Cethin

They’re saying NASA relies on public companies, not that it is one. SpaceX is not NASA. NASA has increasingly relied on, and funded, SpaceX to complete their missions though.

I think you’re being sarcastic here, but there is a trend in that direction, with paralympics and such. It all comes down to this. How is the protected class of athletes defined? If a space for female athletes is going to exist at all, there needs to be some definition, which inevitably is going to feel arbitrary to some. The one they’ve gone with excludes males and most intersex individuals - allowing a little wiggle room here for folks with XY who have no male testosterone production which medically speaking makes it into a “woman at birth with low androgens” competition since those people will usually have a female phenotype at birth.

I’m not being sarcastic. High level competition is defined by outliers. There’s many cis women competing in top level sports who naturally have high testosterone, and they’re often blocked by these rules despite them supposedly being to “protect the integrity of women in sports.” They should be allowed to compete in women’s sports, if we’re calling it women’s sports. If we want to divide it by testosterone level then fine, but be honest about that and allow men with naturally low testosterone too. Women’s sports should include all women.

In the case of Imane - it may speculatively (after now reading a little about the circumstances and the “leaked” results) be a case of XY intersex with some kind of androgen dysfunction, either through reduced production via enzyme deficiency or partial insensitivity to testo.

There are many things it could be. We could speculate all day. This rule is not targeting those strictly though. It’s targeting testosterone level, which varies by person and there are cis women with higher levels than some men. Biology is complex. Top level sports will inharently choose those best at the sport. It’s going to choose outliers, not representative of the average person. Women’s sports still don’t allow most women to compete reasonably. It never has, and probably never should. If it self-selects for people with higher testosterone then fine. They shouldn’t be banned for it, especially since they also can’t compete with men usually.

You can though - at least to the extent that we in empirical science usually refer to “proving” or “disproving” (or rather, indicate or contraindicate a hypothesis). In this case it’d be studies/metastudies on injuries in different kinds of matchups (which can either show a statistically significant difference or not) or in performance of different athletes.

Yes, and I’m sure (especially for boxing) there are more injuries. I’m not trying to argue against that. I’m saying, it isn’t worth the witch hunt. Iif you care about injuries caused by trans athletes, are there actually a large enough number to warrant this. Presumably we shouldn’t be preventing cis-women from competing, even if they cause more injuries, right? It’s boxing. Injuries are going to happen. If there are cis-women who just hit really hard for some reason, that’s part of the sport.

The case you linked here is regarding football, not boxing, which simply makes it a question of performance rather than also safety (as it is with boxing or other combat sports).

Exactly. Even when injuries aren’t the issue they’re pushing these rules, so I don’t trust that this is particularly strongly inspired by injuries. It’s about people complaining trans athletes (or rather people they, usually baselessly, suspect are trans) are ruining the sport for “real” women.

Performance wise, the most “fair” might be to sort athletes into leagues based on testosterone levels. It’s already known that higher testosterone levels tend to correlate with higher performance, so rather than imposing an arbitrary limit where only the athletes in the “sweet spot” just below the limit get to excel, grade them into brackets based on that.

This has been my argument for ages, or at least it’s the logical extension of the argument that we should be protecting women in sports by banning certain women who we don’t want competing. The fact of the matter is high level sports selectively choose certain attributes. I’m sure as hell not a top athlete and could never be. I’m not asking for rules to be made that allow me to compete against top athletes, but if we need to protect women’s “fair” competition strongly for some reason, shouldn’t we also have leagues for all types of people? Doesn’t longer arms lead to more injuries in boxing? Is it “fair” that sports aren’t designed specifically for me to be able to win?

I don’t know what the answer is, but breaking sports into a “premier” league (no barriers; anyone can compete so only the best of the best rise) and then having a ton of leagues with different sets of rules to exclude people seems like the logical conclusion to this. I can’t honestly say I think that’s the best solution, because it’d make it ridiculously hard to watch, find teams, and track. I do think it’s the only way the argument for testosterone testing works though. It doesn’t work if you’re excluding cis women from women’s sports, otherwise it isn’t actually protecting the integrity of women’s sports. Top level competition is a game of outliers.

You can’t disprove it. It’s a value call. Is it worth restricting players who should (in my opinion at least) be allowed to play for this? Are the trans (or higher testosterone cis) players actually that big of an issue, or is it a culture issue?

Here’s a case where cis-female Zambian soccer player was barred from playing. Did that do more good than harm? I doubt it. This is far from the only case where cis women are prevented from competing because of made up rules that make them ineligible. I’m sure it’ll happen in this scenario too.

Headline news, physiology and most importantly “data and medical evidence from an extensive range of sources and consulted widely with other sports and experts across the world” - as they claim. I don’t have time to personally look into that (sucks to have a life amirite) but am inclined to trust that they care for the athletes and have done due diligence.

Here’s the issue we have: you trust them because they put out a press release with this claim. I don’t, because it’s a press release. You want others to prove them wrong instead of needing them to prove they’re right.

I’m sure there’s some truth to the statement, but did they actively look at the points made by the opposition and weigh it all? There’s no claim for this here even, and even if there were I wouldn’t trust it implicitly. To be scientific you need to actively try to disprove your assumptions. If they still hold then cool, but you have to be critical.

At the end of the day, this is a business. They’re trying to make money. This is something that I’ll never just give my trust to. If they prove their claims then fine, but I’m going to assume all decisions are business decisions first, not the best decision for all athletes necessarily.

There are several cases in sports already where people who are born women and have a female phenotype and genotype, but have naturally higher levels of testosterone, who have been banned from competition.

The message they use is the they’re “protecting women” but it isn’t actually the goal. Often there aren’t any cases of transgender athletes outperforming their cis opponents, yet they still try to create these rules. It’s frequently actively harmful to many cisgendered women.

The problem with all of this is the “basic biology” crowd never learn that biology is really fucking complex. What they learn in grade school is not the totality of biology, yet they assume they must be experts and force their very limited and wrong views on other people. It’s bad and harmful and siding with them makes them feel all the more justified in their crusade of bullshit and misinformation.

You sound really intelligent and reasonable.

Yeah, it’s kind of insane. They buy them for the value, but they only have value because there’s perceived scarcity, and there’s only perceived scarcity because they buy them. It’s an incestuous system that harms us all and creates nothing of value.

Well, I think that’s always the case when this kind of thing is done. That part isn’t ironic, but it is frustrating and, yes, ridiculous.

As everyone else has said, she’s not a child-but-actually-ancient. The show is not about sex. It’s about mortality. I started watching it, and I want to continue, but it’s really depressing. I wasn’t in the right mood to keep going.

As far as I’m aware, there are absolutely no sexual undertones in the show. It’s sometimes funny, but it’s also pretty serious.

They said he has immunity for official duties. This article is about him using the presidential seal for non-official duties. I don’t think anything is going to happen still, but even the insane SC ruling doesn’t give him immunity for this.