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I think its time to do away with separations on sex, and go with ones based on ability and size. Boxing does it with weight classes, why can't we do it with everything?
It's very sad that this is a political issue - it makes any reasonable solution impossible. Any restrictions that liberals might find practical and fair (like a ban on competing where muscles are involved) will inevitably be used by conservatives to justify bigotry and prejudice in a number of other areas (exclusion from public bathrooms, for example, or even restrictions based on race, nationality or sexuality).
I don't know the history of all sports, but the few tidbits I know all point to sex/gender separation as being initially based on beliefs that women were inferior to men. From physical sports to mental ones like chess, sex separation was due to women not being seen as equal to men. I think its time to do away with separations on sex, and go with ones based on ability and size. Boxing does it with weight classes, why…
I don't know the history of all sports, but the few tidbits I know all point to sex/gender separation as being initially based on beliefs that women were inferior to men. From physical sports to mental ones like chess, sex separation was due to women not being seen as equal to men. I think its time to do away with separations on sex, and go with ones based on ability and size. Boxing does it with weight classes, why…
Go look up Olympic world records and compare the numbers for various events between men and women. It might not sound very nice, but women are on average physically inferior to men. At the top of any given objectively quantifiable sport, the best male athlete will beat the best female athlete, I'm guessing 99.99% of the time, although I don't know about all of the sports so some may give women an advantage I suppose.
> Thus, the muscular advantage enjoyed by transgender women is only minimally reduced when testosterone is suppressed. Sports organizations should consider this evidence when reassessing current policies regarding participation of transgender women in the female category of sport.
What is the argument in favor of allowing transgenders to compete in female sports? Does anyone actually defend this decision?
I think sports categories should be chromosome strings. "XX division", "XY world record". "XXY 400 m finals", "XYY long jump trials", ... Gender identity doesn't factor into it at all; the words "man", "woman" should not be used. Problem solved; you don't get to wedge yourself into competition with XX persons if you're XY.
Physical sport competition shouldn’t be separated by n number of genders, but by weight class.
As long as you're fine with excluding people who were born with the physical characteristics historically associated with the word "woman" from all sports, that will work. I don't think that can be the woke position, though. Women's sports are generally a carve-out. Women can't compete with men in most sports. Because of that, I don't think that women should be excluded from men's sports. "Men's sports" are just spor…
Physical sport competition shouldn’t be separated by n number of genders, but by weight class.
I can't agree; the number of kilograms is too simplistic a parameter. I'd be more inclined to agree to some more sophisticated division that takes body composition into account. But that is still too simplistic if it is applied the same way in every sport. In some sports, mass is disadvantageous. In some sports, lean mass is advantageous, fat mass isn't. In some, raw mass is advantageous.
What is the argument in favor of allowing transgenders to compete in female sports? Does anyone actually defend this decision?
Why wouldn't people support transgendered people able to be the gender they wish and being able to do so in all possible aspects? Be they transwomen wanting to play female sports, or transmen wanting to play male sports (which you oddly leave out of your question).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What happens when physical sport competition results tend to favor 1 of the n number of genders? When it comes to powerlifting, I would bet on current or former members of one particular gender.
That's the problem that division into genders is supposed to address. Currently we have n = 2. Results favoring one of the two genders is addressed by having separate categories with separate results: women's records, men's records.