I think the existing categories of "male" and "female" used in sport were adopted when we had a much less sophisticated understanding of gender and sexual biology, and the current debate just highlights that they are probably no longer fit for purpose.
If you extend the discussion about eligibility for trans athletes to include the eligibility of inter-sex athletes, like Castor Semenya, you end up with a huge range of human biology and sexual identity, and the simplistic historic categories of male and female just don't seem appropriate any more.
There are already precedents for categorising sport in a more granular way; no one would seriously suggest that athletes in boxing or martial arts should compete in a single "male" or "female" category, and triathlon has a well established age group structure with multiple categories. It's not unreasonable to suggest that many sports could be restructured to group competitors into multiple bands of similar athletic ability.
The really difficult question is how to define new categories for each sport. I don't know the answer to that (and there are obvious logistical issues with multi category sport) but perhaps it would be more useful to investigate this question, instead of persisting with arguments about eligibility for the existing male/female classifications that often seem to be bad natured and unproductive?
(, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 9:49, Reply)
yes, I'm sure some bloke telling women that women's sport is no longer fit for purpose and will be replaced with some as yet to be decided categories will go down well to those that have dedicated their lives pursuing careers in it.
(
cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 16:14,
Reply)
See the thing is I hadn't been looking at womens sport as "fit for purpose"
I didn't realise it was there to keep them happy and winning medals that apparently you lot think they couldn't win normally
(
HappyToast Groat froth, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 16:41,
Reply)
It’s not “I think they couldn’t win”
Recognising the difference between male and female physiology isn’t denigrating them. It’s been demonstrated to you with statistics that female people and male people are not on a level playing field if competing against each other.
The sexist thing is a mindset that implies that women might be faster than Bolt if only they tried a bit harder.
It isn’t sexist to recognise that the fastest female runner should be valued as an exceptional woman, and that that’s equally as meaningful as being the fastest man, even if the fastest man is faster.
Yet again, your problem is your unthinking assumption that “normally” = “competing with men”.
Differing physiology means that if “normal” was “unisex sport”, male people would be the ONLY people in most elite sports.
Your issue is in thinking that the statement “women are not as strong/fast as men” is a value judgement rather than a neutral statement based on observation of peak performances of both sexes plotted on a bell curve.
(, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 23:13, Reply)
A prime example of this is American Football
It is open to both sexes, yet there are no top female players. There is a reason for that.
(, Thu 1 Jul 2021, 16:58, Reply)
you were the one who liked his comment, HT
men and women ain't the same. deal with it. As to why women compete in their own comp, it's the same reason why children don't compete with adults.
why do we value and laud Serena Williams much more than 49th ranked man Bublik Alexander, despite him having an awesome name? He could thrash her in straight sets. It's mainly because she's the best in the handicap category of women, though it could also be that people like watching the gendered differences that women bring to sport, though this argument wouldn't work if you don't acknowledge they exist in some nice but misguided effort to be inclusive and non-sexist
(
cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 23:51,
Reply)
I guarantee that you don’t have a more refined understanding of biology
There are two sexes. There are variations within those sexes.
Those variations can manifest physically as differing specialisations. Sport measures and rewards those specialisations.
If we didn’t segregate by sex, well done, female sport doesn’t exist and no female person achieves sporting excellence. I don’t think you understand quite how much advantage male people have over female people in sport.
Appropriating a complex case like Caster to justify inclusion on the basis of asserted identity is absolutely not logically justifiable. Peoplewith intersex conditions are a different group from people who have a gender identity they day categorises them as the opposite sex.]
You can see quite how different the groups are by the way that Laurel Hubbard has been accommodated while Caster has been put through hell.
(, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 10:00, Reply)
"Appropriating a complex case like Caster to justify inclusion on the basis of asserted identity is absolutely not logically justifiable."
It's a good thing I didn't do that then, isn't it?
(, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 11:02, Reply)
Dunno, mate.
It was you who introduced her to the debate.
(
Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 11:17,
Reply)
“If you extend the debate about trans eligibility to include intersex athletes”
Please explain how that isn’t using an intersex athlete in order to make a point about inclusion of intersex athletes in lieu of an argument for inclusion of unambiguously male people on the grounds on identity?
(, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 11:48, Reply)
Sure. I'm including the example of intersex athletes to demonstrate how the existing categories of male and female (as currently defined in sport) don't appear to work very well for people that don't fit neatly into those existing definitions. Many trans athletes encounter the same problem.
I am not trying to "justify inclusion on the basis of asserted identity". I'm biologically male. If I self declare as a woman, but have no hormone treatment or other procedures, some women athletes might object to me competing in the existing category of "women". If you discard the existing sporting categorisation of male and female, and classify me according to some other combination of objective measurement (weight, hormone levels, body composition, V02 max, etc, etc) then my identity becomes irrelevant. I only qualify to compete in a class of athletes with similar characteristics.
(, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 15:43, Reply)
Laurel Hubbard *does* fit neatly into existing definitions of male and female;
Laurel Hubbard is an adult human male.
I’m not sure why ŷour post mentions your “identity” becoming irrelevant.
Sex still remains the most relevant factor, even if you pretend that sex isn’t a thing that exists or matters.
(, Wed 30 Jun 2021, 14:11, Reply)
...
Intersex has nothing to do with trans. Intersex people are not a third, fourth, or fifth sex. They are male or female; intersex conditions are sex-specific.
One more time: there are two sexes in humans. Sex is determined by the activity of the SRY gene, which either is or is not activated. That's it. That's your lot. There is nothing simplistic about this.
More importantly for this debate, having an intersex condition is a fact about material, observable reality. It is not something that one identifies into.
I thihnk that cases like Semenya's are very difficult, not least because she competed in good faith as a woman, rather than deciding that that was what she was. Still, cases like hers tell us nothing about trans athletes, because she is not trans.
(
Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 10:01,
Reply)
Of course intersex is different from trans. I am not conflating two different things.
Castor Semenya is a woman, and competes in the female category, which is entirely proper. However, it seems unarguable that because of her specific biological makeup she has a significant athletic advantage over many other athletes in the female category. That would be fine if she was simply allowed to compete as she is, but the athletic authorities have ruled that she must take hormone treatment to limit her athletic ability in order to compete in her existing category, which seems fundamentally wrong.
Instead of hobbling someone to fit a category that is clearly not fit for purpose, I'm arguing that we should consider reorganising sport to group athletes in more granular ranges of similar physical potential which are based on material, observable reality, and are independent of historic categories of male/female or self identification. This would also address the issue of trans classification; you compete in the category that matches your base physiological characteristics, regardless of sex, gene activity or identity.
(, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 10:20, Reply)
It wouldn't touch the (non-)issue of trans classification
since the whole basis of the trans claim to compete in female categories is that biology is unimportant in this regard, or at least less important than one's inner "sense of self". So there'd still be plenty of scope for athletes to insist that they should compete in this or that category, irrespective of their sex.
Your proposal is to take something other than sex as the guideline for classificatory boundaries. But what would that be? How granular do you want it? Eventually, you end up saying that there's as many categories as there are people, and in that case competition is meaningless. Or if you try to come up with meaningful categories based on combinations of size, muscle-density, metabolism, and the thousand-and-one other athletically-relevant factors... well, you end up back at sex.
(
Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 10:31,
Reply)
If you remove the existing male and female categories you do address the (non-)issue of trans classification. You can't insist that you should compete in a category that no longer exists.
(, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 10:42, Reply)
All you'd succeed in doing there is ensuring that all elite sport is male.
(
Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 10:55,
Reply)
No, you would have multiple elite categories. Some of those categories would be dominated by athletes currently categorised as "male", some would be dominated by athletes currently categorised as "female" and in between there would be categories where the winners could be athletes from either of the existing categories.
(, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 15:57, Reply)
how do we gauge "material, observable reality"?
In something like the 800m, presumably they'd all need to race against each other to find out who was closest together in ability. Then all the ability classes would race to find out who was top of each class. So you'd have a fastest class (all men probably) that would get all the media attention, then a load of slower classes containing women and the slower men that everyone would ignore. That's a bit shit isn't it?
(, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 10:35, Reply)
I don't think simply getting people to race against each other would work as an alternative method of categorisation. I'm not pretending there is an easy answer to how you would define that alternative classification, and I don't know what the answer is, but I don't think the existing classifications of male and female are working very well for many trans and non-trans athletes.
(, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 10:47, Reply)
you dont know what the answer is because broadly there is no better system than the one we have now
That is not to say that every effort shouldn't be given to accommodate minority groups wherever possible. But in this case it is not possible without excluding half the population from meaningful competitive sport.
(, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 11:21, Reply)
No, I don't know the answer because it is a very complex question, and society has only started seriously discussing it relatively recently.
"broadly there is no better system than the one we have now"
The current system accommodates the majority of athletes in the majority of competitions, but is causing some high profile issues in the relatively small number of cases where it doesn't work. I don't think we can say there is no better system, because I don't think anyone has seriously looked at alternatives yet.
(, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 15:50, Reply)
You are fundamentally misunderstanding what sport *is*
The categories we have allow us to measure and reward excellence, and so there are barriers to entry/recognition/high level competing based on skill.
What you are discussing isn’t “people that the current system doesn’t support” - there is, after all, a category in which Laurel Hubbard can compete fairly against peers - but you are in fact talking of a shift *away* from useful categories because you are coming from a perspective where your aim is “trans inclusion, with the right to choose their category” rather than “sporting fairness”
(, Wed 30 Jun 2021, 9:17, Reply)
A lot of people discussing this who aren’t really
Sporting experts, and I think their lay position, or assumption is that you have the men’s 100m and the women’s 100m, and that while the men are a bit faster, it’s almost as if the fastest men are the worlds fastest 1-8 with the women being 9-16, because that’s what a casual glance at the olympics might suggest if you’re not paying attention.
They seem not to realise that there’d be zero female Olympians under Happy Toast’s batshit proposals
(, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 10:48, Reply)
" no one would seriously suggest that athletes in boxing or martial arts should compete in a single "male" or "female" category"
Pro sumo has no weight classes (and it's thrilling to see a 90kg Enho or Takanoyama beating 200-300kg giants).
Amateur sumo has an openweight class, judo also has a long tradition of openweight tournaments, some MMA/bare knuckle promotions have openweight championships, and I think most of the old shootfighting and 90s proto MMA promotions were defacto openweight or at least had an openweight division (never mind that the outcomes were often predetermined).
Then of course there's catchweight contests in MMA and boxing, as well as lots of inter-weight contests (see the colourful career of Butterbean for example).
I'm open minded about the whole trans in sport thing. For all its talk of fairness, sport is, to a large extent, a genetic contest. No amount of training or expertise will overcome your body type; Eddie Hall will never be able to run faster than Usain Bolt, who in turn will never be able to deadlift half a tonne. There's nothing fair about that.
(
brb man-child cuck corporate supplicant fuck, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 17:53,
Reply)
You’re confusing fairness with the sport itself
Eddie Hall racing against Usain Bolt would be these two things;
1: fair
2: a mismatch
It would be fair because both men would be competing by the same rules, and are in the same sex category, and what would be measured would be “which of these men is faster”
The answer would be Usain Bolt, and we would have found out which man is faster.
It would be a mismatch because Eddie Hall’s ability is way below Bolt, due his differing specialisation; if he wants to sprint, then he can sprint, and if he runs enough, in different competitions/meetings, he would theoretically eventually discover where he ranks, and it’s likely that it’s be many levels below Bolt.
There is nothing unfair about that. The only way it would be unfair would be if Bolt challenged him to a race as a way of settling a tie break in a pub quiz.
The unfair thing would be this;
Usain Bolt in his prime racing against Florence Griffith Joiner in her prime to find “fastest person”, with a reward for the winner.
Why?
Because we know that male physiology means their bell curve of speed places the fastest men *waaaaay* above fastest women; while Hall and Bolt exist on the same spectrum of speed, with sport the vehicle of separating them, Joiner and Bolt’s performances exist on different bell curves, and we already know *whoever* the fastest female is, she will be slower than the fastest male.
With that knowledge, and the understanding of the physiological reasons for that performance gap, there emerges a compelling argument that if we want to recognise elite atheletic performance by people with female bodies, we need to celebrate female performance on its own terms. It’s not “the nice thing” to say “I believe women can be just as fast as men” because all you’re doing is showing that you don’t understand how bell curves of performance work.
It’s interesting - a lot of this thread is taken up with people arguing against sex categories who are effectively saying “to ensure fairness, we should somehow find a way of ranking athletes and sports people by ability rather than body type”, and not realising that the process they’re describing *is* the sport
(, Wed 30 Jun 2021, 10:36, Reply)
I'm not confusing fairness with the sport itself at all.
If sport was fair, there could be no winners or losers. Conceptually, a fair contest isn't intended to distribute the results evenly.
Eddie hall is a short squat wide man, whose body is best suited to deadlift half a tonne. With his body he will never be a sprinter, and never could have been an elite sprinter even if he'd dedicated his life to sprinting. There is nothing fair about that.
(
brb man-child cuck corporate supplicant fuck, Wed 30 Jun 2021, 14:05,
Reply)
“If sport was fair, there would be no winners and losers”
There you go again, fundamentally misunderstanding what sport is.
The sport - sprinting - is a means of finding out and ranking the speed of competitors. The fairness is in having a meaningful category, not in nobody winning or losing. “Male people interested in sprinting” is a meaningful category. “All people interested in sprinting” isn’t, because an elite female will be outrun by an OK male,
While Hall/Bolt is a non-sprinter being not as fast as a sprinter. The unfairness isn’t in ranking the two; the only unfairness would be if a third party decided that the way to measure who was the best sportsperson arbitrarily decided that sprinting was the means by which we decide.
Eddie Hall will indeed never be an elite sprinter, and that’s why a fair contest to find out how he compares to Bolt would show him to be not as good at sprinting.
What you’re failing to understand is that there is no fair way to compare a female sprinter to Bolt. For exactly the same reason there’s no fair way to compare Bolt to a Cheetah in a “fastest mammal” contest - the differing physiology makes it impossible to have a meaningful ranking of positions, because a 10.5 second 100 metre run means something different for a man, a woman, and a cheetah.
Eddie Hall’s 100m run would demonstrate what sprinting attempts to show, and his, presumably unimpressive, time would contrast with Bolt’s excellence.
But put Bolt against the fastest woman who ever lived, and you don’t demonstrate Bolt’s ability relative to anything except a physiology less geared towards speed than that of Bolt’s sex.
Once more, it’s a fundamental understanding of what sport is for.
(, Wed 30 Jun 2021, 15:59, Reply)
I said could, not would. A small but significant difference. And I said a fair contest isn't intended to distribute the results evenly,
so what you're responding to isn't clear, especially as your conclusion contradicts your introduction.
At this point I think it's fair to say that we just don't agree on the definition of fairness. Sport, like life, isn't fair.
(
brb man-child cuck corporate supplicant fuck, Thu 1 Jul 2021, 20:07,
Reply)