"I think I may be missing something in some of her comments that weren't quoted."

As with all of the conversations here, there aren't any comments that weren't quoted. Do you really think I would edit out people's arguments without admitting it?! I'm actually kind of offended!😅

In the interests of complete transparency, after the final reply I posted here, Eve did reply with a link to an article in which she'd basically just posted screenshots of the above conversation. I didn't add the link here because the conversation is all *already* here and I didn't feel like sending her any traffic. But that's it. If you feel as if you're missing something, it's not because I'm hiding it from you.

Yes, we agree that she was trying to turn my argument back on me. This might even have worked if I it were *in any way not racist* to think of black people and white people in the same way one might think of trans women and women.

One of the reasons I had so much fun in my reply to her, was the paragraph about black people needing to have surgery and take hormones to "pass" as "normal people. I can't give a clearer explanation of why the idea to "turn the argument back on me" was doomed the moment it left that lonely little neutron than this.

I wasn't mistaking Eve's arguments for "right-wing" arguments (not least because right-wingers very rarely argue in favour of trans inclusion😅). I don't even mind "genetic differences" arguments, except insofar as they're usually based on Charles Murray's extremely shaky research and they always miss how much diversity there is *within* the "races". Often more than is *between* them in fact. If you group human beings by any criteria, even largely arbitrary criteria like eye colour or skin colour, you'll find data that suggests one group is smart/taller/funnier/better at kissing, than the others. I don't find this particularly interesting, but it doesn't offend me. Even if it suggests that "my" group lacks intelligence or are physiological behemoths. I'm no more or less intelligent than I was before the research was done. Nor is anybody else.

I describe Eve's argument as racist because it requires a "white people as 'normal'" view of the world in order to function. So do some of the things you say here. This isn't KKK racism, or even "purse-clutching" racism. But it's still racism.

For example, you say that there "seems to be an over-representation of some Africans in some sports." When you see a lot of white people in a sport, swimming for example, or wrestling, or most field athletics, can you honestly say that you've ever described it as "an *over-representation* of some Europeans in some sports"?

And, more importantly, what would the "testing between races" look like? As I asked Eve (notice how she avoids the hard questions?), what "race" am I? What "race" is Michael Phelps? What "race" is Naomi Osaka? Is Usain Bolt the same race as Eliud Kipchoge? Would this testing screen them both out of the same events? A lot of these gently racist ideas simply come out of a flawed understanding of what race is.

The top 1% of males beat the top 1% of females in pretty much *every single athletic discipline in existence*. In fact, the top 5% of males do. This is not true of any "race". If the "over-representation of Africans" in sport was this dramatic, or if the average advantages males have over females more closely mirrored the average advantages different "races" have in different events, we'd be having a very different conversation.

I think you made my point about switching sides; the experience of being something isn't the experience of pretending to be it.

There are absolutely insights you can gain, but a) there is no unified "experience that you peer into, b) I think the kind guy who won't take a woman seriously because she's a woman is vanishingly unlikely to take a trans woman seriously because she used to be a man, and c) I think those insights can be gained by anybody who is sincerely willing to listen and engage and honestly reflect on their blind spots.

I'm constantly learning about the perspectives of men and women and gay people and trans people and *black* people. I've learned about my blind spots on countless issues over the years, again, including some black issues. I didn't have to become something I'm not in order to do so.