Serious question:If males can participate in female sport because they feel like women,why isn't winning now based on feelings?

[DontLikeCrumpets]

Now that males can compete with women because they feel like women, why hasn't the definition of winning changed as well? If measurable physical factors no longer play a role in determining who competes in a women's sport, why should something measurable like speed be the determining factor in deciding who wins?

Why aren't medals now given to all who really feel they are winners even those who placed last? We have all witnessed, at one time or other, bad sports, people who become enraged if they don't win. Why are these passionate competitors not having their feelings validated? Why shouldn't their intense desire to win be enough to justify their being awarded a first place medal?

Sport and the rules governing sport are not written in stone, they are social constructs so why hasn't the definition of a winner changed? Why not award gold medals to any competitor who feels really bad about not winning or to those who show grit and determination? Why is there only one winner? Now that is a question devoutly to be asked! Having only winner seems very hierarchical and so very passe, so very colonial, so very Western.

In for a penny, in for a pound. Times they are a-changing so out with the old I say and in with the new. Let's go whole hog - divy up winnings between all competitors in a meet and hand out medals to all.

Everyones a winner that's for sure.

😂

Absolutely! Everyone should get a medal, even those who fail to turn up.

OMG, I cant believe the bigotry!

Only including those who 'take part' is sooo exclusionary and colonalist.

Surely anyone who merly thinks about the event should be celebrated.

Why I myself have won the football world cup many many times...

and Golf championships too dontchanow

You could do it by assessing each competitor's performance against their own respective personal bests. Winning determined based on greatest exceeding of PB or getting closest to it, in percentage terms.

Precisely, the very notion of 'winning' is the epitome of exclusionary. The idea that there can only be one 'winner' is a highly patriarchal, Western concept that relies on masculine qualities such as rugged individualism, competition, an 'all or nothing' attitude that rejects relationality, co-operation and team work, with a strictly hierarchical binary that erroneously categorises people as 'winners' and 'losers' without any regard for self identification or how people feel about the matter.

Michael Phelps, for example, won his races by a fraction of a second. It is absurd beyond belief to say that the 'runner up' is a 'loser' because he missed out by such a tiny margin. The idea of a 'winner' is a completely made up social construct that is entirely within our power to control and change. I absolutely agree that sports should lose their emphasis and focus on competition and winning, such as to let any one participate if they want to. And in line with that, they should scrap the outdated, heteropatriarchal, exclusionary concept of 'winning' as well. Children's sports days have already managed to make every child feel like they are number one, so why are International sports falling so far behind? Winning should be an entirely subjective personal decision for each competitor. If a competitor declares that they are a winner, then they simply are. Why must we accept this one size fits all model whereby winning is confined to entirely arbitrarily chosen standards such as the 'fastest; in terms of Western concepts of time keeping (itself a British invention of the 17th century)? Why is winning sometimes related to the 'strongest', itself a meaningless concept (given that it is entirely relational to how strong someone is on planet earth. But there is no objective concept of someone being THE strongest.) Let EVERYONE compete and let EVERYONE be a winner.

Maybe you'd have to take some smug pills and wear a gold medal everywhere for a while first, just to prove you really do feel like a winner? Seems legit

Not sure why they don't allow heavyweight boxers to identify as lightweight boxers.

The concept of most sports is patriarchal.

Women excel at endurance sports like very long runs but of course these are marginal activities rather than prestige events.