"Why alienate 50 per cent of their audience?": Daley Thompson slams British Cycling for transgender athlete policy

None of that means that any human is not male or female.

trinityboy wrote:

None of that means that any human is not male or female.

You mean that you can still arbitrarily classify someone as male or female despite the facts of the matter.

You're a colour-blind person telling us that red is clearly white and blue is clearly black. Your lack of understanding does not define reality.

Another analogy for you - humans are clearly either tall or short. You can not point to a third height for humans that is neither tall nor short.

"Don't tell them about about quantum superposition, Pike!"

chrisonatrike wrote:

"Don't tell them about about quantum superposition, Pike!"

I mentioned polarised lenses once, but I think I got away with it.

chrisonatrike wrote:

"Don't tell them about about quantum superposition, Pike!"

Heisenberg was driving in his car, when the police stopped him. 

Heisnberg wound down his window and said "Can I help you, officer?"

The Officer said, "Do you know how fast you were going, sir?"

Heisenberg replied "No, but I know where I was to a fair degree of certainty" 

Great gag, I've always used a slightly different version:

Heisenberg is pulled over by a traffic cop and accused of speeding. "Where are we officer?" he asks.

"Why, we're in Göttingen."

"Are you certain of that, officer?"

"Absolutely."

"In which case you can't possibly know how fast I was going."

Heisenberg and Schrödinger were driving on the motorway, going to a seminar, when they get pulled over by an official looking cop. The cop comes around to the driver side and says to Heisenberg,

"Did you know you were going 87mph in a 70?"

And so Heisenberg says, "Oh great, now I'm lost".

The cop scratches his head, and says, "Pop the boot, I want to take a look". He walks back, looks in and then walks around to the right side and says to Schrödinger, "Do you know you have a dead cat in the boot?"

Schrödinger says, "I do now".

After some thinking, I quite like the tall/short analogy.

Imagine if you will, a planet much like ours, populated with people much like us. However, they've never categorised people based on genitals, but instead used to have a remarkably strict height based system.

After birth, a doctor examines the new-born and declares (usually based on size) whether the baby is tall or short. Obviously, all babies are small, but they categorise them based on what height they will eventually become (it often wasn't clear if the right decision had been made until they hit puberty). The tall people are dressed in blue and the short ones in pink to differentiate them.

Over time, their society has made different roles for the shorts and the talls - the talls are considered "bread winners" and go out to find work whilst the shorts are expected to stay home and look after things there. Their society used to have a strict policy of only allowing short people to marry tall people, although they are now more accepting and have finally allowed shorts to marry shorts and talls to marry talls.

Now, there were some peculiar situations when a tall didn't grow as much during puberty and ended up "shorter" than some shorts and conversely some shorts grew massively to become at first sight, a tall (obviously they would still be wearing characteristically "short" clothing).

Eventually, their people talked and talked and decided that maybe people should be able to decide for themselves if they were short or tall and they even developed surgical techniques for shortening or lengthening people who felt that they didn't fit in to the stereotypes (height reassignment surgery).

That also caused a kerfuffle as almost all their sports were strongly divided into talls and shorts as the very best talls seemed to out-perform the very best shorts in almost every competition. The shorts declared that it was unfair for height re-assigned talls to compete directly with them (the shorts' competitions were often considered "lesser" in their society) and at the same time, the height re-assigned talls were fighting to get equal acceptance in society as the traditional talls and shorts. (There were also several short people that chose to dress as talls and some of them chose surgery whilst others wore prosthetics such as raised shoes. They didn't seem to cause nearly as much "concern" from the rest of the population).

Now imagine when our societies meet - would they mock us for focussing on dangly (or not dangly) bits between our legs or would we mock them for doing the same with height?

hawkinspeter wrote:

Now imagine when our societies meet - would they mock us for focussing on dangly (or not dangly) bits between our legs or would we mock them for doing the same with height?

Probably just nuke each other, because, y'know, different...

mdavidford wrote:

hawkinspeter wrote:

Now imagine when our societies meet - would they mock us for focussing on dangly (or not dangly) bits between our legs or would we mock them for doing the same with height?

Probably just nuke each other, because, y'know, different...

It's the only way to be sure...

Again, there are the two sex classes, that's how we all got here, millions of years of evolution. People aren't arbitrarily dividing each other by dangly bits.

trinityboy wrote:

Again, there are the two sex classes, that's how we all got here, millions of years of evolution. People aren't arbitrarily dividing each other by dangly bits.

If dividing people by dangly bits isn't arbitrary, then dividing people by height is also not arbitrary and actually a far more obvious physical characteristic. Again, million of years of evolution naturally divided people into tall and short. Alternatively, you could appreciate that height and sex characteristics are a continuum and not a binary division.

For there to be any sensible continuation of this discussion, you should specify what definition of male and female that you are using - might be dangly bits, genetics or some combination thereof. Imagine meeting the planet of talls and shorts - what measurements are they using for tall and short?

trinityboy wrote:

....millions of years of evolution.......

Although technically correct, you are out by a few orders of magnitude there...

It's not arbitrary, it's normally obvious but in rare cases it takes an expert or a number of experts to find out.

most color-blind people would be more likely to tell you the red is green and the blue is gray. color blindness is clearly not your forte. but that's OK, color blind people are one of the few groups left on the planet against which it still seems OK to suggest prejudice. 

cmedred wrote:

most color-blind people would be more likely to tell you the red is green and the blue is gray. color blindness is clearly not your forte. but that's OK, color blind people are one of the few groups left on the planet against which it still seems OK to suggest prejudice. 

I was referring to monochromacy which is complete colour-blindness and is very rare. But yes, red-green colour blindness is the most common form (and far more common in men). I'm puzzled about your prejudice comment as in my experience it is impossible for people to tell whether an individual has any colour-blindness, let alone pre-judge them. Maybe you're confusing a discussion for some kind of judgement?

hawkinspeter wrote:

it is impossible for people to tell whether an individual has any colour-blindness, 

So much so, that after a visit to the optician, my daughter was refered to a specialist for colour blindness, who declared she had no problem at all.

I swear they both used exactly the same dot test cards. 

Mind you, I still have some doubts due to her description of the Picadilly line as purple on the underground map.

wycombewheeler wrote:

So much so, that after a visit to the optician, my daughter was refered to a specialist for colour blindness, who declared she had no problem at all.

I swear they both used exactly the same dot test cards. 

Mind you, I still have some doubts due to her description of the Picadilly line as purple on the underground map.

Reminds me of this interesting article: https://jamessevedge.com/articles/red-light-green-light/

Quote:

It reminds me, I sometimes tell this story about my eldest son. His name is Ben. He’s 22 now, but when he was about three, we were driving down the street. We stopped at a traffic light, and we were working on both colors and also traffic rules, because at the time we lived on kind of a busy street in Cambridge. So we’re stopped at the light. And I say, “Hey, Ben. What color is the light?” And he says, “It’s green.” I said, “Ben, we’re stopped at the light. What color is the light? Take a good look.” And he goes, “It’s green.” And when it turns, he says, “It’s red. Let’s go.”

Now, the kid seemed bright in most other ways. So I just thought like, what is going on with him? My first hypothesis is maybe he’s color blind, which then that would be my husband’s fault. At least I thought at the time, it’s my husband’s fault. I’ve since been informed it would have been my fault.

So I started collecting data. I’m running a little scientific experiment of my own. So I start asking him to identify red and green in other contexts, and he gets it right every time. And yet every time we come to a traffic light, he’s still giving me opposite answers, because I get a little obsessed with this.

My second hypothesis, by the way, is that he is screwing with me, which I certainly had some data to support. This went on for about three weeks. It wasn’t until maybe three weeks later, and I think my mother-in-law was in town. So I was in the back seat sitting next to Ben, and we stopped at a traffic light. And I suddenly realized that from where he sits in his car seat, he usually can’t see the light in front of us, because the headrest is in the way or it’s above the level of the windshield, windscreen as they say in Europe. So he’s looking out the side window at the cross traffic light.

Now just think about the conversation from his point of view. He’s looking at the light, it’s green; I’m insisting that it’s red, and he’s like, you know, my mother seems right in most other ways, but she’s just wrong about this. The reason that that experience has stuck with me all these years is that it’s such a great illustration of the fact that where you sit determines what you see.

cmedred wrote:

most color-blind people would be more likely to tell you the red is green and the blue is gray. color blindness is clearly not your forte. but that's OK, color blind people are one of the few groups left on the planet against which it still seems OK to suggest prejudice. 

 

Inadvertent discrimination against colour blind people is really common. I was pretty ashamed when I realised how many dashboards I've created that are bloody useless to people with standard colour blindness. Just a bit of thought and courtesy could have avoided that like adding a letter R/A/G to colour graded risk ratings.

In a similar way, adding pronouns is a simple courtesy that does no harm and can do good. I do worry about the mental health of people who get upset about things like that.

*edit, I'm not sure I've seen any discrimination against colour blindness in this thread, just pointing out that the world is build in a way that disregards colour blindness

JustTryingToGetFromAtoB wrote:

cmedred wrote:

most color-blind people would be more likely to tell you the red is green and the blue is gray. color blindness is clearly not your forte. but that's OK, color blind people are one of the few groups left on the planet against which it still seems OK to suggest prejudice. 

Inadvertent discrimination against colour blind people is really common. I was pretty ashamed when I realised how many dashboards I've created that are bloody useless to people with standard colour blindness. Just a bit of thought and courtesy could have avoided that like adding a letter R/A/G to colour graded risk ratings. In a similar way, adding pronouns is a simple courtesy that does no harm and can do good. I do worry about the mental health of people who get upset about things like that. *edit, I'm not sure I've seen any discrimination against colour blindness in this thread, just pointing out that the world is build in a way that disregards colour blindness

I agree about discrimination against colour-blindness (that it happens, not that it's a good thing) and designers will often make mistakes unless they consciously ensure that shapes and positions are used to convey information rather than just colour shades.

I don't know why cmedred was banging on about prejudice though.

trinityboy wrote:

None of that means that any human is not male or female.

Actually, I can agree with this. Wait, hear me out.

Pretty much everyone starts out in life with someone at your birth pointing at your genitalia and assigning a man made category of male or female. Therefore everything that happens after is either in accordance with or goes against the initial classification of male or female, but that initial manmade classification remains.

Except for societies that do indeed have additional classifications over that male and female.

And except where someone looked at the baby genitalia and went 'fucked if I know, you decide' and gave the job to someone else.

Actually, scrap that, I can't get on board

JustTryingToGetFromAtoB wrote:

Actually, I can agree with this. Wait, hear me out. Pretty much everyone starts out in life with someone at your birth pointing at your genitalia and assigning a man made category of male or female. Therefore everything that happens after is either in accordance with or goes against the initial classification of male or female, but that initial manmade classification remains. Except for societies that do indeed have additional classifications over that male and female. And except where someone looked at the baby genitalia and went 'fucked if I know, you decide' and gave the job to someone else. Actually, scrap that, I can't get on board

So if someone is born in a forest with no-one around to classify them, then they are neither male nor female?

hawkinspeter wrote:

JustTryingToGetFromAtoB wrote:

Actually, I can agree with this. Wait, hear me out. Pretty much everyone starts out in life with someone at your birth pointing at your genitalia and assigning a man made category of male or female. Therefore everything that happens after is either in accordance with or goes against the initial classification of male or female, but that initial manmade classification remains. Except for societies that do indeed have additional classifications over that male and female. And except where someone looked at the baby genitalia and went 'fucked if I know, you decide' and gave the job to someone else. Actually, scrap that, I can't get on board

So if someone is born in a forest with no-one around to classify them, then they are neither male nor female?

That's the other classification. Male, female and tarzan

Unless they're Mowgli!

JustTryingToGetFromAtoB wrote:

..... Actually, scrap that, I can't get on board

Aaaw c'mon man, don't ya wanna fly? THIS is the really good stuff....

trinityboy wrote:

None of that means that any human is not male or female.

Hamlet wrote:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

As a trinitarian have you at least considered the possibility that there may be more to it (one, the other, both)?  I presume at least you agree that they partake of the same essence...?

chrisonatrike wrote:

I presume at least you agree that they partake of the same essence...?

Well they draw on the same source, but in different ways...

mdavidford wrote:

Well they draw on the same source, but in different ways...

I really enjoyed that series, but then I haven't read the books.

Me too!

Apparently the books are, appropriately for this thread, a bit more binary in their approach to gender and magic

Just sticking to the basics. I mean, do you believe in Road Tax?