spent a weekend with in a hidden retreat in the mountains. With a good Internet connection of course.
Pretty sure I saw this in an episode of Prince of Tennis once.
Didn't see a good place to share this in the art forum and figured it'd be more on topic here. Made this real quick after considering leftover thoughts from the last feminism thread (sort of in the same vein as this) and conversations I've been having on twitter recently. Tweeted it up with "#smashthepatriarchy"
Took some cues from early riot grrrl stuffs. I get the feeling that the whole scene needs something like what riot grrrl did for punk.
Posts
and that's cool too
it's never a bad thing to self-examine and question
"can I be more excellent to others?" is a question always worth asking of oneself
at the same time
sometimes the answer is
naw, you're good for now, keep being excellent
Yeah, this is a pretty hotly debated topic, and frankly it just shows how stupid separation by gender is. As far as physical performance goes, men and women actually overlap pretty far, statistically. When you take gender out of the equation it really brings up the point of why athletes aren't separated by height and weight classes instead. But on the other hand, integrating sports with our current social structures seems like it would just ruin it for women.
And how complete is the shift? You mean when it comes to hormones? There are only a few things that don't change for trans women. The size and shape of the skeleton don't, for one. We tend to lose a lot of muscle mass, though. It's also pretty hard to "get swole" through exercise, comparatively speaking.
This topic about trans* people in sports is something I have always found quite interesting. I think many of the same points that can be made with this topic, can be made with integration in sports and society in general. I have always wondered why there has never been any (to my knowledge) integration between men and women in sports (much less trans* or non binary people). I love Metalborne's idea for height and weight class separations, or perhaps just physical fitness in general. I see no reason why anyone who is good enough to compete in a sport such as lets say American Football (what is unfortunately viewed as being solely a 'mens game' including stupid sexist bullshit like the Lingerie Bowl) should not be able to play it if they want to and have the skills regardless of their gender, sex, or anything else, and be taken seriously as both an athlete and a person.
Two three hundred pound behemoths rocketing a tennis ball back and forth between each other, each time the racket meets the ball it sounds like a clap of thunder. The match only ends when there is a suspicious absence of a thunderclap, the camera pans down to show the shocked faces of the crowd through the smoking hole in the loser's abdomen.
In my mind, everyone who touches my back becomes a lover that I once spent a weekend with in a hidden retreat in the mountains. With a good Internet connection of course.
I've got that DVD.
I mean, there are positions in most team sports, where everyone has a job. See:Goalie
I meant more like weight/height classes. The only ones I can think of are 1v1 sports like boxing.
Well yeah, if you want to involve context....
Intergender MMA has a bit of a problem on the conceptual level, and I'm going to explain it.
This is Liz Carmouche:
She's a UFC fighter in the Women's Bantamweight division. She's 5'6", and has a fight weight of 135 lbs.
Liz is one of the best female MMA fighters out there. She's ranked in the top ten of female MMA fighters in the world by most ranking systems.
This is Urijah Faber:
He's a UFC fighter in the Men's Bantamweight division. He's 5'6", and has a fight weight of 135 lbs.
He's considered in the top 15 fighters in the UFC, and is ranked 2nd in his division.
Could Liz Carmouche and Urijah Faber have a fair fight? After all, they're nearly identical in height and weight, they fight in the same division in their respective genders, and they're both highly experienced, well-regarded fighters that are highly ranked in their divisions.
The answer is yes, they could have a fair fight. If you took gender completely out of the equation, and compared them purely on every other factor and said "Could these two fighters have a fair bout?" to anyone who knows anything about MMA, the answer would be yes. Urijah would be the obvious favorite, but only due to being the more experienced fighter with the more diverse range of higher quality opponents. He has the more proven record, so he'd be the surer bet, but it wouldn't be because of gender.
People might, at this point, might try to make some kind of argument about some kind of gender influence on strength, muscle mass, bone density, etc. I'm gonna go ahead and encourage them to stop before they start. Any kind of study you might have to source always gets conducted on average people. It gets conducted on a general whole. Professional athletes, by definition, are not average. They are not the norm. The way in which they train, the way in which they impact their bodies and their minds, changes them and makes that kind of factor if existent at all fairly negligible.
"But, surely, a man's muscles might..."
Look at this man. This man is Roy Nelson. He is a heavyweight MMA fighter:
He fought this man, Cheick Kongo:
Do you know what happened? This happened:
Cheick Kongo got the shit kicked out of him. He was knocked the fuck out less than 3 minutes into the first round. That is what happened.
So don't tell me about "male muscle" or any of that. It's shenanigans. Training matters. Skill matters. Yes, weight and strength do matter, which is why MMA fighters are separated by weight class (but not, notably, by height, because while it impacts reach it doesn't actually grant as much advantage in a fight as you might think)
"But wait," you might be saying, "didn't you say at the outset of this that intergender MMA has a problem?"
Yes, it does. The problem with intergender MMA isn't whether or not it can be done. It's a question of whether or not it should.
I love MMA. I'm passionate about it. I did amateur MMA for years before I accepted the reality that I was never good enough to go pro. But even though I love the sport and I'm passionate about it, I'm not fucking blind. MMA has problems. Social problems. Cultural problems. The fan-base of MMA can be fucking deplorable. There's a reason why the stereotype of douchebags in Affliction t-shirts picking fights in bars exists. It's because those dudes are real. Am I one of those dudes? Fuck no. I used to be a bouncer and having to deal with those fuckers was part of my fucking job. And a lot of those guys are misogynistic pieces of shit, and they represent a gigantic chunk of the MMA fanbase.
Make no mistake about it, even though MMA has come a long ways since it's dark days in the 90's there's still a lot of people who are only interested when there's blood out. There are people who have no appreciation of the art of it, they're in it for the violence and the bloodshed and the cheap gladiatorial thrill. They're a huge chunk of the fanbase and big companies like the UFC are very careful not to fully alienate them while trying to class themselves up for the mainstream.
These are the guys who, when one guy has another guy pinned in a full mount and is just pounding his face into bloody fucking mash, cheer the loudest. These are the guys that hope to see someone's arm get broken. These guys? They're the hardest piece of evidence to shake when rebuking claims that MMA makes society more violent and bloodthirsty, that it's more than just "human cockfighting" (a term I find super-offensive, so use in earnest at your own desire to find yourself on my personal shit-list). When I try to extol the virtues of MMA and how those awful things aren't true, it can be hard to argue with my opponent when they point to these hooting gibbons.
So let's bear their existence in mind when I touch on another part of the issue: We don't have a huge widespread cultural problem of male-on-male unarmed violence in the world. I mean, it happens. Men fight with other men. But let's face it, unarmed fisticuffs between fellows is not something I would call a serious social issue, and I say this as a guy who literally had to break those up as his full-time job.
You know what is a serious social issue? Male-on-female violence. Spousal abuse. Sexual assault. That's a pretty serious, endemic fucking problem everywhere on Earth. No part of the world is this not true. I mean, I don't want to diminish male-on-male spousal abuse and the like (this absolutely happens to queer men and they suffer in silence and it's fucking hideous) but statistically and socially, the widespread endemic problem of male-on-female violence is massive and pervasive and it's been at most less than a century in most parts of the world considered fucking illegal to hit your wife. In many parts of the world it's still not considered illegal, or is allowable under certain circumstances.
With all of that said, I want you to consider two scenarios:
Scenario A.) Liz Carmouche vs. Urijah Faber: Carmouche wins by knock-out. Clean fight, Carmouche eats some nasty strikes in the first round but recovers and lands a good roundhouse that takes Faber out.
Do you cheer? A lot of people would cheer. They would feel good about cheering. They would be okay with Carmouche winning like that. They would be alright with a woman beating a man, even by KO. That's okay.
Scenario B.) Liz Carmouche vs. Urijah Faber: Faber wins by knock-out after referee stoppage. Faber gets a double-leg takedown in the second round and gets a full mount, and starts raining strikes down on Liz's face. Liz attempts to defend herself, but she eats a lot of hits. Several times the referee considers stepping in and stopping, but Liz continues to defend herself and periodically attempt to improve her position and strike back, so he lets it continue. Her eyebrow gets cut and her nose is broken. Her left eye swells shut and her mouth starts bleeding. After about twenty seconds of this, she fully turtles up, not being able take any more strikes from Faber, and the referee stops the fight.
Do you cheer? Does anyone cheer as this woman lays on the ground for a minute and a man just hammers her face in till she bleeds and can't defend herself anymore and covers her face to stop the damage and the ref steps in to stop the fight? Because I bet you the fucking gibbons in the Affliction t-shirts cheer. That's why I brought them up. They're cheering. They're cheering this woman getting her face smashed in by a man on top of her till she can't take anymore. They think that's pretty exciting. Are you cheering? Should anyone be cheering that? Should we, as a society, be normalizing that and saying that this is okay and that people should be cheering this on?
Because that's the problem. I think when we have a society where that kind of pervasive, endemic male-on-female violence is still such a huge social issue, we need to think very carefully about how we treat intergender sports that involve full contact and especially ones that involve full on violence and striking.
In the lower levels I could not tell you beyond society is stupid. As you move higher though it becomes more by force. There is a generally small statistical difference between men and women in terms of physical performance. However, that is all out the window at the very peak of performance. Men's best marathon times tend to be much lower than women's. Muscle mass is just easier to build with more testosterone. There is also a much greater level of flexibility found in ciswomen making a few sports where transmen might be able to clean up, but I am uncertain what biological process is at work to cause that discrepancy.
That's not to say it is impossible of course. Female pitchers have been coming along, and with the recent drop in batting ability due to steroids crack down there could be more development on that soon. There was recently a woman who entered into the NFL draft as a place kicker, although she did terrible for reasons not related to potential peak physical shape.
Trans individuals in pro sports are always going to have a certain level of controversy as a result of these truths. Trying to define what exactly constitutes a fully transitioned person one way or the other. Any measure creates a problem, and in some cases no measure can make it equally problematic. I suppose the best solution could be to just treat trans people as just aberrations that are no different than the ones that allow a person to throw a ball at well over a hundred miles an hour and let the chips fall where they may. It would create some issues, but I think it would all be forgotten in a generation or two.
Good post though, I'm just picking nits here.
The nit you're picking isn't what I'm saying, though. What I'm saying is that Roy Nelson and Chieck Kongo have completely different body types. It's not just a matter of "visible abs". Roy doesn't just have an abundance of body fat covering what would otherwise be a rockin' six pack. They have completely different muscle to body fat ratios, and that's fine because they've trained to make their bodies work for them. An argument people often make about "male muscle" has to do with body fat ratios and muscle density, that "male muscle" is higher in density and strength per pound than "female muscle" (quotation marks because these are ludicrously unscientific ideas people propagate) and that a man will have a higher body fat to muscle ratio than a woman, erego a man will be stronger and etc.
The point I was making is that even if that were true (which it basically isn't at the professional fighter level, again assessments of male vs female muscle mass and strength are based on population averages not pro athletes) it doesn't really pan out as an especially compelling argument when you're talking combat sports, because in MMA body fat and muscle mass ratios can suddenly become completely meaningless if someone knocks you the fuck out because they're a better striker than you are. There are upper limits to the values of such things.
I agree with this, especially the last paragraph. I think the only way to get past this would be to have full integration. Viewing trans* people, fully transitioned or not (I would argue that there is no such thing though this is beside the point), as being not the norm, with logically cis men or cis women being the norm is the problem. There was a time where the norms in major sports leagues were only whites, with non whites playing in separate segregated leagues and over time when the major leagues were integrated it was eventual accepted. I will say that it is not exactly the same, but I think that there are definitely parallels that can be drawn between the two. If trans* or gender binary non conformists cannot play in the same leagues as everyone else, then where can they play?
hey no one addressed this, so I'll just chime in that many trans and intersex people do find the "biological" qualifier objectionable. that part wasn't just your friend overreacting
A lot of controversy came about in the MMA world when Fallon Fox came out as trans. A lot of people in MMA stated that while they didn't have a problem with trans people in general, they did have a problem with Fallon Fox fighting in women's divisions. They subscribed to the notion that Fallon Fox had an unfair biological advantage, due to "male muscle" and shit like that. A lot of fighters and even some commentators (among them Joe Rogan) said something to this effect. It's unscientific nonsense, and was further cemented as such when Fallon got beat by Ashlee Evans-Smith. It's also implicitly transphobic, although the people saying it would refuse to admit that it is. They'd say "Oh, no no, we're not saying we have anything against trans people, we're just saying that it's unfair for her to fight other women". Except, the plain as day implication of that statement is that Fallon is not really a woman, she's still basically a man and is thus imbued with "male strength" and thus has all the "unfair advantage" that a man fighting a woman would have. It's still a transphobic statement, even if the people saying it would like to pretend it isn't.
One fighter in particular, Matt Mitrione, decided to go a step further and go on a toxic and incredibly transphobic bit of ranting about Fallon in an interview. It's pretty awful, so I won't go looking for it or link it here, but he was basically voicing how a certain contingent of other people in the MMA world felt; that Fallon wasn't a woman at all, that she was some dude who just got surgery done so they could beat up women.
For this, the UFC fined the shit out of Mitrione to the order of thousands of dollars and suspended him until he apologized and agreed to some mandatory community service and shit. But that was really only because he had the gall to be openly and virulently transphobic, instead of more politely dismissive and concerned about fairness like other people like Joe Rogan.
Like I said, I love MMA, but shit MMA has got problems.
not just trans and intersex people find it objectionable. There's a reason we have terms like Female Assigned At Birth, FAAB and MAAB now. Because gender/sex is such a weird concept.
[Childish Giggling Intensifies]
Funny this MMA conversation came up because a friend sent me this video last night and I couldn't stop giggling
And if memory serves equestrian events like Dressage are mixed-gender at the Olympics*.
An addendum to this:
I had read that while this was generally true, the shape of the skeleton can change if you're not so far post-puberty that your skeleton has solidified in its permanent shape. Personally I know my hips have widened since being on hormones.
And also, if you were allowed to start hormones as puberty was happening/before puberty, then your skeletal structure and size would be developping to a form more typical for the gender you're transitioning to.
You're right.
I guess I should have mentioned that puberty is where the male and female forms differentiate themselves on an outwardly physical level. Except for the pee pees. Those differentiate themselves (usually) before you're born.
So a tiny human being comes out of a vagina. That human being has a y chromosome and a penis. Traditionally we would say "it's a boy!" and consider that person to be "biologically or maybe genetically male", differentiated from what's traditionally referred to as female by the aforementioned chromosome and organ.
So what do people want that person to be called? What pronouns do we use? Totally neutral ones, until the person is old enough to self determine a gender identity, or lack thereof?
Related question, there are diseases and genetic things that mostly happen to one set of chromosome having people or the other, due to that genetic structure, and doctors need some way to refer to those people, so can they still use male and female? Would folks prefer just "xx" or "xy" or something?
Parasite works, maybe The Accident.
but I'm gonna go with "he" and "she" and "boy" and "girl" until an individual need to reevaluate any of that comes up.
Seems to me that the words themselves are less an issue, and more the cultural significance of what we attach to those words, and that's pretty fluid anyway, so.
Something about that situation - It was my understanding that sex chromosome tests are only ever performed if the doctors consider the genetalia ambiguous, and most people in the world, even modern world, don't have a medical record saying xx/xy/anything else.
Personally, I think it's okay to use male/female, but you have to be willing to change your usage easily if the child so decides.
I mean, if we are talking the dream society of the homofascist agenda to turn the good old US of A into the People's Republic of Transistan, I would say I would like to see a society where gender roles are not pushed from birth the way they are now, by default using more neutral pronouns until the kid says differently or until puberty where a kid can better decide what they want to explore, try on, or identify as.
In terms of practical advice, I am not gonna fault a parent for referring to a kid by genital-coded pronouns. I would say the danger lies in then stopping your kid from exploring gender because you've gotten used to thinking of them by their naughty bits. In terms of talking about chromosomes with people who already identify as transgender (which, speaking as a transwoman, I do not see as relevant to anything nearly as often as one might think) I have heard the term "birth-certificate sex" thrown around, and I quite like it?
GoFund The Portland Trans Pride March, or Show It To People, or Else!
bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/06/13/uncommon-household-the-history-early-american-same-sex-marriage/oGJ3H6xZtluQUhvdJnR94M/story.html
What's cool is that not only did a 19th-century frontier town tolerate an openly homosexual couple, but the local authorities apparently accorded them legal standing as such
Of course, lesbianism just wasn't taken too seriously back then (if they had been two men it couldn't have happened), and they still weren't recognized as an actual marriage, but hey look my 'murica had gays 200 years ago and the government let them be all gay with each other and the nation didn't collapse
Pretty sure I saw this in an episode of Prince of Tennis once.
Took some cues from early riot grrrl stuffs. I get the feeling that the whole scene needs something like what riot grrrl did for punk.