Coming Together: DGPT Launches United Series

[jenb]

Even the best studies on trans people suffer from small sample size and participant drop out. Not that many potential participants to start with and most only agree to participate because gender clinics require it in order for them to receive treatment. Hard to blame them for dropping out when they complete transition when they only participated under duress.

 

[Brychanus]

This is about the politics of science.

I am a cisgender Caucasian male. My primary job is a (soon to be tenured) academic research professor at an R1 university in psychological & brain sciences. My laboratory has historically well-funded for its age by the NIH*, industry sponsors, and donors. You'll understand why that's relevant in a moment. To understand what science is, you need insight into what it can look like on the front lines, and where the money flows.

I'm not surprised when it is people who share those first three personal identifying words that I shared above (as usual) have the loudest and most often-repeated opinions. I really, really didn't want to write anything at all. I just want to say a few things from the perspective of a very prematurely jaded academic scientist who has seen more than his fair share of skeletons in closets. I want to mention some of them and learn if in some small way I can help.

I keep seeing this word "science" coming up everywhere and I'm having a hard time seeing anything remotely like what I mean when I use that word. As someone who spent a significant part of his training in psychology clinics, all I see in most of these online interactions that supposedly refer to science is a lack of citations to primary sources and outstandingly bad faith arguments. I can't remember the last time I saw a good faith argument on the topic at hand here that involved directly interacting with scientific publications. For the record, Jeff Spring definitely wasn't doing it in my estimation, and was doing a poor job masquerading as a politician who just wants to move on from the issue "for the next couple of years." I want to sidestep that for a moment and just focus on "real world" science and how it looks from the perspective of someone who is "successful" at it in the eyes of certain power structures. You can tell by my quotation marks that I'm a little cynical about that too.

In my research group, we hit all the benchmarks that Big Admin marks as a "good lab". We're not perceived as the "best" in my entire field (whatever that would be), but we do very well in our local environment. Sometimes good things happen to us just because we're "on the map" now. I'm saying this because I'm someone who escapes into disc golf as often as I can to get away from the stressors of what that process entails. It's utterly exhausting.

It's easy to become very cynical about science in practice. There is no shortage of well-known issues in funding models from our national agencies, including the perverse yoking of base salaries to extramural funding, which exacerbates all manner of competitive dynamics. When the optimizing function is for "grant dollars in" as a function of "published units out," strange things happen. It is important to understand a few of these oddities.

Tenure-track hiring committees are notoriously economically and politically conservative even in progressive universities. The rationalization is usually "risk minimizing" - tenure track hires are increasingly a career marriage for a department. A "bad hire" (what would that mean?) is perceived as a tragic loss for a department. Guess who (demographically) still gets hired the most? I probably don't have to tell you. Guess what their science needs to be? If you think it doesn't have to do with money, you'd usually only be half correct these days.

I am in one of the "good scenarios" with a 9-month contract, meaning I get 75% of my annual salary from the university. I'm not paid in the summer unless I bring it in myself. An alternative model is to work in a medical school, which is anywhere between 50% or more likely closer to 100% self-funded these days even for primary tenure track investigators, meaning you need to show up with the bucks. Oh, that includes by the way the pay for your own benefits, the same for your supervisees and staff, research funds and overheads, and so on, unless you've already convinced some university you are so extraordinarily valuable that they will take that pressure off of you, usually by stealing you from a competitor. Most funding for biomedical science goes to medical investigators these days, not people in "hard money" positions. There are all kinds of dynamics that prop this structure up and put all of the risk on the investigators, not the institutions.

Traditional "hard money" positions or "soft money" medical positions, did you know that there is a legitimate "pecking order" of hires and what counts as "legitimate science" in the United States? Diversity researchers (in any construal of the word) are still generally treated like second-class citizens (at best), because their work is often treated as derivative of the "real science." They're all just interested in moderating effects and not the "primary" findings, right? It couldn't possibly be that we only keep them around because it fulfills a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion quota, could it? Ever notice that the people studying transgender topics are usually "instructor" or "adjunct" or other positions? That Universispeak for "you and what you do aren't important to us to keep around more than a year or three at a time like the real faculty, so we'll pander to you in the meantime. I'm really not being hyperbolic, nor am I really taking a stance on that in this moment. This is to say nothing of the gamification of diversity variables among the student population, which of course are all inflated and distorted by university rankings and various federal upheavals I don't have the energy to get into right now. Start adding up all of those things and you start to see why we know pitifully little about transgendered anything, much less disc golfers.

Bad faith arguments happen all the time in academic science, just like in the rest of life. But I also still have plenty of good faith arguments too, which is part of why I don't quit completely and why I work on processes that encourage more of them in my day job despite the withering, ever-growing BS in our modern universities. Call me old fashioned, but I believe the core mission of academia is still to create and disseminate knowledge despite the perversion of the power and money structures. I also believe it is outrightly irresponsible to make applied conclusions from basic science without well-designed studies, and usually scrutiny from multiple parties. Sometimes it doesn't seem that way in science, but when you realize that you're meeting a small group of people at all the same conferences who all really know who is behind the "deidentified" work, real conversations start to happen in the long run. So far, I have seen nothing like that happening in disc golf.

Where is all this "science" people keep talking about, and why isn't that part of what we actually talk about? Does anyone actually care about it or what outcome measures are used to inform decisions, or how they relate to what happens in the real world? Or did we all just decide where we stand and use the word "science" like it's referring to something happening mutually in all of our heads? I mean it, I'm not a rhetorical politician. It isn't surprising to me due to the issues above and more that we don't have more transgendered studies, much less well-designed ones, much less ones specific to athletic development, much less ones specific to disc golf. Who's paying for it? What are we even trying to answer, and is it even a scientific question? I'm asking.

I'm willing to learn that I'm wrong, but I don't think it's about the science.


*National Institutes of Health (NIH) gets $51-ish billion of our tax dollars, which might sound like a lot but turns out to be woefully low for the demands on our society according to various metrics, even after accounting for the BS.

 

[Orioles_Lefty]

Let me start with a kind of caveat.

When I slow down and look at it from a devil's advocate point of view, I would hate to be in Jeff Spring's position. What I mean is that if I, as a trans ally who has two trans kids, was the CEO of DGPT it would feel like I was in a highly precarious position without good options. The desire of conservatives to make trans persons into pariahs that they can conveniently scapegoat, and their success in doing so, puts the found success of professional disc golf as a spectator sport at risk given Natalie's debut into the spotlight. As CEO of the tour, I would be responsible for, among other things, the lives and well being of many employees and the pro tour players. That's not just a professional responsibility, but a moral one. I would necessarily be trying to balance those with the same responsibilities regarding preventing the dehumanization and segregation of trans persons. It wouldn't be as simple as taking the proper moral stance on the inclusion of trans women.

Which means I'd be inclined to be somewhat sympathetic to Spring, and less inclined to yell obscenities at my speakers, if he could manage to actually put an ounce of spine behind his talk of being inclusive and loving.

Instead of saying mealy mouthed phrases like "People, on both sides, need to stop dehumanizing people they don't agree with," he could call out people like Allen and Hokom for continually misgendering and dehumanizing Natalie. If he could bring himself to say "Natalie is a woman and I fully support her playing in womens' divisions, the only question is whether the advantage of male puberty can be appropriately addressed to allow for equitable competition," I'd be more inclined to believe the kumbaya rhetoric.

He could say, "We owe it to Natalie to reach out to her and to be in dialogue. Just saying we accept her won't lead to her feeling accepted, nor is it true acceptance."

As it is, I do yell at my speakers, especially when he gets softball interview questions or when isn't pressed on his circular answers to even slightly difficult questions.

I did not listen to the Upshot interview so I don't know if that's what you are referring to, but the fact that Charlie Eisenhood is the leading journalist in disc golf and also a DGPT contract freelancer (correct term?) is a problem, and I say that as someone who generally respects his work and think he finds a way to be critical of the DGPT on the regular.

I know the traditional lines separating journalistic reporting and all else are gone (and have been for 20+ year). I know he's scrapping together income from various disc golf ventures. I know almost all profit streams in professional disc golf except disc sales depend on the DGPT (see: Jomez). But interviewing what amounts to your boss about very controversial issues just ain't a good look. And that's where softball questions come from —not to mention I think he is politically and ideologically in the minority compared to the disc golf populous and his subscribers.

The DGPT basically has an operational monopoly on everything but disc sales, so it's fairly funny that their relative power in the industry/industry/sport was of no real power when it came to state laws and pending lawsuits. The whole professional side runs through endemic exchanges of money with the DGPT at the center.

 

[denny ritner]

Turns out the inconvenience on players for having to re-arrange their travel schedules last minute to compete in an event without their usual media coverage outweighed the sacrifice of unfair competition for this small number of events.

The good news for 2024 is that, if the DGPT continues with this model, planning is already underway for a series of private invitational tournaments which will afford the players who do not wish to play in the "unified" events an alternative.

 

[Rastnav]

I did not listen to the Upshot interview so I don't know if that's what you are referring to, but the fact that Charlie Eisenhood is the leading journalist in disc golf and also a DGPT contract freelancer (correct term?) is a problem, and I say that as someone who generally respects his work and think he finds a way to be critical of the DGPT on the regular.

I know the traditional lines separating journalistic reporting and all else are gone (and have been for 20+ year). I know he's scrapping together income from various disc golf ventures. I know almost all profit streams in professional disc golf except disc sales depend on the DGPT (see: Jomez). But interviewing what amounts to your boss about very controversial issues just ain't a good look. And that's where softball questions come from —not to mention I think he is politically and ideologically in the minority compared to the disc golf populous and his subscribers.

The DGPT basically has an operational monopoly on everything but disc sales, so it's fairly funny that their relative power in the industry/industry/sport was of no real power when it came to state laws and pending lawsuits. The whole professional side runs through endemic exchanges of money with the DGPT at the center.

Yes, the Ultiworld interview. It was rather infuriating.

I'm not going to bag n them too much for being attached at the hip to the pro tour. That's nothing new for coverage of any sort of niche activity or sport. Trying to apply journalistic standards to these type of publications is something of a non sequitur. I'll at least give them credit for consistently pointing out that the DGPT/PDGA has been making decision that were fairly obviously going to lose in court, that they couldn't afford that court fight, and that the so called medical underpinnings of the decision seems to have been written in crayon on a napkin. Just not in the interview with Spring.

I'd honestly have preferred they hadn't asked any substantive questions rather than starting to ask a hard question and treating the subsequent word salad as in anything other than a filibuster.

 

[jenb]

Turns out the inconvenience on players for having to re-arrange their travel schedules last minute to compete in an event without their usual media coverage outweighed the sacrifice of unfair competition for this small number of events.

The good news for 2024 is that, if the DGPT continues with this model, planning is already underway for a series of private invitational tournaments which will afford the players who do not wish to play in the "unified" events an alternative.

What? No perma ban? Sadface.

 

[txmxer]

Brycganus—if I follow your rant, you are bemoaning the lack of genuine science based analysis of transgender issues.

Although my field is electricity, I couldn't agree with you more. And that has nothing to do with sports or disc golf. It's about helping people. Understanding human diversity.

I appreciate what I believe is your intent.

 

[jenb]

This is about the politics of science.

I am a cisgender Caucasian male. My primary job is a (soon to be tenured) academic research professor at an R1 university in psychological & brain sciences. My laboratory has historically well-funded for its age by the NIH*, industry sponsors, and donors. You'll understand why that's relevant in a moment. To understand what science is, you need insight into what it can look like on the front lines, and where the money flows.

I'm not surprised when it is people who share those first three personal identifying words that I shared above (as usual) have the loudest and most often-repeated opinions. I really, really didn't want to write anything at all. I just want to say a few things from the perspective of a very prematurely jaded academic scientist who has seen more than his fair share of skeletons in closets. I want to mention some of them and learn if in some small way I can help.

I keep seeing this word "science" coming up everywhere and I'm having a hard time seeing anything remotely like what I mean when I use that word. As someone who spent a significant part of his training in psychology clinics, all I see in most of these online interactions that supposedly refer to science is a lack of citations to primary sources and outstandingly bad faith arguments. I can't remember the last time I saw a good faith argument on the topic at hand here that involved directly interacting with scientific publications. For the record, Jeff Spring definitely wasn't doing it in my estimation, and was doing a poor job masquerading as a politician who just wants to move on from the issue "for the next couple of years." I want to sidestep that for a moment and just focus on "real world" science and how it looks from the perspective of someone who is "successful" at it in the eyes of certain power structures. You can tell by my quotation marks that I'm a little cynical about that too.

In my research group, we hit all the benchmarks that Big Admin marks as a "good lab". We're not perceived as the "best" in my entire field (whatever that would be), but we do very well in our local environment. Sometimes good things happen to us just because we're "on the map" now. I'm saying this because I'm someone who escapes into disc golf as often as I can to get away from the stressors of what that process entails. It's utterly exhausting.

It's easy to become very cynical about science in practice. There are no shortage of well-known issues in funding models from our national agencies, including the perverse yoking of base salaries to extramural funding, which exacerbates all manner of competitive dynamics. When the optimizing function is for "grant dollars in" as a function of "published units out," strange things happen. It is important to understand a few of these oddities.

Tenure-track hiring committees are notoriously economically and politically conservative even in progressive universities. The rationalization is usually "risk minimizing" - tenure track hires are increasingly a career marriage for a department. A "bad hire" (what would that mean?) is perceived as a tragic loss for a department. Guess who (demographically) still gets hired the most? I probably don't have to tell you. Guess what their science needs to be? If you think it doesn't have to do with money, you'd usually only be half correct these days.

I am in one of the "good scenarios" with a 9-month contract, meaning I get 75% of my annual salary from the university. I'm not paid in the summer unless I bring it in myself. An alternative model is to work in a medical school, which is anywhere between 50% or more likely closer to 100% self-funded these days even for primary tenure track investigators, meaning you need to show up with the bucks. Oh, that includes by the way the pay for your own benefits, the same for your supervisees and staff, research funds and overheads, and so on, unless you've already convinced some university you are so extraordinarily valuable that they will take that pressure off of you, usually by stealing you from a competitor. Most funding for biomedical science goes to medical investigators these days, not people in "hard money" positions. There are all kinds of dynamics that prop this structure up and put all of the risk on the investigators, not the institutions.

Traditional "hard money" positions or "soft money" medical positions, did you know that there is a legitimate "pecking order" of hires and what counts as "legitimate science" in the United States? Diversity researchers (in any construal of the word) are still generally treated like second-class citizens (at best), because their work is often treated as derivative of the "real science." They're all just interested in moderating effects and not the "primary" findings, right? It couldn't possibly be that we only keep them around because it fulfills a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion quota, could it? Ever notice that the people studying transgender topics are usually "instructor" or "adjunct" or other positions? That Universispeak for "you and what you do aren't important to us to keep around more than a year or three at a time like the real faculty, so we'll pander to you in the meantime. I'm really not being hyperbolic, nor am I really taking a stance on that in this moment. This is to say nothing of the gamification of diversity variables among the student population, which of course are all inflated and distorted by university rankings and various federal upheavals I don't have the energy to get into right now. Start adding up all of those things and you start to see why we know pitifully little about transgendered anything, much less disc golfers.

Bad faith arguments happen all the time in academic science, just like in the rest of life. But I also still have plenty of good faith arguments too, which is part of why I don't quit completely and why I work on processes that encourage more of them in my day job despite the whithering, ever-growing BS in our modern universities. Call me old fashioned, but I believe the core mission of academia is still to create and disseminate knowledge despite the perversion of the power and money structures. I also believe it is outrightly irresponsible to make applied conclusions from basic science without well-designed studies, and usually scrutiny from multiple parties. Sometimes it doesn't seem that way in science, but when you realize that you're meeting a small group of people at all the same conferences who all really know who is behind the "deidentified" work, real conversations start to happen in the long run. So far, I have seen nothing like that happening in disc golf.

Where is all this "science" people keep talking about, and why isn't that part of what we actually talk about? Does anyone actually care about it or what outcome measures are used to inform decisions, or how they relate to what happens in the real world? Or did we all just decide where we stand and use the word "science" like it's referring to something happening mutually in all of our heads? I mean it, I'm not a rhetorical politician. It isn't surprising to me due to the issues above and more that we don't have more transgendered studies, much less well-designed ones, much less ones specific to athletic development, much less ones specific to disc golf. Who's paying for it? What are we even trying to answer, and is it even a scientific question? I'm asking.

I'm willing to learn that I'm wrong, but I don't think it's about the science.


*National Institutes of Health (NIH) gets $51-ish billion of our tax dollars, which might sound like a lot but turns out to be woefully low for the demands on our society according to various metrics, even after accounting for the BS.

I'd like to hear more from you. I'm science degreed but not "blooded" so to speak. I see a lot of what I think is shenanigans, but it would be stellar to hear from someone in the trenches. Y'know, in addition to a few others here.

 

[Jolt]

IS there a way to solve this? Does not feel that way.
If you dont "draw a line" than any male 1000rated player can say they identifies as woman and play FPO.
Kristin makes over $100 000 a year just in tornament. . "easy money" for a +1000 rated male, and if one does that many will follw and soon FPO will have only male players that says they identifies as woman to make money.
So a line has to be drawn and i dont see a solution here. ..how do we agree were that line is drawn?

 

[Skamanda]

IS there a way to solve this? Does not feel that way.
If you dont "draw a line" than any male 1000rated player can say they identifies as woman and play FPO.
Kristin makes over $100 000 a year just in tornament. . "easy money" for a +1000 rated male, and if one does that many will follw and soon FPO will have only male players that says they identifies as woman to make money.
So a line has to be drawn and i dont see a solution here. ..how do we agree were that line is drawn?

This will never happen. I had a good breakdown of the costs and reasons why in another thread, bit it's just a conspiracy theory that the anti trans people peddle, that flies in the face of reality.

The short, short version is this:

To get to the day they'd be allowed to play their first tournament in FPO, they'd have to spend tens of thousands of dollars in medical expenses, go through 3-4 years of medical treatments (lying to doctors convincingly the whole time, so as not to get pulled off transition), sacrifice safety, stability, job, family, friends, and permanently lose the masculinity they like having, add all the emotional weight of it in top of the emotional effects of hormones, and a LOT more.... Just to be able to START resorting l recouping their costs with the MUCH smaller payouts in FPO, while losing any distance advantage they had, that would give them an edge over KT, or the other top women.


People really need to stop using that nonsensical fear mongering as a reason to suggest discrimination. It's no more rooted in reality than the fear that trans women will assault women and girls in women's restrooms.

 

[Jolt]

This will never happen. I had a good breakdown of the costs and reasons why in another thread, bit it's just a conspiracy theory that the anti trans people peddle, that flies in the face of reality.

The short, short version is this:

To get to the day they'd be allowed to play their first tournament in FPO, they'd have to spend tens of thousands of dollars in medical expenses, go through 3-4 years of medical treatments (lying to doctors convincingly the whole time, so as not to get pulled off transition), sacrifice safety, stability, job, family, friends, and permanently lose the masculinity they like having, add all the emotional weight of it in top of the emotional effects of hormones, and a LOT more.... Just to be able to START resorting l recouping their costs with the MUCH smaller payouts in FPO, while losing any distance advantage they had, that would give them an edge over KT, or the other top women.


People really need to stop using that nonsensical fear mongering as a reason to suggest discrimination. It's no more rooted in reality than the fear that trans women will assault women and girls in women's restrooms.

I dont want to offend but hard to even ask questions. . .
What i mean is if we have NO rules anyone can play , right? ( and not do any of those things you said)
So how do we make fair rules?
I dont know so i ask ( but that didnt work) . . is it possible to come up with a rule that most people will see as fair?

 

[HyooMac]

Yes, the Ultiworld interview. It was rather infuriating.

I'm not going to bag n them too much for being attached at the hip to the pro tour. That's nothing new for coverage of any sort of niche activity or sport. Trying to apply journalistic standards to these type of publications is something of a non sequitur. I'll at least give them credit for consistently pointing out that the DGPT/PDGA has been making decision that were fairly obviously going to lose in court, that they couldn't afford that court fight, and that the so called medical underpinnings of the decision seems to have been written in crayon on a napkin. Just not in the interview with Spring.

I'd honestly have preferred they hadn't asked any substantive questions rather than starting to ask a hard question and treating the subsequent word salad as in anything other than a filibuster.

Yeah, it was a word salad. But that's been the usual for any interviews I've heard with Spring. He just talks incessantly and rambles through any answer until he runs out of breath.

I did take note of his repeated phrasing "both ends of the issue" instead of "both sides of the issue." I guess someone thought that was a clever construct.

He entirely sidestepped the question about whether Natalie was consulted, by answering that he couldn't talk about any settlement.

I have learned, from watching public events during recent years, that it's really dangerous when the opposing side to your views is able to dominate the discussion - as Spring and some FPO players are doing at the moment. I can't imagine the strain Natalie is under. I had hoped that Paige - or somebody with Pro Tour visibility -would have stepped up and advocated for Natalie's position.

Otherwise, we're left with one side complaining they didn't get everything they wanted - and renewing their efforts to get it all next time.

 

[Skamanda]

Yeah, it was a word salad. But that's been the usual for any interviews I've heard with Spring. He just talks incessantly and rambles through any answer until he runs out of breath.

I did take note of his repeated phrasing "both ends of the issue" instead of "both sides of the issue." I guess someone thought that was a clever construct.

He entirely sidestepped the question about whether Natalie was consulted, by answering that he couldn't talk about any settlement.

I have learned, from watching public events during recent years, that it's really dangerous when the opposing side to your views is able to dominate the discussion - as Spring and some FPO players are doing at the moment. I can't imagine the strain Natalie is under. I had hoped that Paige - or somebody with Pro Tour visibility -would have stepped up and advocated for Natalie's position.

Otherwise, we're left with one side complaining they didn't get everything they wanted - and renewing their efforts to get it all next time.

Paige was the only one who reached out to Natalie to discuss it with her.

She told Natalie what the DGPT wanted to do, and asked her to get on board.

 

[biscoe]

I dont want to offend but hard to even ask questions. . .
What i mean is if we have NO rules anyone can play , right? ( and not do any of those things you said)
So how do we make fair rules?
I dont know so i ask ( but that didnt work) . . is it possible to come up with a rule that most people will see as fair?

"Most people?"- probably. The vocal anti-inclusion crowd?- almost certainly not- it is a black and white issue for them. My opinion is that the PDGA rules for non-Elite play were "acceptable" to "most people "(and legal in all states in the US at least). I have said since the very beginning of this controversy that it will be sorted out in court for better or worse. That remains the case. There will be people left unhappy with the outcome either way.

 

[Skamanda]

I dont want to offend but hard to even ask questions. . .
What i mean is if we have NO rules anyone can play , right? ( and not do any of those things you said)
So how do we make fair rules?
I dont know so i ask ( but that didnt work) . . is it possible to come up with a rule that most people will see as fair?

We don't have "no rules", and haven't for several years.

It's entirely possible to come up with fair rules, and I've said many times that the current rules for testosterone suppression are a not terrible starting point, but they need iterative adjustments.

24 months is more reasonable than 12, if you're trying you ensure the muscles have fully atrophied, but trans women should be allowed the full range of testosterone levels a healthy cis woman is capable of. That means increasing the max from 2nmol/L to 2.8nmol/L.

The parts of the rules that will never gain acceptance from trans players are the discriminatory ones. If we have to provide testosterone test results, EVERYONE in the protected divisions should. Also, since the science that ISN'T put together by hate groups, or doesn't commit asinine mistakes like leaving out data and results that contradict their intended results (or even having intended results to begin with), or measuring cis men and saying that works for talking about trans women, all seems to suggest that trans women have no measurable advantage athletically, excluding us at ANY level is never going to get acceptance from the trans players, and it never will.

Nor should it.

 

[Jolt]

How does Olympic sports deal with this, track and field must have dealt with this question for MANY years
But ALL those atletes get tested all the time, guess Discgolf cant do that.

 

[HyooMac]

The parts of the rules that will never gain acceptance from trans players are the discriminatory ones. If we have to provide testosterone test results, EVERYONE in the protected divisions should.

This is a REALLY important point, and maybe overlooked. If the basis for inclusion is changed, it needs to be applied equally.

In my clumsy way of thinking, whenever it was that FPO was established, the basis of entry for FPO was "being a female" (my quotes). There was no concept (or consideration) of anything other than cis gender, right? (not saying this was right, just trying to characterize the past...).

If the basis for FPO qualification changes to something else - like testosterone levels - then anyone who doesn't meet the standard shouldn't be included, and everyone who does should be included- because the basis for inclusion has changed.

Sorry if this elicits "D'uh!" from those who have thought this through long ago.

 

[jenb]

I dont want to offend but hard to even ask questions. . .
What i mean is if we have NO rules anyone can play , right? ( and not do any of those things you said)
So how do we make fair rules?
I dont know so i ask ( but that didnt work) . . is it possible to come up with a rule that most people will see as fair?

That most people will see as fair? Yikes

 

[denny ritner]

Excluding us at ANY level is never going to get acceptance from the trans players, and it never will.

As you requested, I've added FPO spots. Looking forward to meeting you in September!

Maggie's Birthday Party 2023

Maggie's Birthday Party 2023 is a PDGA-sanctioned disc golf tournament in Live Oak, Florida beginning September 30, 2023 and hosted by Mark "Denny" Ritner.

www.discgolfscene.com

 

[Brychanus]

Brycganus—if I follow your rant, you are bemoaning the lack of genuine science based analysis of transgender issues.

Although my field is electricity, I couldn't agree with you more. And that has nothing to do with sports or disc golf. It's about helping people. Understanding human diversity.

I appreciate what I believe is your intent.

We use electricity to try to improve brains. I still have no clue how it works, but at least we haven't electrocuted people so far

I hoped it was coherent even though a little bit of rantiness slipped in. Sorry, I'm actually trying to have/promote a conversation. Summarizing what I actually think (which could be wrong, and I really do want answers to my questions but no one is obligated to give them to me):

1. I'm not really sure I should even speak up at all. Sincerely.
2. If we're going to talk about science, let's talk about science.
3. If we're not talking about science, let's talk about what we want to talk about. It's better to state that it's not science if it's not science.
4. Yeah, science is a fucking mess in this country, so hopefully my post gave insight into that and why we have a lot of general issues, which you can imagine are only worse in transgendered studies (and jenb pointed out a very significant problem about duress/implicit coercion in many of those studies, too*).
5. I still think we can all work to have more good faith and fewer bad faith arguments in general as humans. This has been getting measurably worse and worse in the age of social media (yes, people study that too).

I'd like to hear more from you. I'm science degreed but not "blooded" so to speak. I see a lot of what I think is shenanigans, but it would be stellar to hear from someone in the trenches. Y'know, in addition to a few others here.

If it's welcome I'd love to air things out. I'm very sensitive & sincere to point out that I'm not wanting to overstep into terrain where I shouldn't be, but if it's welcome somewhere I'm happy to be there.

This will never happen. I had a good breakdown of the costs and reasons why in another thread, bit it's just a conspiracy theory that the anti trans people peddle, that flies in the face of reality.

The short, short version is this:

To get to the day they'd be allowed to play their first tournament in FPO, they'd have to spend tens of thousands of dollars in medical expenses, go through 3-4 years of medical treatments (lying to doctors convincingly the whole time, so as not to get pulled off transition), sacrifice safety, stability, job, family, friends, and permanently lose the masculinity they like having, add all the emotional weight of it in top of the emotional effects of hormones, and a LOT more.... Just to be able to START resorting l recouping their costs with the MUCH smaller payouts in FPO, while losing any distance advantage they had, that would give them an edge over KT, or the other top women.


People really need to stop using that nonsensical fear mongering as a reason to suggest discrimination. It's no more rooted in reality than the fear that trans women will assault women and girls in women's restrooms.

I'm learning a lot from you and mostly just listening. I'm still trying to figure out what the "glass half full" attitude Spring is talking about and "separate but equal" perspectives mean here & to you or Natalie or Nova etc. I'm also still trying to figure out what that means in the context of the FPO women who have issues with transgendered inclusion and perceive that it's an intrusion/fear stimulus/unfair etc. into something they wanted and felt they needed in a male-dominated society. I'm curious about your/others thoughts about that.

None of what I'm writing is intended to be leading comments or questions, even if that is how some of it came across.



*One of my favorite topics in all of science, ethics, and philosophy is relevant here: When is "informed consent" really informed, and really consent? Is there even answer to that question? Don't worry, there are hundreds of pages of arguments and studies on that, too.