I'm entertained by the double standard. If we say "One of the players on the San Jose State women's volleyball team is not a woman," the response is "Bigot! TERF!" But if Hiltz says "One of the runners in the women's race is not a woman," well, that's totally stunning and brave.
And on this topic, we are approaching the one year anniversary of one of the most pointlessly obvious peer-reviewed research publications of all time: "Performance of non-binary athletes in mass-participation running events," an Armstrong-Sullivan-Perry joint. Er, I mean to say, Armstrong et al (2023).
May I ask where you see the article us "obviously" transphobic? I see other flaws in the article - for example, using first name to identify a person's sex - but I can't see where it is "obviously" transphobic.
Sarcasm does not come across very well online. I know the commenter, George Perry, and in keeping with the tone of the article, I thought I could get away with a sarcastic response. You are very right—that study clearly shows what we knew to begin with—that a nonbinary gender identity doesn't affect performance but sex does.
Yep, I'm the co-author on that article. The primary method to determine / assume athlete sex was by entering their name into the Athlinks website, which aggregates endurance sport race results. Since the non-binary category didn't exist until a few hours ago, most of the runners in the NB category at NYRR road races participated in races - either NYRR's or elsewhere - where they had to enter either the M or W/F category, because those were the only two options. There were very very few NB runners that we could not find results for in Athlinks. For those few, we relied on the name frequency database; whereas that was the secondary / confirmatory method for that very large majority for whom we had Athlinks data.
And a fair amount of Twitter thought it was "obviously" transphobic :)
If I had been asked to describe Hiltz ten years ago based solely on the photo that accompanied the piece, I would have said she was a lesbian. I'd say the same thing today.
Call me a cynic, but if Hiltz really is gender afflicted maybe she's opting for "nonbinary" instead of trans because if she decided to identify as trans (like many young women, she'd be a foxy, boyish and believable man), she'd be competing against real men. She wouldn't have a prayer of winning, but maybe the fellas would adopt her as a sort of mascot.
The way you know all this is bullshit is that you never see natal females with gender distress insisting they should be in male sports/prisons, etc. And nobody would care if they did apart from being worried for their safety, which gives lie to the idea that sex realism is "anti-trans" broadly. Show me the natal female who, convicted of a felony says "No, damn it! I am a man, I have to go to San Quentin!" Or a sub 15:00 5k runner winning in the female category says "No damn it! I am a man, I should be an also ran at the East Springfield Turkey Trot competing for a gift card instead of winning international events and getting paid by sponsors!"
Exactly. This is why I am sick to the back teeth of Nikki Hiltz complaining about "having" to compete in the female category. I, too, could care less about what she wears, but she knows damn well the only reason she has reached the pinnacle of her sport is because she's a very talented woman running in the women's category. She would not qualify for the state track meet in the boys' 1500. It's beyond stupid, and particularly idiotic that media totally go along with her BS
My 5k PR is 14:52 and I did that at 6'4" and weighing 175 in my 30s and a full time job. Needless to say the most money I ever won for such lame running was $250. I won a pretty cool winter coat once. Maybe running for textile awards would be more validating for they/them. These beliefs that your maleness somehow evaporates in the heat of introspection are in the "Noah had an Ark with animals on it" or "Moses parted the Red Sea" category of belief. Impervious to facts because they are so tied to a moral worldview. I grew up in church and one hymn proclaimed "You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart!" and I knew this was bullshit epistemology as a 7th grader. "You ask me how I know I am a woman/man? I can look inside my heart".
She just can't admit she's a Butch Lesbian. These days we are nearly invisible because there's no freat status there. But we ARE FEMALE and some of us PROUD TO be women.
Shes just the self hating type. Wants to be special.
Yep, she said after the Olympics she was “going on T and get her breasts removed” because she was not a woman. She could compete as an NB person in the Boston Marathon and compete against other non women AND get beat by a non man in the same NB division. (All NBs get to qualify under the woman’s standard. Regardless of their actual DNA.)
I have no problem at all with performative androgeny - that identity has a long and glorious cultural history. But nonbinary is, obviously, a meaningless sham as it conflates sex which is always and only binary with a cultural continuum of "performance".
I'm entertained by the double standard. If we say "One of the players on the San Jose State women's volleyball team is not a woman," the response is "Bigot! TERF!" But if Hiltz says "One of the runners in the women's race is not a woman," well, that's totally stunning and brave.
And on this topic, we are approaching the one year anniversary of one of the most pointlessly obvious peer-reviewed research publications of all time: "Performance of non-binary athletes in mass-participation running events," an Armstrong-Sullivan-Perry joint. Er, I mean to say, Armstrong et al (2023).
https://bmjopensem.bmj.com/content/9/4/e001662
This study is obviously transphobic. :)
May I ask where you see the article us "obviously" transphobic? I see other flaws in the article - for example, using first name to identify a person's sex - but I can't see where it is "obviously" transphobic.
Sarcasm does not come across very well online. I know the commenter, George Perry, and in keeping with the tone of the article, I thought I could get away with a sarcastic response. You are very right—that study clearly shows what we knew to begin with—that a nonbinary gender identity doesn't affect performance but sex does.
Yep, I'm the co-author on that article. The primary method to determine / assume athlete sex was by entering their name into the Athlinks website, which aggregates endurance sport race results. Since the non-binary category didn't exist until a few hours ago, most of the runners in the NB category at NYRR road races participated in races - either NYRR's or elsewhere - where they had to enter either the M or W/F category, because those were the only two options. There were very very few NB runners that we could not find results for in Athlinks. For those few, we relied on the name frequency database; whereas that was the secondary / confirmatory method for that very large majority for whom we had Athlinks data.
And a fair amount of Twitter thought it was "obviously" transphobic :)
Sarah and I did a little in-house interview about it: https://www.thefemalecategory.com/p/think-its-obvious-that-sex-is-more
Sarah, you are so correct. How could Nikki accept a medal for a woman's event when she is not a woman???? Perplexing.....
If I had been asked to describe Hiltz ten years ago based solely on the photo that accompanied the piece, I would have said she was a lesbian. I'd say the same thing today.
Call me a cynic, but if Hiltz really is gender afflicted maybe she's opting for "nonbinary" instead of trans because if she decided to identify as trans (like many young women, she'd be a foxy, boyish and believable man), she'd be competing against real men. She wouldn't have a prayer of winning, but maybe the fellas would adopt her as a sort of mascot.
The way you know all this is bullshit is that you never see natal females with gender distress insisting they should be in male sports/prisons, etc. And nobody would care if they did apart from being worried for their safety, which gives lie to the idea that sex realism is "anti-trans" broadly. Show me the natal female who, convicted of a felony says "No, damn it! I am a man, I have to go to San Quentin!" Or a sub 15:00 5k runner winning in the female category says "No damn it! I am a man, I should be an also ran at the East Springfield Turkey Trot competing for a gift card instead of winning international events and getting paid by sponsors!"
Exactly. This is why I am sick to the back teeth of Nikki Hiltz complaining about "having" to compete in the female category. I, too, could care less about what she wears, but she knows damn well the only reason she has reached the pinnacle of her sport is because she's a very talented woman running in the women's category. She would not qualify for the state track meet in the boys' 1500. It's beyond stupid, and particularly idiotic that media totally go along with her BS
My 5k PR is 14:52 and I did that at 6'4" and weighing 175 in my 30s and a full time job. Needless to say the most money I ever won for such lame running was $250. I won a pretty cool winter coat once. Maybe running for textile awards would be more validating for they/them. These beliefs that your maleness somehow evaporates in the heat of introspection are in the "Noah had an Ark with animals on it" or "Moses parted the Red Sea" category of belief. Impervious to facts because they are so tied to a moral worldview. I grew up in church and one hymn proclaimed "You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart!" and I knew this was bullshit epistemology as a 7th grader. "You ask me how I know I am a woman/man? I can look inside my heart".
She just can't admit she's a Butch Lesbian. These days we are nearly invisible because there's no freat status there. But we ARE FEMALE and some of us PROUD TO be women.
Shes just the self hating type. Wants to be special.
Great read. I thought Nikki was jonesing to get on testosterone after the Olympics. What a narcissist! They all are.
Yep, she said after the Olympics she was “going on T and get her breasts removed” because she was not a woman. She could compete as an NB person in the Boston Marathon and compete against other non women AND get beat by a non man in the same NB division. (All NBs get to qualify under the woman’s standard. Regardless of their actual DNA.)
She needs an intervention.
Nikki Hiltz, is a very good 1500m runner. She's clearly deeply infused with a need to shout out 'look at me'.
I have no problem at all with performative androgeny - that identity has a long and glorious cultural history. But nonbinary is, obviously, a meaningless sham as it conflates sex which is always and only binary with a cultural continuum of "performance".
I LOVE this article! I wish all sports officials could read it!
You're my new best friend Richard
It just exposes the absurdity of this whole movement.
You’re at your best when you snark ;)