Hello again!
I don’t plan to make it a habit to use this space in a reactionary way, but I do want to address some discourse that has been making its way through the press the past few years, all the way to our little town.
As you all know, I don’t exactly have expertise in anything but technical and journalistic writing. However, my schooling also taught me how to discern reliable and corroborated sources.
There are plenty of things happening in this world that are hard to understand, especially when it comes to science. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; science is supposed to change when new and better evidence comes to light. But since what we think of as absolute fact isn’t as fixed as we’d love it to be, sometimes we can get frustrated or worse, mistrustful.
I can empathize with that frustration. I can even empathize with mistrust up to a certain point, knowing what I do about periods in history like the Tuskegee experiments.
What I cannot empathize with is using your very limited knowledge about a subject to justify oppression.
It has been pretty well-established now that sex and gender are two different things. According to Yale School of Medicine, the two terms were defined scientifically after a committee reviewed evidence in 2001 that concluded that “sociocultural and psychological experience” differences between men and women “greatly affected their health,” therefore more precise language was needed.
Currently, scientists have distinguished a scientific basis for some individuals experiencing gender dysphoria. It’s no secret that scans on transgender people have revealed a stark difference from cisgender brains.
I think we can all agree that being transgender is real. One particular bit of discourse that has flourished, even in more like-minded circles, is that transgender athletes have an inherent biological advantage over cisgender athletes, and that supposed advantage is so unfair that it’s sometimes likened to the oppression of women. As a nonbinary feminist, that doesn’t sit right with me at all.
Testosterone, the hormone associated with men, is chiefly responsible for muscle growth. In fact, the “female” hormone estrogen can help maintain muscle, but it can also significantly weaken other musculoskeletal structures, like ligaments and tendons. I’m no scientist, but to me, that makes it seem that any female athlete must have decent testosterone levels to be able to be at that rank in her sport in the first place.
On top of that, as we all were reminded very publicly (and shamefully, in my opinion) during this Olympics, which turned out to be mostly a nothingburger, plenty of cisgender female athletes do naturally have testosterone levels higher than expected.
To me, it seems odd that we can accept that we’re all very unique in things like appearances, vocal traits, personalities, etc. Yet somehow we believe that bodies must be structured and function exactly the same way, especially when the presence of testosterone doesn’t even necessarily lead directly to muscle mass..
I may not personally place the same importance on athleticism that other people do, in fact I’m only a very casual fan of maybe 3 or 4 sports, but I can appreciate that athletes work hard. It takes a whole lot of effort to condition your body in a way that’s actually in line with what a certain sport requires. They definitely deserve some respect for that. But assuming biology and biological ability based on (??? Sight I suppose?) assumption is pretty silly and at this point bigoted.
I don’t want to pretend I have all the answers, especially when science rightfully doesn’t have all the answers either. What I would like to bid for are 2 things. First, that we recognize our own limits. I may have passable knowledge about some of the things I find especially interesting, like the Civil Rights Movement and the Harlem Renaissance (and a lot more because ADHD), but I don’t know sh** about most things. I can admit that. And there are some people who have expertise in things like science, know what the hell they are doing, and can be trusted to perform fluid-ish and complicated tasks such as the scientific method.
The second thing I absolutely beg from you is solidarity with your fellow, already struggling human being. The reason I pushed out this post, without promoting the event too much, is that a talk will be taking place in Alamogordo next week discussing the topic. I do not know what the content of the talk will be, but in my perspective, it very much seems like this speaker has their mind made up and is not very interested in a discussion, given that there are no other noted guests.
Who exactly does this serve in our community? I think we all deserve better than fear-mongering.
Enjoy your weekend, and
Salud
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