298. Neil deGrasse Tyson — Starry Messenger (4)
2 (36m 46s):
So they became their own category for a while, but the more we studied them, the more diversity was revealed in them. And I can tell you, basically, there is a continuum between the smallest of planets and the largest of stars. Yeah. Okay. And we in astrophysics, this is why coming to this as an astrophysicist for me is important because we've had to grapple with going from discreet categories to a continuum. And we've developed vocabulary for this and systems for this so that we can talk about the objects you say, is it a chair? Is it not a chair? Is it a star? Is it a, it here's what kind of star it is? Oh, by the way, based on that, criterion, it is very close to not being a star and being this other thing.
2 (37m 29s):
And maybe somewhere in there, it's doing both, okay. We recognize this, the universe is structured that way. And so I bring this sensibility to gender expression. It's all. It is just someone, maybe if you're 10% male, 90%, female, 50 50. And I analogize that to bits on a computer. Okay. Okay.
1 (37m 55s):
We need to distinguish between sex, sex, sex, and gender. You're talking about gender here is in a, in an evolved sexually reproducing species. There's just two, two sexes. If you have a body that produces gaits that are small, we call 'em sperm. You're a male. If you are a body that produces large gaits called eggs, you're a female, that's it? There's only two. There's intersex about one out of 5,500 in humans. But that doesn't mean it's a continuum. So, but you're what you're talking about is the expression of how somebody identifies or, or culturally or socially. But that is
2 (38m 29s):
Primarily different. That is, that is the in wait, that is the engine of what is modern controversy about that entire field. Yeah. It's what happens is when people say there's a gender expression say, well, I'm talking about sex. Well, fine. Go ahead and do that in your lab or whatever. But in, in the manifestation of people's conduct in society is what people are trying to inhibit. Okay. So, yeah. So that's where the rubber hits the road. You can go into your Biolab and count chromosomes, go ahead. You can do that till the, till the cows come home. Fine. Boy, I haven't said cows come home in a long time as an urbanite. It's a very foreign concept. So I didn't know. It takes a long time for the cows to come.
1 (39m 9s):
You
2 (39m 10s):
So you, you could do that. Wait, wait, just made me clear. You can do that and no one will stop you, but the rubber does. That's not where the rubber hits the road. The rubber hits the road is I feel female today, but you're trying to stop me from being female. You're trying to take away my human rights just because of how I express myself in a free country. Oh my gosh. It means you're not really in a free country. There's something else going on about that. I agree.
1 (39m 40s):
That's
2 (39m 40s):
I'm trying to say, yeah,
1 (39m 41s):
I understand. And you did make that point very well, this book, but to me where the rubber meets the road is conflicting. Right? So just use the specific example of the female swimmer from Penn state, Leah Thomas, who was a male, a male, female trans who for the first three years of college swam on the men's swim team and then identified as a woman, took the year off by the NCAA rules, took the testosterone suppression treatment and so on. And then re-entered and, and pretty much dominated the field. So there, of course, I, I agree with you on freedoms and Liberty and, and do whatever you want. But what, where you have conflicting rights is between the right, for her to compete as a woman, as she identifies as against other women and the right of women to compete against biological women who don't have the same bodies.
1 (40m 28s):
Cause once you've gone through puberty, those massive changes have been made. I don't know if you've seen those examples that I just gave, but he's huge big shoulders, you know, long arms and legs. And so on, the changes have already happened. Now, the NCAA is saying, well, maybe we should reconsider that rule about one year of, of the,
2 (40m 46s):
Yeah. So that's, so you bring up sports very important, cuz that's an UNS. That's that is a, a frontier that is still in progress about how they're gonna handle this. So we can all opine at this point. And I have, I can opine as well. I, I can say things like maybe sports is not, is not genderized. Okay. Maybe sports is harmonized. So what does that mean? So you competed in hormone categories. Oh, hormone, you compete in hormone. Yes. Right? Hormone, eyes, you like that. See what I did there.
2 (41m 26s):
I, I don't have, I don't have the definitive answer yet. And every one of these ideas needs to be fully explored for what the consequences are, but what I'm suggest holding aside the physical difference between people which I'll get to in the post, me the post puberty puby yeah. Physical differences and height and hand size and leg size and this sort of thing. So hold that aside for a moment. Just I can imagine a day where the Olympics is a continuum of hormone ratios, you know, testosterone to estrogen, whatever is the, the key hormones and you compete in a hormone category. That's not so weird. I wrestled in high school and college and in a little bit in graduate school, we have 10 weight categories in college because the bigger people can't wrestle, the little people that doesn't work.
2 (42m 18s):
And when you go see sports, what you're really after is an interesting contest where people are sort of equally matched and you see one who train better or harder or whatever. And so the, by splitting wrestling into 10 categories, it is in a sense recognizing the continuum over which you find bodies and trying to address that with 10 categories and the 10 wrestling matches in a meat constitute the full duration of the meat
1 (42m 48s):
Within the mail. So
2 (42m 49s):
There's some precedent or within dividing this up, I'm saying, no, I'm saying now you divide it by, by I'm putting this out there to be debated, not as some law that I'm ready to enact that the future sports might be. Instead of splitting everybody into boys and girls, everybody divides into hormonal categories. That's one way to recognize what role hormones play in your capacity to compete. Okay. And we all know testosterone is, is matters there. Okay. But by the way, does testosterone matter to, if I give you more testosterone, will you become a better Olympic gymnast, you know, on the floor exercises?
2 (43m 35s):
You know, I don't know. There's some things that women do that the men don't do. The men sort of physically can't do. Okay. So we'd have to figure out how to create this continuum. It is a little weird that we split people by male and female in this way. I'm imagining a hundred years from now looking back and say, do you know, back a hundred years ago, they split boys and girls and they couldn't compete. And I was like, that'd just be kind of a little
1 (44m 1s):
Weird. I don't know Neil, because the difference
2 (44m 3s):
I can imagine thinking how weird
1 (44m 4s):
That is. I could imagine that too, but the differences are so massive on average. Again, I've seen the pictures of you as, as college wrestler, but the average woman is not gonna be able to take the average woman. Wrestler is not gonna be able to take down you when you were in your, your peak, okay. Maybe the best Michael female wrestler.
2 (44m 24s):
You sound like you're, you're an old man on the porch, in a rocking chair right now I'm telling you, I'm telling you, I'm telling you, you are criticizing something that is in need of modification. Why we agree, okay. But you're criticizing it in a way to return it to the way it once was. And I'm criticizing it in a way to open it to a rejuvenated understanding of how humans will compete with other humans. Realize that world class athletes are already genetically different from us. Okay? The, the, the basketball players are all taller. The you're not saying, wait a minute, you, you can't be short and played you.
2 (45m 7s):
You know, that's not fair to the short people. If you have to be genetically tall to play this, you're not, I don't hear you saying that. Okay. But that's kind of what you're saying now, but now the sex is the factor here rather than what height you're born into is the, is the thing. So what do we have? We have other sports that short people can play. Okay. And we split things up so that everybody can participate and engage in a sport. That's the future of sports. As far as I can see, not re regressing to a point that doesn't match who and what we are and how we express ourselves as a species.
1 (45m 45s):
I like the idea of in country, more divisions in sports. So sure. One solution to the Leo, Thomas examples just have trans divisions. You have male to female trans division, female to male trans division. And so on. That would solve the problem. The problem at the moment is that there aren't enough competitors to have
2 (46m 0s):
It's a little regressive, but yeah, it's, it's progressive regressive, right? You think it's a new, and I'm
1 (46m 5s):
Don't, I don't see that because let's say you're a woman and you, you fought for decades for title IX, protections of your own equal opportunities in sports and, and, and payoffs in the, in the prize money. Like the us open that women got as much as the men and so forth. That
2 (46m 22s):
That was right.
1 (46m 23s):
Yeah. Yeah. But if we erase the
2 (46m 24s):
Lot of good progress there. Yeah.
1 (46m 26s):
But if we erased the male female divisions and just said, you have to compete against the men. Now, the women wouldn't make any money. So that doesn't seem fair to
2 (46m 34s):
Sound like you on the wheel, on, on the rocking chair again. Okay.
1 (46m 36s):
You
2 (46m 37s):
Keep trying to fit it back into the prior model of the binary model. And I'm saying sports, I'm agreeing with you. Well, no, while maybe I'm not, I'm saying we're starting the same place and walking opposite each other. Okay. Right. The direction I'm walking in. Yes. Sports needs to be somehow updated so that the contests remain competitive in the way we always value competition in sports. Okay. And, and I'll just remind you that no one is saying we can't compete of Michael Phelps in the swimming because he's taller than the other athletes. And he has webbed fingers and he has flappy feet.
2 (47m 17s):
That's unfair. Okay. He had all these things or whatever was the list that you could make for him. I probably made up one of those in that list. But you, you, you don't disqualify people just because they're genetically different and therefore beat everybody because of that genetic difference. What you do is create categories where people are then similar. So what, what might you do you a category with people of similar arm reach, okay. This is something they compare in boxing there, weight categories, and they check your arm reach. Okay. And cuz that's not fair. If you web way, it just doesn't make an interesting match. And people pay to watch interesting contests.
