Trans and sport - so what would be fair?

Fair question BigDesk, I suppose we don't need to segregate. I was thinking of ways around the problem posed by the OP. Plus, I find it a bit distasteful that all the funding that goes into sport from hundreds of sources mostly goes towards men. I guess it's yet another reflection on society in that respect.

"Surely it would just lead to two or more categories, where the group with the tallest, fastest or strongest members becomes the team which gets the most coverage and the most money."

I think there may be some mileage in looking at different sports and viewing them as a physical skill, rather than just biggest, strongest fastest etc. As mentioned before in football, it isn't necessarily the pro's in those categories that excel. Weightlifting, sprinting etc. Yes, completely, that's what those sports are all about! But stuff like snooker, motor racing, golf, there's a lot of them out there that really don't bear up under scrutiny (IMO).

I'm still not sure why we need to unsegregate sports? Surely it would just lead to two or more categories, where the group with the tallest, fastest or strongest members becomes the team which gets the most coverage and the most money. Realistically, where would women feature. Unless every team or race has to include equal number of women and men. And then we're back to is a MTT a man or women?

Interesting stuff, thanks for the links Olennas. I don't think there is much disagreement between the relative differences between sexes as a whole. I suppose I'm just wondering whether these differences are as significant as typically made out. I'll have a wade through the info. you've provided in a bit more detail... ...could take some time though!

Mostlybowling, again interesting about football/soccer. I suppose what made me think (and this will show my age!) is that comparing some male pro footballers, there is obviously a huge variation in size, build and shape. Compare Sol Campbell with Gianfranco Zola, or Peter Crouch with Michael Owen. If such a wide variation doesn't hinder male pro-footballers, why should it for female?

Also, going back to my original post, is there really not another way that sports can be categorised to remove the need for sex segregation? Would some form of biometric assessment be appropriate for example? Something like BMI but that takes into account muscle mass, relative body strength, leverage capacities or similar? I don't know if any of these suggestions would work, but worth thinking about, if only theoretically.

The USA provides us with a good example regarding football / soccer too: if girls are encouraged to be sporty, it will be soccer. It's very much seen as a girls game once children hit their teens - the boys play it until they are able to play American football.

At family gatherings, Americans are more likely to throw around an American football or a baseball than kick a ball around. Or there is the ubiquitous basketball hoop over the garage door (yes, they really do exist, not just as a cliche on TV)

But, as we saw upthread when the very top level, professional American women's soccer team played a good U15 boys team, the women were comprehensively weaker.

The point you make about women and girls coming into sport at a much later age, is very true for a lot of different sports. The exceptions I can think of are riding, tennis and gymnastics, and probably swimming.

Let's go back to football Keep, because it's a sport I've played and watched a lot, including playing it against men.

On the socialisation side - yes, as I've mentioned upthread, socialisation plays a huge role. I'd guess 50% of boys (those with football mad dads - and in some cases mums) will be encouraged to kick a ball more or less as soon as they can walk. Not so much girls. So girls who come to football will typically do so later. 50% plus of little boys will play football obsessively because socially it is the thing little boys are expected to do in our society - hours of practise accrued at a very young age (see Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours hypothesis for how long it takes to get really good at a motor skill). Probably 5% of girls. So (a) there's a lot bigger pool of players to choose the best from and (b) playing against good players really brings your own standard of play up - so in your average primary school good boy players will be continually challenged by good competition, good girl players not so much (one reason why mixed football at primary school age is such a great idea).

Then there's the issue of money. It's only really recently in the UK that women's football has been wholly professional in some teams at the top level (and even then it's an ongoing struggle - several teams have gone fully pro, then gone back to being semi pro when the economics didn't work out). It makes a tremendous difference in performance - I'd say the standard of the women's FA cup final in the last 20 years has changed out of all recognition. But the smaller pool to choose from issue still kicks in. A typical male pro footballer has to have both good ball skills and excellent athletic ability. Often forwards will be seriously good sprinters (it's not unusual for a male international to have a 100m speed of round the 10 seconds mark) whereas midfielders and full backs will generally be able to run at the level of quite an accomplished athletics club middle distance runner (David Beckham was a county level cross-country champion in his youth). When I watch women's football, I often see women who've got the ball skills but to be frank, not the athletic ability - they are lumbering clumsy runners, a man with an equivalent running ability would not have made it in the man's game. And I think that's down to the smaller pool of talent.

So much for socialisation. But now for biology. Top speed matters in some positions. If you've got a male striker with a 100m speed of 10 seconds, you'd need an Olympic class sprinter as a female back to match him tracking back. And football is a contact sport. In a shoulder-to-shoulder tussle for a ball, who's going to win? Me (5'3" and 9 stone in my playing days) or a bloke who's 6' and 12 stone? Would I want to be on the receiving end of a sliding tackle (even a perfectly executed, legal tackle) from a man that size, or would I worry I'd be coming off the field on a stretcher? Then there's the size of the goalmouth. I seem to remember 6' is about the 25% mark for the distribution of men's heights, but about the 1% (or possibly lower) mark for the distribution of women's heights. It is just harder, statistically, to find a woman who can actually reach the top corners of the goal mouth (8' high, 8 yards wide).

Don't get me wrong - I think that women are strongly socialised not to reach anything like their full athletic potential. From infancy onwards, women are discouraged from running, throwing, climbing, building muscles, being competitive. It takes a strong minded woman with good family support around her to buck this social pressure. But even if women did reach their full potential, there would still be a degree of sexual dimorphism.

I've done some quick googling to see what research is out there already, and this blog really struck me in the context of this discussion about sport, because it seems that all the physical advantages that men have are related to better sports performance (muscle mass, lung capacity etc), whereas the female advantages are just about living for longer and reproducing (getting sick less, healing quicker)

this paper from 1993 (which doesn't understand the difference between gender and sex...) clearly shows that men have a far greater upper body strength. This is borne out by the experience of the men and women who do fitness tests for the army or the police - women generally are not nearly as strong in their upper body as men of similar stature. (This anecdata might also be a rebuttal to your pondering about socialisation - I would hazard a guess that women who want to join the army are not underestimating their athletic ability)

There are various studies quoted in this Wiki article and in this LiveScience article.

The top and bottom of it is that most women are physically weaker than most men of similar stature, whilst as a whole men are also taller and bigger. This means that any sport that relies on strength, speed and / or physical contact is inherently unfair for female competitors matched with male competitors

LadyJuno - I was going to respond to the comments on my original post, but thought better of it at the time!

However, as you've mentioned womens football, this is what got me thinking about the minimal difference between men and women in lots of sports. I still think there is an argument for men and women to play football (and many other team sports) together, considering the size difference between male players in professional football I can't see a reason why there is still sex segregation other than pure patriarchy of course.

What also got me thinking was the changes that have been happening in long distance running (marathons), and the speed at which women are catching up on men in terms of times to complete the courses. I have heard this is due to better training for women (getting close to the amount men get), improved sponsorship and generally a better supported professional network.

I also wonder whether the physical and biological differences espoused on this thread aren't unduly tainted by the idea that women are the weaker sex, the society they've been raised in not appreciating their athleticism, their skill etc. and generally putting it down from an early age. Examples of this have been cited already in this thread, so it wouldn't be a surprise for me if this attitude was also a significant barrier to reducing the competition between sexes.

I suppose, linked to all this is the patriarchal assumptions about women being weaker etc. being supported by patriarchal scientists demonstrating "facts" about how important hormones, physical make up, muscle mass, leverage capacity etc. How much of our understanding of womens biology compared to mens has been tainted by these attitudes?

I fully appreciate that there are lots of sports where size, power etc... are the overwhelming deciding factor so please don't assume I'm arguing for a complete removal of sex segregation! But, it would be interesting to test the assumptions made and see if they really do stand up to a proper, objective analysis, rather than a subjective one.

There's a Phd in there if anyone smarter than me fancies it?! I'd love to read the executive summary and the conclusions!

Good point Keepithidden

I suspect the true reason sport is segregated is to protect male ego's. The moment they started losing to women, it would be the end of their macho fantasy and would cause a surge of female empowerment.

Also segregation is a way to keep all the money in the male versions and keep female sports teams impoverished. If women's football was put on tv instead of the Premier League people would eventually realise the margin of difference is very small and in some ways the women's game is better. Far more technical, less reliance on brute strength.

I take dd and ds to watch Arsenal ladies regularly. DS did sulk at first but has now admitted how awesome they are!

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A friend investigated the possibility of blockers for her son, who was going through early puberty and struggling with mental health issues. There was a huge list of criteria he had to meet before blockers were considered, and he was considered a bit too old at 12 (I think).

Another friend has a teen son with CP and complex needs. He has considerable cognitive developmental delay, but now has the body of a hormonal teen going through puberty. Despite growing behavioural problems, it's unethical to intervene, apparently. As he's non-verbal, she could probably get away with putting a dress and hairclips on him and saying he was trans, and she'd get all the help she needed then.

It's wrong and scary.

I think much of the increase in the young girls identifying as trans is yet another misdiagnoses of autism. But that's a whole other thread.

I don't think the blockers are any safer, Bob. What's happening is that medical ethics seems to have flown right out the window. This has happened before. Every so often you'll get a medical fashion - or a moral panic - and normal, cautious practice is forgotten. Eventually everyone wakes up, but by that time patients have been harmed.

My dd was monitored from the age of 5 for early puberty. During that time the hospital was at pains to tell me blockers were only used in extreme cases and for months not years. I don't know what's changed in the last 8 years or so, hopefully the drugs are safer.

When I googled puberty blockers 8 years ago, all the results were for early puberty, now its for trans.

Yes, I think its slight of reporting. I believe they tend to use world wide figures (Asian girls tend to start later), average male and female puberty, or even just use male puberty, to get to the 14/15 year olds starting blockers. The last figures I saw, and they were 10 years old, had 50% of girls starting their periods at 12 and below, and 90% starting at 13 and below. (I know all this because my did started early, and I became a bit of an expert )

Surely if puberty blockers were so harmless and reversible, they would be being used on any primary aged girl who hits puberty early?

Personally if there were a medication out there that put off periods until I, or my child, was ready emotionally, i'd grab it. All these 9 and 10 year olds with periods, surely a couple of years of blockers then they can restart at 12 or 13...who wouldn't?

The fact that they're not being used in this way suggests they're not quite as straightforward..

Actually, my reasoning appears to have been slightly out: the current thinking is that blockers should be taken as soon as puberty has commenced (pubic hair, periods etc), so that doctors can be certain that the endocrinologic system is working properly and so that there is something to actually "block". The media reports I've read glibly assert that these are harmless and reversible, and just help buy some more time to decide how to proceed (which I sort of get as a valid reason). But then also talk about starting to take them at 14 or 15, which is far older than most of peers were when they reached puberty back in the day, and I had understood that girls in particular were getting their periods earlier and earlier now. So some sleight of hand reporting (at best), methinks, as it's more palatable to think about 15yo taking puberty blockers than 10yo

7? That's a chilling thought, Wimple. Those parents and their advisors - from HCP to Mermaids - are going to have a hell of a lot to answer for.

Good point, Prawn - DS isn't going through puberty yet, but my baby he is definitely changing physically (broad shoulders etc), and at least one of his classmates has started her periods (I know from her mother, not class gossip)

So it's got to be before 10, probably 8 or 9. So to allow adequate counselling, weighing up the pros and cons etc, means taking children to the doctors at 7 or 8.

My 7yo DD has enough trouble deciding whether she wants Lego or Playmobil for her birthday, there's no way that she could make a decision of this magnitude on her own. So it must, must, must be being driven by parents, right?

Slightly off topic, but comparing an 11 yo boy to his DM - very typical - makes me wonder just how young they're having to start boys on puberty blockers. Well, girls too. You can see changes in the bodies of children years before puberty "officially" starts: height in boys, a gradual slight widening of the hips in girls. To put a block on all this surely involves medication very young, because if you leave it until they're 16 it's going to be far too late, although in my view even 16 is too young to be making such a decision.

Does anyone know when puberty blockers are being initiated?

Yeah, I didn't quite finish my point above, did I?! Yy to continued sex segregation, and not just for those who have been through a male puberty - I was trying to say that the advantages of having a male body are evident before then.

DH can still comprehensively beat DS in pretty much everything - as can male friends who are 15/16/17. Everyone would think it very unfair if DH lined up in DS's school sports team. But apparently we are supposed to applaud him as brave if he decided that he wanted to compete in DD's school sports team.

Was kinda thinking still sex separated..as I know a lot of teen/almost teen boys would beat your average woman.

Which kind of brings us back to the obvious biological advantage of males over females actually.

Would your DS win against an adult male though?

Was kinda thinking still sex separated..as I know a lot of teen/almost teen boys would beat your average woman.

Wanking - my 11yo DS is pretty much as strong as me. At the moment I've got a height / reach advantage over him, but that will only be for another few months at the rate he is growing. I'm genuinely not sure who would win in a fight between us. It's about 50/50 who wins when we run against each other (he's more agile, I know how to run a proper race), but very soon he will consistently beat me. The only other thing I have in my favour is my weight, and I could do him real damage if we clashed on the rugby pitch, for example, and landed awkwardly

It sounds pathetic to admit it - and I suspect that is one thing that is holding back top female athletes from making the point - but boys are able to physically beat grown women at a pretty young age, even without the benefits of going through puberty