Thread by @Scienceofsport

This was my primary frustration after today’s debate on the subject at #SSAC22 Hard as I tried to explain that every SELECTION matters, that every place or lane earned by a girl or woman going a male is wrong, what this debate needs is for women to be asked for their voice

https://twitter.com/Hogshead3Au/status/1500101305389486084

The reason this came up, by the way, is that @gladwell asked the panel if this issue of trans women participation could be handled differently for elite sport compared to sub-elite and community sport? One answer was that yes, it can and should be, and only when records & money

…are involved should we care about the retained advantages and its implications for fairness. I tried (clumsily, I regret) to say that it’s not about money or prizes, but about selection and about earning places on teams, or lanes in finals, and that women at ANY and ALL levels

…have a right to fairness. My point is that sport has value because it is a meritocracy where we earn our way up the chain, so it doesn’t matter if it’s selection into a school lacrosse or basketball team, or making a final in NCAA track or swim meets, the point is that everyone

…in a protected category deserves a chance in a fair and equal contest. Given the retention of biological advantages in TW, the presence of males who are athletically inferior to the girls/woman they deny those places and lanes to is not fair, and money and prizes don’t matter

The reality is that sport is a giant interconnected meritocracy, with pathways and pyramids that we can’t predict, but that we trust to deliver the best athletes (within categories) to their highest level. But we can’t sit there on stage & dictate what sport should mean to people

…but that’s unfortunately what happened. Which brings me back to Nancy’s original tweet - the objection to the notion that girls & women should give up their places just because there’s no prize, record or money at stake would be so much more powerful if it was voiced by a woman

At that point, I realized I was not the right person to refute these ideas at this forum, but that there was a chair missing on that stage. How can we address this colliding rights issue without seeking the voice of one half that collision, the one being asked to move aside?

To his credit, @gladwell tried to bring the discussion back, and I think he was actually making an astute point about how the elite sport consequences are impacting the general participation, but by then we had abandoned data, and instead I was being challenged with “would you…

…deny a ten-year old a chance at sport because of a pathway?” There’s no response to that, I’m afraid. So I was left frustrated, disappointed that I didn’t challenge harder and do better, and actually quite disillusioned at how easily emotion runs roughshod over evidence

I felt the first half of the debate was solid, we might have explored more data and biology, and I think @Gladwell asked smart questions to pretty firmly establish retained advantages and thus unfairness. It’s just that too many people, well, they don’t seem to care about that.

But then the second half happened, and that missing chair on stage, occupied by a woman who could credibly and justifiably reject the request to “move aside” when money & prizes aren’t at stake, became important, because it was unbalanced and evidence was irrelevant from then on

So all in all, it was frustrating and I’m pretty pissed off at my own performance too. There is a lot of emotional inertia here, and limited space for logic and data. Anyway. On a positive Women’s sport note, this is one of the great finishes in cycling