In fairness to the original question Moliere posted and ignoring the emotional examples and the questionable appeals to authority, simply agreeing that when someone claims they are a certain gender they have the right to compete as that gender can result in complications that are potentially (or increasingly) dangerous up to and including life threatening. These questions need to be addressed.hepcat wrote: ↑Thu Feb 21, 2019 10:54 am I think Fireball hit the nail on the head. The question of fairness due to physiology is a logical one, but it gets buried by those who want to view it through the lens of prejudice and downplay it as ridiculous, instead of trying to address it as a serious question.
Outside of competition, it is my opinion that it costs society nothing to simply accept and support assertions of gender identity, and provides many benefits in lots of different ways to both the person in question and society in general. That doesn't hold true for competition, particularly highly physical competition.
While I don't agree that there is a clearly defined hard line separating genders in gender based competition, neither do I think it should be whichever gender a person identifies as is the gender they are allowed to compete as. Just because we want equality and want societal justice for all doesn't mean we ignore realities and pretend what we want to be true is true and condemn others who won't join the group delusion.
Max posted the IOC rules which I think are a good starting place, because presumably they are giving this reasoned and thorough thought backed by science. This is their bread and butter after all, and they've been at this a long time with much international scrutiny and pressure. I don't actually know that's true (reasoned opinion backed by science) nor do I want to put myself in a position to second guess the IOC. I withhold judgement on whether they are the final arbiter on what *should* be the guidelines, as any single organization can be monolithic and potentially narrative or politically driven. They certainly have every right to make their own rules, I'm just not willing to evaluate them based on my limited understanding of the entirety of complications that surround transgender/gender competition.
Like I said, the IOC is probably a good place to start. Whether it ends there or not, I'll take a wait and see attitude.