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).

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

^^

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.

FFS

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.

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

Another plop and run thread? Now that is tiring.

@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.

And yet unsurprising.

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

@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.

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.

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.

@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.

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.

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/

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.

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.

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.

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.

No.

HTH, tinkly laugh etc.

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?

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.

I’ve seen a variety of this do the rounds on tumblr, reblogged by otherwise lovely women co-signing the notion of girls to include men of the same size and “just try harder”. It makes me wonder how online we’ve become. Even casting aside millennia of female oppression, the age old fear of rape, and dv statistics - don’t you have brothers? Have you never been in a relationship with a bad ‘in? Literally, have you ever tried to wrestle or hold back a man who wasn’t controlling his strength around you?

god I wish I was Xena warrior princess too, but I’ll never be anywhere near strong as a man, not even the most pathetic one.

Putting aside the difficulty of finding a way to measure physical potential to allow skill/hard work to differentiate. Look at the bell curves. Wherever we pick as our cut-off that might be close to elite female level, there are going to be 100 X as many men. Chances of ever seeing an elite woman compete would be next to nothing. If one happened to fall near the threshold they're competing with screes of mediocre men. It would be men's sports and men's sports. That is not equality.

match people by weight and/or skill to compete with each other

I go to a boxing gym, they actually advice that it's best not sparring with a man no matter their size or weight. because even sparring can hurt or damage us because the man is much stronger and what is a lighter punch to them could really bruise us. I mean we can if we want but they at least warn us.

boxing is segregated male and female then split into weights.

a man the same as me is still much stronger.

Why is it necessary to remove female only sports from women, the celebration of excellence and achievement for biological females, to please male people?