mormont

30 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

The 5ft basketball player would statistically still have a significant advantage over a 5ft CIS female. 

Well, not in height. And whether she in practice had any other advantage would depend on many other factors, some of which (but not all of which) are influenced by sex at birth. But the point is that regardless of which of them have the advantage, it's always the trans woman and never the cis woman who would be banned. So the ban is ban for being trans per se. 

1 hour ago, BigFatCoward said:

Its not because they are trans per se that they are being excluded, and I think you know that.  

In many cases, it is, though: it's specifically trans athletes that are banned. The exclusion is solely for those who have additional height, etc. because they are trans, and not for cis women who also happen to have that physiological advantage. (Indeed, those women are likely to be celebrated and sought after.)

That makes it a ban because they are trans per se:  the supposed advantage is an ostensible reason, which is not to say that it's necessarily a cynical pretence, but it is to say that it isn't the actual criterion on which those athletes are being excluded. As others have pointed out, a trans basketball player who is 5' tall would be banned in many places despite having no advantage. 

As for the rest of the thread, I think the posts here show what I was saying is true - we all have strong feelings about this, that go beyond what you'd expect for the scale of the actual issue. That's also a pretty good reason to reflect before posting: we want a civil discussion, and that's harder to have when emotions are high. 

2 hours ago, TrackerNeil said:

I suppose one could say the same of those who are, say, supportive of the use of puberty blockers, or of the inclusion of trans women in women's sports, right? It's not just about medicine or science or sports; it's all a proxy for comfort with the existence of trans individuals. I just don't know where that view gets us.

One could: I think I was pretty clear that this is not directed at any one view, but the discussion in general. I have strong feelings about these issues because I have trans friends, work with young trans adults, and have strong views about the rights of young adults in general to control their own lives and take their own decisions.

At the same time, I grew up in and live in the same society as everyone else: until I was an adult, trans folks were the butt of playground jokes and nothing else, gender roles were firmly defined and straying from them got mockery at best and made you a target for physical bullying more often than not, and not conforming to your gender assigned at birth was portrayed as inextricably linked to sexual perversion. These were prejudices literally beaten into me at times, and I've had to work to counter them - they still exist in me, at some level. If that's not the culture you grew up in, then I'm glad. A lot of the young adults I work with grew up questioning that culture, and I'm happy for them. 

18 minutes ago, Ran said:

Many people are born who simply cannot compete in a sport they might like to compete in. Such is life.

But those people generally lack the same genetic advantages that are being considered unfair when they arise as a result of being trans women. 

1 hour ago, Ran said:

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.

That's not really what I'm saying: what I'm saying is that it's a best naive to pretend that our views on the former are not influenced by our views on the latter (which are in turn a product of wider issues we have as a society with gender, sex, sexual attraction, presentation, and so on). 

Any discussion of inclusion of trans athletes that doesn't reckon with those factors is incomplete. 

8 hours ago, Ran said:

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.

This is... unconvincing, as an argument. Lacking any actual evidence that Hubbard, or anyone else, changed sex just to gain an advantage, we're left with the fact that trans athletes (in some sports) gain a natural advantage from their birth and upbringing - but so does everyone else competing at that level. And there's little evidence that the advantage trans athletes have, where they have any, is so disproportionate as to require direct bans to preserve the integrity of women's sport. (Indirect bans, of course, such as limits on testosterone levels, affect some AFAB competitors.)

More relevantly to the thread, like the puberty blockers argument, or trans criminals, this is a problem presented and treated out of all proportion because of the wider political context and it cannot be divorced from that context. It's a proxy, of sorts, for the discomfort we as a society feel about the existence of trans folks, a discomfort we have felt (and still do feel) about other minorities too. But in the case of trans folks, that discomfort is linked to deeper issues with our society's conflicted and difficult attitudes to gender, sex (in both senses) and privacy. We're unsettled when we're forced to think about those, and the existence of trans folks pushes those issues to the forefront.

In other words, when we argue about puberty blockers, or sports, etc. we're not solely arguing about that. We're working out some feelings about the existence of trans folks and their place in our society.

If we truly accepted the existence of trans folks, these arguments would be minor, or non-existent, and regarded as fixable problems or ones we can live with, instead of how we currently treat them.

Scot, protest is a legitimate tool, and no, it doesn't have nuance. But nuance isn't always useful or good. Different tools are suitable for different purposes. Nuance alone would not have won universal suffrage. 

Scot, I'm not sure you understand the difference between a protest and a debating society. 

The Liefeld joke indicates some element of time travel, since it would last have been funny twenty years ago. 

Well, yes: it answers it by avoiding it.

1 hour ago, TrackerNeil said:

If there were evidence of harm, would you change your mind?

The quoted is not my 'mind', though. It's not an opinion, it's an observation. 

With respect to that observation, if the facts change, the facts change. If a medicine does show evidence of harm, the consideration then - made by far more qualified folks than you or I - would be about a balance of the harm versus the benefit. Again, it's not unusual for that to happen, in fact it's commonplace. 

I'm going to try not to be rude here. But there are, we can agree, numerous medical interventions that have weak evidence and many that show evidence of harm, and we're not discussing those. Do you accept, then, that it's not solely the weakness of the evidence or the possibility of evidence of harm that is making you ask that question, and making you so curious about whether these particular interventions cause harm, or should be approved? 

As I've said repeatedly: there's no point in pretending that this is a medical discussion when it is in fact a political one. 

9 hours ago, TrackerNeil said:

OK, then think of recovered memories without McMartin. Or think of lobotomies. There are no lack of examples of my point without getting entangled in a specific example.

Lobotomies, with respect, are an even worse example. Nobody doubted that lobotomies caused irreparable harm. 

If there's no lack of examples, it's hard to understand why the first two comparators that come to your mind are not very comparable.

As for the Cass review and puberty blockers, I quoted previously the actually worrying finding, which is that most of the (very small number) of under-18s being prescribed them were older, with the most common age being 15. There's a suggestion that this was done purely because protocols required they be on puberty blockers for a year before being prescribed gender affirming hormone treatments. No arguments there: if that's true, it's bad medical practice. Drugs should be prescribed on medical need, not to fulfil an administrative requirement. 

But I'll repeat, since it's not been mentioned in this thread yet - the Cass review did not find any evidence that puberty blockers were harmful. Prescribing a medicine where the evidence of benefit is weak, but there is no evidence of harm, is not as unusual as some people seem to imagine. Take this study, for example:

https://blogs.bmj.com/bmjopen/2024/02/15/poor-quality-clinical-data-informing-nice-decisions-on-treatments-in-over-half-of-cases/

What is unusual is that this is a controversial area of medicine. But let's not pretend that it is controversial because of the weakness of the evidence base. Rather, more is being made of the weakness of the evidence base because the area is politically controversial. 

[mod] OK. folks. Let's be clear. One may legitimately argue about whether a particular person, or post, or opinion is or is not 'anti-trans'. But to argue that there is not a substantial anti-trans movement in the world today is straight up gaslighting a group who are currently being oppressed worldwide. It's needlessly offensive to most users and that is why I have my mod hat on. It isn't going to be tolerated as a statement. Simple as that. We would not tolerate that sort of statement about prejudice faced by any other group, and we're not tolerating it about trans folks.

ETA - and the other thing about having the mod hat on: that means if you want to discuss this, take it to PM. It's not open to discussion in thread. [/mod]

There certainly is a lot of disinformation about what the Cass report says, but you would agree that a large chunk of that disinformation comes from the anti-trans side?

As I said when the report was published, if the report has a flaw, it is that Cass was - at best - naive about how the report would be received and used. It was commissioned for political purposes and is being used for political purposes. Largely, ones that are unsympathetic to the idea that trans people should have dignity and equality.

I believe Hilary Cass when she says she wants to see more services and more support for trans kids. But nobody's interested in discussing what care trans kids should receive - only what they shouldn't get. As is the case with so many issues about young people, sadly.

I think it's important also to note that the Cass Review does not conclude that puberty blockers are an unsafe treatment.

We know this because they have said so, explicitly.

https://thekitetrust.org.uk/our-statement-in-response-to-the-cass-review-report/
 

Quote

Does Dr. Cass believe puberty blockers are unsafe drugs? If so, why is OK for them to be prescribed to cis kids and not trans kids?

The Cass Review Report does not conclude that puberty suppressing hormones are an unsafe treatment. The report supports a research study being implemented to allow pre-pubertal children to have a pathway to accessing this treatment in a timely way and with suitable follow up and data collection, to provide the highest quality of evidence for the ongoing use of puberty suppressing hormones as a treatment for gender dysphoria.  

In the data the Cass Review examined, the most common age that trans young people were being initially prescribed puberty suppressing hormones was 15. Dr. Cass’s view is that this is too late to have the intended benefits of supressing the effects of puberty and was caused by the previous NHS policy of requiring a trans young person to be on puberty suppressing hormones for a year before accessing gender affirming hormones. The Cass Review Report recommends that a different approach is needed, with puberty suppressing hormones and gender affirming hormones being available to young people at different ages and developmental stages alongside a wider range of gender affirming healthcare based on individual need.

Any chance we could get the conversation back to contemporary UK politics?

28 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

I agree it is incredibly suspicious, but to the highlighted, i'd be surprised if most people making that have instant access to £5,000.  I don't keep that much in my savings account, i have about 2 grand for emergencies and the rest is tied up in investments.  

About 50% of people have less than a grand, i know the majority of those will be on lower incomes but 90k really isn't that much in the great scheme of things. 

His retired campaign manager had instant access to £5K - £6.5K, in fact. So I'm not buying that as an excuse. 

And in the grand scheme of things, £90K a year really is that much. It puts you in the top 5% of earners. 

So I'll forgo my rant about how shitty our generation is, and how we've no right to criticise younger folks when we are so awful, in favour of highlighting this story, which the headline ('Tory MP suspended over alleged misuse of funds') really does not do justice:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68841840

Quote

A Conservative MP has been suspended by the party following claims he misused campaign funds.

Mark Menzies allegedly asked his former campaign manager for money to pay "bad people" who he said had detained him overnight in a flat, the Times reports.

He has lost the party's whip while an investigation is carried out.

Mr Menzies, who represents the Fylde constituency in Lancashire, told the Times he "strongly disputed" the allegations.

According to the newspaper, Mr Menzies phoned his former campaign manager, now a party volunteer, at 03:15 last December saying he was locked in a flat and needed £5,000 as a matter of "life and death".

The sum was reportedly paid later that morning, by which time it had risen to £6,500, from the personal savings of Mr Menzies' office manager, who was reimbursed from campaign donations, the paper said.

A source close to Mr Menzies told the Times he paid the money because he was scared of what would happen if he refused, but didn't have enough in his own savings.

Mr Menzies offered to repay the funds but claimed local Tories who controlled the account the money came from said he didn't need to, a source told the paper.

I suspect this is one of those times when we won't ever find out the whole story, but clearly, there's a little more to this than 'Tory MP misuses funds'. 

I appreciate that MPs live an expensive life, but this dude gets £90K a year in basic salary and he did not have £5K in the bank even for a matter of life and death? Who were these bad people? How did this situation arise? This is extremely concerning.

There's also another £14,000 of medical bills covered by party money and not repaid. 

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

BREAKING THE LAW EVEN MORE THEN, I SEE

I'm a little confused about kids today, who are simultaneously anarchic visigoths roaming the land secure in their invulnerability to adult disapproval but also oversensitive woke snowflakes who never leave their bedrooms, but one thing's for sure - they aren't to be trusted to make their own decisions.

31 minutes ago, SeanF said:

 Think of the fairly big minority who wished to ban nightclubs for good, during the pandemic.  

Since this is the first I’ve heard of them, and I work in an organisation that has a nightclub, I’m thinking they were not that big of a minority.

2 hours ago, SeanF said:

Agreed.  Prohibition of drug possession has not been notably successful.  All that happens is that distribution of the product passes into the hands of criminals.

And, it’s quite illiberal.

While this evening’s tally shows quite a few Tories have an issue with the measure on that latter principle, or at least think there are votes in that stance n, mostly they’re content with the usual ‘liberty for me, not for thee’ position.

As for supply, since your ‘dealer’ only needs to be someone born before 2008, there seems no space for organised criminal involvement.

2 hours ago, SeanF said:

Truss is quite lacking in self-awareness. 
 

https://x.com/number10cat/status/1780228873247948916?s=61&t=VAHy5UztwfQqm4Pp6VIw0w

Truss has always been a grifter, she's just trying desperately now to horn in on the Trump gravy train.

One of the ironies of the Cass review is that a major theme is the 'toxicity' of the debate. And yet it has immediately been seized on by the most toxic side of that debate, with the aim of ramping up the toxicity even further.

Little has been said about the review's findings that support for young gender questioning kids is hopelessly underfunded, for example, and that the waiting lists are far too long, and that more - not fewer - gender identity specialist clinics are needed. As is so often the case, people are much more concerned with what those in need of care shouldn't get than what they should.

The review of the effectiveness of puberty blockers is open to criticism, but in any case these are so rarely prescribed that to treat it as the most important issue the review was concerned with shows a deeply skewed set of priorities. The conclusions on social transitioning are... odd. People have been socially transitioning for as long as there have been people. To say we don't know enough about the long term harms and benefits of this strikes me as mistaking timidity for caution.

But the saddest part is that whatever Cass' protestations, the review will be - is being - wielded as a club by those who want to deny that trans identities are valid. It was set up for political reasons and will be used for political reasons. Trans and gender questioning kids should benefit from a review that calls for more support, a holistic approach and better quality evidence. Does anyone here think they actually will?

[mod] Folks, please, no tipping talk.

Tipping has seriously caused more bad blood and flaming than virtually any other topic on this board over the years. It's, pardon the pun, off the table as a topic. Thank you. [/mod]

OK anyone except Ran. :p

(You got 3/5.)

But the point remains, Hugo voters have always had their favourites.