As a TS woman do I stand a chance against men?

I dont know if I agree with this whole "were animals, we compete with others".

Fundamentally we aren't chimpanzees and we aren't bonobos.
We've taken a different evolutionary path that's allowed us to build nations and even systems like the NHS (a massive effort of cooperation in which our most highly skilled members of society are voluntarily underpaid despite being able to choose to do anything they want).

“All animals are competitive by nature and cooperative only under specific circumstances.” - DeWaal, Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape

Yes the natural order is competition (usually in group vs group) but we've created conditions that allow for cooperation too. Humans can knowingly change our environment and have done that. We can subvert the "natural" order and we know we can do it and there are plenty willing to band together to do it and we have done it time and time again.

Sprinters of all countries have more in common with one another than any of their countrymen who wave flags.

For many athletes, when you ask them about their goals, past the media hype of "destroying" their opponents, listen to what they say.
They want to better themselves, run faster than themselves, fight better than their opponents so they can prove to themselves that they are better than they used to be. The goals are intrinsic and personal. It's not about the opponent.
That is truly a human quality to turn a competition against others into a competition against oneself.

This is all to say - the true spirit of of sport isn't in extrinsic competition, it's in personal competition with opponents as a tool to push harder and achieve that goal.

It's only the punters that see competition with others but with wider participation, I think we'd see this diminish. Basically the fat lads need to get out the pub on regular and spend more time on the field to understand what sport really is.

(Also I poo poo on the value of IQ and its links to "intelligence" or even a solid concept of intelligence. Yes high IQ people may occupy higher rungs of the social ladder but only because they are generally rewarded for being born with access to schooling that prepares them for standardised testing and a certain type of thinking which many culturally specific IQ tests assess)

 

Though in fairness there are a number of people who think it's bad because of the lack of competition baked into the system!

 

Let me just clarify, I meant psychopaths who make up a small but consistant part of the population, are rewarded if they have the intelligence to not break any laws, by their actions.

Random article to illustrate my poorly made point.

1 in 5 business leaders may have psychopathic tendencies—here's why, according to a psychology professor

Bonobos are famously cooperative too.

Unpeeling the layers of language: Bonobos and chimpanzees engage in cooperative turn-taking sequences | Scientific Reports

We are animals, and our most closely related family, will share some characteristics, not all, but some. For example bonobos are different to chimps, stands to reason why we would be different too.

I wonder how different we were to the different species of human that used to exist

 

Of course, but it raises my hackles when people (not you) say: "We do x because chimps do y.", when the only valid statement is "We do x and chimps also do x."

 

It's just shorthand for, it's probably evolutionary, chimps do it too.

It makes the right point, BUT in the wrong way, I wonder if chimps are pendantic too!

 

And you know as well as I do the great leaps of assumption that a lot of these hypotheses make.

 

For sure but I'd say nation building is a greater exercise in cooperation than any other animal to be honest.
(Re: bonobos)
07-08-08

I find the whole "evolution" and culture thing to be a bit derpy. Complex soical systems are greater than pure biological determinism alone and it's pretty transcendent that we've gone beyond that in a ways that are pure illogical too hahaha.
Emergent behaviours of evolution I guess you could argue?

To bring it back to the OP though, dont look to "beat men" for the sake of it, ask yourself what you want to prove to yourself.

 

Maybe being the object of societal prejudice makes a person more likely to want to prove themselves in relation to that society, rather than purely in relation to themselves?

 

Devil's advocate, nation building is cooperative in one sense, but in another if it's because you hate the other nation state, it's just group competition.

Americans hate commies so much they voted in a Russian asset to stick it to the liberals.

 

E.g.
Black CEOs aren't proving anything to society and they aren't doing it for society, I think black folks know they're capable hence the civil rights movement being about being given the opportunity to succeed.

I think if you start with an outside motivating factor and dont shift to an internal one (or in addition) your career in sport will be very short.

 

I'm not going to publicly talk about the OP, because that's really unkind, and unwise.

But human actions are a funny thing, for every few gay rights activists, there's a right wing closet homosexual voting against gay marriage.

Former GOP congressman who voted against LGBT protections comes out as gay

Nothing is simple, feelings really don't care for facts sometimes.

 

Yeah but external motivators of nationalism only work for a single events, that's why we need a constant refresh of wars, Olympics, media hype, outside groups like the EU migrants or people on dinghies.

Long term what keeps people together is the idea of cooperation and care, the safety and the previously seen benefits.

 

That's a very good point.

Unfortunately most nation states have been at war for long periods of their existence, whether it's through real wars, or proxy wars/empire.

It's going to be a combination of both, I wonder whether theres a correlation between high sporting countries and high warring countries?

 

I wasn't speaking specifically about the OP, as I don't know them.

But I don't think "no-one values or respects me, I'll show them" is that uncommon as a motivation. Like Mangosteen says though, it's not likely to sustain someone to greatness in any given field.

 

An old paper, but that does seem to be the case: Error - Cookies Turned Off

The aggression "discharge" model of sport doesn't hold up to scrutiny, or there would be an inverse correlation between competitive sport and military aggression.

 

I think a lot of nations view the Olympics as a proxy for war. I'm willing to bet military spending and professional international sporting investment correlate.

Although many countries have been at war for a long time, when you start looking at were the wars are, not everyone is involved. Theres stable communities that aren't warring although they vastly share common traits like ethnicity and language so theres a fair point there about ethnicity and in groups (Jewish folk were well integrated for a millenia, visually indistinguishable from other Europeans and still got merced. But let's not talk about that cos I worry for the future of my family and friends if the majority of the population in future decides Oswald Mosley was right)

Germans and us used to fight the French on a yearly basis, but with the EU, we've built something that means our middle class kids get together in a park on a yearly basis, listen to music and do the latest party drug.

I think of India as a prime example or extrinsic factors failing as the sole motivator. They're currently going through a cultural crisis in that until the past 10 years, they viewed themselves as a country units in opposition to British colonialism. The extrinsic motivation is gone now and they are fragmenting with the hindi speaking north actively trying to promote their language, culture and now even religious practice over the the Tamil, telegu and malayam south.
You can see this shift in the films of Amir Khan, they went from anti colonial to domestic issues (Rang de Basanti was a clear turning point).

As sad as the state of affairs in the US is, it's actually the worlds most successful experiment of cooperative, cohesive and diverse (in people, landscape and language) nation building.

 

Highly competitive countries are highly competitive.

Wierdly in the USAs case, they only play sports that the rest of the world doesn't, so they don't get the being beaten bit as much.

They still call it the world series though.......

 

In fairness, it is the only experiment of its kind, so it's hard to compare to other nations or know how things could have turned out differently.

Other nations in the "New World" and Australasia didn't colonise or grow in the same way.

 

Argentina (wiped out the black population that was responsible for guaranteeing their independence and then populated the country with people of the ingroup from Europe)

Brazil (I still have hope for this one)

Chile (formed a decentish compromise with the mapuche)

Mexico (formed a new united Mestizo identity for the entire nation)

 

The USA did almost wipe out their indigenous population, and then import a huge amount of slaves, eventually freed them, but denied them civil rights for a long time, and still incarcerates them at a much higher rate then the white population.