Women's sports
Platonic Forms: We have mental categories that define the essence of something.
Sometimes the reality on the ground doesn't easily fit our mental boxes.
We all know at a glance the difference between a cat and a small dog. A three-year-old child can do it. Apparently it is a hard problem for a computer.
When we are faced with a Captcha challenge and asked to click examples of crosswalks, we are doing a task that separates humans from computerized spam robots. Our decisions don't just get thrown away once we met the challenge. Artificial Intelligence programmers use our answers to inform self-driving vehicles. We are teaching future cars to know the difference between a crosswalk and the painted lines for a track and field event. We humans know the difference.
The recent Senate hearings to confirm Judge Jackson's nomination to the Supreme Court coincided with the controversy over swimmer Lia Thomas. Republicans are having a field day, driving home the idea that Democrats are dangerously out of touch with real meat-and-potatoes common-sense Americans. They say crazy ideology-burdened Democrats want to claim Lia Thomas is a woman when she isn't, not really. "Can you define
a woman," was a "got-cha" question posed by Senator Cruz.
Lia Thomas and University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines tied in a recent swimming contest. Gaines protested that the playing field was unequal. "This is not OK and it's not fair," she said on Fox's Tucker Carlson show.The outrage! The elites!
The issue is a perfect wedge issue for Republicans. It pits Democratic support for women's empowerment, signaled through respect for women's athletics, against Democratic support for Americans with non-traditional gender and sexual orientation. The issue splits the Democratic coalition. Better yet for the GOP-Fox-Christian nationalist side in the culture wars, there are a lot more women than trans-gendered people. Moreover, the trans issue splits the LGBTQ community.
Lia Thomas may be uniquely un-sympathetic as a transgender athlete. We have not seen her lifetime of struggles, only her triumphs now competing as a woman. The first-glance male/female assessment of Thomas does not mark her as obviously binary and female. Democrats who defend her right to compete as a woman have the problem of definitions and mental boxes. Sometimes they conform easily with what we see. Sometimes not.
I have family members who compete in high school athletics, specifically women's cross country and track at Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon, not far from Nike headquarters. The runners are superb. They are well coached. There is enormous esprit de corps among the athletes. High school athletics offers opportunity for healthy competition, team bonding, self-discipline, goal setting.
But I noticed something when I looked at a scheduled race. In a world of political spin, "alternative facts," and massaged data I observe this bit of simple, unadorned data. Here is the seeding for a recent contest in the 1500 meters.
Among these elite athletes, the 15th fastest male is 15 seconds faster than the fastest female.
Public policy is in transition. There are hard cases, and those become politicized and famous. Gender transition is being worked out in athletics, in bathrooms, and in law. Democrats need to be careful not to take a simple knee-jerk position of opposition to the Ted Cruz-Fox-GOP talking points--easy to do because Republicans are, after all, being so nasty about this. If Democrats fall for that temptation they let the cultural right frame the debate. A better, harder strategy is let policymaking be guided by realities and data. Democrats will fail if they try to sell a definition of gender--a Platonic form--that defies a reality on the ground.
Stripes on a running track might confuse a computer into thinking it sees a crosswalk, but it doesn't fool a human. We know a crosswalk when we see it. Or think we do.