8 BAD Arguments About Trans Women in Female Sport

0:00 Introduction
3:34 1) The "woman is adult human female" argument
14:30 2) The "so height doesn't matter... even when it clearly does" argument
25:09 3) The "Michael Phelps is unfair" argument
32:33 4) The "trans women don't dominate ergo they have no advantage" argument
41:22 5) The "males outperform females: end of argument" argument
44:02 6) The "burden of proof" argument
51:45 7) The "women's sport is actually to protect men from elite women" argument
01:02:40 8) The "I haven't read the systematic review but I'll quote it anyway!" argument

This video follows from a debate that took place between the YouTubers Sargon of Akkad and Brenton Lengel, hosted initially on the Modern Day Debates channel (all links below).
In this video I use that debate to line up some of the recurring arguments in the debate over how to square the circle of trans women competing in the protected category of female sport.
I hope you find the responses to these arguments interesting and provoke you to consider their validity for yourself.
What this video is NOT is an attempt at laying out a structured narrative of the problems that arise from attempting to incorporate all people into a sporting binary of two sex/gender based categories nor my POSITIVE arguments as to the way through this situation. All these were covered in a number of videos last year that form the following playlist:

This video took a great deal of putting together and I thank my patrons for helping me to make such content (especially given that such material flags as advertiser unfriendly which dissuades many YouTubers from these subjects).

Your links:

Intro:

Should Trans Women Be Able to Compete in Women's Sports? | Sargon vs Brenton
Sargon's (most used) channel
Brenton's channel
Modern Day Debates (host of the original debate)

Section 1)

Semenya and Athletics South Africa v. International Association of Athletics Federations, CAS 2018/O/5798, at 2 Court of Arb. for Sport(2018) (the document quoted in the video)

The more readable executive summary:

Section 2

Olympic Games 2012 Volleyball Men (Height, Age)

Height Percentile Calculator, by Age or Country

NBA Draft: Is Being 7 Feet Tall The Fastest Way To Get Rich In America?

Ross Tucker: On Transgender athletes and performance advantages

Section 3

Ross Tucker: On DSDs, the theory of testosterone, performance the CAS ruling on Caster Semenya

Section 4

Female hyperandrogenism and elite sport

Why It’s Hard to Accept My Body

see also systematic report listed in section 8

Section 5

nil

Section 6

Proving a negative

Section 7

The Physical Obstacle for Women in Baseball

Biomechanical Comparison Between Elite Female and Male Baseball Pitchers (Journal of Applied Biomechanics 2009)

The World Darts Championship set a new milestone for women in sports

Woman Beats Man at Darts Championship for the First Time

Section 8

Sport and Transgender People: A Systematic Review of the Literature Relating to Sport Participation and Competitive Sport Policies

Karolinska study: Muscle strength, size and composition following 12 months of gender-affirming treatment in transgender individuals: retained advantage for the transwomen

[Heroltz]

Great breakdown, I enjoyed it. It's was so funny to read the comments from the debate video, supporters from both sides had the sentiment of "our guy completely destroyed the other side with FACTS and LOGIC" and Noel here is just saying "I'll have you know they are both wrong". It's a bit sad that the argumentation in this issue seems to mostly follow dogmatic battle lines, but I guess that is the human experience with things that stirr up big emotions.

On a completely unrelated note, someone was wrong on the Internet some time ago, and your hard work allowed me to show they are wrong. It was the "Essence of Thought vs. Rachel Oates" timeline thingy with HJ Hornbeck. They tried to claim that is the Truth(tm) of the matter, and it felt good to clap back a bit. Thanks for doing what you do, and rest assured (or not, depending how you feel about it) that given the opportunity in the future I'll for sure appropriate your work again to tell people they are wrong.

[uruson]

4) and 2) seem to share the same flaw; The larger selection pool is more likely to have coinciding advantageous traits, than the smaller selection pool.
I.e. being 'only' the tallest, as compared to being 'very tall, plus excellent in traits B, C, D, E, and F' and respectively 'only' going through male puberty, as compared to the top female percentile.

Must say I really appreciate your coverage of, well, virtually anything. Your forthright candour is a refreshing and tranquil place of rest for the mind, so; Thank you, for everything.

[LazyGoose]

Thank you for doing this video, its refreshing to find someone as competent as yourself!
Im an anatomist and physiologist and have been fortunate to compete at a very high level in several sports (volleyball being one - which made the debate youre commenting on infuriating haha), I also work as a PT and have trained athletes at the top end who have been affected by this issue in competitive sport, and Ive also trained trans women, it is astounding (although obvious when properly considered) to me how people dont seem to be able to look at this topic rationally. I would almost guarentee its the fact that people who take ideological sides in this argument have 0 actual experience in sport, and the average person is in no way scientifically literate, and has 0 actual experience completing research.

I really wish you were able to get involved i more of these discussions as this is a sport/science issue that has quickly and unnecessarily developed into a societal/rights issue, and if the state of the US and UK and Scial and mainstream media has shown us anything over the past 4 years its how bad this polarisation can be.

If you would ever have the time or interest in having a discussion regarding this from a sporting/mechanistic perspective, Id be interested to hear your take on several things.

But please keep doing what youre doing :D

[Ashamanic]

Also, the idea that the difference is exaggerated is absolutely insane. In the 2016 olympics the womens 100m winning time was 10.71s. Every man in the final beat this. There were 3 semi-finals. 22 men finished and all beat this. There were 8 heats, 69 men finished. 65 of these beat the time the women's olympic final winner set. In the UK alone, just to qualify, you had to be able to do 10.16s - not only faster than the women's winner, faster than any woman has ever run. In the US trials alone, over 30 men beat this time and since 1924, when Harold Abrahams was recorded as running 10.4 seconds, only one men's winner ran slower than 10.7s

[TrueThanny]

To the overwhelming majority of English speakers, the word "gender" is nothing but a substitute for the word "sex". You'll get nowhere trying to convince ordinary people of anything if you simply assume the word has some mystical other meaning that's somehow related to sex but still not sex itself. It's a linguistic term that was misused by far-left academics in the early 1970's, and only entered widespread usage in English starting in the early 1980's. And that usage was as a substitute for "sex", not something apart from sex.

Not that it really matters for the argument you're trying to make. The trans activists have already widely disputed the idea that sex exists (often redundantly called "biological sex"), and claim that a trans woman is actually female. So it makes no difference whether you call it "women's sports" or something like "female sports". The trans activists will continue to push for making them accessible to males.

[lukecackett]

While listening to the bit at around 18:40 regarding the proportion of 7ft+ men who play in the NBA, it occurred to me the 17% figure might actually be underrepresentative. Whilst I don't know how the author calculated that figure, I'm guessing from how it's written they've just divided the number of 7ft+ tall athletes in the NBA at the time of writing by that estimate of 70 7ft+ tall 20-40yo men in the USA as a whole. If so, this 17% estimate would exclude for example those who had previously played in the NBA but have since retired. It seems likely to me that there would be at least one or two such people given that 40 years old would be a seriously late retirement for many professional sports, even if an athlete was completely injury free their entire career

A quite pedantic and not particularly important point, I appreciate

Anyway, thanks for your great videos, Jim. I really enjoy watching and rewatching them, including (perhaps especially) the longer ones. Always packed with insight and some good laughs, and your videos on trans athletes in professional sport have got me genuinely interested in the topic

[williamlennie]

Imagine reading a source before quoting it... what a crazy world we live in!

[ChillyUK]

The "keeping women in their place argument" is laughable. For the reasons you laid out regarding coverage but also because "mens" sport largely doesn't give a fuck.
Hypothetical, if there was a woman with the skill level of Mesi or even just an above average striker in the Premiere league, clubs would be tripping over themselves to sign her. Maybe there would be a few grumbles from some men who weren't on board for whatever reason or possibly even cynical attempts from clubs who couldn't sign her to keep her out via looking for loopholes (if we can't have her no one will mentality) but those would largely be drowned out. There would be too much money on the table to pass her up.

[joegillian]

The "Michael Phelps argument" is totally self-defeating. If the reason that Michael Phelps dominates in his sport is because of his physical characteristics, then physical characteristics DO make all the difference and it's not that Michael Phelps is somehow "super skilled" at his sport. He has physical advantages that allow him to perform better than others, and no amount of training or determination is going to make those physical advantages not matter. It's like putting a bicycle up against a race car. It doesn't matter how skilled the bicyclist is. And I have to come back to the point that sports are about competition. A competition isn't interesting if it isn't fair (as fair as it can be), hence we have these different categories of participants.

[AnaxofRhodes]

I expect more and more people to be like Sargon: just throw up their hands at trying to understand trans people, clearly state a simple but bigoted position, and accept the backlash as preferable. Given JK Rowling's several-round row on Twitter over trans issues, I'm seeing more people brush calm reason aside, since the more they talk about this only worsens their headaches.

[L_Martin]

I really can’t agree with you that the word “woman” now should be taken to mean something else, just because the sporting bodies are captured. It’s not the same as “gay” now meaning 1 thing to us today, vs “gay” meaning something else in the ‘50s.

In general conversation, the general public all know damn well what “woman” means, and we do not, in regular conversation, use “woman” to now mean “someone who maybe has a p* /nis”. I don’t agree with you at all that just because the IOC wants to use “woman” to mean “a gender identity associated with female stereotypes, pink, doing the dishes, being domestic, being passive, liking make up” - should be how WE all use that word.

It has not been a natural evolution of language as in the case of “gay”. This is an imposed re-defining of “women” out of existence. We do not use that word to mean “someone who might have a pe /*nis”. It’s repulsive to do that swap of definitions. Imagine if some white people wanted to change “black” to mean “anyone with a ~racial identity~ made up of racist stereotypes associated with black people”.

This is males trying to redefine what OUR WORD for ourselves means. It’s abhorrent. To yield up that language is defeat from the outset. It goes directly to the heart of what is being done here. An Orwellian abuse of language so we are not allowed a word to describe half of the f-ing population.

[SarahMichel]

Another excellent breakdown.

Unfortunately very few people having these debates in the public arena are actually interested in sports or knowledgeable about it.

The World Athletics' statement shuts down all arguments that rely upon semantic games, from both "sides". It's IMO a very well crafted argument.

[masscreationbroadcasts]

Answer me four questions under two conditions:

1) What is a male?
2) What is a female?
3) What is a man?
4) What is a woman?

The conditions? One: Do all this without being a poster child for gender confusion. (aka give a positive, clear definition)
Two: Answer 3 and 4 so that all cis and trans women are women, all cis and trans men are men, no trans woman is a man and no trans man is a woman.
I don't care what you do with non-binary people.

[TrueThanny]

It really is rather annoying too see that same "study" trotted out over and over. It's essentially an op-ed with references that either don't have anything to say with the conclusions, or actually contradict them.

[SangoProductions]

43:50 You are missing *his* point. He was saying that these are advantages that existed because of development as a male. Last I checked, hearts and hands don't shrink, with reduced testosterone levels. Now, there might be osteoporosis issues. I think I've heard of those issues. I did not bother verifying it, but I'll give that maybe testosterone would negatively affect bone density. It certainly harms muscle growth. But it doesn't just cause the muscle you've already grown to slough off.

[genderenquirer]

How to answer to some for whom sports is all about unfairness, so for them the debate over male advantage is irrelevant, they just go: look, there are women with high testosterone and that is not fair for other women, so what the heck.

[hian]

While it's true to say that language pertaining to categories are "arbitrary" in that, yeah, there's no metaphysical rule of reality that demands "dog" refers only to dogs rather than both dogs and cats or all four-legged mammals, it is however a fact that category words are not arbitrary in light of the purpose language serves - namely to communicate ideas, feelings and observations of reality.

There's nothing arbitrary about the category of man and woman considering obvious and concrete differences between the two and their roles in reproduction and by extension our relationships to one another, just as there's nothing arbitrary about the split categories of canines and felines.

Language isn't prescriptive outside of as a means of protecting meaningful and functional communication, however, language is descriptive.
When I call a dog a dog, and insist we do so, it's to serve the function of making it clear that I am talking about dogs, not cats.

If you want to redefine the term dog, you can do that, however not only will it make it harder to inform people of your pet of choice, it won't have any impact on the phenomenon of mass and energy that are dogs and the concrete differences between that phenomenon and the phenomenon of felines.

You can insist that we redefine what women and men are all you want, but you can't insist that what the categories describes change as a well, nor insist that the change in definition should inform views, choices and attitudes that are tied to the concrete attributes of the phenomenon, not whatever socially or culturally contingent baggage that we associate with the definition.

I don't define women based on cultural artifacts like cooking, staying home, being feminine, or wearing dresses.
I define the category based on whether you are biologically female or not. I suspect that is how most people have for most of history.

While it's certainly interesting to consider gender and gender roles as an extension of that and the problems associated with those roles and rigid enforcement of them, the idea that mounting an effort to essentially undermining the entirety of that categorial divide due to unfortunate cultural trends is imo ridiculous.

[Berendoever]

I wait to see your breakdown of the video debate.

My current stance is that :
*People compete in sport with their physical bodies, not their gender feels.

*There are permanent physical differences between males and females that cannot be undone by by artificial hormones. Like pelvic shape and orientation, arm length, heart and lung size, cranial thickness, twitch muscle tissue, etc. Looking at Olympic times/records between males and females tells you there is a physical difference, or you think women just don't try hard enough.
Every year, there are hundreds of high school boys who can beat the time of the worlds fastest woman.

*Sports should be men's (and women who are able to qualify or women's, (meaning female). Unless the goal is reduce female participation in sport. Then by all means, let people who went through male puberty, but who say they feel like women (whatever that means) compete against females.

Currently most sports (post high school) require trans women to be on replacement hormones for some period of time, but there are already trans women sports proponents like Rachel McKinnon/Veronica Ivy who state that trans women ARE women, without qualifications, so no hormones or surgery should be required.
That's where this is headed.

I'll see if my mind can be changed.

[revlarmilion]

Ultimately I think Brenton would get a lot out of watching this video, while Sargon would get almost nothing, and that really says it all.

[Berendoever]

While listening to Brenton, it sounded like he has already redefined women to include trans women (his opinion, but I'm sure he wants everyone to agree on that), so therefore it is no great leap to allow trans women into women's sport, as they are women after all, in his ideology.

All of his arguments were contingent with this idea already being accepted(TWAW), whole cloth, and then trying to find anything that will support his ideology.