Fuck It. Joe Rogan Podcast Thread

[Necrometer]

fuck yes, another thread seduced by feminism

and maybe yeah i sound like a climate denier or something but i think gender itself is a weird scientific category.

isn't it universally accepted that gender is a culture thing while sex is the science thing? gender is always going to be a fuzzy web of ideas

Meaning, is that medical data driving your conclusion, or is it just part of what allows you to keep a certain emotional opinion?

I definitely have a reason/experience-based intuition that a m->f transperson will likely retain some amount of the corporeal elements that make men statistically more capable fighters than women. Is skeletal density really an issue? One's adult skeletal frame doesn't rearrange much in response to hormones, right? I feel like certain developmental stuff will not be wiped away, no matter the time and hormone dose. My mind is open to the finding that after 5 years of trans living, a m->f woman is, on average, close in physical capabilities to the typical cis-female average, but it would take a lot to convince me that there'd be no difference.

Let's imagine that this is demonstrated, and that trans-women are allowed to MMA. They could conceivably fail a drug test if they don't take their hormonal supplements, right?

[Kurt Russell's Beard]

Thanks, yeah, I've read all those dissenting doctors' reports on that site too. Bone density and muscle mass does decrease (bone length as far as I know does not--they're right about that) with HRT, and it seems they're haggling over at what rate it does. So if you take a woman like Fallon Fox, who was a smaller man anyway, and who has for years been a woman, her bone density and muscle mass have dramatically decreased. I believe they've done her measurements for this.

But now we're in an area where the natural distribution of height and strength among cis women are more disparate than any advantage Fox might even have. There are some very tall, dense women. There are women with obvious male-like musculature (ahem, Cyborg). And they are already at an advantage from a purely physical standpoint than Fox. I'm not sure if they already do so (maybe in the Olympics?), but they should do these measurements across an average of women, and if a trans woman falls within that average, then she's within the range of equality and she should be allowed to fight. No consent and transparency, in my opinion. She's a woman, legally and physically. I know that's not going to happen right now, but ethically I hope it does one day.

[Kurt Russell's Beard]

fuck yes, another thread seduced by feminism

Haha, I know!

Let's imagine that this is demonstrated, and that trans-women are allowed to MMA. They could conceivably fail a drug test if they don't take their hormonal supplements, right?

Heh, that would be funny. But no, I'm pretty sure it doesn't work like that. After SRS, they're seriously low on testosterone forever. They take hormones for estrogen, and they don't test for that because, well, it doesn't do anything for fighting ability. Just bitching ability.

[Mari_Mar]

Well, I just spent the last hour or so googling for indepth articles related to studies examining the potential advantages trans athletes may or may not have, and FBTS and KRB basically summed up everything I found.

This legal brief does the same in waaaaay more words:

http://law.shu.edu/Students/academics/j ... etes-3.pdf

[FVBTVS]

wait i wasn't clear

i think it's absolutely valid to feel the way he feels about it but i just think there are other factors as well.

You were clear.

and no i actually wasn't

i felt that joe was being a fucking stupid jew and opening his mouth about something he's not educated enough about to be commenting on and said there's absolutely positively an advantage being born a man and then competing as a woman after srs. i'm saying there isn't enough evidence to prove there's no advantage whatsoever.

there's a gaping hole there wide enough to drive a truck through. hence, something to be somewhat sensitive about. joe. you fucking faggot.

[Mari_Mar]

I got linked to show last week from a friend on Facebook, and it was clear to me that Joe was speaking from a position of ingnorant assumption. It's completely common place, from my own transition up through the social politics of the day. I see this stuff everyday.

But it was this Joe Show that lead me to read about the IOC's 2004 decision to allow post-op trans women, with 2 years HRT after surgery, compete in the Olympics in women's categories. I should have followed that up with finding medical journals related to the subject. But, I took it for granted that his opinions where the same tired assumptions that lead people to label 6-year old trans girls as potential sexual predators, and lost interest...

[Kurt Russell's Beard]

Yeah, Rogan comes off like an idiot, but he believes in alien abduction and conspiracy theories and shit, so I'm not so sure he's level-headed.

I think the only real question about advantage might be bone density, but it might just be noise compared to the variation already present in women. I'd love some good data. I doubt they will because they'd be too afraid of finding adamantium-coated bones in Cyborg.

[valgalder]

just curious.. how do post op women like Fallon Fox able to keep such muscle mass also? Hormones must be all over place with this one..

[Necrometer]

Let's imagine that this is demonstrated, and that trans-women are allowed to MMA. They could conceivably fail a drug test if they don't take their hormonal supplements, right?

Heh, that would be funny. But no, I'm pretty sure it doesn't work like that. After SRS, they're seriously low on testosterone forever. They take hormones for estrogen, and they don't test for that because, well, it doesn't do anything for fighting ability. Just bitching ability.

If you'll allow me to step into misogynist character for a moment, I think one would still get a competitive advantage if they dodged bitch-brain by skipping their estrogen dose (jokes aside, good thinking; I forgot that once the testicles are off... yeah)

http://law.shu.edu/Students/academics/j ... etes-3.pdf

I read a lot of this, and the entire science section. If one wanted to look at it from a cold, hard facts stance, this is the only sentence in the whole thing that actually matters:

Though transitioned women still have, on average, larger muscles and less body fat than natal women,

To me, that's essentially the end of it. On average, cis men have more muscle than cis women, which is one of several reasons there are so many sex-segregated sports. Sports is pretty stupid but as far as fair competition goes... fuck. This is a tough one but I understand the spirit of having women compete vs. women and men compete vs. men, and trans people have different averages than either of those categories. For a sport where cis men typically dominate over cis women, trans men and trans women will almost definitely fall somewhere in between.

Mari, would it be compelling to you if there were some massive study that ranked skill in a given sport, comparing the average performance of cis men, cis women, trans men, and trans women? Would your opinions change if the ranking were cM>tW>tM>cW as opposed to cM>tM>tW>cW? Do you think it even matters which scenario was shown to be the case?

[riley-o]

Has it come out when Fox started training MMA ? I'm in no way a doctor but I am a fighter and I've trained with a lot of women and female fighters and something common to almost every single one of them was a lack of aggression and natural tendency to attack. The killer instinct. You see it all the time in women's fights that the panic instinct gets triggered quickly and easily and, while I'm not saying this doesn't happen in men, it's much less common and much easier to breed out.

Further, I feel that the aggression-imprinting learned as a man would go a long, long way in the women's division of MMA and if you were learning to fight as a male, the motor learning would still be present after the surgery, wouldn't it ? I'm not sure, that's an honest question. But it's incredibly rare that a woman can swing the hips into a kick or explode the core and shoulders into punches the same way a man can, and I strongly doubt a person would lose what their body learned when they were a man. I've read the articles posted and this wasn't covered.

Finally, the fact is that this simply hasn't been researched in anywhere near the detail necessary to be gambling unaware people's health on it, if it's done the way Fox wants it where transgenders should not have to reveal that they weren't born female. This isn't track and field or volleyball or weightlifting where you might lose a competition, this is the sport of hit the other person in the face until they can't continue and every time you fight you're in danger of losing your life.

[valgalder]

I could be wrong, but I thought it was mentioned that Fox was fighting MMA before she became a women. I should look that up though.

[valgalder]

My uneducated knowledge of all of this, I say she shouldn't fight women.. but at the same time, i'd love to see Ronda Rousey put her in an armbar.

[Mari_Mar]

Ross, yes! Such a study would be interesting to me, and I would totally be open to the results.

Riley, if we're speaking anecdotally, the time I spent training in fighting, I totally got my ass handed to me by a cis girl. I'm not really sure what that says, since its a really narrow study group, and we were all pretty young. How do you measure things in this way without doing a comprehensive study? Rather than say that Fox isn't allowed to fight women, I'd rather see an effort put into measuring how she compares to her potential competitors. It's a perfect chance to conduct a partial study into what Ross suggested above, really... We can measure punching power, strength, and stamina. I'd suggest this would be a better measure of a participants eligibility, rather than what chromosomes they have, or what upbringing they had...

[riley-o]

Sure, in a setting where everyone is fully aware of what's happening and is a willing participant in an experiment where their life could be at greater risk than it already is. Fallon is suggesting that the women that fight transgender women remain unaware that they are part of that experiment and that is simply unacceptable.

[Necrometer]

Really thoughtful posts, everyone. (Except Joe.)

Ross, yes! Such a study would be interesting to me, and I would totally be open to the results.

So if trans women competed more similarly to cis men (and likewise for trans men & cis women), would you advocate for people competing based on XX v. XY?

[Kurt Russell's Beard]

Sure, in a setting where everyone is fully aware of what's happening and is a willing participant in an experiment where their life could be at greater risk than it already is. Fallon is suggesting that the women that fight transgender women remain unaware that they are part of that experiment and that is simply unacceptable.

I think this would be great, let her fight those opponents who agree to it. And release the exact stats of her bone density and muscle mass and blood work and T level and every little detail, and then do the same for her opponents.

That's just the thing, people keep saying there's simply not enough data to allow this to happen, but it's a catch-22 in that we won't ever have any if we don't create a situation where they can fight and we can get the data.

And if it turns out that Fox has, say, average muscle mass for her weight class but higher bone density, and they measure Cyborg and find that she has superior muscle mass AND bone density, then what does that say about allowing Cyborg to fight?

Why do we allow the outliers to compete with unfair advantages—super tall women with reach, roided out chicks, etc.—simply because they were born with a vagina? That's what trips me out. That's why I want to see all the women really measured for physical data and compared. I'm guessing that Fox won't be the most extreme outlier, that there will be cis women who have obvious biological advantages, and what then? Are trans women allowed? Do we disqualify the cis women?

This is all fascinating to me.

[valgalder]

the problem is what if she wants to go for a title, and the challenger accepts, and Fox wins? Then all (born) female challengers are forced to fight her? Hmmm.

[Necrometer]

That's why I want to see all the women really measured for physical data and compared.

[Kurt Russell's Beard]

the problem is what if she wants to go for a title, and the challenger accepts, and Fox wins? Then all (born) female challengers are forced to fight her? Hmmm.

Hmmm, yeah it seems like they would have to be non-title matches while the testing is going on. How has Fox been doing so far? Is she killing the competition? Has she lost yet?

(If she's really good, she'd be smart to take a dive a few times, ha.)

About the imprinting thing Riley was talking about...
I don't see this ever being proven. I mean, they're still trying to figure out basic brain stuff, I just don't see a ton of research going into this to make any real headway with such a subjective and uncertain topic. Maybe Ross has a better outlook on how feasible this is. It just seems to me like that bullshit you always hear in the news: BANANAS PROVEN TO CAUSE CANCER. And you freak out and say, "Why the fuck isn't this a national emergency?!" And the next month it's: BANANAS CONTAIN ANTIOXIDANTS THAT CURE AIDS IN MICE. And back and forth. Shallow news-science that isn't real. Don't hold out for ever getting a straight answer on imprinting, I think. There are also violent women in Scumfucker's hood that could totally kill my pussy ass. Compared to Torsion, I resemble more a cis woman in my aggression levels. The whole thing is a subjective mess. Bone density and muscle mass as compared to other cis women—that's hard data we can look at. Subjective "aggression" level memories is a pipe dream. Don't let that be a sticking point.

[Necrometer]

these things are going to be extremely difficult to test considering the paucity of trans people in general

your expectations seem a bit off anyway; one's bullshit detector should go off any time someone claims science has "proven" anything

you can test stuff and you can observe trends and draw very human conclusions... proofs are for math

I think Riley's intuition feels reasonable in my cis man gut though

[Mari_Mar]

...would you advocate for people competing based on XX v. XY?

No. The IOC already determined that chromosomal data is not a reliable way of measuring male and female catagorization back in 1999, I believe. (It may have been 2004. This was explained in that legal brief I linked.) We'd have to base the decision on other data. Chromosomes and phenotype have more variations than XY and XX.

[Necrometer]

Well, this question was framed in the context of my fantasy experiment where aptitude is measured scientifically for a given sport - so how about if I remove XX/XY and change it to:

So if trans women competed more similarly to cis men (and likewise for trans men & cis women), would you advocate for people competing as categorized by their birth sex?

[Kurt Russell's Beard]

I think Riley's intuition feels reasonable in my cis man gut though

I think I've read about trans women saying that after HRT they lost aggression, so it would be interesting to widely interview them, and then interview the fighters themselves to compare. I don't think it's out of the question that such imprinting might exist, just that I doubt science is going to be able to show conclusive data with something so subjective. But I could be wrong!

I agree, we need to see how much of an advantage all this is. We need more tests and data. It would be a shame if trans women really did have a clear and unsafe advantage in MMA because it would be disqualifying athletes who want to compete and who would likely have nowhere to go to do it. But I'd rather have that than a woman's fighting league that falls apart because trans women keep too many male advantages in the cage.

I just watched a Fallon Fox fight and she was absolutely dominant. She's 2 - 0. She reminded me of how Cyborg fights.

[Mari_Mar]

Well, this question was framed in the context of my fantasy experiment where aptitude is measured scientifically for a given sport - so how about if I remove XX/XY and change it to:

So if trans women competed more similarly to cis men (and likewise for trans men & cis women), would you advocate for people competing as categorized by their birth sex?

I don't know. I would need to see the data. Historically, categorizing people by their birth sex has been faulty as exemplified by the very existence of trans people. And, where would intersex people fit in this scenario.

[riley-o]

If male to female trans lose aggression, why is she choosing to fight after completing her transition ?