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

[herdingcatss]

Hear me out.. I'm all for inclusion and diversity as a whole. but I'm not in favour of transwomen taking part in women's sports as they do have unfair physical advantages etc etc. They even play the same game differently (google transwoman volleyball player). I do get that and believe that if you have sports separated by physical biology than that is what it should be, and gender identity shouldn't come into it.

But when it comes to team sports, surely there could be a new approach that could help solve the issue of including transwomen and where to put them? Otherwise the option is to have them muscle their way into women's sports which is obvs unfair to women, and it's not realistic to have lots of separate teams to cater for different identities.

Personally, I think that we should think about doing away with separating team sports by sex or gender altogether for a new approach - for example maybe do what they do in boxing - ie: match people by weight and/or skill to compete with each other, or to work together in a team. TBH I don't know much about boxing so i could be wrong, but from what I understand, they match players in terms of whether they're lightweight, middleweight or heavyweight, to make it equal (I know boxing is still separated by sex but this is why I'm focusing on teams instead).

If we have teams set up for the same weight category, then they have the option of focusing on obtaining the skills they need as a whole, and can bring in people based on their strongest skills in the game, whether they are men, women, trans etc. Then teams from the same categories could play each other in tournaments etc and it wouldn't matter what gender/sex they are made up of.

So basically it's an overhaul to the way traditional sports is run. But it's just an idea as I think we need a new way of looking at sports in society, to move the subject on, as the discussion seems to be at a stalemate at the moment with little progress going on imo. It's tiring!

Anyway do you think this is a potential solution to the issue? Or have I missed something major? I don't play sports but if anyone does, I'd love to know what you think of this approach, and whether mixed teams of equal weights would work instead of being based on biology (or gender).

Hi OP,
first of all thanks for thinking about it, thinking is good. If lots of people disagree with you very quickly is because a lot of us have been thinking about these things for quite some time.

1. is the sport safe to do mixed sex? Some definitely aren't but some non contact e.g. track and field, swimming cycling are safe (but unfair) in which case you have a single sex category for women, and an open category for men, transwomen, and transmen who've been taking testosterone.

2. if the sport isn't safe to do mixed sex it isn't just a matter of weight. Google tamika brents vs. fallon fox.

horses race against other horses, not humans.

and again there are different types of horse racing - OP's idea is about as ludicrous as putting horses that race on the flat into the Grand National (a jump race in case you don't know OP).

DD plays rugby, I never want her to have to play contact with a male. You need all shapes and sizes for a successful team, heavier and strong women in the scrum, your faster nippy women for running etc. It's a ridiculous idea.

Just like toilets they don't want a male, female and mixed sex category which would solve the problem these men want to be in the women's sport to beat them because they couldn't hack it in the men's category and / or they get off on it as its a fetish.

My niece played rugby with boys, when they get to puberty it is far too dangerous. She was admitted to hospital with concussion. There was no malice, the boys were just becoming too strong. So she had to play with girls from then on.

Absolutely zero critical thinking here??!!!!

I lift weights, have done for years. Heavy weights (not strength training, body building). Am fairly strong. Not massive but carrying a little bit of extra fat.

I can categorically state that a completely untrained, never set foot in a gym before man, of my same weight range, could walk into the gym and lift up far far more than me.

women train for years in the gym to be able to bench and deadlift the same as a fucking 17 year old lad on his first trip in.

Im pretty sure that I read that the average woman has the equivalent grip strength of a 75 year old man.

We have the grip strength of a pensioner!!!!

come on!!!

The only sports we should be offering as mixed sex are non contact, no athletic. Chess, fly fishing, the one with the dancing horses? Dog agility.

Hi OP, first of all thanks for thinking about it, thinking is good. If lots of people disagree with you very quickly is because a lot of us have been thinking about these things for quite some time.

I agree. It’s good to think and it’s good to ask questions and offer ideas. Don’t be put off, OP. Keep questioning. That’s how you find the truth.

I do a sport where women and men train together. We don't compete together at anything serious because men can just overpower women with a similar skill level.

I'm heavier than many of the men I train with, but not stronger or faster.

I think you’re coming from a reasonable standpoint OP. But what you’re suggesting isn’t workable due to the advantages of male puberty. If a man and woman of the same weight class are pitted against each other in a boxing match, for example, who’s going to win? Who can punch the hardest? Who’s got the most muscle mass? Who’s got the strongest lungs? Clue: Not the woman. The only times mixed-sex sport would work would be for something like darts or snooker, where strength and agility is irrelevant.

I don't think boxing is the one to think about this for - because of the punch difference between men and women. IIRC there is something like 160% difference in the strength of a male punch versus a female punch. I believe it's one of the biggest single differences between men and women that is shown in sport. There is in my view no way to equalise this between the sexes.

I do think there may turn out to be some sports or events currently categorised by sex which don't need to be. And the best way of working that out is to go for Open and Female categories. Because if the Open category becomes the only one that competitors enter, and if the distribution of results is pretty equal between the sexes over time (in position and in numbers participating), we obviously don't need a separate Female category and it will probably wither away.

However, I'd be amazed if that really happens in an organic way. I've been quite a high level participant in a power sport. I've competed in women's and mixed teams, and coached a little. There is a very simple and evident difference in male power output due to different anatomy.

It's also true that fewer women get to learn this sport at a young age. But this sexist difference in access isn't a good reason to eliminate sex categories either - quite the reverse.

I've just watched a kids film in which the female lead cartoon character beats the horrible male monster at least partly through physical strength. This is a fantasy and tbh a bit of a damaging one. Male standards of strength are not the same as virtue.

I'm sorry if you find this debate tiring. I'm afraid I don't. There has been progress in dismantling this sexist override of women's sport, but it's not complete. And until it's complete, I am too angry to be bored.

“No Thank You”

A small group of people asking for something unreasonable just warrants the answer no surely?

Not rewriting all rules to appease them.

I wouldn't like to see males and females go up against each other or watch a male taking punches against a female in boxing.

There is trans inclusion, sports are sex separated.

In your scenario, I doubt any women would even make the team. Why would they bother including biological women if they could fill the space with someone who is 30% stronger and faster? What you’re suggesting would eliminate the majority of women from team sports entirely.

Absolutely ridiculous OP. Boxing is separated by sex first and foremost. There is far more than just weight difference when considering the physical differences between men and women.

Also, you say it’s impractical to have lots of different teams for lots of different gender identities which is absolutely true, and why simply separating players by sex works just fine. Two groups. Simple.

we separate sport by sex because gender identity has fuck all ti do with it. We don’t play sports with our gender identity but with our sexed bodies

Ryan lochte & missy Franklin are both Olympic swimming champions who are the same height and have the same ‘wingspan’

compare their fastest times
100m freestyle Ryan 48.6 missy 53.3
200m freestyle Ryan 1.44.4 missy 1.54.8

Ryan is magnitudes faster in swimming terms because he’s male. It’s fuck all to do with things like height or arm length, it’s because he’s been though male puberty and all the benefits that confers in sporting terms.

Yes! And this https://boysvswomen.com/#/ these are high school boys, they've still got some growing and stacks of testosterone left to give them an edge.

The difference between men and women when it comes to sport is so much more than weight though. It’s strength and muscle mass, speed, endurance. Men have a physical advantage in all those areas.

Until recently my DH and I were a similar weight- about 2kg difference. He’s about 2 inches taller than me. Our hands and feet are the same size. I have always been very good at sport and was a state representative in a couple of sports. I was a very good sprinter in particular. DH wouldn’t even come in the top 3 in a heat at his school sports day. But he’s still faster than me. When we play tennis together he has to take at least 50% off the power of his serve and strokes or I have no chance of returning them.

I’ve played mixed sport and as long as the teams are balanced then non contact sports are fine. But it isn’t balanced if one team has 3 men and 3 women and the other has 3 men and 3 trans women, regardless of size or weight. People who are born male have innate physical advantages that women cannot match. We don’t compete against other women because that’s the place where we feel we belong. We do it because that’s where the competition is fair and we aren’t going to get hurt. If we restructure sport so that the trans community can feel happy and included then women will be unable to compete and will be pushed out. At worst, they will be injured.

Why not do what they do in boxing?

Which is to have the primary separation by sex.

You fail to realise how much better men are at sports because if their biological advantage.

If you have mixed teams, all that will happen is the best teams will be male. Whether they "identify" as a man or a woman is irrelevant. The winning teams will absolutely be male.

So you'll have 2 X male categories and 1 X female.

How many transwomen does it take to change a lightbulb? One. They hold the bulb and the room revolves around them.

Most men don't want to compete on an uneven playing field where they're going to be at risk of injuring women or to have an unfair advantage. You have to wonder at the mindset of those who do.

The other big problem for your idea op, is that transwomen don't want mixed categories. They want to play with women.

You've made the mistake of thinking it's about inclusion and taking part in sport. It's not, it's about validation of their "womanhood".

(Plus all the stuff above obviously).

So mixed sports would deprive female competitiors of the chance to compete fairly, would put them at physical risk, and the demographic you're pandering to would still be moaning.

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.

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

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.

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