How important is it that sports need to be separated by sex or gender? Why not do what they do in boxing?

Oh goodness yes.

Middle aged women do so much unpaid work too - it would be in society's interest to keep them healthy.

If I'm anything to go by, and my friends and colleagues, middle aged women rarely have time or motivation to exercise and it's a real problem as many (including me) have chronic illnesses.

Other important groups who need to be included more in sport and exercise are middle aged and older women , asylum seekers and refugees and homeless people.

Thats hundreds of thousands of people in the UK. I wonder why no one is talking about including them?

No.

HTH, tinkly laugh etc.

There is already a massive drop out rate of girls from sports when they go through puberty.

If we don't have women's sports then fewer and fewer girls will do sports.

The OP sounds like someone who hasn't got out into the real world much and has based their ideas on all these ridiculous Marvel movies where the women are able to take on men their size and bigger. That's not reality.

The opening post is the classic "I'm gender critical as they come but..."

Thank you, OP, for starting this thread as it's a good reminder of all the different ways why sports needs to be segregated by sex.

Just a reminder though,OP, men who say they are women already have a category they can play in. It's inclusive in that all males are welcome.

If you are really worried about inclusion in sports, maybe focus on increasing minority ethnic and participation in sports and looking at how we can retain teen girls and young women in continuing to participate in sports. That's the tragedy of focusing on the trans population in sports - other groups have been neglected.

This kind of think arises when someone muses way outside of their experience.
Logistically, OP, your model for teamsports is entirely unworkable. It would tank at local level, where there are likely only so many committed, decent players to make up a team, let alone several teams based on your criteria.
Unless you've encountered it at close quarters, you don't 'get' testosterone in a sporting context.

DP has done a lot of points fighting in mixed martial arts. Having turned 50, he still sparrs, 'light-touch', with friends for fun some Sundays and it really is something else. Despite being highly technical and controlled, and no blows to the head, it's like watching the clash of the Titans at close quarters. To think that a woman of similar weight and stature would in any way be able to compete fairly and safely is risible.

I met a woman a few weeks ago. She plays football. A few days previously she had been playing football and there was a man playing in the side. His first touch of the ball was to kick it towards her. It came at her at such as speed and with such force that it shattered her wrist. She said she had never once sustained such an injury whilst playing in all female teams.

Men and women do not have the same concussion risks. Even at equal weights men have denser bones and stronger neck muscles. Any accidental or deliberate contact would be more risky for the female. https://www.pinkconcussions.com/

OP not been back, then? Quelle surprise.

We do have mixed sex sports - racquet sports have mixed doubles. But one female & one male on each side of the net. Because that's considered fair, whereas 2 men on one side and 2 women on the other - not fair. It's been this way for ages as long as I'm aware so, @herdingcatss, why might this be? I believe equestrianism is also mixed sex. Not contact sports, you see.

But rugby, football, all the others - nah. We need to keep men out of women's teams. And changing rooms.

@herdingcatss Not been back?

Why sit and type out paragraph after paragraph about things you don’t know anything about? That would be like me writing a load of shite about my opinion on wind currents in relation to Argentinian water lilies in the 1730s. A waste of everyone’s time, and pretty embarrassing.

I thought of that afterwards @SquidwardBound 😀Who would need to go to a strip club or to see the Chippendales, eh? And it would all be on the TV too so you wouldn't need to be in the stadium. Marvellous.

So muscle mass counts for nothing?

Given the normal, health difference in fat to weight ratio in women compared to men and the muscle to weight ratio in women compared to men there's an issue. This becomes even more stark in elite athletes.

Women would be at enormous disadvantage and risk based on fighting a male the same size as them.

That's before you consider stuff like risk to breasts and lung capacity.

@GailBlancheViola There would probably be quite a big audience for the premiership football stripping down to be weighed aspect of that.

Which is not in anyway saying it’s a good idea. Just that it may well have a dedicated audience.

And yet unsurprising.

It’s amazing how often the faux-naive ‘just thinking’ posters tend to not be looking for an actual discussion.

@herdingcatss You know that before any bout in Boxing they have a weigh in, for big professional fights it is done in front of the Press and public, some boxers have stripped off completely to make the weight limit. By your logic there would be a mass weigh in in the centre circle prior to kick off in a Premier League football match. Anyone marginally exceeding the weight limit not able to play? Then go through the substitutes until they find one who is within the limits irrespective of the position they play in the team? Bonkers.

The simple, straightforward, easy to apply rule of segregation by sex works across all sports - team or otherwise.

The discussion around sport is not at a stalemate, Sports Bodies are reiterating the above simple, straightforward rule that ensures safety and fairness.

If trans people are good enough, and are not doping with testosterone in the case of women to men, they can participate in the sport of their choice in their respective sex class.

Another plop and run thread? Now that is tiring.

Or in the case of William/Lia Thomas, getting his kicks by walking around the women’s changing rooms with his “womanhood” hanging out.

OMG BordoisAgain.....I knew what happened but I'd never seen that photo before.

There you go, OP. There's the reality of your musings. Hopefully that will clarify the situation for you.

Sports aren’t sex segregated on the basis of Victorian primmed or Feminist Separatist Point Scoring. Sport is sex segregated to make it fair and safe. Exactly in the same way as boxing is both sex and weight segregated.

Where these things are not an issue men and women compete together. Showjumping. Eventing. Dressage.

This is what happens when a male fights a female of the same weight category:

Fox dominated the infamous bout from the beginning, bloodying her opponent immediately before ending the fight via a brutal TKO just two minutes into the first round. It was later revealed that Brents had suffered a fractured skull and a concussion as a result of the beating by 'The Queen of Swords', which required multiple stapes in her head

^^

The whole trans in sports thing assumes trans people will be excluded from sport if ots sex based.

No it won't, they still have a bio sex even if they won't admit it.

If they are that good at their chosen sport they will surely win amongst the correct sexed competition

There are two reasons not to allow a free for all competition: safety and fairness.

In some, mainly contact, sports, we need a way to stop the people with longer reach, denser bones, greater lung capacity, more muscle mass, etc. hurting people who don’t have those advantages.

In other sports, we need to identify which aspects give an advantage (muscle mass, lung capacity, testosterone levels).

Biological sex at birth is a very good proxy for most of these measures. We can measure them all separately and then segregate if it makes people happier.

There are some sports (skeet is a good example) where there are limited advantages. Many of these used to be unisex competitions but when a woman beat the men they didn’t like
it and made women compete separately. Those sports could go back to being non-segregated.

Ridiculous and unworkable idea. Just imagining trying to organise a football team by weight.

Several things are obvious from
this suggestion.

Most importantly that the OP just doesn’t understand the differences between sports at all. Or even understand what happens in boxing.

How exactly are you going to divide up football or rugby or any team sport - where people play different positions with completely different skill sets - into weight categories? Imagine even trying to have weight category rugby - anyone that’s looked at a photo of a rugby team can tell it would be silly.

Weight categories make sense for
boxing. But they are still sec categories. For very important safety reasons.

That is because one of the other glaring things is that the OP just doesn’t understand the differences between the sexes. In the OP’s mind, women are just smaller, less good men.

But perhaps the most notable thing is the idea that the OP things that the entirety of all sports should just be reorganised so that a very small number of biological
male humans can choose to compete in the female category. These male humans are not prevented from competing. They just don’t want to compete in the male category.

why on earth would making fundamental changes to how games can even be played be the better choice over, for example, a slight change to the sex categories as ‘open’ and ‘female’?

The whole thing is class patriarchy. A tiny proportion of male humans have a fairly minor problem (they don’t get to compete in the category they prefer), so people think the whole world should make big changes to make them feel better. And we’re supposed to pretend that disadvantaging and excluding 51% of the population is a reasonable trade off. In fact, the patriarchal narrative presents anyone objecting to this as a dreadful bigot seeking to ‘hoard rights’ etc.

I hate how this stuff is presented in a faux naive, ‘just trying to be helpful’ tone. It’s so disingenuous.