British Rowing consultation on trans and NB policy

But sex is not bio-essentialism, it's biology and a material and fundamental fact of life. It is the single most important indicator of athletic performance.

This. And anyone who claims otherwise is, quite frankly, a fucking idiot.

@Mark19735
Oh, and Laurel Hubbard? Was beaten, soundly, at the Olympics, by a woman.

Hubbard failed at a lift which had accomplished easily to qualify for the Games. It's still gender doping even if the male doesn't win. An average competitor in men's competition became an elite competitor in women's competition.

Decisions about how to break down sports to broaden and widen participation are largely based on socially-determined factors, not biologically essentialist ones. Why can't sex just be one of those social factors?
Yes, broadening participation is partly based on social factors - poorer countries are often subsidised at international tournaments by world sports governing bodies to get a team together, for example. But sex is not bio-essentialism, it's biology and a material and fundamental fact of life. It is the single most important indicator of athletic performance. Women do not have the same type of bodies as men. There is no way around male athletic performance advantage, there never has been and never will be. So the rules for competition have to mandate a female category from which male advantage is excluded.

Everybody on earth is either male or female and therefore can compete in their sex class. No female category in sport = no females in sport - it's that simple.

If women dominate because there are no men in their weight class, that's not really domination, is it? Women are lighter than men, which is why there are more heavyweight classes for men and the lowest weight classes are for women. Men are stronger than women even at the same height and weight, so it is very likely that the "puny men" - after training hard - would out-lift the puny women - however hard they have trained. Did you not notice my earlier point - that men in the lightest weight class for men - can lift weights comparable to those of the women in the top weight class for women?

No one will want to watch events that are foregone conclusions. Box office receipts will plummet. Betting firms will find it impossible to make a book in this world. New rules will be written to ensure competitions are once again equally matched with outcomes uncertain. It's what makes it exciting. But to insist, a priori, that this must mean men and women must forever be segregated, is regressive, and wrong.

Why would women's sport become more predictable if we continue to segregate by sex? The carving out of a category for women and girls is what encourages greater participation, because they know they have a chance. As more and more women have access to participation and coaching, our sports become more competitive, not less. Women's sport has recently become a lot more attractive to sponsors. More money is at stake and (entirely coincidentally, I'm sure) more and more males are muscling in. What governing bodies are finding out is that people do actually want to see women - female people - contesting the prizes. Not male people. People who love sport love fairness. Cheats are reviled. Males in women's sport, whatever their motives for moving into it, are in effect cheating. The presence of a decent male sprinter in the Olympic women's 100m is what would make the event a foregone conclusion.

Lack of segregation by sex is regressive. It boots women and girls out of sport. Why is it that particular factor that you object to segregating for - not age or weight or even height divisions?

Why does sex need to be treated as a social factor, so that we can ensure that gender identity is all that matters?

Mark is, of course, doing that ‘I think I’m really clever by throwing around terms like biologically essentialist’ thing but he’s not as clever as he thinks he is. Recognising that biology matters is not automatically essentialist. It’s patently obvious that various other factors - training, opportunity, motivation and so on are important too.

But the actual biology still plays an undeniable role. That’s why, even if everything else were equal, the fastest and strongest men in the world would always be

Throwing around the term ‘biologically essentialist’ to try to distract from hiding the gender identity essentialism behind a tree is not clever. Because the whole ideology is absolutely steeped in essentialism - for this ideology gender is some sort of essential truth of humans that must be prioritised above all else.

Laurel Hubbard was an unfit middle aged man carrying a bad injury competing against 20 year old elite female athletes.

All that gish gallop and yet no actual argument against what I said. Just a load of rhetorical questions that you yourself didn't bother to answer. Try harder, please.

Why are you so invested in removing sex categories in sport Mark19735 ? When you state "to broaden and widen participation are largely based on socially-determined factors, not biologically essentialist ones. Why can't sex just be one of those social factors?" Does this reflects your beliefs about women & girls choosing single sex spaces for undressing, hospital wards, intimate care, prison cells and all the other circumstances where single sex spaces provide women with safety and privacy?

and of course this was from an 'athlete' who'd been nowhere near an Olympics as a prime aged man.

Laurel Hubbard was beaten by a woman, yes, but one who was over twenty years his junior and not injured. Hubbard set age group records which will likely last for ever and even at the time of the Olympic final was still easily the strongest 'older lady' to ever walk (well, waddle) the earth. Hubbard would have finished much higher up the field in the Olympic final if she hadn't, despite age and injury counting against her, insisted on attempting a starting lift that was heavier than e.g. that of the silver medallist. Typical male ego, you might say.

@zibzibara - nice chart. Can you explain what the 35 in M35 and W35 means? (Clue - it's an age category). And can you also explain how many bodyweight categories there are within each age category, and what range those weights extends over? In fact, combining age and weight, there are 100 classes in which older men compete and 80 in which older women compete. And maybe can you then have a think about why weightlifting classes even exist - (Clue - it is to ensure that the global population of competitive weightlifters is grouped according to similar intrinsic capabilities, which is necessary to keep competitions manageable, and fair, and exciting). But do also consider the numbers of people involved in competitive weightlifting. How significant a proportion of the global population who actually compete in this sport are men and women? Does that perhaps influence the published performance data? Have you normalised for this? There are two further categories for men over 70 that don't exist for women. There are two further categories for women under 55kg that don't exist for men. The distribution of men and women competitors within the hundred or so classes will not be equal. There will be some of the lighter classes that women would dominate ... simply because there would be many more women competitors than men, plenty of whom would simply train harder, and crush the puny men in that class. At the heavyweight end of the spectrum ... not so much. But to argue that sex must be the primary discriminator is myopic.

The fact is, age classes have far greater variability in qualifying criteria then sex classes. There's a 200% spread between the 35 and 70 year old competitors. Sex comes second, with about a 160% spread between men and women. Then comes bodyweight, with only a 130% spread between a 55kg competitor and an 81kg competitor. See? it's not always about sex ... other factors sometimes matter more. In the case of weightlifting masters (your choice of sport) it is age, by a country mile.

And why is it that grouping men into weight divisions in 6kg increments and women into divisions in 4kg increments is inherently 'fair'? Or that grouping competitors into 5yr age groups is inherently 'fair'? What does the graph of performance comparisons look like when you plot all the 35 and a day yr old 88.99kg people against all the 39yr and 11 months year old 81.1kg people? Is it better or worse than the one you chose to replicate that split performance just by sex? Don't know? That's because your selective quoting of the research is biased and deeply unscientific. It's a polemic.

Decisions about how to break down sports to broaden and widen participation are largely based on socially-determined factors, not biologically essentialist ones. Why can't sex just be one of those social factors? In the end, after a couple of years of the sports associations finding their way round this issue, economics and financial interests will prevail. No one will want to watch events that are foregone conclusions. Box office receipts will plummet. Betting firms will find it impossible to make a book in this world. New rules will be written to ensure competitions are once again equally matched with outcomes uncertain. It's what makes it exciting. But to insist, a priori, that this must mean men and women must forever be segregated, is regressive, and wrong.

Oh, and Laurel Hubbard? Was beaten, soundly, at the Olympics, by a woman.

Yes that was my understanding too - which just shows what a fantasy- based policy it is - biology only counts when men might be disadvantaged. Just like primogeniture inheritance which makss me rage!

Mark seems to have vanished. Incel much?

@SinnerBoy
😂😂

@Mark19735

We discriminate on the basis of sex when it matters. In sport, their sex gives males or huge advantage which women cannot overcome by training or even doping.
We don't discriminate on the basis of sex in the workplace when it comes to the vast majority of jobs, because there is no reason to. In health, men and women have different needs in some areas because we have different bodies. Even if our lifestyles were pretty much identical, this would remain the case.
Does that all seem unreasonable to you?

Well Mark, it's all part of a sinister plot to make women the overlords (overdames?) above men. The main method is to give women loads and loads of extra rights, so that eventually, they can lounge about, chocolate and guzzling win the sofa.

And to control men's money, going to be the law that men have to give it all to their female partners and live in a rabbit hutch in the back garden.

Mwou ha ha hahah!

Shit - why am I laughing - I'm a bloke....

@Mark19735

Really, it's so fucking obvious that tall people cannot compete fairly against small people. That's what genuine recognition that eg height plays a fairly fundamental role in rowing ability would really entail.

Height confers an advantage in many sports, but is not overwhelming. Rowers tend to be very tall because long levers (arms and legs) are advantageous. Weight confers a more significant advantage in sport generally, which is why rowing, alongside other sports like boxing, weightlifting and grappling sports like wrestling and judo, has weight categories. There is also the consideration of safety as well as fairness in contact sports.

FTFY

What does FTFY mean?

Perhaps a genuinely inclusionary policy would have height classes for rowers (a bit like weight divisions for boxers) ... crews could compete in divisions according to their height and then no-one need ever worry about what any competitors are packing in their shorts ... would that be "fair" enough? Or does it always have to be discriminating by sex first and other criteria second? If so, why?

Height classification for rowing is unnecessary, as explained above. In virtually all sports, participation is segregated by sex, age and disability. Of these factors, sex confers the single biggest advantage of all. Male performance advantage is huge. In sport it varies from 10% in sprinting and swimming to 30% in weightlifting.
Reflect on this - the 1.5 legged Jonnie Peacock won a gold medal in the men's T44 100m race at the 2016 Olympics in a time of 10.81 seconds, which was faster than the able-bodied silver medallist Torie Bowie in the women's 100m final at the same games. (For comparison, the winning time in the T44 women's 100m was 13.02 seconds.)
Laurel Hubbard, an average weightlifter in men's competition, came out of retirement at 43, having been on hormones for a couple of years and was able to out-lift women half his age, and qualify for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Weightlifters in the lowest weight class of men are competitive with women in the heaviest weight class. So sex matters in sport, more than any other factor. Identity claims do not.

We segregate first and foremost by sex in order to include women and girls. If sports were not segregated by sex, every sport with a very few exceptions (rhythmic gymnastics, equestrian events) would have only male winners - and at any level of competition, only male participants. Abandoning sex segregation discriminates against women. We are uniquely adversely affected. Males will be able to dominate women's sport and push us out, we will not be able to move in men's sport.

Women fought for and carved out female-only sport to give ourselves a chance to shine, working with the bodies that we have. Bodies whose athletic performance is compromised by the requirements of the super-power which is the ability to gestate babies. We also do not benefit from the turbo-charging effects of male puberty (obviously).

And before you bring up Michael Phelps' hands, all his records have now been broken. Also, he won races by fractions of a second, not the several seconds gaps that exist between elite male and female records.

That was US Rowing.

For those struggling with the concept of physical advantages that men's bodies have over women's, this link shows the differences between teenage boy high school athletes and female Olympians:

https://boysvswomen.com/#/

Thanks for link . I have submitted my feedback.

Here's why - the graph below is for weightlifting, but the same principle applies to almost all other sports. It shows the total lifts achieved by elite athletes in women's and men's world championships competitions.

Notice how the set of male lifts is entirely distinct from the female lifts.

Can you spot the male competing in the women's category?

are you tripping?

😂😂

I know. It's hard. Ever heard of the gender pay gap? It's quite a thing in corporate life. Women are paid less than men, apparently. But they also produce less than men. They work fewer years during their lifetimes (maternity leave), fewer days per year, on average (sickness absence), and fewer hours per day (higher ratio of part time work). They also tend to work in indirect labour roles such as HR or admin. Direct labour (hod-carrying, ditch digging, climbing telegraph poles, felling trees) tends to be done by men. And this is where the value is actually created - certainly in manufacturing, energy, mining, agriculture. [Side note - I accept that there are many roles where women outperform men and many industries where women outnumber men too - I'm not arguing that this is absolute and universal]. But we have laws, and customs, that tell girls they can grow up to do anything just as well as men. We have laws, and customs, that require employers to ignore the differences in performance that can be attributed to sex, and to pretend this distinction doesn't exist. We do that because it makes society a fairer and better place. Men benefit from this too.

As far as I can make out, the TL:DR of that is 'women do less work than men. Except not always. And the law (which one?) tells girls they can do as well as men and makes employers ignore it when they don't (again don't know which law does that)'? Even if, and that's a very big if, all or any of that was true, what's it got to do with rowing?

So when it's access to employment, why is it that we agree that the obvious sex differences can simply be overlooked,

Did we? Did I miss a memo? ( Probably off sick or on mat leave that day)

but when it's sports, sex differences are the most important thing to focus on? We already know that in many sports factors such as age, height and weight matter, and actually matter far more than sex - and these are already split into divisions and classes that reflect this.

Please name sports where the divisions are based on age, height and weight, but not sex. And I don't mean mixed sex team sports, actual sports which ignore sex in categorisation. Please provide receipts that 'we already know these factors matter more than sex', I'm not aware of that research.

So why the obsession with making sex differences the primary discriminator under all circumstances at all times?

Are we still talking about sports, or are we back to hod carrying?

are you tripping?

Height and weight don't matter more than sex. They matter as well as sex.

The reason that dividing sport by sex matters is that otherwise from the moment babies are born, half of them would have zero chance of having a professional sporting career, or winning sporting medals as an adult. Whereas there are both short and tall professional sports men and women.

I quite literally have no idea what you're talking about.

I know. It's hard. Ever heard of the gender pay gap? It's quite a thing in corporate life. Women are paid less than men, apparently. But they also produce less than men. They work fewer years during their lifetimes (maternity leave), fewer days per year, on average (sickness absence), and fewer hours per day (higher ratio of part time work). They also tend to work in indirect labour roles such as HR or admin. Direct labour (hod-carrying, ditch digging, climbing telegraph poles, felling trees) tends to be done by men. And this is where the value is actually created - certainly in manufacturing, energy, mining, agriculture. [Side note - I accept that there are many roles where women outperform men and many industries where women outnumber men too - I'm not arguing that this is absolute and universal]. But we have laws, and customs, that tell girls they can grow up to do anything just as well as men. We have laws, and customs, that require employers to ignore the differences in performance that can be attributed to sex, and to pretend this distinction doesn't exist. We do that because it makes society a fairer and better place. Men benefit from this too.

So when it's access to employment, why is it that we agree that the obvious sex differences can simply be overlooked, but when it's sports, sex differences are the most important thing to focus on? We already know that in many sports factors such as age, height and weight matter, and actually matter far more than sex - and these are already split into divisions and classes that reflect this. So why the obsession with making sex differences the primary discriminator under all circumstances at all times?

If it was just about testosterone then surely trans-men would be competing at a meaningful level in men's sport....?
Even if matched in height and weight, biological men would still have an advantage (shoulder width, muscle mass, lung capacity etc)