Northern Europe perspective: This was a minor but ongoing part of public discourse until well into the 90s, to my recollection.
It didn’t take real root, and my theory of that is that our racists are generally fascists who consider physical strength and fitness to be high values. Intellect and arts are for weaklings. Going into detail on how the Africans had an advantage on speed, strength and agility but were still somehow inferior required too much mental gymnastics.
I mean, none of the trans people I’ve met are people I would describe as natural athletes. I’m sure they exist but there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of overlap in the two categories which likely skews any sort of analysis of the subject.
We should all just get on board with allowing discrimination based on sex at birth in women’s sport competitions.
No, we need the exact opposite of this but for the same reason.
We should ignore it as an issue because it's literally not an issue. The minuscule number of people it will affect don't warrant national discussion nor legislation. But we should also not cede ground to transphobic bigots that want to use this as precedent "that assigned sex at birth" is relevant in some venues. Next stop is bathrooms and gyms.
More over, scientifically this isn't even a metric that makes sense. What about intersex folk? Their assigned sex at birth inherently doesn't fit in to a binary. It also ignores the numerous cis women who naturally have higher testosterone levels. I get why its an easy solution as transphobia is rampant and dangerous in other areas of life, but thats not a good reason to make inherently flawed laws.
You are missing the point, the polls don't matter. I know it's a wedge issue that republicans slam on, but just because a thing is popular doesn't make it wise.
Scientifically (HRT equalizes everything after 2+ years)
Philosophically (trans women are women, trans men are men)
Politically (sets a precedent of gatekeeping certain areas)
Practically (intersex, cis athletes with unique biology)
From every angle you look at it, we can't enshrine ASAB as the end all determination. It's not a compromise that will make transphobic people chill, it will be a victory for them to push more.
Are you really going to tell me that a trans girl who was on puberty blockers as a child and HRT when she is old enough, who never went through "male puberty" at any point physically has some edge and should not be able to be on a girls soccer team? Because that flies in the face of all reason. Setting a law because of popularity instead looking at the facts will cause more problems down the road.
physically has some edge and should not be able to be on a girls soccer team?
Are you going to tell her she can play a sport as long as she’s not exceptional at it?
I’d be fine with the girls who are mediocre at a sport. It’s not reasonable to tell anyone that they’re allowed to play a sport as long as they aren’t good at it. Trans women shouldn’t be taking scholarships and awards away from born women.
The same doesn’t apply to bathrooms or the gym. You can be as good as you want at pissing in whatever gender bathroom you want. I don’t care.
Trans women who do not fully transition are going to have an advantage. And anyone who performs well is going to be suspected of not fully transitioning. It’s not fair to them and not fair to born women.
We already have controls in sports on sex hormones. This isn’t much different.
I wish the trans community all the best in areas outside of this one. I’ll call you by whatever pronouns you prefer. You can use whatever bathrooms you want. But this issue is different.
It’s NOT a wedge issue in sports, as evident by the fact that a majority of independents, and a sizeable portion of democrats are also against it.
And it’s also not settled scientifically. This isn’t about ONLY testosterone. It’s also about bone structure, muscle density, wing span l, height, ligaments and tendons, and much more. All things that don’t just disappear with the cessation of testosterone.
I don’t see how maintaining the status quo can be seen as a “victory that makes them push for more”? That argument is much easier to push the other way:
If someone can play a sport based on undergoing X treatment, isn’t that discriminatory against those that can’t afford treatment but still identify a certain way? What about XYZ women’s only spaces, should we allow anyone that proclaims self-identifying a certain way into those spaces?
That’s the same “victory to make them push for more” just flipped.
The issue is that exceptional people win. And you can’t allow people to compete, but then tell them it’s not okay if they win.
I’m cool with anyone competing in men’s competitions, but sports set aside for women at birth should keep that standard. The same logic applies to Oscar Pistorius, who shouldn’t have been allowed to compete in the Olympics. If you win a competition with artificial legs, it’s hard to argue that the artificial legs aren’t an advantage.
That makes no sense when you look at the reasons of why it was established this way. It would be just blind and dumb egalitarianism. People need to use intelligence in judging these things, not just emotions.
I agree. It also depends on being able to understand how those terms work and what they represent in real life, which is, unfortunately, often rather difficult for people to grasp.
Even if that were true, I don’t think 100% of sporting organizations require 2+ years of hormone treatment before they allow trans athletes to compete.
Genuinely curious on this, so don’t take offense when I ask for a source. I’m gonna Google it, too, but it would be helpful for others if it’s posted up.
Your still have a bone, ligament and muscle structure that developed under testosterone, I don’t think that just “goes away” once you remove the hormones that brought it on in the first place.
Thank the tiny gods, or I would be spherical with no muscles at this point. Muscle and the resilience of connecting tissue takes a very long time to atrophy.
I can’t remember a specific example, but that does sound familiar. I remember someone claiming a possible reason for their strength was that slavers would breed slaves like animals for certain traits.
I think someone who is forced to do hard labor since birth of course is gonna be stronger than a master who can’t wipe his own ass without 15 servants helping him, so they gotta think blacks are naturally stronger.
The famous example you're thinking of is Jimmy Snyder, aka Jimmy the Greek, a sports commentator and sports betting expert who used to work for CBS sports. He was interviewed as part of a series about civil rights in the US, and the interviewer was sort of expecting him to say something pleasant about black folks' success in athletics opening doors for education and leadership, etc.
You can try the modern Turing test. Just ask OP to write a political speech why millionaires are good people and why they shouldn’t need to pay any taxes at all, whereas all the poor people should work harder and pay more taxes.
Millionaires pay less tax percentage because they have money, which they can buy political power in bulk and use them to reduce their tax. Poor people don’t have available budget to access lawyer service and/or buy political power to reduce their tax percentage.
It is more effiency for poor people to pay their tax in full.
My first draft included something thoroughly NSFL, but then I decided to use the lite version of the test instead.
Teasing GPT to use certain forbidden words could be a fun way to test it. GPT would refuse to write about it, whereas most humans would tell you exactly the kind of person you are, and they would not hold back on using colorful language either. However, the same test is also able to detect a certain type of person who happens to be into said immoral thinking. They would be happy to write a few pages for you, and they would explain everything in great detail.
no bro I am real human, with my hand typing on real keyboard.
I am reading your comment with my real eyes, on my screen. Then I think. It took me 4 minutes 23 seconds to think. Then I use my hand to move my mouse to reply text to click on reply. Then I type on my keyboard this message.
I was going to say tie a piece of cord or rope to the wireless mouse and tether it to your desk, somehow your suggestion seems like a more practical solution
Attention is a feature of minds, wherein a mind can have awareness of lots of inputs (senses, internal thoughts, emotions, etc.) but dedicate most of its “thinking power” to only one or a few things from its awareness at a time.
(“Attention” is narrow; “awareness” is broad. You can be aware of the color of the wall next to you, even if you are not attending to it.)
What does attention do? Attention selects; attention shifts. You can switch from focusing on this sentence, to your breathing, a sound in the distance, the taste of your coffee, your plans for the day, the texture of your socks.
Shifting is not a bug; it is what attention is for. That is why we have it.
There is a rhythm to attention shifts. They can happen quicker or slower; and more or less suddenly. This rhythm differs from person to person, activity to activity, and with emotional and hormonal changes.
Some people are more aware of their attention shifts than others. Some people feel more control over their attention shifts than others. Some people’s attention shifts are more or less in tune with classrooms or offices or other environments that expect certain sorts of tight control.
Meditation allows us to notice and gently alter the parameters of attention.
Spontaneous attention shifts are important! If a loud bang and the smell of sulfur happen from the closet next to you, your attention will probably no longer be on reading this message. If a loved one bursts into the room weeping in despair, your attention will no longer be on reading this message. If the smell of baking pies drifts into the room, your attention will no longer be on reading this message. (At least, if you’re like me. Mmm, pies.)
Focus is also important. When someone “gets in the zone” they may not notice many things that otherwise would grab their attention. They might even fail to attend to the smell of pies; and the weeping loved one would take a little longer to grab them than otherwise.
Attention works along with self-awareness. Attention does the shifting; self-awareness creates the sense of continuity: even though you are sometimes reading and sometimes thinking about pie, you still have the sense that you are the same person. Even though there is not really any such thing as “a self” (q.v. anatta), it is pretty useful to remember that “you” have a body and that it is pretty similar to the body “you” had yesterday.
Some of the parameters for attention seem to include:
Speed and rhythm of attention shifts. Am I focusing solidly on one thing? Or am I switching back and forth between several things, like a student driver who must keep track of their feet and their hands and other cars and pedestrians and signals? When I am distracted, how reliably do I return to an intended object of attention? (I say “rhythm”, but “melody, meter, and rhyme” might be a better analogy.)
The ratios between attention on different sorts of targets: external (senses, objects in the world, people saying words at me), bodily (stuff my body is doing: motions, itches, weird inner ear noises, gait, hunger), and reflective (stuff my mind is doing: inner voice, memory recall, making plans, worrying about that weird inner ear noise).
The strength of episodic memory formation; and the subjective passage of time. Short-term memory is how we perceive time passing; people who are not forming short-term memories (e.g. alcoholic blackout, senile dementia, high psychedelic doses) don’t notice time passing, experience frequent deja vu, repeat the same “discovery” over and over, etc.; they may have extended attentional focus on a single object because they’re just having the same thought repeatedly without forming memories.
I think usually they are referring to “undivided attention” because technically, even though we’re pretty bad at it, you can do multiple things at the same time. I can drive, listen to music, and have a conversation but it starts to overload my brain at that point, as most of my attention is focusing on driving.
If we think of our brains & attention-span as RAM (memory), then some tasks take up more memory, and we have a limit to the RAM, so there are only so many processes that can run at the same time.
Advertisers/products/lovers, they’re all fighting for a bigger slice of your RAM.
I can drive, listen to music, and have a conversation but it starts to overload my brain at that point, as most of my attention is focusing on driving.
The usual computer analogy is multitasking, in which the kernel rapidly switches from one process to another. A single CPU core may switch between running code for my browser, my chat program, the temperature monitoring process, and the wifi driver; this happens so quickly that it appears to me that all of them are running “at the same time”.
Attention also shifts quickly. When you are doing two things “at the same time”, attention is switching back and forth between them! You’re not really constantly attending to the music and the road; ideally you switch back to the road often enough that if something surprising happens there, you can respond to it in time.
We know from experiment that when people have more distractions going on while driving, they actually do respond slower to surprises on the road. Eating a bagel with the radio on and your kids in the back seat is actually hard, and really does slow down noticing the dog that just ran out into the road.
Hmm, that’s difficult. Some electronic hardware stores take in batteries (Microcenter comes to mind, but I bet others do something similar). I think some libraries take in batteries too, but I don’t recall where I heard that, or if i just misremembered - could be worth checking your local library if they do.
If nothing else, universities basically always have a battery disposal, but the bins themselves can be frustratingly difficult to find sometimes
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