Ran

You are hardly the only person who has trans friends and family and loved ones. I'm in the same club. This doesn't really matter for anything, however. I have no responsibility for what other people want to think or say. The IOC study, when you read it, has, sadly, a lot of substantial flaws, like the fact that the transwomen participants were substantially less fit than the rest of the group. But the biggest flaw is a self-own -- they correct for height and weight, so while the performance of transwomen may seem worse than that of ciswomen in relative terms, in absolute terms they are in fact still superior. This is because height and weight (re: muscle density, fat vs lean) are two things that male puberty plays a big part in, and which hormone treatment only affects so much (or not at all). The absolute superior performance of transwomen in handgrip strength is particularly noteworthy, since handgrip strength is often used as a proxy for general strength. Joanna Harper led a review of studies that's worth reading. She was behind the 2016 IOC policy that allowed Caster Semenya and others to participate, based on her research (including a study of sub-elite distance runners), but afterward she said that she now believed they were wrong on that policy, and that a new policy was needed. She is a transwoman athlete herself.

No, but they give us evidence of what happens to physically fit transwomen who go on hormones. If anything, I'd suspect at the absolute elite level, the margins would be higher after hormone regimens. Your typical boy's state high school champion in various athletics would take the Olympic gold medal in the women's category, by as much as a 10% margin in some events. And they're 17 and 18 year olds, still not fully developed and without world-class level training, facilities, support, etc. It may be that blocking puberty at 14 or 15 may well be enough, and that the current ruling of no natal puberty at all is unnecessary, really, but we'll need more time to figure it out. Do you know where I'd look up information about that? Cycling is one sport I don't really follow. Wikipedia has some information but it seems to suggest she stopped competing well before she transitioned.

Most elite competitive athletics events are decided by 1% margins or less. 9% is huge. I believe the general view is that males have between a 10% and a 30% percent advantage in athletics, depending on the sport. Hormone suppression only removes some of that advantage. Per one biomechanics of sports resarch, the advantage of black elite athletes in sprinting is perhaps estimated to being 1.5% (and, similarly, the advantage of white elite athletes in swimming is estimated to being about 1.5% as well -- apparently Asian swimmers may in theory be even better, but they are not as tall on average, a significant disadvantage).

Then what's shameful or wrong about Trans Olympics? People are fooling themselves into thinking that hormone suppression is all you need to level the playing field between transwomen and ciswomen, in many sports. Per the study I noted earlier, hormone suppression and estrogen therapy for transwomen soldiers lowered their run time advantage over ciswomen from 12% to ... 9%. Because length of stride, narrowness of hips and angle of motion, etc., all play a factor in these things, and they don't go away due to hormones. Height and length of reach matters in a lot of sporting events. Transwomen will on average have advantages there, and in other areas, and it has to do with their natal sex and puberty.There's just ... you know, a lot of things that goes into why we separate the sports between the sexes, and it's not just testosterone, but the whole process of androgenizing. ETA: Of course, re: puberty, it's reasonable to allow transwomen athletes who transitioned before puberty and never went through male puberty, which is I believe the current rule as it applies to the Olympics. This raises some entirely different questions and issues, but it seems, in terms of science and common sense both, a reasonable approach until such time as either we learn more and differently or we develop other means to permit competitive participation.

How do I see them? Say it plainly, please. You're allowed to call me a transphobe, if you feel that fits the bill. Is it? I find it hard to read anything other than a rejection of the idea that trans athletes may need to have their own sports divisions to be able to compete fairly. This goes for transmen, too, who, bless them, compete in male sports with no real complaints despite the fact that they know they are (in most sports) at serious disadvantage. Ditto. I've no particular idea what sports are at issue. But in general, the US has a history of legislation that relates to sex in sports (Title IX) and recognizes that there's a reason for a division of the sexes in many sports.

So the athletes in the Special Olympics and Paralympics are just some "rainbow glitter"? This says a lot more about how you see them than you seem to realize.

It obviously isn't. If I had said "other functional disabilities", I'd be saying that, but I am not. Stop looking for reasons to be offended, please. Nope. Is being mendacious so easily come to you? I'd already cited at least one Olympic sport where trans athletes aren't at all an issue. But who here takes issue with a Trans Olympics for those sports where it is in fact an issue? I wouldn't.

Indeed. The very nature of competitive sports creates a hierarchy.

Many people are born who simply cannot compete in a sport they might like to compete in. Such is life. As trans people become a larger part of the population, there's no great reason there can't be sports divisions for them specifically, not unlike how we see for various functional disabilities at the Paralympics. Or alternatively we get good enough at the science of sport that we can handicap accurately and create new divisions that mix the sexes but remain fair to participants.

@karaddin My understanding is that the vast majority of transwomen do not have the surgery, and I'd guess this goes for transwomen athletes as well. But as I said, a one-size-fits-all policy doesn't seem right -- there's all kinds of transwomen, including those who do not take hormones, much less don't have gender-affirming surgeries. But the point of the research I linked is that even with well-controlled testosterone, there are physical advantages puberty gives that don't disappear at all. Skeletal structure isn't going to change, density of muscle nuclei is not changing or changing only very slowly, etc.

On Blackthorne:

Transwomen athletes retain sizable physical advantages over ciswomen (the Air Force data is particularly interesting), and their "advantage" comes from having been born in the 50% who are the opposite sex. This isn't like Michael Phelps, a freak of nature with half a dozen weird genetic traits that all combine to make him the best competitive swimmer ever -- the vast majority of his advantage versus female swimmers comes simply from having been born male and having undergone puberty, the rest is just the gravy that put him over the top of other elite male competitors. Hormonalization does not reduce transwomens' elite athletic performance sufficiently to put them on an even playing field with their ciswomen sisters in many sports according to the way sports work now. I agree, a one-size-fits-all ban is inappropriate. Different sports will see different variations in advantage, or even none at all -- I follow competitive horse jumping (Henrik von Eckermann won the world cup final again, second year in a row!) and no one would care about a transwoman competitor. Hell, they probably already exist. But then, there's no gender divisions because it doesn't actually matter to performance. But in the sports where it does matter, and there are many, well, it does matter to competitors in those sports, and they have a right to be treated fairly. In the US and UK, yes, but I have to say that the Nordics, Germany, etc. are much less affected by the politics of the Anglosphere. But who says we can't look at these aspects separately? Attributing opposition to unfair inclusion of some transgender athletes in some female sports to being a proxy for discomfort with the existence of trans individuals looks a lot like an ad hominem to me. I happily accept their existence, for reasons both obvious and probably unobvious. I expect you, too, do so. But with increased visibility and acceptance, it is incumbent on society to actually figure out where fairness lies for everybody. Fairness in sport, in medical care, under the law, etc.

Well, yes. Women have far more limited financial opportunities in sports, as you so smartly point out. Which makes fairness all that much more important, for those who want to make careers or go to schools in athletic scholarships.

Does Mechwarrior have the AI companion/co-pilot of the mech/exoskeletion chatting with you? I don't recall that from when I last played the games, but it's a big part of Titanfall.

I feel like I would put money on the odds that at least one of the writers/creators/producers has played Titanfall.

I'm not sure one needs to do it just to win a medal. It's enough that the result is you might win a medal and you act on it. Laurel Hubbard comes to mind. She's someone who, pre-transition, was a junior national competitor (never competed internationally) and stopped competing in 2001, and then nearly two decades later started again, entered international competition for the first time, and won a place to compete in the Olympics, bumping Samoa's Iuniarra Sipaia (she's qualified for the 2024 Olympics, it turns out, so good on her). She didn't go through it all just to win a medal, but it's a pretty extraordinary journey for someone who had stopped competing entirely two decades earlier. (ETA: I should hasten to add that Hubbard did nothing wrong. She competed under the rules that existed at that time. The rules simply were wrong from a competitive fairness sense.) Hubbard bombed out at the Olympics, but then again she was in her mid-40s at the time, a decade or two older than her competitors. If there are monetary prizes, sponsorship money, endorsement money, and/or scholarships involved, sports that have traditionally divided the sexes should probably still do so, at least until such time as we come up with some alternative categorization of competition (.e.g handicap systems) to level the field. For things like youth sports (at lower levels, anyways) and intramural co-ed sports, safety should really be the only consideration. As to those who say, well, does it really matter, it's just sports... By 2028, global sports are expected to be a $680 billion industry. People make careers out of it. In the US, young athletes can get scholarships that may change the courses of their lives. Unfair competition for these opportunities is, well, unfair, and does actually matter to those people.

Still funny now, IMO. But these Deadpool movies really do nothing for me, and this seems no different, even with Jackman as Wolverine wearing the original costume.

Star Wars TV programs since Disney bought Lucasfilm that are kid-friendly: The Clone Wars (return), Rebels, Resistance, The Bad Batch, Visions, Tales, Young Jedi Adventures, The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wab Kenobi, Ahsoka, the forthcoming The Acolyte and Skeleton Crew, Jedi Temple Challenge Star Wars TV programs since Disney bought Lucasfilm that are not kid-friendly: Andor. Let the adults have one serious dramatic TV show. Some of us even like (some of) the other stuff.

Nope. Move along, move along.

Andor is a lot deeper, thematically-speaking, which may be where you're running into a road block, much as with the ending of Cyberpunk 2077.

Even expanded access requires that a regulatory body signs off on there being sufficient understanding to know the probable risks and benefits in relation to the risks of harms for not giving it. It's a lot easier to give someone compassionate access to a possible life-saving drug or procedure when the evidence is very clear that the alternative is likely death. In this case, neither harms nor benefits are really understood very well. As to puberty blockers, it's interesting that the German countries have come up with their own guidelines. One decision they've made is that long-running gender dysphoria in childhood is not a reason to prescribe puberty blockers prior to the onset of puberty, as they see evidence that the hormonal jolt of puberty can resolve dysphoria. Only if dysphoria persists for some period after the onset of puberty would they conside the use of blockers to halt the process.

In Sweden and Finland, the results of their findings and their recommendations were that because of the low evidence base, blockers and hormones should only be given to minors in research contexts, i.e. with the intention of collecting data to improve medical knowledge. This is something that, as I understand it, is a difference between the care that had been given in the UK previously, where detailed outcome results have not been collected for study despite no one really knowing anything about the outcomes of these relatively novel approaches to treating children. I imagine your father's experimental care are part of research and clinical trials where he's signing on board with having his results shared for the advancement of knowledge, and I think even he might question the ethics of receiving experimental care without an appropriate protocol to help understand the efficacy of that care. I think the situation is said to be even worse in the US regarding this care for minors, per the NYT's reporting. Very, very little oversight or data collection in relation to what one would want for any care with a low evidence base.

As Sweden and Finland were mentioned up thread, I think it's relevant to remark that the review has been in the news here as our countries were cited as outliers. Why? Well, per the Cass review, the Endocrine Society and WPATH collaborated with one another on their guidelines, which when released were unsurprisingly complimentary to one another. Then various countries adopted protocols based on their readings of those guidelines. And then when WPATH released WPATH 8, it cited these various countries' protocols and the Endocrine Society's guidelines (which were based on WPATH 7 and the Endocrine Society recommendations written in association with WPATH) as support for their latest guidelines. The Cass review cited thie circularity of this as an obvious issue. Sweden and Finland stood out for doing fully independent systematic reviews with a high level of rigor, and were also the only examined national health institutes that included ethical reviews as part of their process in determining their recommendations. So, yes, a bunch of nations could indeed very easily have found themselves in a position of recommending care with a very low evidence base. That's I think the main point of the review's findings.

Tim Cain on the show, with some thought on seeming lore changes. He's fairly cool with it all, but

A moment of digging in his Substack and you will see that, no, he was not for Trump. He thought Trump was as bad as every other politician, that he's as involved in the "global Ponzi scheme" alongside Peter Thiel, the Clintons, the Bushes, Elon Musk, etc. He was a fairly typical Illuminati-style conspiracy theorist, who with great conviction burned himself alive to try and open our eyes.