Maybe it's because I'm more knowledgeable of professional than amateur sports, but I don't know of that world you speak of. A person of any gender can play in the PGA, NHL or whatnot. I thought we established long ago that so-called "mens" circuits are in fact open circuits. No, we didn't. Each circuit and each league is whatever it is; no one, certainly not "we" on Sportsfilter, ever came up with a blanket rule establishing who may compete in all of them. I'll give you one small limited example from the wide world of sports competition: high school sports in the United States. As educational organizations that receive federal tax dollars, US high schools are required to provide access to programs irrespective of gender. This includes high school sports. However, this does not mean that every team in every sport at every high school in every state is open to any student, regardless of gender. Each school is supposed to provide something that can be construed as equal opportunity, but US federal law grants a lot of leeway in how that can be measured. It can mean providing equal dollars to boys' and girls' programs, although no one ever does that because of (cue dramatic music) football. It can mean fielding boys' and girls' teams in each sport, or an equal number of boys' and girls' teams. Or, it can mean allowing a student to compete on a team that is nominally of the opposite gender. To make matters more complex, each state's interscholastic athletic association creates its own set of regulations indicating which forms of the federally-approved compliance may be used within the state. The end result is that an individual school may well blend several of these forms of compliance: my local high school, for instance, fields a football team that is nominally for boys and a field hockey team that is nominally for girls, but they have had boys compete on their field hockey team -- and their girls' tennis team has competed against teams including boys. If you stopped reading halfway through that paragraph, I don't blame you. The point is that there are plenty of gender restrictions in sports participation. As for the Olympics, they deal with it by having competition for both men and women -- sort of. Women's ski jumping didn't make it into the Vancouver Olympics, which sucks much ass if you ask me. I think it has to do with the fact that gender defines this field of play. It is womens sports, after all. If there is fuzziness about who can play, then there is a door open for abuse. And no matter how much you dislike "what if"'s, they're what making rules is all about. Hang on -- you just got done telling me that you didn't know of the world of gender-restricted sports, and now you're sayng that "gender defines this field of play"? As for the fuzziness, you missed my point: there are already great physiological differences between competitors, much greater than those posed by transsexualism or intersexed status. Given that, isn't it purely arbitrary to say that these differences are permissible, but "fuzziness" in the matter of gender is not? If your answer to this is, "Yes, but you have to draw the line somewhere," we're now going in circles. My whole point has been that if you're going to make rules and draw lines regulating sports competition, then for God's sake, draw them where it makes some sense! Why were you creating the rule in the first place? Um...er...well...I forgot...cuz you gotta have rules? Oh, wait, to ensure fair competition! Well, that's great. But a set of rules that arbitrarily bans intersexed people, while permitting Margo Dydek to play in the same competition as Dawn Staley, has nothing to do with ensuring fair competition.
you just got done telling me that you didn't know of the world of gender-restricted sports, and now you're sayng that "gender defines this field of play"? Way to twist my words, there. Gender defines womens sports' field of play. Of course, womens sport is gender-restricted. As I said a long time ago, that's its purpose. And it has absolutely no bearing in the existence or absence of an unrestricted field of competition in the same discipline. If your answer to this is, "Yes, but you have to draw the line somewhere," we're now going in circles. Probably. Mind you, I'm not especially in favor or against moving this line past intersexed people. But a line will be drawn, and it will still be arbitrary, and someone is still going to end up being just on the wrong side of the line, and you'll again be the first to denounce this injustice. The only way to end this is to remove all lines, and have only one field of competition.
you'll again be the first to denounce this injustice Well, hurray for me. I'd rather be among the first to denounce an injustice than among those hanging to the rear, or acting as apologists. We all have our choices to make, I guess.
Sorry about the personal jab. My point is that it is not an injustice. Exclusion is an unpleasant but necessary artefact of ideas such as womens sports. If you want to end exclusion, you need to end womens sports, and have men, women, intersexuals, transexuals and everyone else compete together. I'll grant you one victory: we are going in circles.
l_b_b, qbert has a point though. Since every person is unique, none of us are ever exactly equal (except in theory) in any situation. There will always be unavoidable inequity in any and every group. If you define it as an injustice every time someone is just a hair outside of the rules, then there are injustices in almost every competitive situation. What's worse, more often than not, if you eliminate one injustice, you'll end up creating others. You may want to rethink the Staley/Dydek argument as well. You're comparing apples and oranges. Soudarajan competes in an individual sport while Staley and Dydek are each part of a team. Their size, skills and style of play are very different even though they're playing the same game, but that's not a problem because the demands of their respective positions are different. They'd never be expected to compete against one another in a head to head sport where the size difference would be overwhelmingly decisive (weightlifting or boxing, for example). In many other individual sports, they'd both be eligible to compete, but not necessarily very capable because their physiology doesn't fit with the demands of that particular competition. I have no doubt that Staley would be a better gymnast or sprinter, while Dydek would most likely be better with strength related activities like the shot put. None of that matters because their game is basketball and they're each well suited to the demands of their given positions. Your comparison implies that the size difference somehow makes it as unfair for them to compete against one another as it would be for a woman who has male characteristics that give her an advantage over the standard woman to compete against a field comprised of just such women. That comparison simply doesn't wash. Remember, there is a qualifier here. If it's demonstrated that Soudarajan has some masculine characteristics, but none that give her an unusual edge (such as high testosterone levels, etc.), then there should be no objection to having her compete against other women. On the other hand, if she does have demonstrable advantages, and your interest is truly fairness, then you cannot expect all the other athletes to compete against her.
If it's demonstrated that Soudarajan has some masculine characteristics, but none that give her an unusual edge (such as high testosterone levels, etc.), then there should be no objection to having her compete against other women. On the other hand, if she does have demonstrable advantages, and your interest is truly fairness, then you cannot expect all the other athletes to compete against her. I don't believe the gender testing does this. It doesn't test whether the differences between Soudarajan gave her an advantage, it just tests whether there are differences. I think that is a pretty important distinction. To the extent that such differences may give an athlete an advantage over other athletes, then it is worth discussing where to draw the line. However, if we are not sure if there are advantages and we only know that there are differences, then excluding athletes like Soudarajan is unfairly harsh.
Sorry about the personal jab. No need to apologize at all. As I said before, I'm perfectly happy with where I am on the action/inaction spectrum when it comes to injustice. What you said is a compliment, not a jab. We will have to agree to disagree on this. You believe that the only way to avoid excluding intersexed people from sports is to eliminate women's sports. I believe you're wrong. Furthermore, while I grant you that slippery-slope and circus-pony arguments may be strong enough to carry the day when some matters are concerned, I'm strongly against them as the sole support for a policy of exclusion. When we're talking about not allowing people to play, I like stronger arguments than vague hypotheticals. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
l_b_b, qbert has a point though. Since every person is unique, none of us are ever exactly equal (except in theory) in any situation. There will always be unavoidable inequity in any and every group. If you define it as an injustice every time someone is just a hair outside of the rules, then there are injustices in almost every competitive situation. I thought that was more my point than qbert's point, actually: that inequities exist throughout the world of sports, but we're very selective in how and where we regulate them -- and that this area, by objective standards, does not cry out for regulation more than many other inequities that continue to go unregulated. As for the Staley and Dydek apples-and-oranges argument, you're right that basketball is different than track; however, it's silly to deny that being tall gives you a big advantage in basketball, and that the difference between the two is enormous. There are all kinds of things that convey physiological advantages in sports, so why is this one important to single out? It's never an "all other things being equal" situation with real live human beings; somebody got more protein when they were four, someone else grew up in a subtropical climate and had more year round training opportunities, someone else came from money and had the best coaches. Why the overwhelming need to rectify this supposed inequity, and let all the other ones go?
Hey...did somebody say "pony?" Hardy har har, har hardy.
l_b_b, you're right that we're selective about what we regulate, but we have little choice. Since it's impossible for any of us to anticipate every scenario, we could never regulate all the possible situations. Hence, we regulate some things and not others. Since I know from experience that you're very intelligent, I'm certain that you already recognized that fact. Under those circumstances, it seems to me that your argument is more about what we choose to regulate than the fact that we don't regulate absolutely everything. I get your stance that this situation doesn't demand the level of regulation that it seems to be drawing, and I'm not sure I disagree...and there's the rub. Whether or not I agree with you, I think it's a certainty that we'll never be able to set regulations that everyone agrees on. There will always be those who think a regulation goes too far or not far enough, or that a group should be exempt, or one that is exempt shouldn't be, etc., etc., etc. Still, that doesn't mean that you should hesitate to argue for what you believe to be the most equitable outcomes. Just realize that others will probably have different opinions, and often their reasoning will be just as well thought out and valid as yours, and since we can't regulate everything, the only other way to eliminate these arguments would be to eliminate all regulation as qbert suggested. As to the Staley/Dydek debate, I still think that you're putting too much emphasis on size. It's only one factor, after all. Staley's speed and agility nicely offset Dydek's size and strength. Would you also argue that AI would be overmatched by any of the NBA 7+ footers? He plays on the same court with them all the time, and he seems to get by fairly well, don't you think? I get the point that you were trying to make. I just didn't think that the Staley/Dydek example was an apt one.
Heh. It is, in fact, the case that Staley has gone up against Dydek and scored. That's one reason why I chose that example.
