" 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.
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brb man-child cuck corporate supplicant fuck, Tue 29 Jun 2021, 17:53,
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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.
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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.
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brb man-child cuck corporate supplicant fuck, Thu 1 Jul 2021, 20:07,
Reply)