Weight categories
Would not counter the advantage male people still have over female people. That’s why.
The integrity of female sport is dependent upon recognising that female sport isn’t created because female people “aren’t as good as men”, but recognising that female physiology has differing ranges of abilities.
Get the tallest men and the tallest women together - the men will be significantly stronger,
Sort boxers by just weight rather than weight *and* sex? Guess which sex has 130% more strength in their punching.
Runners? 10,000 male college age runners ran 100m faster than the existing female world record last year.
Happy Toast, do you not recognise that a man suggesting we abandon sex segregation in sport due to the fact that the sex with superior strength and speed want to be in that category too, is perhaps not being very considerate to women?
(, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 9:26, Reply)
"not being very considerate to women" sounds very patronising there :D
I'm not saying we do anything, I'm simply saying I've never understood how sport is called fair or unfair when there are thousands of "whataboutisms" at play.
I'm not sure there's a problem for men to always be winning the "LEVEL C" category of weightlifting if they can, but if it means that men and women are competing together in the "LEVEL F" one that's a good thing isn't it?
(
HappyToast Groat froth, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 9:57,
Reply)
No.
Once again - women are NOT “less strong men”. Their physiology is different, and so the world’s best female weightlifter needs to be recognised as the worlds best weightlifter according to sex.and that same recognition applies right down the line to the worlds millionth best female weightlifter.
Honestly astounded you can type “men will win at level C, what’s wrong with women being a few divisions lower with the crap men” with a straight face. Presumably the US women’s football team would be better placed in the Evostik Premier League where they’ll battle bravely against relegation?
Pound for pound men will still lift more than women. and you’re still relegating women’s achievements by not recognising that when strength is measures relative to men, women will come up short, but when women’s physiology is recognised and celebrated in its own merits, we can celebrate and award female excellence by measuring against other females, rather than against average men.
It’s fanscinating how quickly “include trans athletes” can morph in some men’s minds into “let’s not have female categories anyway”. My intention was to patronise because I find it sexist as fuck, and it amazes me that ostensibly progressive people will discuss female sport as irrelevant, or pretend they don’t know what female means on B3ta or in the olympics when they definitely know what it means on Pornhub
(, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 10:10, Reply)
But by winning whichever class they win they would still be the strongest female if you want to think of it that way
You're seeing the class as "lower with the crap men" whereas I'm seeing it like welterweight compared to heavyweight.
Or do you think welterweight boxers are shit heavyweight ones?
(
HappyToast Groat froth, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 10:20,
Reply)
If the worlds best female
Is not recognised as the worlds best by any official metric, what impact do you think that has on sponsorship, prize money, medals etc?
If you don’t see a problem with “it just happens that men are better, but well done world’s 750,000,000th fastest person, we’ve noticed that you’ve done alright for a lady” isn’t a batshit crazy stance to take, I dunno what to tell you.
Except that it has taken precisely one male wanting in on female sport for you to say “meh, do we even need female sport”. And that is grossly sexist.
Again, I wonder how many straight men here happily suggesting it’d be ok for women to scroll through 38 pages of stats before finding a woman would go back to a porn site where they encountered the same issue...
(, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 10:30, Reply)
^That^
Serena Williams is a magnificent tennis player. She'd still get trounced by hundreds, if not thousands, of men. That's not because she's crap. It's because she's female, and - wouldn't you know it? - female bodies are different from male bodies, and this matters in sport.
(
Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 10:40,
Reply)
you're ignoring the welterweigh/heavyweight issue completely
By your argument you're saying no one cares about Manny Pacquaio because he's not Tyson Fury.
It's not sexist to question whether people should or could be judged on physical ability and if a new class system could be incorporated in sports.
(
HappyToast Groat froth, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 10:44,
Reply)
No I’m not.
Take sex segregation out of welterweight boxing and separate it only by weight, and you’d have zero female welterweight boxers at elite level, and plenty of dead women who tried to get there.
(, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 10:49, Reply)
oh ffs it wouldn't be the same welterweight, I'm just using that as a comparison
Your argument is people only care about the fastest person so women would always be 750,000,000th.
I'm saying that's not true because people care about multiple classes of boxing, some holding welterweight champs higher than heavyweight.
The same therefore could apply to a wide spectrum of classes in all sports getting equal big screen bouts/races based solely on sporting ability not gender.
(
HappyToast Groat froth, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 11:00,
Reply)
What would it be then?
If it’s not the same welterweight, what form would these mixed sex boxing matches look like? How would they ensure
1: that the sport was actually inclusive of women
2: that women weren’t disproportionately at risk of serious physical harm
3: that women’s achievements are recognised
4: that sex differences didn’t lead to men winning everything?
This is the problem with people with casual drive by opinions. You haven’t engaged with this stuff.
Here’s what you should consider - your frustrated “of COURSE that’s not what I mean” suggests that outside of a thought experiment, you know you’re talking utter bollocks that’s harmful to women. So you need to either say exactly what a given sport - let’s stick to boxing for now, or maybe football or sprinting - whichever you’d prefer - would look like in practice - How does your sex neutral sport still rewardfemale excellence? - or acknowledge that the sex division serves (and always will serve) a very useful purpose in that it - blindingly obviously - allows recognition of female sporting excellence
(, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 11:01, Reply)
Funnily enough I'm not a world class sports physician/judge and this isn't a forum for making that kind of call
so you're really wasting your time hoping someone musing something on b3ta will come up with the specifics here.
You're fixating on rewarding female excellence when what we're considering is rewarding excellence full stop.
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HappyToast Groat froth, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 11:12,
Reply)
“Excellence full stop”
...when using a mixed sex class = male excellence, because mixing the sexes at the Olympics would result in no female Olympians. Mixing sexes in football would mean zero professional footballers,. Mixing sexes in sprinting would = zero female world record holders. Boxing - no female title holders.
You haven’t even been able to lay out a laypersons vague idea of how this works work in practice, and you’ve done so while admitting not being an expert. Hard to conclude that what you’ve done is seen that a male wants into female sport and been so enthusiastic about it that you, who isn’t an athlete, are happy to write off female sport at a stroke.
And that, my friend, is sexism; it’s sexism that emerges from the left, so it’s sexism that you’ll find your left wing mates approve of. But it’s sexism all the same, and it stinks; you initially said you don’t understand why sport is segregated by a sex binary; that would suggest you had a much more sensible plan in mind. You’ve been unable to demonstrate even the most basic idea of how it would actually work in practice, how to ensure integrity and safety. Maybe just put this one down to “hmmm, I didn’t think it through” because that’s a better option than sticking to your guns here. You’ve heard that it’s the right, good thing to think. It ain’t.
(, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 11:26, Reply)
I don't understand what you're saying in that first bit at all
Why would I need to lay out how this would work in detail. This is b3ta, we're just chewing the fat not actually solving world problems.
You're completely misjudging me with the sexism thing, I'm not saying get rid of women's sports, I'm talking about trying a new separate system based not on gender but on ability. You could keep having male and female divided competition, there's not a finite amount of competitions you can have.
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HappyToast Groat froth, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 12:00,
Reply)
aspects of your system seems quite contradictory so I can see why he/she might want more detail
(, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 12:22, Reply)
what system? And why would I have more detail?
Hold on, is this b3ta? I haven't accidentally been posting on the World governing body for sports scientists have I?
I simply said "I've never quite understood why there are such binary male and female options in sports" when humans come in all shapes and sizes of varying ability and with so many external factors on top of that. Some sports have weight/ability classes to separate people, can that not be expanded on to solve this issue? I didn't expect some kind of sexism accusing Spanish inquisition
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HappyToast Groat froth, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 12:29,
Reply)
If you’ve never quite understood why there is a male female distinction in sports
That strongly implies that a more sensible model is something that springs to mind easily.
You’ve made vague suggestions and had potential issues identified, so I’ve asked you for a specific, back of the envelope summary of what your alternative looks like.
If there’s no obvious alternative, then that’s your lay person’s, chewing the fat answer as to why the male/female distinction exists.
The nature of this board doesn’t preclude me from articulating why male and female distinctions are essential, so I don’t see why it should preclude you from informally laying out why you think I’m wrong.
Your initial point about weight/height doesn’t work, because pound for pound men still have advantage; “same weight” isn’t “same physiology”
(, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 12:35, Reply)
I'm not saying anyone is right or wrong
I'm just pondering on whether it might be good or not to try a more scientific approach to sports based on ability which might solve the issue in the original post, especially when so many sports seem biased on physical attributes. I don't think I need to spend any time investigating the complex nuances and writing up details, even on the back of an envelope. Because this is b3ta, it's just chit chat.
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HappyToast Groat froth, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 12:46,
Reply)
When we base on “ability”
without controlling for the differing physiology of the sexes, “highest achievers” = “male athletes”
Most competitive sports were already designed to recognise attributes society valued in male people.
You’re simultaneously arguing for a more scientific approach while also saying that as it’s chit chat, being asked to scrutinise the implications of your arguments just isn’t cricket.
Here’s an example
Base football on “ability” not sex, and there are zero young girls who watch England vs Germany this evening who will be able to do so while thinking “if I train hard, I can represent my country at international level at football”, because no female footballers will be as good even as the top 1% of male footballers, let alone the even tinier number who represent their countries.
Same applies for sprinting, boxing, weightlifting, tennis, swimming and countless other elite sports.
Simply put, the answer to “why separate sports by sex” is “because if we don’t, there’s no female elite sport”
It seems you don’t really have a counterpoint to this - even your own example of boxing was immediately shown to be wrong, and while you said that’s not what you meant, it’s not clear what you did mean.
(, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 13:04, Reply)
I'm not arguing anything, I'm wondering if there's a better, more inclusive and still fair way of doing it
I'm sure it's been tried, tested and rejected by many minds greater and more focused than mine, but there's also a huge chance that we're stuck in the current system because it profits some people and why bother rocking the boat.
So apologies for half arsed considering it, but that's all I was doing.
Also, you have mixed competition in snooker, equestrian and stuff, so who knows, maybe they'll find a way in other elite sports.
I'm off now, peace and love as Ringo would say.
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HappyToast Groat froth, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 13:41,
Reply)
Those last sports you mention
are not based on strength, build or stamina where males have an obvious advantage, so I'm not sure your point holds up there
(, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 13:50, Reply)
^this
there is a lot of fuzzy logic being thrown around by some in this thread
(
Mex3 =mememe, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 14:51,
Reply)
Snooker and equestrian sports
Are an example of sports where segregation of sex would be sexism rather than recognition of sex differences.
The fact that we have some sports that aren’t segregated by sex suggests that the question of fairness has been addressed, and resulted in a situation where sports are, funnily enough, segregated by sex where it’s legitimate and fair to do so, and not where it isn’t.
If you’re able to give just *one* example of an elite female athlete whose prowess and recognition is limited by not being allowed to show that she’d outperform elite males in direct competition, I’ll concede that something needs looking at.
As it stands, all you’re saying is “because trans people, maybe “male and female” are outdated terms”
That is frankly nonsense, and it’s dangerous nonsense because if a reasonable, unbiased person read this thread, they’d see that your instinctive desire to support trans rights has resulted in egregious casual sexism
(, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 13:58, Reply)
we have womens sports for the same reason we have the paralympics
most of the time this goes unexamined and unspoken, but occasionally some prick like bobby riggs or McEnroe decides to make a point about it. It's a little ironic that in their desire for inclusion as women in sport, male to female trans athletes are once again bringing back into focus this inconvenient truth, and I think will get confronted by disgruntled female athletes that gender identity choice and gender are not the same thing if the big kiwi trans weightlifter wins gold in tokyo. there's already ructions. I'm not that fussed myself, it's only women's sport, but I can't see how you can please all parties. It's one of those life of brian foetus gestating in a bucket things
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cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 15:58,
Reply)