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Hi there,
the recent win of Scarlett (congratulations btw) in the WCS NA, raised an interesting question for me. How should we view transgenders in sports?
I wanna say upfront, no disrespect to people who are transgender this is really just a general discussion about the topic.
So Scarlett was born a boy and decided to become a girl. As a girl then she won the WCS NA and everyone is yelling "wow outplayed by a girl lol" and stuff like that. I don't really see it that way. Let's shift the whole thing to other sports and to other people.
Current world record in 100m is held by Usain Bolt with 9.58 in August 2009 (According to Wikipedia). So imagine he would say now hey, I feel I was born in the wrong body and become transgender.
The best time for a woman on that distance is 10.49 by Florence Griffith-Joyner in 1988, so about 1 Second slower than Usain Bolt. Which would mean that if Bolt ran this record as a woman he would hold the world record in Women's 100 metres for a very, very long time if not forever. So my question would be if you treat transgender men in sport as normal women, wouldn't that distort the whole sport and achievements? Wouldn't other female participants be up against a huge disadvantage?
[I know that Starcraft is a game of the brain and not so much of strength, still men are by far dominant in this game, means if a transgender would sign up for female events she would have a huge advantage.] -> I put this in brackets now sinced it caused an offtopic discussion. What I meant to say is that currently the rate of pro gamers is way bigger on the male part, the game is marketed towards boys/men and also the ratio men/women is favoring the men - so if several progamers would turn out to be transgender they would dominate every female event. At least that would be my theory. <-- EDITED
I find this a confusing topic and hope I didn't offend anyone by laying down my thoughts. I just like to get some diversion on this to see different points of views.
Thanks in advance
P.S. English is not my first language, so I apologize for mistakes.
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I'm amazed you mentioned track and field and not the South African lady with internal testes or whatever it turned out to be.
edit: actually I guess that's transsexual and not transgender?
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Why does it matter, a person is a person.
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If Usain Bolt turns into a girl he can't run as fast.
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I think for the most part transgendered people actually have the opposite gender brain compared to their body.
So I'd say just because she isn't a biological women, doesn't mean she has any advantage over other women.
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At least OP says what he's thinking instead of the rest of the sheep that try to conform.
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I know that Starcraft is a game of the brain and not so much of strength, still men are by far dominant in this game, means if a transgender would sign up for female events she would have a huge advantage.
and how would being male have an advantage in the game of starcraft? Men are dominant because theres like a 100000:1 ratio of men playing this game overall as compared to women. And theres an even bigger ratio of men who train at pro level compared to that of the women? Which women are actually playing and training at pro lvl right now? 2 or 3?
its so much different in sports because physical strength differs greatly between women and men. Transgenders will have to compete at what their physical gender is. Starcraft is mostly mind games, so...
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Everyone knows that having a penis automatically makes you better at video games.
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This isn't that trollish. It actual does raise some interesting questions.
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I don't understand your post. What's the comparison to Starcraft? You mention Athletics and an athlete "switching" from male to female competition, but there's no parallel to that in Starcraft, MLG is MLG regardless of what gender you are.
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On August 27 2012 03:10 viOLetFanClub wrote:
At least OP says what he's thinking instead of the rest of the sheep that try to conform.
User was warned for this post
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Was she born a boy and decided to become a girl, or was she born with unclear gender (xy genes, but otherwise unclear) and the doctors decided to make her a girl?
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I think transgender means that a person is born a certain sex, but with a brain of the opposite sex. Doesn't that mean scarlett was born with a male body but with a female mind?
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I think you misunderstand why men are dominant in starcraft, just because there are more male players at the highest level does not mean they have an advantage, the fact that they are male has no impact on their skill. The same cannot be said for conventional sports, the two situations are completely different you can't draw any meaningful comparisons in scenarios like this.
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Let's see, are men "dominant" in starcraft because they're inherently better at it, or is it because the game is marketed mostly towards men?
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correlation =/= causation.
gtfo.
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Starcraft isn't a physical sport, where males have such advantages, therefore gender shouldn't (largely doesn't) matter.
This was really discussed at length at Scarlett's breakout IGN performance...and the community seems to have accepted the situation.
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Um not really an issue at all. I remember them talking about this on "live and three" after IPL 4. And most players were like, thats cool, can she play? And in all the interviews everyone was like she can play the game. Its not like she is doing anythign illegal. I feel like this is a not an issue at all. Thanks for making it an issue.
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On August 27 2012 03:12 Cybren wrote:
Let's see, are men "dominant" in starcraft because they're inherently better at it, or is it because the game is marketed mostly towards men?
You're not actually serious, are you? I can't tell.
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please close this thread.
User was warned for this post
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It's still the female only tournaments responsibility to decide if they want to allow transgender or not. But I agree with what you are saying.
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Russian Federation484 Posts
On August 27 2012 03:11 blackone wrote:
I don't understand your post. What's the comparison to Starcraft? You mention Athletics and an athlete "switching" from male to female competition, but there's no parallel to that in Starcraft, MLG is MLG regardless of what gender you are.
Yeah, but women-only tournaments aren't.
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Seriously, people should give Scarlett a break from this bull... gender doesn't matter in SC2 at all.
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close this thread already -.-
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men and women do have different brains. women have more connections between the right and left side of their brains giving them better multitasking but men have faster reflexes (by a good margin). just because you want to change sex doesn't mean that you can.
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illsick
United States1770 Posts
On August 27 2012 03:11 blackone wrote:
I don't understand your post. What's the comparison to Starcraft? You mention Athletics and an athlete "switching" from male to female competition, but there's no parallel to that in Starcraft, MLG is MLG regardless of what gender you are.
she does compete in only female tournaments
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hah.. yeah.. who gives a damn.. lol.
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On August 27 2012 03:13 viOLetFanClub wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2012 03:12 Cybren wrote:
Let's see, are men "dominant" in starcraft because they're inherently better at it, or is it because the game is marketed mostly towards men? You're not actually serious, are you? I can't tell.
What's not to be serious about? If the game is played 99.99% by men, then 99.99% of the pros are going to be men...
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Scarlett obviously deserves all the victories without question, but shouldn't be considered the best girl in Starcraft. In studies it has been shown that male brains take much more pleasure from conquery type games, they played some version of Go in an MRI and compared the brain activity between males and females. Because it's more pleasureable neural-nets are formed much faster and they therefore play better. Female brains have an increased empathetic compassity, which is why they enjoy different things for the most part.
I'm not trying to say that females are stupid in any way, I think both genders have different, biologically-influenced strengths.
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It is a disgrace to say that transgender people ought to be treated as the gender that they were in order to keep organized sports and records neat and orderly.
Usain Bolt wouldn't switch because he wanted to set a women's record, he'd switch because it is a deeply personal choice that attempts to match one's body with one's character.
We are not going to bring up "men are better at starcraft, transgender women have an advantage", or any of the other stuff, because it's utter bullshit.
Transgender people are no different than the rest of us.
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I persionally think this has been discussed to death and is only going to devolve into a shitfest.
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These kind of threads never turn out well
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On August 27 2012 03:14 BabyToss! wrote:
Seriously, people should give Scarlett a break from this bull... gender doesn't matter in SC2 at all.
Yeah it does. Male brains are generally better at somethings, while female brains are better at others.
Men in general can concentrate and focus on single tasks for longer periods of time than women. Pretty big advantage when it comes to playing SC.
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On August 27 2012 03:06 Asharon wrote:
Hi there,
the recent win of Scarlett (congratulations btw) in the WCS NA, raised an interesting question for me. How should we view transgenders in sports?
I wanna say upfront, no disrespect to people who are transgender this is really just a general discussion about the topic.
So Scarlett was born a boy and decided to become a girl. As a girl then she won the WCS NA and everyone is yelling "wow outplayed by a girl lol" and stuff like that. I don't really see it that way. Let's shift the whole thing to other sports and to other people.
Current world record in 100m is held by Usain Bolt with 9.58 in August 2009 (According to Wikipedia). So imagine he would say now hey, I feel I was born in the wrong body and become transgender.
The best time for a woman on that distance is 10.49 by Florence Griffith-Joyner in 1988, so about 1 Second slower than Usain Bolt. Which would mean that if Bolt ran this record as a woman he would hold the world record in Women's 100 metres for a very, very long time if not forever. So my question would be if you treat transgender men in sport as normal women, wouldn't that distort the whole sport and achievements? Wouldn't other female participants be up against a huge disadvantage?
I know that Starcraft is a game of the brain and not so much of strength, still men are by far dominant in this game, means if a transgender would sign up for female events she would have a huge advantage.
I find this a confusing topic and hope I didn't offend anyone by laying down my thoughts. I just like to get some diversion on this to see different points of views.
Thanks in advance
P.S. English is not my first language, so I apologize for mistakes.
And there's the crux of the topic. It completely becomes a non issue if there are no "gender only" events.
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Starcraft 2 is a mental game. Men and women think differently. Just because scarlett wants to be a woman, doesn't mean scarlett has a woman's brain/way of thinking. The only reason this issue is brought up is because everytime scarlett wins there's all the news about "FEMALE WINNING!!" when in reality that's not 100% the case.
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I know that Starcraft is a game of the brain and not so much of strength, still men are by far dominant in this game, means if a transgender would sign up for female events she would have a huge advantage.
I wouldn't say males are more dominant, I would just say theres a metric crap-ton more of males, which is why we see more males winning then females. Simply because there is more.
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SC2 doesn't have different leagues for male and females, so this doesn't matter at all.
It's up to people's own opinions if they see Scarlet as a female or male, just respect that she would like that people call her a she.
And no when some organization would organize a ladies event then Scarlet probably is not allowed to compete just as like it is in any other sport on this world.
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Competition in starcraft are not gender-seperated so this doesn't matter at all.
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Netherlands6142 Posts
There's plenty of threads on this and I don't think we need another - especially if the OP hasn't informed himself on the subject first (f.e. by reading said topics).
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EPT
