It should be noted, that trans women don’t appear to have a competitive advantage over cis women Source
I see this argument made about transgender athletes so frequently and yet…
It’s crazy, because professional athletics is absolutely rife with outright doping and edge-case medicalization. If you’re a 12-year-old on a regiment of HGH, there’s nothing that’s going to separate you from a “naturally” big guy like André the Giant or Yao Ming in another ten years. You don’t have to change your sex in order to enjoy a performance benefit from modern medicine. And, as the '00s-era of baseball demonstrates, nobody really cares so long as they get to see you pitch no-hitters or hit lots of home runs. So the idea that “changing your gender” is cheating runs afoul of all the folks who ahem stayed in their lane and still cheated and will most likely run circles around you in any competitive athletic setting.
Further, changing your gender either sets you out the gate as being at a disadvantage or sticks you with an enormous handicap relative to people who aren’t in transition. Gender transition never actually improves your ability to compete in a sport. That’s why you never actually saw the “team of T-girls” cleaning up at softball or dominating the WNBA. You weren’t seeing T-boys burst onto the scene in high school men’s athletics as UIL champions. It was always some white boy comedy fantasy or cartoon show punchline.
Finally, the very idea of “fairness” in professional athletics, from a physical individual perspective is absurd. People aren’t the same. Nobody is expecting them to be the same. We aren’t demanding people under 5’ to play professional basketball or people coming in under 100 lbs to compete as linemen in the NFL.
It’s always been bullshit, top to bottom. Just something for people to scream at, because Cracker Barrel hadn’t changed their logo yet.
This is how I’ve been addressing it. Category error, because the current framing of sports is… Really dumb
Frankly most global level competition is just people flexing how make affordances people have. Imagine trying to ruin people’s lives to protect the sacred structure of mild eugenics through some social hierarchy or another.
But if ‘fairness’ is the goal, then the wealthy would be a much more deserving population to nerf or exclude.
Not that I think sports and competition are not valid forms of practice and fun, but you’re not as ‘better’ as you think because you had the resources to master an eco-niche that doesn’t actually do anything other than give you monkey hierarchy feelings. You also shouldn’t have the right to exclude people who make it hard to believe in that stupid oversimplified terrain that the preference style was built upon.
But TERFs and other bigots never got anywhere being thoughtful about others or the world they live in.
Tbh, top-level sports is unfair to the end. To get into it you need to have a combination of money and perfect genetics next to your training.
99+% of people could never compete in a given sport on top-level, no matter how much they train, because they just don’t have the perfect body for the sport.
One big genetic marker that is necessary to compete in most top sports is being male.
So to make women’s sports at all possible, that protected category of women’s sports was created. As a protected category, there needs to be some kind of cut-off, and that cut-off is arbitrary and sucks. If you are 10 grams overweight in a weight limited category, your are also out. (Though it’s easier to do something against 10g than against genetics and hormones, but you get my point.)
We need to stop viewing women’s sports as some kind of “natural category”, but as the protected category it is.
One big genetic marker that is necessary to compete in most top sports is being male.
Pump the brakes, because you are making a lot of assumptions that make sports worse for women. Including:
- that male and female are perfectly distinct categories that everyone fits into
- that everyone can be categorized into male or female based on their gender history or a ‘sex test’
- that everyone put in the male category has an advantage over everyone in the female category
- that everyone sorted as female needs to be protected from intrusion of everyone sorted as male
- that hormones have no effect on performance of people in either category
These aren’t based in anything but anxieties and hearsay, and trying to enforce them will inherently affect far more cis women than trans women, because cis women outnumber trans women by an absolute fuckton.
But how will I explain to my kid the concept of non binary?
1, 2, … Nope, too complicated, too confusing. Better to deny their existence and do everything possible to make that a reality.
Found the Fortran dev
another reason for Javascript! Any gender is just [object Object] around here!
non binary
1,2
Where’s the 0, solarvector? 🤨
2 is categorically non-binary.
Hah!
I’m not sure they’d understand that concept either.
women’s height for tennis: 5’8"
any competitors not at that height are unable to compete because of unfair advantage. there is no deviation; height must be exactly 5’8" to the micrometer. thanks republicans! you saved women’s tennis! :)
Try watching F1 and hearing “natural talent” in the context of men who had done 30,000 hours of karting before they could walk. Max Verstappen was built from the ground up to be a racer. I don’t think these people are bad, but they definitely have it easy going up against one of the smallest playing fields in all of sports.
Hey! Verdomme, how dare you talk that way about our Max! Our pride and glory!
(you’re 100% completely right though)
To get into racing you either need to have the connection (generally family) or a shit load of money.
It’s the same with the Dutch navy. If you have the right family name but are dumb AF you are destined for a good career. Same goes for blonde and big breasts. If you’re intelligent and good at your job but lack the influence, family name and/or ass licking skills you’re doomed to fail.
Eh I think you would have a bigger point with someone like lance stroll, max definitely has a massive edge from all the karting but he is objectively someone with a natural talent that got those additional competitive advantages which has set him up to be a once and a generation type driver. Plus I kinda feel bad for max when you hear about the stories of his dad vicariously living through him as a kid and pushing him till his hands were cold and numb on the kart giving him like a 5 minute break to warm his hands slightly and then have him continue to do laps. But yeah modern f1 is a good example of a rich man’s sport, the shear cost to get to the point of just the feeder series disqualifies so many people who could compete and be rivals to the likes of max but due to not having the funding from a young age they are just completely ineligible to even try to compete.
The argument isn’t about kids of rich parents not having to work for a position in F1 or other sports, but about even getting the chance to be there.
If you are poor, there’s no way to ever get into F1, even if you have perfect natural talent. You just won’t be able to afford the training.
Here is the comment I was replying to which was calling out the natural talent portion stating its only about their money and training to get in and max just isnt the one to try and prove that with:
Try watching F1 and hearing “natural talent” in the context of men who had done 30,000 hours of karting before they could walk. Max Verstappen was built from the ground up to be a racer. I don’t think these people are bad, but they definitely have it easy going up against one of the smallest playing fields in all of sports.
They were specifically calling out max stating he doesnt have natural talent besides his parents money. Max is not a great example from the grid for that, he won the natural talent lottery and rich parents lottery that allowed him the ability to compete and use that natural talent. Almost every single person on the grid has had the same training and time to practice as max has had yet no one really can drive like he can.
Like the last portion of my comment stated f1 is obviously a rich man’s sport, there isnt any denying that but you can have an easier time demonstrating that by calling out anyone but the generational talent that made it in, like idk cough cough lance stroll. If money wasnt a factor you would get more talent like max in the sport but we can acknowledge that max has the talent to back his position even if in that sport money is what will be the ultimate deciding factor on whether you can even sit at the table to prove it.
Somebody should just organize a “people’s olympics” and ban all the rich people. It would get so much press.
ban all the rich people
We could bracket them, like in boxing. Anyone who gets more than $1M in training goes into the B-tier. $10M goes to C-tier. Etc.
That said, back in the Soviet Era, you had a lot more money in public sports clubs, particularly internationally. The US, Canada, the UK, Russia, China, France, and Germany all had state sponsored athletics programs that sought out young athletes and bankrolled them. Only post-Soviet collapse have we seen western states turn the recruitment and training over to the private sector.
The neoliberalization of professional sports isn’t the norm. It’s a direct consequence of the 90s-era commercialization of athletics. Putting Tony Hawk on the box cover of Wheaties was the beginning of the end for any kind of public athletics program.
AFAIK Germany still has some sort of state sponsored athletics program. Its some sort of collaboration with the military, but I dont really know how it works.
Source: I know someone who is responsible for working with athletes at the military.
You mean the Olympics? It used to exclude professional athletes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Games#Amateurism_and_professionalism
Do you mean something like this? wiki: International Workers’ Olympiads
For anyone who cares this is horrible logic that only superficially makes a point. Two things are true here… being rich is an advantage and the sex you were born can be an advantage when you compete against one of the sexes.
It’s a bad faith argument that can only be accepted/made by the dishonest who desperately want it to be true and kind-hearted fools. But the demographics of Lemmy mean OP could only be praised and upvoted. 🤷
There’s no research that proves AGAB has anything to do with athletic advantages
I’m still up for that random internet user’s idea of an olympics with randomly selected people from each country, to give a fair representation of its people. It would be so fun to watch, or even to participate!
I’m under opinion that we take sports wayyyy to seriously. It’s just entertainment and should be treated as such. It’s absolutely bonkers that we let shit like running slightly fast and jumping slightly high become so important - isn’t that just crazy?
Kids who grow up in homes with proper nutrition run faster, jump higher, and hit harder. Their bones have never been sapped of calcium, their teeth never threatened with scurvy. It’s not fair or safe to have them compete with malnourished kids who grew up eating fast food and tv dinners.
who grew up eating fast food and tv dinners
You must be pretty privileged if that’s how you imagine poverty food
Id agree. I grew up poor and we definitely do fast food or tv dinners. Beans and rice. Saving fat from meats. Sleep for dinner. Cabbage and rice or sometimes if youre lucky, cabbage and sausage.
Made me real good with seasonings though.
I’m an American, so yes I am privileged and yes that is poverty food in the United States.
They didn’t specify poverty, you can be malnourished without being in poverty. Especially on a typical American diet.
Yeah, in general nobody should compete with anybody as long as we don’t live in a fully automated gay space communist utopia were everyone’s disadvantages are compensated. I’m sure this is what transphobes actually want
I swam competitively in high school, graduated 2005. I actually ran into a guy yesterday who was five years ahead of me, but an absolute stud of a swimmer at the time. Haven’t seen him in 20-25 years at this point, long time, I was just a kid.
We get to talking and I mention how I go to the Y we both swam for and I look at the time board, and how none of the old names are up there any longer; in fact, we talk about how the times on the girls board are now faster than the times the boys set back when we swam.
There have been advances in technique, and how they practice, and the types of suits they wear, but the main thing we could figure was it was access to nutritional information and the like. Back when we did it was amateur hour. Kids nowadays can get custom-tailored meal programs for their training regimen, and that’s on top of much more personalized training and everything. Every facet has been absolutely tech’d out, and kids are going much, much further (and faster). What only Olympians had access to when I was a kid is now something anyone has access to.
Mother fuckers won’t give a shit about women’s sports unless it’s to police who participates
And even then they don’t watch it.
Let the people who play the sports decide the rules. What kind of moron thinks governments should be deciding sports?
The party of “small government”.
Depends on the sport in all honestly, some womans sports are more fun to watch than men’s. I can’t think of an example of hand though.
football
I think it’s because a lot of them like to creep on female athletes.
Back in the day, the losing football (called soccer by stupid) team would lose their heads. Now they earn millions (the men only though), that’s not what sports should be about. Men have an unfair salary advantage over women. I think losing their heads would be a better motivation for a proper game.
Some people are born more capable of learning in school, creating an unfair disadvantage, therefore, we should ban smart kids from school.
Yeah if a kid’s too smart you gotta hit em with a brick a few times. If you look at history it would have prevented a few genocides. I read about in history clas- *thunk*
