Interesting Links for 03-10-2014

[andrewducker]

• Sport & gender: A history of bad science & 'biological racism'
  (tags: sport gender lgbt testosterone )
• What to do if you've overdosed on the internet
  (tags: internet addiction comic funny )
• Consent is not a contract - and automating it is a really stupid idea
  (tags: consent contracts relationships sex )
• Making Fast-Paced Multiplayer Networked Games is Hard
  (tags: programming games network )
• Apple blacklists tech journo following explicit bendy iPhone vid
  (tags: Apple journalism iphone censorship )
• Why our search for “monsters” is blinding us to the realities of sexual abuse
  (tags: rape abuse )
• Scotland exempt from Tories’ Human Rights Act axe
  (tags: conservatives Scotland rights )
• Former Top Official Says Kim Jong-un Is No Longer in Control of North Korea
  (tags: NorthKorea vianwhyte )
• Livejournal sued, defends its users, and refuses to hand over their identities.
  (tags: law LiveJournal )
• Human rights at risk in Scotland too
  (tags: rights Scotland )
• The Paedophile Hunter review – dark and disturbing
  (tags: paedophilia tv police review )

Comments

[altamira16]

I read about the people in your first link in a trans-excluding feminist hate blog. It was really interesting stuff though completely hateful. Basically, female is getting narrowly defined by estrogen to the advantage of trans-women and the disadvantage of women with genetic quirks like the ones mentioned in that article.

Male has no analogous definition. We are not declaring men as having too much testosterone or too much estrogen to play. By defining female this way, trans-women that have been trans-women for two years are being allowed to play in women's sports. I didn't think much of this until I saw that this rule is being applied in mixed martial arts where a trans-gender woman has severally injured her most recent opponent. And this nonsense where a 6'4" 52-year-old trans-woman is allowed on a women's college basketball team.

[andrewducker]

It's a perennial problem - we divide sports into "men" and "women" because otherwise in most sports women wouldn't be able to compete at the top level. But then we end up having to put rules in place that deal with the grey areas, and they never do so to everyone's satisfaction.

Possibly they ought to divide up sports by other methods instead - basketball could be done by height, while ones where testosterone does make a difference could be divided up by levels of that. It works for weight-lifting, where the weight of the contestant makes a difference what group they are entered into.

[altamira16]

There is also different bone density and different body fat ratio for men and women.

[andrewducker]

Sounds like we're going to have to compare a whole bunch of different stats, assign people an overall score, and then have different leagues for different scores.