With the recent issues of transgender people in sports, why don’t we move some sports over to a weight-class system? - eviltoast

Obviously this won’t work for all sports, but things like football, track, soccer, it would allow for de-gendered team, even allowing athletes with the skills but not the genetically-endowed physical attributes to have a place to play.

Note: I know very little about sports and being on a sports team, so please point out anything that doesn’t make sense.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      On average, but there’s outliers.

      Like, there are women out there with higher testorone than the average man, and crazy is a huge factor.

      I played rugby in college and we hung out with the women’s team and drunk coed wrestling was definitely a common thing.

      Every once and a while a non rugby player would think it was just an excuse to roll around with a hot chick, and they would get absolutely demolished. Like I’m not talking about underestimating the woman and losing quickly due to technical skill. Just getting absolutely manhandled by a girl without the socially ingrained fear of violence and pain. Like, I was one of the biggest guys on the men’s team and had wrestling experience, I still lost to some of them. Women almost a foot shorter and that I had more than 50 pounds on. Because they really wanted that W and kept trying till they got it.

      Hell, for two years we had coed practice including full speed tackling and scrimmages. Top end speed was usually the only clear difference, and even then the fastest five players on the field was never all guys.

      • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        There was a story on Reddit from a soldier, his squad ended up in a fight with rugby players in a bar in Australia and after the fight they had a drink together and when a soldier told the players they were pretty brave to start fighting people in the army, they replied “the only people we fear is women who play rugby because they’re completely crazy”.

      • Chloë (she/her)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        5 months ago

        Like, there are women out there with higher testorone than the average man

        No, that doesn’t happen, the adrenal glands and ovaries do not produce enough t to reach even very low male levels, testosterone for the most part is produced in the testicules which cis women do not have. that much testosterone would transition a woman into a man, they would grow beard and get a deeper voice, that’s how HRT works for FtMs.

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          they would grow beard and get a deeper voice, that’s how HRT works for FtMs.

          Plenty of people with XY chromosomes can’t grow facial and have a high pitched voice well into their 20s or even after

          And plenty of people with XX chromosomes shave/wax/bleach facial hair and have deep voices.

          Hormones aren’t binary, there’s a bunch of different hormones that can be in a lot of different ranges

          And that’s not even getting into the other options besides XX/XY

          Stop trying to make everyone conform to your binary views on gender.

          • kava@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            She’s not talking about gender he’s talking about sex. Someone born with testicles with XY chromosomes is always going to produce more testosterone than someone born with ovaries with XX chromosomes - assuming both sexual organs are functioning as expected.

            • zbyte64@awful.systems
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              5 months ago

              Oh, nice to know that girl who beat me (in the same weight class) at wrestling was cuz her sexual organs weren’t working properly.

              • kava@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                We’re talking about testosterone in blood not wrestling abilities. A 300lb woman will beat an 110lb man in wrestling. Doesn’t mean she has higher T.

                • zbyte64@awful.systems
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                  5 months ago

                  Amazing how one can dismiss another’s personal experience by simply insisting a different scenario happened.

            • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              assuming

              A whole bunch of shit while ignoring all the contex…

              I’m talking about 18-22 year olds and the women are on the women’s rugby team comparing them to men who have never needed to shave and their voice hasn’t cracked.

              If you think every 18-22 year old guys has been thru puberty…

              That’s as ridiculous as not understanding that hight T women would be attracted to high level athletics and then overly represented in elite athletes.

              What you are doing is the equivalent of someone who stops paying attention to science in sixth grade but believes they’re an expert at 47.

              You got the cliff notes version and think people should address you as Doctor.

              Shits a lot more complicated than you think.

              • kava@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                A high T woman is 70 ng/dL and that already is starting to imply some sort of adrenal tumor or polycystic ovary syndrome. The normal range is a lot closer to 20~30

                A low T man is ~250 ng/dL and average is around 400~500 ng/dL

                A woman will not have T levels similar to men because they don’t have testicles. Even the highest T females compared to lowest T men.

                The only time this would be true is in 1 in 10 million cases. If that’s your whole argument, then OK. It is theoretically possible if the woman has an adrenal tumor and the man is effectively castrated.

                But for virtually all other cases this simply cannot happen due to human physiology.

                • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  What do you not understand about 18-22?

                  Which, if you haven’t noticed, is still the age range of a lot of Olympians and elite athletes.

                  Hell, some sports average under 18.

                  It’s like you didn’t even read my comment. You’re just fucking insisting everything fits in your nice little division of two piles and no one else can exist.

                  It’s the same line of thinking as transphobes…

                  And I have no desire to ever interact with people stuck in that thinking. And immediately regret trying to help you understand the finer points.

      • Emerald@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Every once and a while a non rugby player would think it was just an excuse to roll around with a hot chick, and they would get absolutely demolished. Just getting absolutely manhandled by a girl

        The perfect deal if they’re into that

      • Welt@lazysoci.al
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        5 months ago

        Plus, bears already have an open weight class independent of gender! Now we’re making real PROGRESS

    • Pacmanlives@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I remember Serena Williams making a comment that the men can just hit harder and faster. So even a sport like tennis men just have an advantage.

      Having watched some badass girls wrestle dudes and win it’s an up hill battle. Women are typically stronger then men at a young age like single digit age but one puberty hits it’s all off the table.

      Now shooting(archery/firearms) I have seen girls out preform men and it’s a fair sport of accuracy. Also in motor sports women can be competitive there and also have an advantage of being smaller and lighter. Every 100 lbs is a 1/10th a second

  • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    5 months ago

    Hot take: Sports are not that important, and it’s not the end of the world if someone in the other team is “physically better” than you.

    Sports should be just played for fun and for making exercise, not as a profession. And the whole sports industry should be taken down all together. Make all sports amateur and just for the fun of it and suddenly it really doesn’t mather who is on your team or in the other team.

      • Two2Tango@lemmy.ca
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        5 months ago

        Not to mention how many sports betting sites will go out of business 😱💸

            • Welt@lazysoci.al
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              5 months ago

              Man when I was hooked on online betting I made an immense wager on the outcome of a soccer game I wasn’t even able to watch. It was Omsk vs Tomsk, and I think I won it despite knowing nothing about soccer. Of course I was deeply in the red once I stopped such irresponsible behaviour

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I think the harder question is how advertisers will convince underdeveloped schlubs that they call ball with Micheal Jordan if they just wear the right kind of shoes.

        • Welt@lazysoci.al
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          5 months ago

          You mean like Oscar Pistorius shoes? I think it would be really creative and extremely entertaining to watch. Better than this shit they’re blasting out to a disengaged populace these days

    • vierbl00m@feddit.de
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      5 months ago

      Most sport is played by amateurs and for fun. It is still no fun to play against someone who is way stronger/weaker than you, of course!

  • Bear@lemmynsfw.com
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    5 months ago

    Because a man tends to be stronger, faster, and more athletic than a woman of the same weight. It won’t work for football, track, or soccer.

      • The Menemen!@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        You sure? I cannot find records adjusted to weight, but the male record is ~2:01h and the female 2:17h

        Edit: Why is there a cake next to my name? It cannot be that I am on lemmy for a whole year already? Fuck.

          • Emerald@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            why an egg? Would it be to represent the disorientation of suddenly realizing you have been on Lemmy for a whole year? Like how an animal may be disorientated when seeing the light of the world for the first time.

      • jimbolauski@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        Testosterone also increases red blood cell count, so even male endurance athletes have an advantage. Look at Tigst Assefa who holds the women’s World record for a marathon at 2:11, she’s 120 lbs, the top 5 male marathon runners are all at 120 lbs too and run 10 minutes faster.

    • halvar@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Shouldn’t a woman and a man with the same height, weight, and body-muscle percentage be basically identical in terms of athleticism or am I wrong?

          • Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            All a drug is a chemical substance when administered to a living organism, produces a biological effect.

            Hormones are just naturally produced chemical substance. As soon as you dope with it is becomes a drug.

      • ikidd@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Skeletal structure and muscle connection make a huge difference in leverage and speed.

      • mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        5 months ago

        To add to other replies I also think that its much harder for women to develop muscles. (Just what I think I observed, coukd be wrong)

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          “Explosive upper body strength” specifically. Men have wider shoulders and more chest/back/shoulder muscles.

          Women have to work twice as hard for half the results.

    • Psythik@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Get rid of gendered sports. Next, legalize steroids for women; keep them illegal for men. Solves part of the problem, but I have no idea how trans people would fit into this scenario, though.

  • Kilgore Trout@feddit.it
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    5 months ago

    soccer

    “Male” soccer is not restricted to men. Both genders are allowed. There are only men because they outperform women.

    edit: Although FIFA forbids women from access to the main World Cup. Also the statement above is true generally, but not everywhere.

      • kava@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        He addresses them with that statement. There are plenty of women that are in similar weight classes as men but you don’t see any in male sports.

        Even though male sports does not have a gender requirement. This is essentially an indirect way of saying that there are biological differences between male and female that go beyond weight.

        There are various differences you could point out. Males have lower body fat %, which means more muscle. Their bones are shaped differently and are more dense. Men tend to be more aggressive and competitive. Men tend to have stronger bones, joints, tendons, and ligaments.

        Men have more red blood cells, their hearts are bigger so they can pump more blood, and greater lung volume relative to body mass. So even a male and women same weight and height the man will be able to circulate oxygen more quickly.

        There are many more examples if you go do some reading.

        One of the differences may not be huge by themselves. But when you take the differences above and combine them, it creates a situation where in almost all sports, men play virtually unopposed by women.

        Look up the Serena Williams interview. She’s undoubtedly the best female player in the world. She doesn’t stand a chance against a the 203rd best tennis male player.

        This difference even applies to areas like chess. The highest ranking a woman ever got was 6th in the world, Judith Pulgar. Amazing player, but out of the 2500 or so grandmasters in the world, 42 are women.

        Some of these differences can be explained by women around the world not being encouraged to play chess, but that does not explain all.

        There are large biological differences when you look at the population in a statistical sense. And when you look at the most extreme samples from the edge of the normal distribution… that’s where the best athletes / chess players are going to come from.

        • JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          The chess one isnt quite right. There’s been experiments where if a woman player didn’t know her opponent was a man she would perform better. It’s called stereotype threat phenomenon.

          It also happens when a male player knowingly goes up against someone higher in the league than himself and he performs below his own standard average.

          Basically people in general psyche themselves out of their best performance when going against someone they perceive to be better than them whether that’s factual or not. Confidence and undermining confidence can change a whole lot about how a person does in any given game or task.

          • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            There’s an effect on both sides.

            Contrary to what people assume, aggressive chess is a good strategy.

            Due to a lot of factors I don’t really want to get into, most chess players think men are naturally better than women.

            So a woman who thinks she’s playing a man is immediately on the defense, and a man who thinks he’s playing a woman starts out very aggressively.

            Which means a man and woman of equal skill, the man will likely win.

            It’s called stereotype difference and it’s not just chess related.

            I don’t know why people always pick chess because there’s no physical difference while ignoring the mind games we even play on ourselves in those situations.

            Just people completely ignorant of what they’re talking about and grasping at straws to find something that agrees with them

            https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797620924051

          • kava@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            You think that accounts for the differences? 42 of 2500 grandmasters are women because all the women are scared and intimidated of the men?

            Maybe this plays some small effect but I doubt it’s statistically significant enough in this context

            Like you said, it happens to men playing higher rated men. In order to go up in ranking, you need to play and beat progressively higher rated opponents.

            By the very nature of being a high level player, that player would have had to go through that.

            • JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee
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              5 months ago

              It’s a phenomenon that’s been observed across multiple sports, not just between men and women chess players. It’s particularly poignant in men vs women’s chess… because of people repeatedly telling women they are inherently worse than men. Like you are doing right now.

              There’s been multiple studies on this. So yes, I side with the data that stereotype threat phenomenon has a significant impact on women’s performance in chess against men.

              • kava@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                Show me. Link me a couple.

                I don’t think this effect can account for more than a small fraction of the difference. Let’s look at the research. I couldn’t find anything from a quick search but maybe I’m using wrong terms.

              • LordGimp@lemm.ee
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                5 months ago

                The bigger difference imo is the brain development due to hormones in the womb. Old TLC program had a whole section on this suggesting it’s why STEM fields are generally male dominated. Turns out hormones that determine biological gender also very much effect the development of the brain, and the male chemicals tend to develop the spatial reasoning part of the brain faster/more thoroughly than those who get don’t get the male chemicals and stay female. This average higher spatial reasoning capacity creates an advantage in tasks or objectives where complex visualizations are necessary, like visualizing chess moves in your head.

                It’s not some massive, overwhelming difference, but it’s enough to tilt the table. Play out that average enough and you have 42 women out of 2500 chess grandmasters

                • zbyte64@awful.systems
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                  5 months ago

                  TLC is name I have not heard on a long time. Did they really use the term “biological gender”?

        • uis@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          Chess? What percent of woman players are GMs and what percent of male players are GMs? Because it sounds like sampling bias.

          • kava@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Women make up roughly 15% of US Chess Federation members. They make up roughly 1.5% of grandmasters.

            That’s an order of magnitude difference.

            • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Here’s a podcast about a study

              https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/mens-chess-superiority-explained-08-12-29/

              Normally I’d just link studies…

              But I feel like if you’re this opinionated about things we figured out long ago, maybe listening would help more than reading.

              Because it wouldn’t have taken much for you to Google this at some point and realize we’ve been studying this for decades, and maybe, just maybe, science is better than your assumptions.

              There are a lot of factors in play, and you seem to think it’s because of…

              What exactly?

              Like it seems like you’re just arguing women are bad at chess?

              • kava@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                I’ve read multiple papers on this topic. I’m a 2000 rated player and have tutored girls in chess. This is an interest of mine.

                There is a very large gap in performance. The research overall implies a complex variety of factors. This includes what you mentioned, along with other inequities. It also includes the fact that women players are roughly 11 years younger on average and therefore haven’t peaked yet, which will account for some.

                But there is evidence that there is also an innate biological difference. Men score better on visuospatial intelligence tests when compared to women. Chess, especially at a high level, involves a lot of this type of thinking.

                I’m not arguing that women are bad at chess. Humans are individuals and there are varying levels of players in both genders.

                Just that if you look at the extremes (which the top chess players will be) you’re going to see a higher level of males even if we fixed all of the inequities currently influencing the gender gap in chess.

                We don’t know if the 10x difference is 5% due to biology or 50% due to biology. But we know it’s a non zero number

                Essentially I used it as an example in the wider context of why we have women’s leagues and men’s league in sports.

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          First England made football.

          But they never set the rules, every English school had their own rules, so you went by “home teams rules”.

          The biggest difference was if you could.pick the ball up like in Rugby (the school). To clarify during scheduling, that became known as “rugby football”.

          It didn’t make sense to call non hand football “football” so it became “soccer football”.

          Eventually they both dropped the redundant football. Then for some weird ass reason I still don’t understand, England made soccer just football and then centuries later gets mad at anyone still using the name “soccer” that they invented for the sport.

          • EnderMB@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            To be fair, the English invented English, so they kinda called most things in that language what it’s called…

            The soccer/football argument is a little silly. It’s been called football in the UK, and many parts of the world for the better part of a full century. Call it soccer if you want, many counties have their own translation for football, or they use a different word when they have their own version of football that they like.

            • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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              No one is trying to make England call it soccer again…

              But the places that use soccer are the places settled by the British when they still called it soccer.

              So it doesn’t make sense why the modern Brits who don’t remember soccer are so mad when we call soccer football just soccer like we literally always have.

    • Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      Not true. Some countries allow it on a national level, but many do not. I believe The Netherlands allows it, but only at lower competition levels.

      I think FIFA forbids it entirely, but I’m not entirely sure.

  • mctoasterson@reddthat.com
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    5 months ago

    Just make an “open class” where any identification, body mods, and performance enhancing drugs are unregulated. The best athletes that science can create.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Ah yes, the Enhanced Games brought to you be Peter Theil and a dozen of the worst tech bros you haven’t heard of yet.

      Part of the problem is that pro sports is already full of illicit doping. Another big part of the problem is that athletic exceptionalism is as much about winning the genetic lottery, getting lucky with no injuries at the peak of your career, and having the luxury of sponsorship/rich parents at an early age as it is doing lots of drugs.

      The only real benefit you get out of an Enhanced Games exhibition is to sell dipshit frat bros the same promise Wheaties and Nike and GMC have been selling for decades - use our brand of steroid and you’ll be a world champion, too. And frankly, that market is already kinda flooded.

      • voluble@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I take your anti-corporate point. However, I believe pro-doping would totally work if it was a gladiatorial bloodbath decathalon within the olympics itself. And if you get caught doping in the non-doping sports, you’re forced to compete in the decathalon with the juiced up killers. Jousting, Barenuckle boxing, Pride rules MMA, Hell in a Cell, no rules water polo, shit like that.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          if you get caught doping in the non-doping sports, you’re forced to compete in the decathalon with the juiced up killers

          I’m listening…

    • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Everyone would die of heart attacks. I’m glad no one is trying this, the death rate would be through the roof.

          • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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            5 months ago

            That’s not due to performance enhancing drugs and body mods though, right? That’s due to diet and associated lifestyle.

            Although I think I still see your point; some sports not only encourage but require the top echelon of the sport to sacrifice their long-term health for the sake of a competitive edge. I’d use sumo as a cautionary tale as to why it’s a bad idea, rather than proof that athletes are willing to make that sacrifice.

    • Dicska@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      It sounds fun at first but imagine the amount of heart attacks and other horrible Mengele level fuckups.

    • Welt@lazysoci.al
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      5 months ago

      That has always been an excellent idea. Russia, China and the US&A - then maybe some weird shit comes out of India or Korea or somewhere, that would be nifty

  • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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    5 months ago

    What sports would it work in? Do you think people will care about the best tennis player that weighs 140 pounds? The best 240 pound soccer players? The fastest 130 pound swimmer? No one wants to watch any of that. It barely works for boxing.

    All that aside from the fact that you’re still pretty much ruining competitive sports for most cis women by doing it. The reason there’s a female “insert sport here” competitive league to begin with is so many women have a reason to compete and can win. A 150 pound trained male athlete will still wipe the floor with a 150 pound female athlete. It’s far, far, from just a weight thing. The Williams sisters were the best female tennis players the world knew, and they went out and proved they couldn’t beat a man that was ranked over 200th. The world champion austrailian female soccer team couldn’t beat a boys highschool team. The fastest woman to ever run the 1500m did it in 3:49. A 5’ 9" guy did it in 3:26.

    Weight and size is only a little portion of physical differences.

    If there’s so many Trans athletes, why don’t they just have a category of their own?

    • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      If there’s so many Trans athletes, why don’t they just have a category of their own?

      Because there aren’t, and this whole thing is much ado about nothing.

      But hey, it keeps the morons distracted and voting, so that’s a plus.

    • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      It isn’t that there’s tons of trans athletes… It’s that even at fairly low levels of sport there are currently more options available to people with disabilities to participate then there are of people of intersex and trans backgrounds. In a lot of cases tracking performances of trans athletes they aren’t dominating. There’s stories of transfem athletes who regularly sit around getting 15th place but after coming in first one time the entire sporting becomes hostile to trans people.

      In civil rights discussions there’s a concept of rights of participation. The concept being that being barred from social, political or recreational spheres creates outsized harms on the ability to make the advantageous connections others are given free access to and creates classes of segregation.

      There’s also a catch 22 situation. If someone opts to go through a trans puberty instead of a natal one there is no meaningful difference to speak of between the physicality of trans athletes and cis ones. If forced to stay inside their original sex segregated sport not only are trans people being being told in no uncertain terms that society does not accept their new status regardless of parity, they essentially become isolated inside the sporting body. Either you have someone whose body is feminine placed in a sport with only cis males to be compared to or you have a masculine body placed inside a group with all cis women and both will be framed out of being taken at all seriously inside the entire body of that sport. A lot of trans people can’t participate in sport not because they aim to be picked for any of the social leg ups excellence in sport provides… But for any of the regular benefits of just participating.

      It creates a fair sting to have a government force your choice of initial puberty that neither you or your doctors and parents thought was a good idea… and then sit back and watch the rest of society constantly punish and isolate you for going through that puberty by then treating you as a logistical social problem for the rest of your life.

      • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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        5 months ago

        Except that isn’t true. Men are more stable due to hip width, their hearts move more blood, their arms and hands are larger/longer, and their lungs hold more air. None of that goes away.

  • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    5 months ago

    or why don’t we just keep everything as is because it’s not a big fucking deal despite what bigots say

    if you really wanted to “fix” or “save” womens sport, just start by fucking paying them the same as men and giving women’s sport the same attention on tv

  • lugal@sopuli.xyz
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    5 months ago

    Martial arts already has weight classes and gender on top. Weight doesn’t cover gender differences

    • person420@lemmynsfw.com
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      5 months ago

      When it comes to martial arts, skill does though. That’s why I got my ass handed to me by a 16 y/o girl who is much smaller than me.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Skill matters. But you get enormous leverage by simply being longer limbed and larger.

        Practice a bit and you’ll be beating up 16 year old girls in no time. But even at their peak, women martial artists will struggle with mid-level male peers because they lack the raw physical features that move another body.

        It’s the difference between a person firing a pistol and a rifle. Marksmanship only gets you so far. Then you really just need a longer barrel.

    • Reucnalts@feddit.de
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      5 months ago

      And for most people it is hard to acknowledge that there is a biological difference to the body of male and female. Same rights to everyone doesnt imply same bodytype for everyone

      • lugal@sopuli.xyz
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        5 months ago

        The problem isn’t that people don’t understand that, the problem is that there are people who don’t fit into the binary distinction

  • Welt@lazysoci.al
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    5 months ago

    Nobody’s making the obvious suggestion to chemically sterilise all athletes.

    • JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      The Castrati League has entered the stadium!

      I know… i know…castrato were young boys castrated to keep their singing voices high… . but words can be updated and language fluid… right?

      • nefonous@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Castrato is just Italian for castrated or neutered, even used with animals albeit mostly used referring to males. Sometimes it’s even used figuratively. It would still work perfectly with your example, I think

  • JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    Yes, splitting teams by sex/gender has never made sense, instead it should be by physical attributes that may or may not happen to align with sex, but irrespective of if they do.

    • coolkicks@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Below the elite level, relative skill differences can be large enough that a skilled cis women can outcompete a lesser skilled cis men. And that’s where 99% of sports are played so these rules/laws just serve to make cis men not feel threatened by potentially losing in a softball game to a woman.

      At the more elite levels, though, the skill gaps are much smaller, and being faster or stronger are the difference. Most WNBA players can’t dunk, most NBA players can. Elite men run 100M a full second faster than elite women. At those levels, men have a distinct physical advantage.

      There have been some studies indicating trans women still have higher lung capacity than cis women, more strength etc, but there’s still some uncertainty because the number of studies are limited, and there’s even one study that indicated cis women may have an advantage over trans women.

      But considering the laws currently being passed, they aren’t targeting elite athletes, and are instead targeting kids, and not out of the spirit of competition, but out of hate.

      • GroundedGator@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Well said.

        I grew up playing soccer on a coed team. At a certain age you could be picked or tryout for a more advanced league. Up until highschool we were devided by skill not gender and I have no problem admitting there were more than a few girls that were much more skilled than I was.

        • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.com
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          5 months ago

          highschool

          Is still well below the professional leagues/elite levels… To discount high schoolers is a bit absurd to make your point. Many boys don’t even hit puberty until high school which is kind of core to the whole discussion.

  • Phegan@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    The recent issue with transgender people in sports is manufactured as a tool to spread trans hate. It’s a non issue that preys on Americans’s sense of fairness.

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I’m still a fan of just removing all the rules around drugs and bodies. Let’s see what 21st century science can do!

    • noobnarski@feddit.de
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      5 months ago

      It would be a kinda fun league to watch, but I dont want to hear about athletes dying because they took obscene amounts of steroids to be the best.

      • MataVatnik@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        We already have racers dying regularly in Isle of Man TT. Blood sports never died, they evolved. Why not sprinkle some steroids over it.

    • cRazi_man@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      I imagine it would be like The Fast and The Furious where he presses the nitrous button till the screws/bolts all come out and the car falls apart very quickly.

  • Leviathan@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Testosterone level AND weight. Wait til they find out what happens when you’re on hormone blockers.

  • OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    I feel like weight class doesn’t do it. Women have higher body fat %. Is a welterweight woman athletically equivalent to a welterweight man? I don’t think so.