Stats on why we have women and men sports?

[InaConfusedState]

I came across the story of Fallon Fox shattering Tamikka Brents eye socket a while ago. It’s so patently obvious that a woman is at serious disadvantage fighting a person with a male skeleton, muscle structure and build, I really couldn’t see why Fox wanted to compete against a woman let alone be allowed to do it. It led me to here and reading fascinating (and diverse) views.

After talking to someone about this case, it got me thinking about why we have women’s sports in the first place. I always thought it was because women are structurally different to men and therefore unable to compete against them on a level playing field. But if men are now able up compete against women, is this not true?

I wondered if anyone has links to evidence and stats that show why women have their own sports.

For example, what does going through puberty as a teenager do for male strength, muscles, etc compared to a female?

What advantage does testosterone confer?

What are the typical levels of testosterone in make and female sportspeople?

If a man competes as a woman, does he have to artificially bring his testosterone levels down (and if so is it to the same level as a woman?). Does the fact he’s been through puberty give him any advantage regardless of whatever testosterone level he now has?

What else - hormones, physical build - do men have as an advantage over woman that makes them faster/stronger?

I’m really interested in these physical aspects as it’s what got me (and several friends) questioning what it means for women if a man can become a woman.

Complaints having been made as to football being played by women, Council felt impelled to express the strong opinion that the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and should not be encouraged.

From the FA Resolution banning women's teams from playing on their grounds.

Rat I’d be interested in your views on what is the current status quo? Do you believe the status qui gives women an equal playing field? If so, why?

"There's an underlying ethos of inclusion and participation" - of course there is. And one of the things they are most trying to encourage these days is women's (and girls') participation in sport.

One guaranteed way to make an entire class of girls give up sport is to tell them they have to compete with boys. They will always (on average) lose. And then if they have to share changing rooms with those same boys that won't help.

This is happening in schools today. Boys are announcing they are girls and taking over.

Sports bodies may be going out of their way to include transwomen, but in doing so are excluding women. Which isn't very inclusive in my opinion.

Actually, on re-reading this thread I've come to a conclusion.

I apologise if I've got you wrong RatRolyPoly, but it seems to me that you either (a) genuinely don't give a shit about men competing unfairly against women or (b) are being willfully disingenuous.

I can't believe, after all the facts, stats and links on this thread you are still saying "oh well, we must include men who say they are women, poor things".

You've got me wrong Maryz!

I can't express to you how strange it is to be suspected of disingenuousness or indeed not caring about women when the POV I'm expressing is so far from unusual amongst the women (and feminists!) with whom I acquaint!

And yet I see how society is incorporating transpeople - perhaps not always in the best way possible - and I think I'm not so unusual after all, so why on Mumsnet am I received with such incredulity??

@RatRolyPoly Shotsfired are you very much involved with sport? There's an underlying ethos of inclusion and participation. It isn't the same as being a pilot. Access to sport is generally considered something that should be universal in a modern society. I for one subscribe to this, and I'm trying to see if or how that ethos can survive.

Not any more, but I was. Access is one thing, but competing is a different level, right? Playing a sport for fun, leisure, health, friendship etc, I don't think anyone has ever said anybody in any body was unwelcome (and I have direct personal experience of transfolk joining in with my club/team).

But when you look at formal competition, that's when my comment about life being unfair kicks in. We don't allow (for example) dopers to take part in the Tour De France as they have an inherent and unfair advantage to the rest of the participants - tough shit Lance. Nobody thinks that's unfair or wrong, do they?

And for the tiny minority of transwomen involved in female competitive sport, then I am afraid, yes, tough luck to them too. They have an inherent advantage in their biological makeup as we have seen. It's unfair, unsporting and actively detrimental to the natal female participants who would otherwise earn the medals and records.

I am sorry if you feel that is offensive, but for me, the greater win for the huge mass of young sportswomen overrides the wishes of a very few individuals to effectively "cheat" the system in this way.

As I said, life's unfair - for all of us in one way or another. I'm not willing to deliberately make it more unfair for natal sportswomen as a whole.

I'm with MaryZ.

No, no, I don't think it's offensive; I used to think much the same thing - you either transition or you play sports; simples. For me though I think I was just of the opinion that anyone who didn't choose sport as the most important thing in the lives didn't deserve to have it! Such is my love for sport.

Obviously the years rolled on and now I don't know what to think, although I come at this from the angle of someone more "up for" trans inclusion - if at all possible - that many here it would seem.

And if it's not possible to treat everyone "fairly", do you think it's women who should lose out?

I think it might be because we have given hundreds of ways in which thousands of girls/women will be negatively affected, and yet you are still saying you are on the fence and worrying about a few men who feel they are women [cynical]

It's disproportionate numbers wise; therefore I believe you are one of those who appears to be happy to chuck (large numbers of) women under the proverbial bus for the sake of (a few) men.

Tell me why we should be more concerned about men who have decided to go down this trans path rather than women who have no choice but to be women?

And I would be very into sport - my wider family play many sports at a high level. In not one of those sports are women in general be able to win if competing against men. And some where it is downright dangerous to expect them to

What is your view of a 70 kg woman being allowed to self-identify as 57 kg and rowing lightweight, by the way? After all, I'm sure she's slim and fit inside. You can argue to get rid of the lightweight category, that's fine, I have no issue with that. But if you have such a category, surely you must allow referees to use weighing scales, not have competitors declare their weight by ticking forms.

Rat the whole point of setting up this thread was to ask why we have women’s sports. Becuase it seems to me unfair that men get to compete against women and I wanted to check whether I was right in that view.

From the evidence and links provided, I was right to be concerned. Biological men have advantages over women and that is why we categorise women’s sport seeratly to men.

It does appear disengenuous for you to focus on inclusion whilst appearing to ignore the question of why women’s sports exists TODAY (not back when people believed women were hysterical and the FA thought women were a danger to men).

Can you please articulate why you think mens and womens sports were categorised seperatley between 1990 and 2000?

By the way I’ve suggested That timeframe as it should be after the FA stereotypes you commented on earlier, and before men were treated as women.

Many people do "choose sport as the most important thing ". Including the women who train all their lives only to be beaten to the tape/scholarship/place on the team by men.

Some men (Laurel Hubbard may be one) aren't good enough, or are too old, or not big enough or whatever to win as men and discover they can tick a box, and hey-ho, their world championship/international place/Olympic medal is back in reach.

There may be some men who transition and then think "oh, it would be lovely to take up cycling again" and then discover they are good at it. But self-id opens it all up to any man for whom sport (and winning) is the most important thing to vastly improve his chances [cynical]

And get this; he can just go back to being a man when he's done, if he wants to. He's had no surgery. No medical diagnosis. Some men don't even need hormone treatment, some need some form of testosterone suppressant for one year, but having beaten (or beaten the shit out of) a bunch of women he can then go back to his real life if he wants to.

Leaving behind a woman who has trained her whole life and come 2nd, having her whole future altered by not being a world champion with all the benefits that brings - financial support, job opportunities etc.

And now my spelling has all gone to pot... I think Rats disengenious comments have utterly peak-transed me.

I think it might be because we have given hundreds of ways in which thousands of girls/women will be negatively affected, and yet you are still saying you are on the fence and worrying about a few men who feel they are women

I'm hearing about those hundreds of ways - some of which I think are likely but could be avoided, some of which I think are inevitable and extremely problematic, and some of which I think vanishingly unlikely catastrophising - and I will look at them further; forgive me if I always take the information people try and ram down my throat with a hefty dose of skepticism, particularly when it bears very little relation to what I have experienced as a woman.

My concern isn't specifically for transfolk actually, it's that refusing or denying the trans phenomenon isn't the right thing to do. Simply that. Looking back through history I can't see a time when any comparable phenomenon not being tolerated has been a good thing for the culture involved. Perhaps this phenomenon is completely incomparable though, I don't know, is that likely? Surely there is some way to move forward from this point rather than trying to reverse this tide?

And for me personally my whole ethical and moral compass has been set to tolerance and inclusion; I'm finding it hard to stomach being told that in order to care about women and girls I can pretty much chuck that right out the window; goodbye moral compass, you're bad for women!

if at all possible

Usually it isn't possible. And that really is the end of the debate - or at least it shoudl be.

refusing or denying the trans phenomenon

No-one's doing that

No-one's saying chuck your tolerance out the window either. Just don't accept that biological men competing with biological women is anything other than grossly unfair to the women.

It's really really really simple.

It does appear disengenuous for you to focus on inclusion whilst appearing to ignore the question of why women’s sports exists TODAY

I didn't ignore that question, it was a question that had been answered repeatedly already Didn't we establish that the answer was simply to provide safe, fair and meaningful competition for all competitors as without it that wouldn't be possible for women? I meant simply to ask of the decrying the status quo where we might go from here.

No-one's doing that

Perhaps I've misunderstood, but that's the gist I've been getting? If that isn't how people want to come across in this debate I think there's a lot of work to be done on the tone and choice of language because really I think a lot of people get that from this debate.

RatRolyPoly, why do we have sex segregation in sport, and do you think we should continue to do so?

Equestrian sports are the only ones where men and women compete against each other equally.
I'm not sure of the statistics but the best dressage rider in the world is a woman.

I cross-posted with your post of 15:11.

Presuming your answer is yes, we should have sex segregation in sport, do you think that some men should be able to compete in the women's category?

Just any old man who wants to? Would that be fair?

This is the intro to the article from Law In Sport that I linked in my very first post on this discussion topic:

The vast majority of sports divide competition into male and female categories.2

This is due to the significant physical advantages enjoyed (on average) by men from puberty onwards3, which at elite level result in a gulf in sports performance between the sexes. For example, the world records in athletics show an average performance difference between men and women of around 12%.4

These physical differences between the sexes are thought to be due, principally, to the much higher levels of testosterone produced by males from puberty onwards, giving males greater strength and power than females5. As a result, separation of the sexes is therefore required to allow for fair and meaningful competition, as well as to address potential health and safety concerns (for example, in contact sports).

This notion of fair and meaningful competition goes to the very essence of what sport is about. It reflects the underlying need to preserve the uncertainty of the sporting outcome, with success being determined by those particular factors that are valued by the sport in question (such as natural talent and training).

And it is this need that underlies the various dividing lines that are drawn in sport, such as age and weight categories, and the numerous Paralympic classifications. It would not, for example, be fair or meaningful for a flyweight boxer to compete against a super heavyweight boxer: there is little doubt who would win, and it would not celebrate any worthwhile sporting values.

Similarly, if women were required to compete against men, they would have very limited opportunities to succeed (at least at the elite level), and would not be rewarded for their sporting excellence or incentivised to make the sacrifices needed to reach their potential.

Obviously I agree with it.

But no-one reads the links, right?

And for me personally my whole ethical and moral compass has been set to tolerance and inclusion; I'm finding it hard to stomach being told that in order to care about women and girls I can pretty much chuck that right out the window; goodbye moral compass, you're bad for women!

Perhaps your "moral compass" is faulty. And not really concerned with women at all? Or particularly moral or ethical after all?