2024 Paris Olympics General (non-Basketball/Track & Field) Discussion Thread

[ejftw]

The top two ranked 92+ kg boxers go down. Chaloyan with great work, and it was hilarious that no one heard the final bell for about 5 seconds.

[LordCovington33]

HOW


ABOUT


THOSE


****


SPORTS


THAT


ARE


HAPPENING?

Like horse dancing? The Brits seem to be good at that

[bisme37]

I always want them to give the medal to the horse but they give it to the human for some reason.

[reload141]

I always want them to give the medal to the horse but they give it to the human for some reason.

Of horse they do.

I’ll see myself out.

[azcatz11]

I was enamored by the men’s gymnasts today. The dude who had to do the horse thing at the end stepped up with a ton of pressure. First medal in almost 20 years. Absolutely amazing

[bisme37]

I am a bit bummed by my USA volleyball gals losing to China earlier. They came back from a bad start and took it to 5 sets, but really didn't play all that well. Too many points where they were conservative tipping the ball over the net instead of taking real swings at it.

I'm displeased with the roster and unwillingness of Coach Kiraly to make subs and adjustments. Team USA won a surprise Gold at the last Olympics, and they brought back essentially the same starters out of respect, which I understand. But the starting lineup lacks size and power and several of the players are just past their prime now.

We have young stars like Kathryn Plummer and Dana Retke on the bench, who are both 10 feet tall and have cannon arms. And Avery Skinner who is not as big but very powerful. When coach finally put some subs in the game they went on a big run, but it was too little too late.

[Nuntius]

And they were fringe elements of the society, not marched out by the French powers that be. That's what made them fun and subversive.

Right and the director of the opening ceremony was very clear about wanting the ceremony to show the world what Paris actually is. He wanted to show the underground, he wanted to show the fringes. He didn't want to showcase just the stuff that tourists see, he wanted to showcase every inch of Parisian life. It's the same exact reason why this was the first time that a metal band appeared in an Olympic ceremony.

None of it was "marched out by the French powers that be". It was all the work of an artistic director who wanted to showcase the city's culture.

If that's the case, I do have more respect for it, or at least its director.

But for many of us watching, we've seen these same motifs/themes take the stage in just about every form of mainstream culture/entertainment. For example, drag-show story-time is popular among parents of young children in my home city of Toronto. RuPaul's Drag Race was/is an immensely popular show. Make-up, fashion companies etc. all celebrate the breaking down of gender definitions.

It's utterly mainstream. So I think the director, even if genuine, isn't accomplishing what he/she/they mean to.

If ruffling the feathers of average working-class, middle-class people and families around the world (no, not just in America) was the goal, great. But while simultaneously drawing the support of the world's wealthiest people, celebrities and corporations is no way to be rebellious/subversive. If anything, it feeds the power-structure.

It hardly feels unique to Paris or some exploration of an exciting culture. It feels like the same global-corporate nonsense that is taking over all forms of media. We're bored of it.

Why are you assuming that working-class people are annoyed by LGBT+ representation? Contrary to what some American parties want to claim, working-class people are not more right-wing than other groups. In fact, it's usually the opposite. Working-class people have traditionally favored left-wing parties and that is still the case in most of the world.

We can even look at the most recent French elections as an example. An election that was won by the New Popular Front, a left-wing party. Who do you think won the working-class areas of Paris like Seine-Saint-Dennis? It was the NFP and this was no accident. Working-class banlieue like Seine-Saint-Dennis have always voted for left-wing parties. They're not stopping now or anytime soon.

And those working-class banlieue were heavily represented in the Opening Ceremony, by the way. I don't know if you watched the entire Olympic torch relay but when Zinedine Zidane went into the metro and could no longer carry the torch, he gave it to three kids to carry through the sewer system. Those kids were children of immigrants and immigrants constitute a significant percentage of the population in those working-class banlieue. The kids then gave the torch to the masked figure who proceeded to carry it throughout Paris. But the fact is that those kids actually represented the citizens of the banlieue in this ceremony and that this isn't something that happen oftens. The working-class banlieue tend to be forgotten by everyone (French politicians, media, tourists et cetera). But this director made sure that they were represented, just like he made sure that all other areas of Parisian culture (like fashion shows and drag shows) were represented. Because he, once again, wanted to showcase everything that Paris had to offer.

Because, you see, another interesting thing about the working-class (and that's something that right-wing parties and media often love to ignore) is that the working-class is a lot more diverse than the richest strata of society. Because, of course, it is. A refugee who just came over from a war-torn country will have to find any kind of job to survive. And without the necessary language skills (they take time to develop) they will often take the job with the lowest barrier to entry and those are usually working-class jobs (construction jobs, delivery jobs, kitchen personnel jobs, couriers, warehouse employees, nannies, cleaners, housekeepers, gardeners et cetera). Same goes for the LGBT+ kid that was disowned by their family for being LGBT+. They are also forced into the workforce at an early stage and are thus forced to get jobs with a low barrier to entry. In general, minorities tend to be significantly poorer than the members of the majority which, in turn, also means that members of minorities are more likely to be working-class than anything else.

I really don't know why North Americans seem to have this notion that working-class people are all like Al Bundy. And while I'm not an expert on the demographics of the US and Canada and therefore cannot really talk about them, I can indeed tell you that this is not how the situation is over here.

I live in a working-class suburb of Athens, Kallithea, that has a large immigrant population. Walking down the streets of Kallithea, I hear people speaking Russian almost daily. Kallithea has a lot of immigrants from the former Soviet Union (particularly Georgia but also Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and other countries). We also have a lot of immigrants from Egypt (the family that runs my favorite mini-market is from Egypt) as well as immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh that play cricket in a small football field near my house.

The situation in the aforementioned banlieue of Paris is relatively similar. Large immigrant populations and highly diverse areas. The commonality between us all is that we're overwhelmingly working-class.

You see, there is a certain realization that you make when you see all these people from different backgrounds working side-by-side with you. You start to realize that maybe you have more in common with them than with your bosses. That maybe, just maybe, class is more important than nationality. But that's a different discussion altogether, I guess

[Nuntius]

The Steeplechase is an event that makes me chuckle. Like how did they even come up with this and why is it called steeplechase??

So basically you run around the track a bunch of times and every so often there's a short hurdle to jump over. But then once around the track each time you have to jump over a wall and land in a puddle of water. And then run the rest of the race with water in your shoes.

It reminds me of if you robbed a liquor store or something and then fled on foot and jumped over a wall in the parking lot in the rain lol.

Wikipedia says that it has its origins in horse-racing and that it originated in Ireland. Apparently, riders raced from one town's steeple to the other and due to Ireland's geography, the riders had to inevitably jump over streams and low stone walls separating estates.

I have no idea why the athletics event chose to get rid of the horses but keep the streams and the walls

[Sofia]

HOW


ABOUT


THOSE


****


SPORTS


THAT


ARE


HAPPENING?

Like horse dancing? The Brits seem to be good at that

I hate the horse dancing so much. Shouldn’t be there

[Slacktard]

I think horse dancing is there to allow aristocrats and royalty to compete for medals

[Nuntius]

If you can't verify Khelif's XX then you shouldn't accuse me of victimization.

Oh, the sweet hypocrisy

Neither you, G R E Y, nor the transphobes whose tweets you're posting can verify that Khelif is XY, can you? And yet that hasn't stopped you from attacking her.

The victims here are the women who have lost podium spots, records, monies, scholarships, and Olympic spots to men who are allowed to compete with them.

Just because you're satisfied with your own conclusion about Khelif based on everything you've read and chosen to disqualify a test done to show XY doesn't mean we should take it as a given.

Here are some other sources who doubt Khalif's eligibility:

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

I fail to see how these two transphobes can be considered sources when it comes to this topic.

Do we consider the opinions of open racists to be sources when it comes to topics they love to be spew hate about? No, we do not. So, why would we treat open transphobes any differently?

IOC stopped doing simple sex-verification cheek swabs in I think 2000. This could all be clarified easily.

So too would any controversy about Semenya, about whom you are giving false information. Not sure if you are aware, but:

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

Again. Simple cheek swab. Compete in the category of your born sex. This is fair. And safe.

Here's a photo of Caster Semenya's birth certificate:



Taken from this article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8215112.stm

What's that written over there? Oh, yes. FEMALE! That is Caster Semenya's born sex. You are wrong. Period. You're allowing your bias to lead you towards the victimization of other women.

[azcatz11]

Anthony Edwards enjoying women’s table tennis

Read on Twitter

?s=46

[bisme37]

Now that I figured it out I'm not sure why it took me so long, but it just clicked for me that Chris Marlowe, who calls beach volleyball, is the same guy who calls Denver Nuggets games.

[Doctor MJ]

Again. Simple cheek swab. Compete in the category of your born sex. This is fair. And safe.

So obviously this is an area where things can get heated and hence maybe I shouldn't insert myself in here, but I don't want GREY to have to be the only one talking about this in a room full of guys who think it's all political.

My general thoughts - not having read up on specific athletes of the 2024 games:

1. I am generally pro-trans. I have trans people in my family. I have trans students. They are people and if it's not hurting anyone else I think they should get to live how they want to live.

2. I am generally what would get labeled "left wing". I don't want to be put in a box, but it's important to emphasize this given where the battle lines have been drawn on this politically.

3. The left as a whole see transgenderism in sports as just another area where transgender rights need to be rallied for.

4. But the left as a whole is generally pretty disengaged from sports and in my experience over the past decade, what I've seen is a lack of understanding about the problem of transfemales in sports. I've been criticized for putting sports above people...but everything I've been talking about is about protecting people.

5. There needs to be clear guidelines about what it takes to qualify for competitive female sports, because of course otherwise the males are generally going to have the advantage.

6. I'm not the one who should be deciding what those clear guidelines are, but I'll say this:

If a transfemale or intersex athlete can beat all cisfemales on Earth at a sport, it's naive to think it isn't because of advantages associated with male sexual development.

7. Now, I understand it feeling unfair to an athlete who has always thought she was sexually female to be disallowed to compete in women's sport. That athlete may well have never done anything dishonest and just worked their ass off for many years. They have not done anything in their own actions that makes them deserve to "have everything taken away from them".

8. But on a certain level, it is what it is. If you're better than all cisfemales on the planet at a sport because your body has male properties, then crowning you as the top female within that sport is allowing male properties to dominate in a second category that only exists to see who is best among those who don't have those properties.

9. And as GREY has said, multiply all of that 10-fold when talking about sports with actual physical contact between opponents, and multiply 100-fold for actual combat sports.

10. Finally, it should be kept in mind that in the open category of competition, anyone can compete. A boxing lightweight can go fight a super-heavyweight, an a woman can go run against men. There isn't anyone on the planet who is disallowed from competing in a sport because of a "gender test". All it means is that they have to compete in the open category rather than categories that have more safeguards.

11. Going back to me personally not being the one to make this call: I don't even know if I think it's a problem for someone to compete in the women's events simply because they have a Y-chromosome. 1-in-80,000 births have Swyer Syndrome, XY chromosomes but phenotypically female even to the point where - I believe - there is no extra testosterone. I don't have any specific reason to say that those with Swyer Syndrome shouldn't be able to compete against women. Such reasons might exist, but I can't give any, and if the medical world were to say that such people have no fundamental advantage over women based on any of the measurables we have that are believed to make men stronger/faster/whatever than woman, I'd have no problem with them in women's categories.

12. Last thought: What of the possibility that a woman is indisputably a woman by genetics and appearance but somehow has male-like levels for the relevant hormones? Should we call someone effectively "not a woman" because of we find something somewhere that gives her an advantage over other woman?

This is where things get very tricky, because there is no objectively clear-cut line for hormonal levels to define sex, let alone does so going back into posterity. And yet at the same time, if you refuse to use these markers at all, then you (re)open the door to all sorts cheating that's toxic to the human body which has damaged the lives of both male and female athletes - and which there's reason to believe has been forced on athletes by their governments in the past.

In other words:

Both XX & XY athletes have a long history of cheating by adding male hormones to their body, and so even if we're just looking at the open (men's) division of competition, I'd say it's unrealistic not to use outlier hormonal levels as evidence for cheating.

The idea that we wouldn't then used this for the women's division - where the results can be even more effective and (arguably) more damaging - is awfully hard to swallow.

And so: It's tricky, and I don't want to be the one to decide.

But that doesn't mean that whatever gets decided by the authorities I'll accept as correct, and part of the reason for that is the fact that the issue has NOW become political in a way it didn't used to be.

Therefore, if - say - in the name LGBT rights - speaking of someone who is himself pro-LGBT rights - we end up allowing someone to compete as a woman despite having clear male attributes, and that person ends actually hurting other athletes in part due to this male-associated advantage, I'm going to have a BIG problem with that.

And I think that's what GREY sees too. I can only imagine what it feels like for women to be told by men that these concerns are just politically-based cruelty, given that when I experience it as a man it makes me see red.

EDIT: Adding this link to the Guardian about the situation. For those who don't know, the Guardian is associated with left-wing politics, and so I chose them rather than bulk of the sites showing google results which were right-wing.

Here's a quote I think worth deconstructing:

In its internal system, which is provided to journalists in Paris, the IOC states that Khelif was “disqualified just hours before her gold medal showdown against Yang Liu at the 2023 world championships in New Delhi, India, after her elevated ­levels of testosterone failed to meet the eligibility criteria”. The IOC also acknowledges that Lin was “stripped of her bronze medal after failing to meet eligibility requirements based on the results of a biochemical test.

So, first there's an emotional valence to this that I think implies that the IOC is being dishonest and I don't see any basis for that. What's happened here - possibly accidentally just through kinks in the new process - the 2024 rules for gender are looser than the 2023 rules.

I'll emphasize again that I'm not the one who should make the rules...but the part I bolded seems like a pretty reasonable rule, and so I wonder what exactly the new rule is.

[Sealab2024]

Anthony Edwards enjoying women’s table tennis

Read on Twitter

?s=46

Lolz. That's the most Ant thing ever. Hyping up the frickin table tennis team.

[Shaka_Zulu]

Anthony Edwards enjoying women’s table tennis

Read on Twitter

?s=46

LOL I was expecting him to be there, and just being him as usual. You know why he is there right? He became friends or "rivals" with the US ping pong team due to Steph Currys instigating ass lol

Read on Twitter

?t=4lBJDZPzQaY4e2z1Pi6nDQ&s=19

[Sealab2024]

Anthony Edwards enjoying women’s table tennis

Read on Twitter

?s=46

LOL I was expecting him to be there, and just being him as usual. You know why he is there right? He became friends or "rivals" with the US ping pong team due to Steph Currys instigating ass lol

Read on Twitter

?t=4lBJDZPzQaY4e2z1Pi6nDQ&s=19

I knew that Curry kid was no good when I first saw him

[Nuntius]

Now that I figured it out I'm not sure why it took me so long, but it just clicked for me that Chris Marlowe, who calls beach volleyball, is the same guy who calls Denver Nuggets games.

It often takes a while to recognize someone when we see them in their summer job

[Tim Lehrbach]

FWIW, I don't mean to come across too strong in the following, so please take it with the respect you are due for your thoughtfulness, as always, Doctor MJ.

So obviously this is an area where things can get heated and hence maybe I shouldn't insert myself in here, but I don't want GREY to have to be the only one talking about this in a room full of guys who think it's all political.

It's not "all political," but it is ethical. Contrary to popular belief, there is not a clear answer reducible to biology alone to the question of who should be allowed to compete in women's sports. Value judgments are inextricable from the physiological ones necessary to draw any lines around participation within women's categories.

4. But the left as a whole is generally pretty disengaged from sports and in my experience over the past decade, what I've seen is a lack of understanding about the problem of transfemales in sports.

There is considerable literature from bioethicists and philosophers of sport on all sides of the issues, which do not owe to political affiliation but to decades of research, theoretical commitments, and keeping up with the state of the art in many sports. It is, I am sorry to say, wildly inaccurate to the point of disrespectful to imply that people who favor inclusion are just "the left" or that they do not understand sports.

5. There needs to be clear guidelines about what it takes to qualify for competitive female sports, because of course otherwise the males are generally going to have the advantage.

Women's sports are segregated by gender, not sex. This is not picking at nits. We consider it important for women to be able to compete as women in sports. It was not originally, and is still not primarily out of concern for safety or fairness, but for equality of participation, that women's sports have proliferated. The concern over biological advantage for trans women and intersex athletes who identify as women came after such women began competing in sport among other women, raising issues which have increased in urgency as society's acceptance of such women has grown. But the women's category in sports has existed long before there were any qualifying sex or gender tests.

If a transfemale or intersex athlete can beat all cisfemales on Earth at a sport, it's naive to think it isn't because of advantages associated with male sexual development.

If one or a few trans women or intersex athletes beat all cisgender women at a sport, they have achieved a remarkable athletic feat requiring incredible talent, effort, dedication, and psychological toll and deserve to be celebrated. To the extent that there are barriers to entry along the lines of hormone or other physiological tests, they have also had to subject themselves to treatment at considerable physical and monetary cost to participate. To the extent that their wins are invalidated by those who do not support their inclusion, they further face stigma and shaming. Let's make sure the extraordinary nature of athletes who face exclusionary pressures competing at all is acknowledged.

We have to remember, too, that there is also widely varying physiological advantage among cisgender women. When we consider the range of acceptable values for different characteristics, we almost always attempt to capture the entire set of cisgender women. Any outliers are stigmatized for their difference (see: the enduring debate over Caster Semenya, assigned female at birth). Attempts to draw boundaries around the women's category on the basis of fairness or safety are, to an extent, dishonest because they collapse some difference into the same category but not others. Most of the time, the lines of exclusion are quite pointedly directed at women who are not cisgender, and -- this is important -- sometimes are not even drawn in such a way that reflects any advantage conferred upon the excluded woman. All this to say, determinations about who gets to participate cannot help but delimit who counts as a woman for the purposes of that sport. That this is problematic for a society which promotes acceptance of self-identifying gender should not require elaboration.

It is curious that fairness becomes a rallying cry only when the issue is biological advantage for some athletes over their cisgender counterparts. We do not exclude athletes for other perceived privileges: wealth, geography, height, genetic advantage for muscle development, mental wellness, etc. (Occasionally, we segregate further into, e.g., weight classes.) If you wanted to argue that we should segregate sport for all advantages to the extent possible, this would be, for me, a more morally acceptable argument than one which focuses exclusively on biological sex advantage to exclude trans, intersex, and other nonconforming athletes. However, it might be impractical, and -- though I will not belabor the argument since you are not making it -- it would be an absurd outcome from an undue focus on fairness.

7. Now, I understand it feeling unfair to an athlete who has always thought she was sexually female to be disallowed to compete in women's sport. That athlete may well have never done anything dishonest and just worked their ass off for many years. They have not done anything in their own actions that makes them deserve to "have everything taken away from them".

8. But on a certain level, it is what it is. If you're better than all cisfemales on the planet at a sport because your body has male properties, then crowning you as the top female within that sport is allowing male properties to dominate in a second category that only exists to see who is best among those who don't have those properties.

I'll be direct here: "it is what it is" is not an argument. I can just as easily prioritize inclusion for all women over fairness and perceived opportunity to win and say that any winning by transgender or intersex athletes over their cisgender counterparts "is what it is" and just needs to be accepted by those who do not win. You are making a value judgment here about what is more important for women's sport: again, fairness and opportunity to win. You absolutely can make such an argument, but again I would refer you to the rich literature debating the questions over just how much advantage is conferred across different sports, whether (dis)advantage should be the lone qualifier for women's sport, and what the actual, rather than feared impacts are on women's sport from inclusion of trans, intersex, and otherwise nonconforming women.

The public imagination, and much popular content on the subject, frequently overestimate the threat of the dishonest interloper as well as the physical advantages conferred to most actual competitors. The hypotheticals can become implausible at times, as though elite-but-losing male athletes will flock to women's sports in droves to dominate, if only we'd open the flood gates.

9. And as GREY has said, multiply all of that 10-fold when talking about sports with actual physical contact between opponents, and multiply 100-fold for actual combat sports.

This is a valid, specific concern (though, as I warned above, we seem to have a blind spot which understates the differences among cisgender women). It may be necessary to further segregate such sports for safety or to create a level field of competition. Consider also that is possible that some sports confer too much biological advantage to e.g., bigger, stronger athletes over others in the first place; we can ask questions about the worthiness of a sport to be elevated to elite competition, too.

10. Finally, it should be kept in mind that in the open category of competition, anyone can compete. A boxing lightweight can go fight a super-heavyweight, an a woman can go run against men. There isn't anyone on the planet who is disallowed from competing in a sport because of a "gender test". All it means is that they have to compete in the open category rather than categories that have more safeguards.

Again, it is generally the basis for women's sport that women should have the opportunity to compete as women against other women. This is inescapably a gendered category, not merely a "lower" or "protected" subset of competition. There are some who argue that we should not organize sport around gender at all -- inclusion should be assured by making sure there are enough levels of participation where everybody gets a shot. I'm not here to argue for or against that, but it is not the way we presently organize sport. We have decided as a society that women should have their own category in most sports; indeed, this is the very basis for trans-exclusionary arguments. But there is no way to draw that line without making a judgment on who is and is not a woman. This, trans, intersex, and other nonconforming women's advocates will argue, can have extremely harmful outcomes. I would argue that these outcomes are not being treated with seriousness when they are reflexively subordinated to concerns over fairness or cisgender women losing to other women who may have physiological advantages -- i.e., "it is what it is."

12. Last thought: What of the possibility that a woman is indisputably a woman by genetics and appearance but somehow has male-like levels for the relevant hormones? Should we call someone effectively "not a woman" because of we find something somewhere that gives her an advantage over other woman?

There is another possibility: women are indisputably women who identify as women. And again, why do we obsess over this and not other advantages in sport? Unfortunately, though I am not accusing you of this, I find that many who argue against inclusion simply do not accept that all who identify as women really are women, or that some are lesser women.

This is where things get very tricky, because there is no objectively clear-cut line for hormonal levels to define sex, let alone does so going back into posterity. And yet at the same time, if you refuse to use these markers at all, then you (re)open the door to all sorts cheating that's toxic to the human body which has damaged the lives of both male and female athletes - and which there's reason to believe has been forced on athletes by their governments in the past.

In other words:

Both XX & XY athletes have a long history of cheating by adding male hormones to their body, and so even if we're just looking at the open (men's) division of competition, I'd say it's unrealistic not to use outlier hormonal levels as evidence for cheating.

The idea that we wouldn't then used this for the women's division - where the results can be even more effective and (arguably) more damaging - is awfully hard to swallow.

This is getting tangled with questions concerning performance enhancement altogether. And, in that arena, it is arguable that tighter parameters, more restrictions, punitive consequences, and a culture of shaming promote less-safe conditions for athletes to compete. This too is not a clear-cut question, but it's worth remembering that it isn't nearly as simple as "performance enhancement: bad."

And so: It's tricky, and I don't want to be the one to decide.

But that doesn't mean that whatever gets decided by the authorities I'll accept as correct, and part of the reason for that is the fact that the issue has NOW become political in a way it didn't used to be.

Again, I would suggest that it became an ethical and political issue when it became increasingly important to some to exclude some women for the benefit or protection of others. I am not saying that no such exclusion can be justified, but it is inherently an ethical, and not strictly biological, question.

Therefore, if - say - in the name LGBT rights - speaking of someone who is himself pro-LGBT rights - we end up allowing someone to compete as a woman despite having clear male attributes, and that person ends actually hurting other athletes in part due to this male-associated advantage, I'm going to have a BIG problem with that.

And I think that's what GREY sees too. I can only imagine what it feels like for women to be told by men that these concerns are just politically-based cruelty, given that when I experience it as a man it makes me see red.

The rights and concerns of cisgender women are taken seriously within the ethical debates, I can assure you. That there can be valid concerns over safety and fairness does not entail that categories of exclusion necessarily win out, however.

I hope this is a helpful contribution and is not overly charged, but I like most others have my own strongly-held positions on these questions, so apologies for any extent to which I have mischaracterized or misunderstood you.

[Sealab2024]

Guys, seriously. I get this stuff in every other part of the internet. So can we not here, please? Or at the very least take it to the off topic board. If I'm out of line and that's not the consensus then I apologize but imho it's legitimately ruining the fun here.