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Storm in a D cup I reckon....
I think that is kinda fucked up. It appears someone at the ACA just didn't give a shit about getting their facts straight and are blinded by their support of the LGBT community. IMO - and from what sources I have read over the years, Rationality Rules is 100% correct in his impression of Transgender women in sports. The muscle mass of men and women is different regardless of hormone levels. As are bone and body structure. I don't know why he would issue an apology or say that he was off track on his previous statements. Men should not be participating in women's sports. A transgender man is a "Transgender Man" and not a woman.
The irony that the ACA are acting like a religious group... jeez!
Why do all atheists need to follow a trend of beliefs?
I have trans friends and fully support their rights, however, I do agree there is serious issues in regards to sporting competition.
Neither does that make one transphobic nor non-atheist.
We are entitled to our views, what is of the utmost importance is keep an open dialogue, respect one another's views, try to understand the points being made and discuss it rationally.
With that said, I haven't watched much material of theirs of late, like the athiest experience.
It feels like a Jerry Springer show these days with the same idiots phoning in and the same points discussed.
I'll go a step further. SHAME ON THE ATHEIST EXPERIENCE. Abandoning one of their Children for growing up and having a different opinion than the one they support. THAT WAS A SHIT MOVE BY THE ACA.
Cult mentality doesn't go away, it just changes it's environment and appearance. We are all susceptible to bad ideas and the only way to ensure that we do not continue to hold them is invite a discussion in which all sides get to equally participate.
Witch hunt mentality is, in my opinion, a subset of cult mentality.
delete
First I have heard about this fellow Rationality Rules. Watched a few of his youtube videos. Interesting times we live in when we are arguing about who can play sports based on their asserted gender. Caster Semenya is being discriminated against because she has naturally higher levels of testosterone and will have to take hormones to continue racing. She is a woman racing against women. But her serum testosterone levels are too high.
Agreed, it's a travesty that Semenya is basically being punished for just simply being a biologically superior female.
Would they tie Usain Bolts shoes together if he was still running, simply because he is perfectly built to do what he excels in?!
Reminds me of Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" and the Handicapper General.
@ Semenya: The OP was about Transphobia. How does that apply to Semenya. She was gifted as a child. Did Rationality Rules mention her? Semenya is a transgender only by the broadest of definitions. She was born gifted and is using her gift.
"The combination of her rapid athletic progression and her appearance culminated in the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) asking her to take a sex verification test to ascertain whether she was female." ... "in July 2010, she was cleared again to compete in women's competitions." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caster_Semenya
LEAVE HER THE FUCK ALONE.
I have absolutely no issue with this woman. She has been through enough and proved her sexuality beyond a doubt. We should probably apologize for our intrusion. At the same time we do want sport competitions to be fair. We do test for performance enhancing drugs like testosterone. "Testosterone and other anabolic-androgenic steroids enhance athletic performance in men and women. As a result, exogenous androgen is banned from most competitive sports." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3264812/ Getting tested should simply be chalked up as being part of the life of any superstar in sports these days.
I see no problem in testing athletes. I have no problem banning a "MAN" from competing in a woman's event. I think it is fair to check for testosterone levels to insure all athletes are playing on a level field. Once that is done, leave them the fuck alone and let them compete. END OF STORY!!!
The fact that we test testosterone levels is pertinent to everything we are discussing, I find it interesting and glad we are doing so as a society. I find this entire subject fun.
I have watched this since Steven posted his video. Was notified the second it was posted and watched it. From what I seen elsewhere it is ONLY the BoD. Matt did not agree with it.
rmfr
WOW the ACA is acting like a certain group of people. I wonder who? Hmmmm.....................
Seems "free thinking" and having your own opinion is only valid when it agrees with their own opinion and pushes their own agenda. Thank you OP.
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@SFT
Is it ever moral for a 50+ year old man to rape a nine year old child?
Try showing some integrity for once, and answer that question and the others you have run away from, and people on here might just care what you think. You are here to pedal superstition, and have no interest in honest debate.
@SFT - Finally something we can agree on. That is the exact message I sent them.
"How Christian of you. Abandoning one of your children because he happened to grow up and have a different opinion than you." tv@atheist-community.org The way you back-stabbed Reality Rules was unconscionable.
Having taken in more information on this subject and seen the original video, read ACA's response and watched the OPs link to RR's video.. I'm still stumped by what he is perceived to have done wrong.
Firstly his original video, I personally found it to be humbly and thoughtfully done in comparison to any other approach I have seen on the subject of transgender athletes.
I also appreciated his candour in stating he was happy to be proven wrong and to approach him with the facts if they were available.
The ACA essentially labelled him a transphobe for breaching the sensitive subject matter.
This not only is false given RR's prior work, but is the standard political stance/action taken when one cannot adequately defeat a claim and/or arguement.
I for what it's worth agree there is a serious issue here and the actual science (biology) agrees, despite social sciences attempts to underpin evidence and empirical data.
It concerns me that biologically born women could have their entire athletic history destroyed with ease, look at australias power lifting trans athlete who has immediately smashed all records.
Men and women are very different biologically and Testosterone isn't the only sticking point.
Consider if American high school track sensation Matthew Bolin identified as a female and ran in the Olympics...
The youngster would absolutely destroy Florence Griffith-Joyner decades standing record.
Boiler recently ran 9.98 albeit wind assisted, which smashes Joyners 10.49 record with ease.
After recalculating due to wind it was still 10.13.
I'm all for trans people being treated with dignity and respect, we are all humans and all descended from the same common ancestor.
But we have to acknowledge that there is two biological sexes, that is how we evolved to our current state and how we continue past one generation
I would suggest an open event, as big as the Olympics where everyone can compete on a level playing field, irregardless or gender, sex, race or what have you...
But this also should be discussed with biological female athletes, they deserve a say on how the feel about this and I would wholeheartedly support whatever they choose.
My real gripe though is with ACA's and other sections of society, using certain words in order to shut down debate, critical thinking and free thought.
Dismissing someone as a transphobe, racist, supremacist or whatever label you choose, without evidence is simply the go to of the intellectually devoid coward.
Its bollocks!
We need to maintain a fair forum in society for nothing to be taboo, providing its discussed honestly, openly and with respect.
This is what I thought ACA stood for, alas, I was wrong.
It is an interesting debate. Especially since the 2 sides do not coincide well at a meeting point, but instead sail right past each other.
To me there are two valid view points:
1 - people should be able to compete as whatever gender they choose to go by, who cares what biological sex is, it is just a sport a competition, may the best win, transgender people face difficult lives and could use our support.
2 - due to inherent traits of biological sex one sex can have a signficant advantage over the other sex due to the biological realities. The competition can get completely unfair to one sex if they must compete against the other sex that has biological advantages (almost always a male sex that has a signficant advantage over female sex in sports.) Many professional sports are carefully regulated to prevent cheating and other unfair advantage, a person who is biologically male declaring as female and plays in female only sports can have a signficant advantage and this is unfair to all the women in that sport. (Especially if the sport requires upper body strength to be competitive.)
Me personally I think the only decent solution is a rather ugly one. For female sports competition at the professional level, test need to be done, (similar to what is already done for other cheating methods,) that screens for biological markers. And that if these biological markers exceed what any strictly biological woman can achieve naturally the person is banned/disciplined from high level professional play, just like an athlete juiced up on steroids, testosterone, blood doping etc will get screened and subsequently banned.
So what gender a person identifies does not matter, what their biological markers add up to does in the interest of fairness.
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This issue has stirred in me the thought that Matt D. (A once wannabe preacher) is actually running a little cult of homosexual, transgender, trans-sexual, non-believers in Austin, Texas. These actions appear to be just like the actions of some Christian organization with an "in-group / out group" mentality. (You are either in the group and in complete agreement with us, or outside the group and damned to ridicule and criticism.) I have also watched all the videos and found nothing unfounded or horrific in them There is nothing at all "transphobic" in them. Having biological men performing in women't competitions is a serious issue and certainly needs to be addressed. I fully agree with the testing that has been done. As far as I am concerned, part of being a professional athlete is testing for performance enhancing drugs and testosterone is certainly performance enhancing. Having a fair and level playing field for all of the athletes is essential to a fair competition.
With that said, I also watched the video of the woman complaining about transgenders and how she was beaten out of going to the Olympics by two of them. (I don't recall her name.) In my opinion, this was complete bullshit and just sensationalism on the part of the NEWS networks to grab viewers. (Create an issue where there is none.) The woman was a sore loser and that is the truth of the story. The women accused of being transgender had been tested and examined. END OF STORY. Nothing unfair here. Get on with life.
The problem with testing only for testosterone is that its not the only biological different and there may be exceptional cases, such as Castor Sememya... who in my opinion has been treated woefully.
If shes a biologically born women, then the IOC should shut up and get on with it.
But what needs to be considered is the production of haemoglobins, fast twitch muscle fibres, bone density, muscle mass, metabolism and so fourth.
There is a huge difference.
This is why normally big standard biologically male trans athletes that have transitioned to female are smashing records where they compete and female to male trans athletes are not.
You could take every female gold medalist from the last Olympics and put their times or distances against males and they are not going anywhere.
A trans games has been mooted but this should be up to the trans community, if they supported it then so would I.
An open event irregardless of sex would be more fair and not so divisive.
@An open event irregardless of sex would be more fair and not so divisive.
The top women athletes come no place close to the top men athletes. Open events would not help. Events would have to be handicapped and that SUCKS! I have been in handicapped events, won by a good margin and still lost. Can't stand them.
Sure, I was speaking from a purely "I want to test myself against the best" kind of outlook.
This open games would have no medals or prize money but just simply an open forum.
A trans games sounds cool on the face of it, but would they feel they are being essentially declared as something other than what they feel they are? And hence will take offence to being forced to compete in something separate?
I suppose that's down to the community.
" would they feel they are being essentially declared as something other than what they feel they are?"
As an atheist I've always gone by 'a delusion, no matter how deeply believed, is still a delusion'
There is serious scientific research that tends to indicate that in many (if not all) cases, 'transgenderism' is more of a mental escape strategy. Among other things, they tend to occur in social clusters which would make no sense if this were actually biological. It is also very often associated by a range of additional emotional issues (drug use, depression, suicide) regardless of whether they've had surgery or not. But universities have actually pulled funding in some cases, buried papers in others, admitting that the political pressure makes the subject too dangerous to touch.
When science starts bending to political correctness, we have a very serious problem. Camille Paglia (hardly a fundie religionist) has paralleled this with other societies that collapsed (and as you can guess, she too is now under attack)
[incidentally a change to title IX rules which would force all schools to close their eyes and pretend that boys wire girls as applied to sports has just passed the House. Every Democrat voted in favor. Progress? or the end of women's sports]
Hardly surprising given the amount of prejudice, discrimination, and bullying they face, even after gender reassignment. Some of the question regarding treating transgender people with dignity and equality may not be possible to solve, and sport may be one of those, but gender dysphoria is a very real condition, and like gay and bisexual people who commit suicide every year in the face of relentless prejudice and bigotry the need and deserve equality as far as is possible.
However it occurs to me the answer might be in the fact that we don't seem to be discussing transgender people who are biologically women but identify as a man wanting to participate in male sport, unless I've missed something, and admittedly it's been a distracting week to put it mildly.
@NeverHappened: If they had surgery would that not qualify them as "Transexual?" If they were born with both sexes they are "Hermaphrodites." My understanding of the woman in question is that she was indeed born a woman. Am I wrong? Example...
The Caster Semenya ruling is a disgrace on the sporting world
Rooted in misogynoir. Forced to take medication to lower her testosterone levels though she was born a woman. Is there some special level of testosterone that permits one to tell the difference between a man and a woman?
https://www.huckmag.com/perspectives/opinion-perspectives/the-caster-sem...
Sadly, the Board of Governors (not all members) has adopted a stance where you follow all of their guidelines, or you are branded a heretic. Just like the Spanish Inquisition. This is a sad day where we should be pushing for tolerance for ALL.
I am not stating that Rationality Rules is correct, or incorrect. But we must allow him to state his opinion without penalty.
I think doing a variation of what they do in golf with handicaps might work. Personally, it seems preferable to genderizing sports.
As for the “do as I say, not as I do” shite, some self-examination may be in order for a few folks.
@Cog
Matt D. has stated that he doesn't support the decision of ACA's board of directors.
@Meepwned: Good for Matt: He is correct again. It was a complete shit thing to do. You got a link. Will he say it publicly? I sent them an Email, I wonder if others did as well. They have to be getting a lot of flack from atheists (I would think). What a shit way to treat someone who is articulate, intelligent, and who basically supports you. If you disagree, why not have a discussion or a debate. What the ACA did is just FUCKED UP.
@Cog
I can't find a link, and I highly doubt he will say so publicly. RR mentioned in his video addressing not only the decision, but the majority reaction, that Matt didn't support the decision.
Edit: Also, they finally opened up a channel on their discord for discussing the decision. From what I've read 99.9% of people are not in favor of it.
Sent another E-mail today president@atheistcommunity.org Feel free to do the same. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3uw4O_6eGc
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