eupraxia

Yeah, amateur sports mimicking elite sports is a big part of this issue and a microcosm of another issue with exercise culture at large. We're more sedentary than ever, but when we go to the gym or train for a sport, we mimic what elite athletes do, which isn't very appropriate for beginners. An example might be doing a lot of strength building in isolation without bringing it together into broader multi-joint movements, which results in poor motor control.

but anyway I digress. This really all should just be a hell of a lot less serious for the vast majority of us and gendered divisions in amateur sports is another arm of that problem imo.

if organizers judge that having been AMAB is a physical advantage for that sport.

Good idea in theory, pretty unfair in practice. Think about the "physical advantages" that we already accept in elite sports - Michael Phelps, for instance, obviously is an impressive athlete but also has some obvious genetic physical advantages. Think of the shortest man you know and the tallest man you know - are they automatically on an even playing field in basketball because they're both men? Don't we kind of just look past that kind of physical advantage?

My experience in fencing/HEMA is that height is the greatest physical advantage, far beyond AGAB. It's a pretty obvious advantage - more height generally means more reach which means you can hit an opponent before they can hit you. So practice tends to be co-ed, if people are paired off to make equal matches there's a tendency toward equal-height matchups. Then, when we go to compete, there's gender divisions for very little practical reason.

The ultimate issue is that AGAB alone is not a great indicator of athletic performance. "Physical advantages" exist even among cis athletes and trans athletes really only call attention to a problem that exists in elite sports anyway. It's also worth saying that sports science isn't a solved field and we're just now coming around to a better understanding of fascia and just how important it is to movement. Fascia is extremely responsive to hormonal changes and with time will more closely reflect a trans person's hormonal composition than their AGAB.

These sorts of advantages maybe matter in elite competitions, and I am willing to accept that AGAB isn't meaningless when discussing physical advantages, but at an amateur level (where the vast majority of athletes are at) it's a lot less relevant. But unfortunately, our amateur sports mimic elite sports and if elite sports buy into the idea that trans people are just inherently physically different to the extent that they cannot compete in the same way, alongside others' genetic physical advantages, then amateur sports take that attitude too and suddenly you get people pushing for genital inspections in kids' sports.

This was one of the more baffling experiences in coming out - seeing some of the most scientifically minded, media literate people I know suddenly shut off all of those instincts when they encountered "the trans debate." Like someone with a healthy amount of skepticism around statistics linking me bullshit "average number of sexual partners" figures from a conversion therapy lobbying group. Or someone with an active dislike of sports suddenly deciding that the sanctity of women's sports is more important than their relationship with their daughter.

The best explanation I've been able to come up with is that gender is regimented by complex trauma, often when we are children, and these are the types of cognitive distortions that occur when we're in fight-flight-freeze-fawn responses. Flashbacks are often thought of as vivid sensory experiences i.e. re-experiencing the traumatic event, but it's a spectrum of responses. Many are more subtle and feel extremely normal in the moment, while our ability to reason is actually overtaken by our need to feel safe in the face of a perceived threat.

I think this kind of statistics vomit can sometimes be a "flight" response to a perceived threat of someone being trans in proximity to them. Flight responses are characterized as attempting to avoid a threat by throwing oneself into action not to overcome, but escape the threat. Perhaps a wall of text with nuanced-and-reasoned set dressing and lots of links and numbers feels like a wall between them and "the problem."

I feel there's some parallels here with fat shaming. (and addiction shaming in general) People exposed to judgemental attitudes about their weight are measurably more likely to become obese, no matter their initial weight. Shaming can make one more fixated on their desire for food, and when that desire is in the front of one's mind, it raises the psychological effort required to resist the urge for comfort in food. That effort is not infinite and will eventually run out, which is why white-knuckling through a diet tends to not lead to permanent results.

Misinformed sex education teaches us to feel shame for sexual urges most everyone has, and in a similar capacity could make one more fixated on that urge. If one instead has a positive view toward their sexuality, they do not have to cope with insecurities that remind them of temptation toward something they're not supposed to do but would be immensely pleasurable. They just do it from time to time and it doesn't bleed into the rest of their life.

idk a bit personal but, I find accepting all parts of my sexuality (especially the parts that make me feel icky) has made me much less prone to risky behavior. shame makes it difficult to make good decisions. I'm a lot more clearheaded now and can just enjoy physical affection with someone I love. I can communicate what I'd enjoy and set appropriate boundaries. fantasy and reality are more well separated now. importantly, I am more satisfied at a baseline and therefore seeking out sex less on the whole.

Body and sex positivity works extremely well as a means of coping with primal urges, not only because it makes us feel better about parts of us that will never go away, but also because accepting them actually leads to better self-control and decisionmaking.

in fact they come from the same Latin roots! "trans-" = "on the other side of", "cis-" = "on the same side of." Useful to know as some will use the word "transgender" and take offense to being labeled "cisgender" - if one word is valid, they both are.

I picked up a $10 cane at random last year and it helped me walk enough to realize there was a chronic issue at play. Definitely worth trying if it seems like something that might help, worst case you have a walking stick.

definitely seconding this - I used it the most when I was using Unreal Engine at work and was struggling to use their very incomplete artist/designer-focused documentation. I'd give it a problem I was having, it'd spit out some symbol that seems related, I'd search it in source to find out what it actually does and how to use it. Sometimes I'd get a hilariously convenient hallucinated answer like "oh yeah just call SolveMyProblem()!" but most of the time it'd give me a good place to start looking. it wouldn't be necessary if UE had proper internal documentation, but I'm sure Epic would just get GPT to write it anyway.

bark-to-text, of course!