Week 7 (9) FINAL Flashcards
What’s the non-discrimination argument for allowing transgender women to compete against
biological females? What’s an objection to it?
Premise:
1. discrimination is bad
2. discriminating trans women from competing with bio women is bad
Conclusion: therefore it is bad to not allow trans women to compete with bio women
Objection: categorization is discrimination
Womens category discriminates against men, but that’s the point. Non-discrimatory sport is when there is no sex categories, but it’s contradictory to be for sex categories but then discriminate based on sex
What’s the ‘sport is a right’ argument for allowing transgender women to compete against biological females? What’s an objection to it?
Premise:
1. sport is a human right
2. if it is a right, then trans women must be allowed to compete against bio women
Conclusion: trans women bust be allowed to compete against bio women
Objection: premise 2 is false
* sport is a right so they have the right to try out for a team, but theres no category fro trans women to go to - this is false. They can change mens category to an open category, they can compete in the mens category, or they can create a trans category
* safety is also a right, and if sport and safety clash, then safety wins. If someones participation in sport makes it unsafe, then their right to sport is trumped by the others rights to safety. Trans women competing in contact sports (ex. rugby) infringes on other players safety
What’s the ‘domination argument’ against allowing transgender women to compete against biological females? What’s an objection to it?
Premise:
1. if trans women can compete with bio women, then trans women will dominate
2. trans women should not be allowed to dominate
Conclusion: trans women should not be allowed to compete against bio women
Objection: premise 1 is false
* Ivy (a trans athlete) looses most of her races and therefore cannot be ‘dominating’
* no openly trans women holds an elite world record, or won an elite world championship
(note: this hinges on how we define dominate)
What’s the ‘unfair advantage argument’ against allowing transgender women to compete against biological females? What’s an objection to it?
Premise:
1. trans women have an unfair advantage against bio women
2. if someone has an unfair advantage, then they shouldn’t be allowed to compete
Conclusion: trans women shuld not be allowed to compete agianst bio women
Objection: trans women don’t have an advantage
We don’t have evidence to believe that trans women do have an advantage against bio women
What does ‘advantage’ mean in the context of the ‘unfair advantage argument.
to say a trans woman has an advantage is to say that the trans women performs better than she would have performed herself if she were a biological woman (she’s a good athlete because she’s male)
How might we investigate whether transgender women have an advantage over biological females?
- follow athletes over a period of time (pre and post transition) keeping training, diet, nutrition constant but only changing testosterone levels, and seeing whether theres a performance drop that matches average difference between men and women in the sport. If they do drop to that level, then they don’t have an advantage
- see if post transitioned women is faster/stronger than average bio women not folloowing one specific athlete, but comparing them to others
- look to see if there’s rank jumping if they are higher ranked as a woman than when they were a man. If they are at a higher rank, then the plausible explanation is that the transition did not lower their performance
Why does Ivy think that even if transgender women have an advantage over biological females, transgender women should still be allowed to compete against biological females? What is a response to her view?
It’s not an unfair advantage: other advantages (such as socio-economic ones) are allowed so why isn’t a bio one allowed
Response: there is a catoegry for bio advantages -the men category
