The question that I don’t think society has wrestled with, and I’m including both left and right wing people, is who should be allowed to do women’s sports? What’s the purpose of the competition?
Imagine a world without male and female events. Instead, every category is open to any athlete who wants to compete. In that world, very few Olympic events would feature any female athletes at all. You’d see some in equestrian events, some in shooting events. In most other sports, having a male body is enough of an advantage that you won’t see many women at all.
So, the purpose of having a women’s category seems mostly to be allowing women to have a chance at winning something by not having them compete with men. That means you have to draw the line somewhere. And, wherever you draw the line, some people are going to be left out.
Who gets to decide where the line is drawn? Different cultures have different ideas, and at something like the Olympics, every country is represented. Historically, it has been men deciding who’s female enough to be allowed to compete. I think most people could agree that that’s bad, and it should be women making that decision. But, should it be all women, or only athletes who are actually competing in a sport? If it’s left up to the athletes, isn’t there a chance they’ll want to draw the line somewhere that favors themselves?
It’s always going to be a sticky situation because the whole point of a women’s category is to keep out another group who would otherwise have an advantage. But, there’s no obvious line that can be drawn that everybody will agree with that separates the two groups.
While this reads and sounds reasonable, in reality it is anything but. Because what it boils down to is that women are not allowed to be successful on the same terms as men.
If a male athlete stands out over his peers through unusual body features and physical advantages, that’s fine. But if a woman does, then you immediately get people questioning if she’s really a woman.
The gender policing of successful female athletes is not new - it has a long and dreadful history. Athletes like Martina Navratilova, Venus and Serena Williams, even Simone Biles were subjected to this at some point in their careers. For some women it has led to significant disadvantages and loss of opportunities purely based on conjecture.
Also, this kind of policing is often done by women under the pretence of wanting to protect women - but hurting women in the process. Some women don’t care that they’re hurting other women. The key problem is that womanhood gets redefined all the time and narrowed at will depending on who currently rouses someone’s ire.
So for what you’re proposing to work, the criteria must be simple, wide-reaching, and unassailable. They must not discriminate against women with unusual physiques or body features so long as they are clearly women. Gender determination cannot be intrusive or demeaning. Anything else hurts all women and entrenches their systemic disadvantages.
women are not allowed to be successful on the same terms as men.
Right, because current Olympic sports are almost exclusively ones where having a male body gives you an advantage.
Imagine someone invented a new sport where women had a natural advantage. Say, some kind of obstacle course where a small body size and flexibility was the most important thing. I can guarantee that if a group of men competed in that and one of the competitors won because he had a very feminine body, people would question whether he was really a man.
So for what you’re proposing to work, the criteria must be simple, wide-reaching, and unassailable
And, I don’t think that’s possible. Sex and gender are simply too complicated. There will always be some arbitrary line that a lot of people think is unfair, and that disadvantages people who happen to fall on the wrong side of it.
For boxing, since they already have weight classes, could they just mesh those together to have a narrower range between classes and have people compete along those lines? Generally the cited advantages of men are their height and muscle mass, couldn’t this ensure even fights?
I think there are plenty of people who understand how to place trans folk into gendered sports is a complex discussion that needs to happen - You’ll just NEVER hear them over the “NO MEN IN WOMEN’S SPORTS BUT ALSO NO WOMEN WHO ARE TOO GOOD AT SPORTS BECAUSE THEYRE MEN TOO IVE JUST DECIDED ALSO ALSO NO UGGOS” crowd.
It’d be cool if instead of grouping people and doing direct comparisons, we scored them on how well they did relative to their physiological features. Kind of like how Wilk scores were used in powerlifting. I don’t know how feasible it is, but maybe something based on testosterone levels could be done.
But, the solution to that – not having any sex or gender based separation is that (with current Olympic sports) pretty much every event would be won by a man, and in almost every category women wouldn’t even make the finals, so they wouldn’t even show up on TV.
So… the “open” class would be all men, because they naturally have higher muscle density, and the “restricted” class would be half men because some men can meet that restricted standard?
Again, what’s the point of having the women’s events? I would have thought it was allowing women to win medals by not having to compete against men.
If we didn’t divide sports by sex, we would have had several sports where women could have not competed on the highest level. As an answer, it has worked well, and keeps working well for 99% of the cases.
We shouldn’t throw away working solutions because they fail 1%. Unless of course you have a solution that works for a higher percentage without compromising the previously solved 99%.
A lot of “male” events are actually open for anyone, it’s just that women generally prefer women only events, since women will usually be at a disadvantage on average.
Yeah, I don’t know if that’s true at the Olympics, but for example Formula 1 has been open to women from the start, and there have been 5 female drivers. Only one has ever earned a point, and that was back in the 1950s. NFL football is also theoretically open to women, but no woman has ever made the cut.
In some cases, like NFL football, it’s the rules that mean that a female body is generally going to be at a disadvantage. In other cases, like F1, it’s probably more that young girls aren’t given the same chances as boys. It seems to me like most Olympic events are in that first category, so no matter what you did to give girls and young women chances, they’d never be able to compete physically against men.
From 1968 to 1992, Olympic skeet shooting was a mixed sex discipline. A woman won the skeet shooting event at the 1992 Olympics.
In 1996 there was no longer a mixed sex skeet shooting event, nor was there a separate women’s event. The latter was introduced at the 2000 Olympics, but the mixed sex event is history. It is said that the decision to end the mixed event was made before the 1992 Olympics, but there is no clear rationale or corroboration.
Sounds pretty suspicious. Shooting is definitely one of those events where the male biological advantage should be low enough that there’s no reason not to have a mixed event.
People keep quoting the “Air Bud rule” here without realizing the reality that most sports would do absolutely anything they can to discourage women competing on a man’s level.
I’ve participated in sports that have “open” divisions, which are effectively men’s divisions. In local competitions, you’ll see many of the stronger women competing in them.
The question that I don’t think society has wrestled with, and I’m including both left and right wing people, is who should be allowed to do women’s sports? What’s the purpose of the competition?
Imagine a world without male and female events. Instead, every category is open to any athlete who wants to compete. In that world, very few Olympic events would feature any female athletes at all. You’d see some in equestrian events, some in shooting events. In most other sports, having a male body is enough of an advantage that you won’t see many women at all.
So, the purpose of having a women’s category seems mostly to be allowing women to have a chance at winning something by not having them compete with men. That means you have to draw the line somewhere. And, wherever you draw the line, some people are going to be left out.
Who gets to decide where the line is drawn? Different cultures have different ideas, and at something like the Olympics, every country is represented. Historically, it has been men deciding who’s female enough to be allowed to compete. I think most people could agree that that’s bad, and it should be women making that decision. But, should it be all women, or only athletes who are actually competing in a sport? If it’s left up to the athletes, isn’t there a chance they’ll want to draw the line somewhere that favors themselves?
It’s always going to be a sticky situation because the whole point of a women’s category is to keep out another group who would otherwise have an advantage. But, there’s no obvious line that can be drawn that everybody will agree with that separates the two groups.
While this reads and sounds reasonable, in reality it is anything but. Because what it boils down to is that women are not allowed to be successful on the same terms as men.
If a male athlete stands out over his peers through unusual body features and physical advantages, that’s fine. But if a woman does, then you immediately get people questioning if she’s really a woman.
The gender policing of successful female athletes is not new - it has a long and dreadful history. Athletes like Martina Navratilova, Venus and Serena Williams, even Simone Biles were subjected to this at some point in their careers. For some women it has led to significant disadvantages and loss of opportunities purely based on conjecture.
Also, this kind of policing is often done by women under the pretence of wanting to protect women - but hurting women in the process. Some women don’t care that they’re hurting other women. The key problem is that womanhood gets redefined all the time and narrowed at will depending on who currently rouses someone’s ire.
So for what you’re proposing to work, the criteria must be simple, wide-reaching, and unassailable. They must not discriminate against women with unusual physiques or body features so long as they are clearly women. Gender determination cannot be intrusive or demeaning. Anything else hurts all women and entrenches their systemic disadvantages.
Right, because current Olympic sports are almost exclusively ones where having a male body gives you an advantage.
Imagine someone invented a new sport where women had a natural advantage. Say, some kind of obstacle course where a small body size and flexibility was the most important thing. I can guarantee that if a group of men competed in that and one of the competitors won because he had a very feminine body, people would question whether he was really a man.
And, I don’t think that’s possible. Sex and gender are simply too complicated. There will always be some arbitrary line that a lot of people think is unfair, and that disadvantages people who happen to fall on the wrong side of it.
And yet the IOC seems to think that these two particular women qualify for the women’s class in boxing. Why is the IOC wrong?
Why do you think they’re wrong?
I don’t. You’re the one complaining about Khelif competing in the Olympics but also saying we should listen to the governing body.
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For boxing, since they already have weight classes, could they just mesh those together to have a narrower range between classes and have people compete along those lines? Generally the cited advantages of men are their height and muscle mass, couldn’t this ensure even fights?
I think there are plenty of people who understand how to place trans folk into gendered sports is a complex discussion that needs to happen - You’ll just NEVER hear them over the “NO MEN IN WOMEN’S SPORTS BUT ALSO NO WOMEN WHO ARE TOO GOOD AT SPORTS BECAUSE THEYRE MEN TOO IVE JUST DECIDED ALSO ALSO NO UGGOS” crowd.
It’d be cool if instead of grouping people and doing direct comparisons, we scored them on how well they did relative to their physiological features. Kind of like how Wilk scores were used in powerlifting. I don’t know how feasible it is, but maybe something based on testosterone levels could be done.
The answer is that dividing sports by someone’s sex is stupid. It seemed like an easy answer, and like all easy answers, is a shitty answer.
But, the solution to that – not having any sex or gender based separation is that (with current Olympic sports) pretty much every event would be won by a man, and in almost every category women wouldn’t even make the finals, so they wouldn’t even show up on TV.
Just find another thing to differentiate on. Lung capacity. Muscle density. The things that actually matter.
Using sex just approximates those anyway.
Untrained anorexic division incoming
So… the “open” class would be all men, because they naturally have higher muscle density, and the “restricted” class would be half men because some men can meet that restricted standard?
Again, what’s the point of having the women’s events? I would have thought it was allowing women to win medals by not having to compete against men.
If we didn’t divide sports by sex, we would have had several sports where women could have not competed on the highest level. As an answer, it has worked well, and keeps working well for 99% of the cases.
We shouldn’t throw away working solutions because they fail 1%. Unless of course you have a solution that works for a higher percentage without compromising the previously solved 99%.
Just find another thing to differentiate on. Lung capacity. Muscle density. The things that actually matter.
Using sex just approximates those anyway.
A lot of “male” events are actually open for anyone, it’s just that women generally prefer women only events, since women will usually be at a disadvantage on average.
Yeah, I don’t know if that’s true at the Olympics, but for example Formula 1 has been open to women from the start, and there have been 5 female drivers. Only one has ever earned a point, and that was back in the 1950s. NFL football is also theoretically open to women, but no woman has ever made the cut.
In some cases, like NFL football, it’s the rules that mean that a female body is generally going to be at a disadvantage. In other cases, like F1, it’s probably more that young girls aren’t given the same chances as boys. It seems to me like most Olympic events are in that first category, so no matter what you did to give girls and young women chances, they’d never be able to compete physically against men.
From 1968 to 1992, Olympic skeet shooting was a mixed sex discipline. A woman won the skeet shooting event at the 1992 Olympics.
In 1996 there was no longer a mixed sex skeet shooting event, nor was there a separate women’s event. The latter was introduced at the 2000 Olympics, but the mixed sex event is history. It is said that the decision to end the mixed event was made before the 1992 Olympics, but there is no clear rationale or corroboration.
Sounds pretty suspicious. Shooting is definitely one of those events where the male biological advantage should be low enough that there’s no reason not to have a mixed event.
People keep quoting the “Air Bud rule” here without realizing the reality that most sports would do absolutely anything they can to discourage women competing on a man’s level.
I’ve participated in sports that have “open” divisions, which are effectively men’s divisions. In local competitions, you’ll see many of the stronger women competing in them.