Current Events > Why not base sports on sex rather than gender?

(+) Yeah! (+)

And then move past the crap with excluding transgendered people from "women's sports". The rationale for the split is biological, not identity-based.

Why not replace arbitrary segregation with a promotion & relegation system?

What about women who have begun transitioning to men and have taken testosterone? Should they be allowed to compete with other women?

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I mean, I suppose it would be nice if people were freaking out about trans men for a change. They must feel left out.

How about a trans league?

RedWhiteBlue posted...

This answer obviously doesn't go into male to female, muscle mass, hrt, and other hot debate topics. Just a matter of the question itself.

Promotion and relegation at the individual level bypasses any need to worry about all of the above.

Were_Wyrm posted...

What about women who have begun transitioning to men and have taken testosterone? Should they be allowed to compete with other women?

Yeah, that wouldnt work well either.

What would be needed would be an accurate way to judge physical capabilities and have a few tiers based off in f that.

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if we are just gonna let whomever compete with whomever they want, regardless of sex, then why even separate them to begin with?

Trans people just want to fit in and just lead normal lives. If you're a guy, think about your high schools girls' soccer team or whatever. The girls were already better than everyone else at the school. You think just because someone is trans they are gonna be able to just crush girls in sports?

Cerealmilk posted...

if we are just gonna let whomever compete with whomever they want, regardless of sex, then why even separate them to begin with?

Questionmarktarius posted...

Why not replace arbitrary segregation with a promotion & relegation system?

Because we like seeing women in the top levels of sport and with a promotion and relegation system like you're talking about there would be absolutely no women at the top level. Not at the olympics, not on the international stage, and not even on most national stages at all.

With the current model, the best woman gets to stand up with a gold medal next to the best man. With a promotion/relegation scheme, the best women would be somewhere down at rank 4000 or more.

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pinky0926 posted...

Because we like seeing women in the top levels of sport and with a promotion and relegation system like you're talking about there would be absolutely no women at the top level.

Why are we still pretending they're "top level" anyway?

Questionmarktarius posted...

Why are we still pretending they're "top level" anyway?

Because at some point society decided it wanted to see who the best women were at X sport, recognising they can't compete against the best men because they don't have the same advantages.

if your point is just that these lines are arbitrary to begin with I agree, but I disagree that they are pointless. I think most women would hate to see women's competitive sport completely evaporate, but I can't speak for them or anything.

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pinky0926 posted...

if your point is just that these lines are arbitrary to begin with I agree, but I disagree that they are pointless.

We don't let adults play little league, no, but we don't pretend some 11-year-old is "the GOAT" either.

Robot2600 posted...

Trans people just want to fit in and just lead normal lives. If you're a guy, think about your high schools girls' soccer team or whatever. The girls were already better than everyone else at the school. You think just because someone is trans they are gonna be able to just crush girls in sports?

The Australian National Women's Soccer team regularly get beat by teenage boys by a large margin

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Questionmarktarius posted...

We don't let adults play little league, no, but we don't pretend some 11-year-old is "the GOAT" either.

There are actually fairly serious child and adolescent athletics events and really the only reason they aren't taken more seriously is because we recognise that the participants are only going to keep getting better.

Women can't bridge the gap to male performance through any training or aging or even performance enhancing drugs. I mean, what even is the point of sports anyway? Like, men are ridiculously slow compared to cheetahs, ridiculously weak compared to a common farm cow, and so on. But nobody wants to see an event where a man races a cheetah.

We're just trying to see who the best man at X is compared to other people who are similar, recognising the limitations of human physiology. And for whatever reason a significant amount of society wants to see who the best female is at X too, recognising that a different general set of physiology applies.

The better comparison would be the paralympics, where we celebrate the best humans who have X disadvantage against people with similar limitations.

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Robot2600 posted...

Trans people just want to fit in and just lead normal lives. If you're a guy, think about your high schools girls' soccer team or whatever. The girls were already better than everyone else at the school. You think just because someone is trans they are gonna be able to just crush girls in sports?

This anecdote doesn't hold up to literally all sports statistics ever, though.

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P.s. there's not really an answer because I'm not disagreeing with you on the facts, @Questionmarktarius . The only question that matters is "do we want to see women in elite sport, yes or no?" Because if that's an important consideration, the promotion/relegation scheme doesn't work. If however we do think it's too arbitrary and outdated and it needs to go, then fine, but we should recognise the obvious outcome.

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pinky0926 posted...

The only question that matters is "do we want to see women in elite sport, yes or no?" Because if that's an important consideration, the promotion/relegation scheme doesn't work. If however we do think it's too arbitrary and outdated and it needs to go, then fine, but we should recognise the obvious outcome.

That's fair, but so is questioning if it ever was "elite" anyway.

pinky0926 posted...

The better comparison would be the paralympics, where we celebrate the best humans who have X disadvantage against people with similar limitations.

Paralympics don't usually exclude, but will "harrison bergeron" someone who wants to participate in "X disadvantage". Sledge Hockey is a prime example here, nor will wheelchair basketball flatly deny someone who can walk.
It's going to be hard to do this for mixed-sex sports, yes, outside of community center leagues or something.

Robot2600 posted...

Trans people just want to fit in and just lead normal lives. If you're a guy, think about your high schools girls' soccer team or whatever. The girls were already better than everyone else at the school. You think just because someone is trans they are gonna be able to just crush girls in sports?

Yes and it's literally whats happening. Fallon Fox has cracked the skulls open of multiple female fighters now. Literally hit them so hard their skulls break.
Which is crazy, because women's MMA never saw those kinds of injuries before. I wonder what changed

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Questionmarktarius posted...

That's fair, but so is questioning if it ever was "elite" anyway.

Sure, but I'd argue that if women categorically have a different set of physiological obstacles to get over thanks to puberty, then why not class them differently?

We know the heavyweight boxer would annihilate the lightweight one, even if the lightweight one is more skilled, so we put them in different events. And we even have terms like "best pound-for-pound fighter" to recognise the little guys. On the other hand, we know the tall basketball player will be better than the short one but we don't put them in different events. I guess no one ever thought that short guy's basketball was an important or different-enough class to warrant separation. We could feasibly havea short person's basketball league, and celebrate the best 5ft7 basketball players (although I think that particular advantage is quantitively different).

Either way it just comes down to whether we want to see women compete.

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PoundGarden posted...

Yes and it's literally whats happening. Fallon Fox has cracked the skulls open of multiple female fighters now. Literally hit them so hard their skulls break.
Which is crazy, because women's MMA never saw those kinds of injuries before. I wonder what changed

I actually dislike the Fallon Fox example because taking bone breaking injuries in a contact sport is a little hard to present as evidence, don't you think? Like it's hardly conclusive. Too many variables.

What I find more interesting is the example of Laurel Hubbard (Olympic champ weightlifter). This is a static sport with clearcut values to measure. How does someone go their entire life barely making a scratch on any report card as a male weightlifter (bar some junior national records in a specific new class and age division), and then enter the female game after a year of HRT and just obliterate several world records in her 40s? Surely if the transition was enough they would be a similar ranking to when they were in the male game, and not leagues ahead within a year?

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pinky0926 posted...

I actually dislike the Fallon Fox example because taking bone breaking injuries in a contact sport is a little hard to present as evidence, don't you think? Like it's hardly conclusive. Too many variables.

What? No, it literally proves the point. No biological female fighters were sending each other to the ICU with traumatic brain injuries. Enter the first trans fighter, heads are breaking, and the athletes that fought her say they've never felt overpowered like that before and many refuse to fight her.

Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean its not solid evidence. Additionally I feel like the opinions of the people actually involved carry far more weight than someone on a dying message board, and they are not in favor of allowing trans athletes to compete against them.

I also wonder why there aren't trans male athletes shattering the records of cis males, like whats happening in female sports. Why ever could that be?

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PoundGarden posted...

What? No, it literally proves the point. No biological female fighters were sending each other to the ICU with traumatic brain injuries. Enter the first trans fighter, heads are breaking, and the athletes that fought her say they've never felt overpowered like that before and many refuse to fight her.

Haven't they?

https://abcnews.go.com/Sports/female-mma-fighter-dies-brain-injury-sustained-bout/story?id=67125913
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/female-boxer-dies-after-bout/#:~:text=She%20is%20believed%20to%20be,the%20Denver%20County%20coroner's%20office.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatalities_in_mixed_martial_arts_contests

Bro, MMA is fucking dangerous. Name a year that someone hasn't died in the sport or received some awful injury and I'll tell you it's a made up year.

We can't look at a fight where someone was injured and say "see, this was because they are a male".

We can say, "all else being equal, there is a greater risk of injury due to the difference in mass + power", but that's a different argument and still one that would need to be substantiated with something more than a single instance.

Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean its not solid evidence. Additionally I feel like the opinions of the people actually involved carry far more weight than someone on a dying message board, and they are not in favor of allowing trans athletes to compete against them.

I don't like it because it's confirmation bias, not scientific evidence. Science would be a study that could show that there was no other factor other than "maleness" which caused the injury. Or at least a study that shows the punching power difference and effect or similar of males vs females in a large selection group.

But taking one instance of one fighter getting hurt is not a *judge hammer slam* moment. And however much you don't care about my opinion, the testimony of someone who lost a fight is not exactly a peer review study either.

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PoundGarden posted...

What? No, it literally proves the point. No biological female fighters were sending each other to the ICU with traumatic brain injuries. Enter the first trans fighter, heads are breaking, and the athletes that fought her say they've never felt overpowered like that before and many refuse to fight her.

Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean its not solid evidence. Additionally I feel like the opinions of the people actually involved carry far more weight than someone on a dying message board, and they are not in favor of allowing trans athletes to compete against them.

I also wonder why there aren't trans male athletes shattering the records of cis males, like whats happening in female sports. Why ever could that be?

truth

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P.s. I don't even disagree with you on principle or rationale, I just don't think the outcome of a single fight is the evidence to end the conversation.

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pinky0926 posted...

P.s. I don't even disagree with you on principle or rationale, I just don't think the outcome of a single fight is the evidence to end the conversation.

so you're arguing for the sake of it, not because you disagree with the other person

Fam_Fam posted...

so you're arguing for the sake of it, not because you disagree with the other person

I disagree with the argument, not the conclusion. I think the "trans mma fighter is breaking skulls, thats all you need to say" is an argument that ultimately hurts the overall position that there's an unfair advantage because it falls apart as soon as you poke it with a stick.

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pinky0926 posted...

Bro, MMA is fucking dangerous. Name a year that someone hasn't died in the sport or received some awful injury and I'll tell you it's a made up year.

LMAO, name another physical contact sport when men and women compete against each other. Then you'll have a point. As it stands MMA is the only example, and will ya look at that, the trans female is dominating the cis females.

pinky0926 posted...

We can't look at a fight where someone was injured and say "see, this was because they are a male".

Yes we can if one athlete has a biological advantage. Women have weaker bones, this is a fact. Next.

pinky0926 posted...

We can say, "all else being equal, there is a greater risk of injury due to the difference in mass + power", but that's a different argument and still one that would need to be substantiated with something more than a single instance.

Well when there is literally only one example (that proves my point btw) that's a difficult order to fill. But to your point, it is not one incident. Fallon has seriously injured multiple opponents. So there ya go.

pinky0926 posted...

I don't like it because it's confirmation bias, not scientific evidence. Science would be a study that could show that there was no other factor other than "maleness" which caused the injury. Or at least a study that shows the punching power difference and effect or similar of males vs females in a large selection group.

I mean...short of having 50 trans females fight 50 cis females, idk what kind of "scientific" evidence you're lookin for?

pinky0926 posted...

But taking one instance of one fighter getting hurt is not a *judge hammer slam* moment. And however much you don't care about my opinion, the testimony of someone who lost a fight is not exactly a peer review study either.

That'snice. But again, the opinions of the people directly involved (he athletes getting the fuck beat out of them) carry far more weight than some person on a dying message board.

And I love how some man not even involved is clearly more of an authority than the women being brutalized. Delicious irony. Fighting for the rights of one group while telling the other to stfu because they don't know what they're talking about


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PoundGarden posted...

And I love how some man not even involved is clearly more of an authority than the women being brutalized. Delicious irony. Fighting for the rights of one group while telling the other to stfu because they don't know what they're talking about

Don't you know that "listen to the victim" only applies when the victim agrees with the person saying it?

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I think all sports should be based on height and weight

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skermac posted...

I think all sports should be based on height and weight

That isnt a bad idea at all honestly.

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Id be down with this. Create a seperate transgender category and let them compete.

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pinky0926 posted...

P.s. I don't even disagree with you on principle or rationale, I just don't think the outcome of a single fight is the evidence to end the conversation.

Ok, but again how else do we test and measure it other than letting them go at each other? How many more women need to have their eggs cracked before we say "this is wrong"? I understand Fallon wants to fight and its her passion, however she's completely changed the dynamic of the sport. I am not and never will be in favor of fucking over an entire group of people to appease the minority. Female MMA was awesome, then I watched Fallon and felt sick to my stomach and ashamed. Ever seen her fight? You can see the terror and desperation on the faces of her opponents after catching a few shots. It becomes crystal clear to them they can't win, and you see a strong proud warrior woman suddenly become a scared little girl that wants the fuck out of there. Its fucked up to see.

I think the only real compromise or solution is trans leagues.

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PoundGarden posted...

LMAO, name another physical contact sport when men and women compete against each other. Then you'll have a point. As it stands MMA is the only example, and will ya look at that, the trans female is dominating the cis females.

You can't say "this is what happens when males and females compete together" when that already happens within both male and female groups. I can show you countless examples of men killing men and women killing women in contact sports. The fact a male killed a female here doesn't prove the argument at all.

If you wanted to make the argument, you'd have to show that it's at a greater risk of happening, or that it's happening more often. And that would be fine, but you don't do that with a single example like this.

Yes we can if one athlete has a biological advantage. Women have weaker bones, this is a fact. Next.

Completely different argument altogether. If you read my earlier comments you'd see i agree with that.

Well when there is literally only one example (that proves my point btw) that's a difficult order to fill. But to your point, it is not one incident. Fallon has seriously injured multiple opponents. So there ya go.

That's exactly the point though. Can you conclusively say that the reason this person was injured was because the opponent was male, and nothing else? You can conclusively rule out every other factor? No, of course you can't. You don't have enough evidence. If you want to make an evidence based argument you need something better than a single data point with a million variables.

I mean...short of having 50 trans females fight 50 cis females, idk what kind of "scientific" evidence you're lookin for?

Peer reviewed study analysis on the physiological factors between male and female groups and how they relate to know injury risks would be better. Exactly like what World Rugby did to make a risk assessment on whether FTM athletes created an unacceptable risk.

https://playerwelfare.worldrugby.org/gender

THIS is how you make an argument for exclusion. Not "well this person had their skull cracked, case closed".

That'snice. But again, the opinions of the people directly involved (he athletes getting the fuck beat out of them) carry far more weight than some person on a dying message board.

In other words, absolutely no weight at all. Opinions and anecdotes are bullshit.

And I love how some man not even involved is clearly more of an authority than the women being brutalized. Delicious irony. Fighting for the rights of one group while telling the other to stfu because they don't know what they're talking about

Neither is an authority at all. Appeals to authority are bullshit, as are appeals to opinions from people who have reason to lie and appeals to anecdotes.

If you thought "you're not an authority" was the gotcha that would end this discussion then I hate to break it to you bro. I'm saying, "let's see what the science says, not what pinky says". You can surely agree with that right?

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PoundGarden posted...

Ok, but again how else do we test and measure it other than letting them go at each other? How many more women need to have their eggs cracked before we say "this is wrong"? I understand Fallon wants to fight and its her passion, however she's completely changed the dynamic of the sport. I am not and never will be in favor of fucking over an entire group of people to appease the minority. Female MMA was awesome, then I watched Fallon and felt sick to my stomach and ashamed. Ever seen her fight? You can see the terror and desperation on the faces of her opponents after catching a few shots. It becomes crystal clear to them they can't win, and you see a strong proud warrior woman suddenly become a scared little girl that wants the fuck out of there. Its fucked up to see.

I think the only real compromise or solution is trans leagues.

I don't think a study would require allowing an uncontrolled experiment on male vs female vs trans fighters to go ahead. I think you'd just need to look at the underlying physiological and genetic factors and measure them up against the known risk factors in contact sport to determine whether things create a greater chance of injury or not.

As above, the world rugby example is how you do it.

https://tinyurl.com/ejknj774

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I agree that peer-reviewed research is the way to go.

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pinky0926 posted...

I don't think a study would require allowing an uncontrolled experiment on male vs female vs trans fighters to go ahead. I think you'd just need to look at the underlying physiological and genetic factors and measure them up against the known risk factors in contact sport to determine whether things create a greater chance of injury or not.

As above, the world rugby example is how you do it.

https://tinyurl.com/ejknj774

So the opinions of the people actually having their heads cracked open don't count, they should shut up and continue to get stomped because we need more studies on this to prove conclusively beyond a shadow of a doubt that a biological male has a tremendous advantage over a biological female in a fight?
Like, can you see how dismissive, insulting, and misogynistic that is?
I'm so sick of this PC litigious woke bullshit on the issue. I support trans peoples, but I will never support trans females fighting cis females. It's fucking wrong, and shouldn't even be this much of a discussion.
Shows just how insane the US has become when a group of women are being brutalized in and driven out of their profession and we'd rather worry about the rights of one person to beat the holy fuck out of said women because tolerance.

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Why not base sports on ability and hard work? My aunts, uncles and cousins have been playing on mixed soccer teams for years.

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Lil_Bit83 posted...

Why not base sports on ability and hard work? My aunts, uncles and cousins have been playing on mixed soccer teams for years.

because they aren't professional athletes and likely who wins doesn't matter very much, so people don't care about disparities because everyone who wants to play can participate.

PoundGarden posted...

So the opinions of the people actually having their heads cracked open don't count, they should shut up and continue to get stomped because we need more studies on this to prove conclusively beyond a shadow of a doubt that a biological male has a tremendous advantage over a biological female in a fight?
Like, can you see how dismissive, insulting, and misogynistic that is?
I'm so sick of this PC litigious woke bullshit on the issue. I support trans peoples, but I will never support trans females fighting cis females. It's fucking wrong, and shouldn't even be this much of a discussion.
Shows just how insane the US has become when a group of women are being brutalized in and driven out of their profession and we'd rather worry about the rights of one person to beat the holy fuck out of said women because tolerance.

Their opinions matter but I dont think you have enough to rule out the idea that maybe the injuries occurred because they're working in the most dangerous contact sport that exists. One person saying "this was heavy, man, chicks dont punch like that" doesn't make for an effective argument for policy.

This is why I'm being contrary, ultimately. I agree with you overall, but there's a powerful and incoherent lobby that is trying to rule women out of sport (whether they realise it or not), and I think that needs strong evidence to be shut down.

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Lil_Bit83 posted...

Why not base sports on ability and hard work? My aunts, uncles and cousins have been playing on mixed soccer teams for years.

Because the "let's put everyone together and base it on merit" argument rules women out of elite sport.

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Robot2600 posted...

Trans people just want to fit in and just lead normal lives. If you're a guy, think about your high schools girls' soccer team or whatever. The girls were already better than everyone else at the school. You think just because someone is trans they are gonna be able to just crush girls in sports?

Yes? Lmao

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Questionmarktarius posted...

Why not replace arbitrary segregation with a promotion & relegation system?

Because the top women in sports usually (not always) struggle to keep up with the average men. Look at tennis, the Williams sisters both got dominated by someone ranked 203rd in the mens league.

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Why not just remove all barriers and let the best players rise to the top?

No more weight and gender classes. Anyone can see how far they can go.

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gmanthebest posted...

Because the top women in sports usually (not always) struggle to keep up with the average men. Look at tennis, the Williams sisters both got dominated by someone ranked 203rd in the mens league.

Its even greater than that tbh. Look at athletics, where events are so restricted and leave little argument over skill or chance. The best women in history in any event are beaten by 4000 men (and boys) every year.

Florence griffith joyner set a world record time so huge that no woman has touched it in 30 years, and everyone aassumes she was juicing and the wind conditions were unfair in her advantage. And there are thousands of non professional male athletes who beat that time every year.

That's what a 10% difference looks like, which is the predicted range between men and women's sport in track and field. In strength sports its predicted at 30%. In contact sports (e.g. punching power) it may be as much as 160%.

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