Micah discusses how a better way to make international policies is to leverage the olympic athletes while incentivizing nations and gold medalists to shape the world for a better future.
K Sera disagrees.
Phil rants about the Supreme Court, again.
Show notes: N/A
K Sera's afterthoughts:
My thoughts on this have changed a tiny bit. Mostly, I still don’t personally care much about sports. I have no stake in these competitions. As for Micah’s initial concept: still a firm and resounding absolutely not. Governing decisions shouldn’t rely on “might makes right.”
For gender segregated competitions, we will definitely need to work this out with time and care, but I did have an idea that might be worth a try. Maybe we have 4 (or 5) categories for physical competitions? Particularly when there are cash prizes, scholarships, sponsorships or national recognition involved. Could we try having separate categories for bio men, bio women, trans men, and trans women? And make the cash prizes a percentage proportion of people participating in the categories? I’m sure there are flaws in this thinking, but it is a thought I’ve had. Possibly there could be a non-bianary/any person category, but the difficulty still lies with the fact we are a dimorphic species. Biological men still have a natural advantage when it comes to physical, strength-reliant competitions. Once people hit puberty, naturally produced hormones accelerate the athletic power gap. To keep up, a young girl could take hormones, but there are side effects other than strength gain that she may decide are not worth it to compete on the same level as boys her age. A trans woman (generalizing here) will more likely begin hormone treatments after puberty, because that’s when people start to figure out who they are as people, and when they have the actual means to realize any changes they want to make. Timing, socioeconomic and physiological factors can really skew the baseline fairness when applied to any competition, but this is especially exacerbated in physical competitions.
If we aren’t careful, the messages we will send to many women will either be “you aren’t a real woman” or, “what is the point of competing at all if the odds are stacked against you from the beginning and you have to take hormones to even have a chance of winning a competition?” Why compete at all when the message is either of those?
If prize money, sponsorships and athletic scholarships weren’t involved, I’d say it’s no big deal, it’s just people putting their skills and strength to the test. But these prizes and sponsorships do exist, they are another factor that complicates things.
Really, I don’t have an answer that can wrap this up neat and tidy, but I suppose I can say with some confidence: Micah’s idea was too absurd to consider.
Phil's afterthoughts:
On the topic of the Olympic Athletes having a greater say of policy making: is it better than the status quo? Last year (when we recorded this on April Fools of 2022) I was so pessimistic about politics, governance, and the state of our democracy. It really felt that Special Interests dominated the seats of power and that the voice of the average American person is not just drowned out, but flat out non-existent. Fast forward to today and now cannabis will be legal in a couple of days, school lunch will be free for everyone in Minnesota, college tuition for Minnesota Residence (for those making less than 70k a year) will start in 2024, and abortion access for women is secured for the foreseeable future (in fact, we are now a state that attracts our neighboring states to come here). Of course there are other good progressive things happening here in our state too, but I am surprised how many amazing new laws are happening here in such a short time frame. So, long story short: my faith in our regional politics have been restored.
As for trans-rights and sports... I am too ignorant (still, even after more than a year after this conversation) to provide any meaningful discussion on this case. I think that the idea of having separate categories may be inevitable, especially if scholarship and business are mixed into sports (which of course almost always is). Basically, for a sport to be fun to watch, doesn't it need to have uncertainty? Otherwise who will want to watch baseball if the Yankees win every world championship until the end of time. If transgender athletes somehow make the game "boring" then the advertising/business will become unsustainable. If the conclusion of a match is already apparent before it started, it's not a sport: it is a process. And watching a process may not be as lucrative to fund scholarships, endorsements, and other big business operations. At the same time, I agree that sadly having a separate category for "other women" and "other men" isn't exactly a good message to send to the marginalized community that they belong with us, but please go play over there away from us. I don't have an answer for this either. On my rant on the Supreme Court: I still have very strong feelings about this but that is for another day.