Obviously this won’t work for all sports, but things like football, track, soccer, it would allow for de-gendered team, even allowing athletes with the skills but not the genetically-endowed physical attributes to have a place to play.

Note: I know very little about sports and being on a sports team, so please point out anything that doesn’t make sense.

  • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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    What sports would it work in? Do you think people will care about the best tennis player that weighs 140 pounds? The best 240 pound soccer players? The fastest 130 pound swimmer? No one wants to watch any of that. It barely works for boxing.

    All that aside from the fact that you’re still pretty much ruining competitive sports for most cis women by doing it. The reason there’s a female “insert sport here” competitive league to begin with is so many women have a reason to compete and can win. A 150 pound trained male athlete will still wipe the floor with a 150 pound female athlete. It’s far, far, from just a weight thing. The Williams sisters were the best female tennis players the world knew, and they went out and proved they couldn’t beat a man that was ranked over 200th. The world champion austrailian female soccer team couldn’t beat a boys highschool team. The fastest woman to ever run the 1500m did it in 3:49. A 5’ 9" guy did it in 3:26.

    Weight and size is only a little portion of physical differences.

    If there’s so many Trans athletes, why don’t they just have a category of their own?

    • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      It isn’t that there’s tons of trans athletes… It’s that even at fairly low levels of sport there are currently more options available to people with disabilities to participate then there are of people of intersex and trans backgrounds. In a lot of cases tracking performances of trans athletes they aren’t dominating. There’s stories of transfem athletes who regularly sit around getting 15th place but after coming in first one time the entire sporting becomes hostile to trans people.

      In civil rights discussions there’s a concept of rights of participation. The concept being that being barred from social, political or recreational spheres creates outsized harms on the ability to make the advantageous connections others are given free access to and creates classes of segregation.

      There’s also a catch 22 situation. If someone opts to go through a trans puberty instead of a natal one there is no meaningful difference to speak of between the physicality of trans athletes and cis ones. If forced to stay inside their original sex segregated sport not only are trans people being being told in no uncertain terms that society does not accept their new status regardless of parity, they essentially become isolated inside the sporting body. Either you have someone whose body is feminine placed in a sport with only cis males to be compared to or you have a masculine body placed inside a group with all cis women and both will be framed out of being taken at all seriously inside the entire body of that sport. A lot of trans people can’t participate in sport not because they aim to be picked for any of the social leg ups excellence in sport provides… But for any of the regular benefits of just participating.

      It creates a fair sting to have a government force your choice of initial puberty that neither you or your doctors and parents thought was a good idea… and then sit back and watch the rest of society constantly punish and isolate you for going through that puberty by then treating you as a logistical social problem for the rest of your life.

    • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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      If there’s so many Trans athletes, why don’t they just have a category of their own?

      Because there aren’t, and this whole thing is much ado about nothing.

      But hey, it keeps the morons distracted and voting, so that’s a plus.

      • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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        20 days ago

        Except that isn’t true. Men are more stable due to hip width, their hearts move more blood, their arms and hands are larger/longer, and their lungs hold more air. None of that goes away.

  • Leviathan@lemmy.world
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    19 days ago

    Testosterone level AND weight. Wait til they find out what happens when you’re on hormone blockers.

  • A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    I feel like it’d probably be better to group based on performance. I don’t see why this wouldn’t work for pretty much all 1v1/FFA/small-team sports/games.

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    Forget weight limits…I think baseball is the perfect place to start.

    I’ve watched baseball for 30 years. I don’t like change. I understood the need for an automanic runner on 2nd during the covid years. It made sense for the context of it’s time. That time has ended, and so should that rule. I hate the pitch clock. For me, baseball is sometimes not even about the game. Some men have a hard time admitting to others, or even to themselves that they enjoy the company of other men. But the truth is, we wouldn’t hang out every weekend, get drunk, and watch sports together if we truely didn’t care for each other. So even though you know your buddy cares about you, and you care about him, there still needs to be a game on. Now you’re trying to make the game shorter? I am not a fan. I will happily watch a double header with the boys. We want MORE sports, not LESS.

    I’m also not a fan of the sensitivity of how balks are called now. Balks used to be so rare, that I had to be explained at age 19 what just happened when I saw one. This after watching baseball for 9 year already. These days it seems like EVERY game has a balk. Sometimes it’s just a twitch of the leg, with no pitching gesture. In NO WAY can some of these balks be realistically interpreted as an intentional fake out pitch movement.

    As you can see, I’m a grumpy old set in my ways grey haired curmudgeon. However, even I wouldn’t even mind at all if women played with men. If they can hit a 97 mph fastball, and beat out the throw to home, why WOULDN’T you want them on their team?

    The first one to break that barrier would be just as iconic as Jackie Robinson. At least you would THINK so. The reality of the situation is, women HAVE played on official MLB teams. The fact that I don’t remember their names or their decades that they played is only testiment to how unfairly they were viewed. If MLB wants to promote diversity, and progressive views, we get Jackie Robinson and Larry Dolby. When the MLB wants to kill the idea, you never hear a word about it officially from them. Instead you only hear about it on youtube videos about obscure MLB facts.

    The point is, on a regular basis, I would still support competitive women playing on every team. There are some truely crappy players in the MLB (looking at you, Bartolo Colon), and if they get replaced with better playing women, then the MLB as a whole is stronger for it.

    …that being said, women and men should NOT play hockey together. It just wouldn’t be right.

    • ashok36@lemmy.world
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      American ninja warrior has had more and more women making it farther and farther in the competition every year. There are still handicaps in place to make sure at least some women make it to the finals but after that there are no handicaps. At this point, even if they removed all the handicaps there would still be women that reach the finals, just not as many. It’s been very interesting to watch.

      The announcers still try to hype up the women’s achievements but at this point most of the big barriers have been broken. They’ve had to resort to stuff like, “if she gets a buzzer here she’ll be only the second mom to get a buzzer in qualifying!”. It’s kind of silly at this point.

    • tempest@lemmy.ca
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      20 days ago

      As a casual baseball fan I like the pitch clock, keeps things moving along aha.

      I actually think coed would be more interesting. You could have a female pitcher for the women and a male pitcher for the men.

      It would add another depth of strategy about which positions are played by which players.

  • Gamers_Mate@fedia.io
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    20 days ago

    I could see this working better than the current system and would undermine bigots argument about an unfair advantage. Though there are people that think being transgender gives people an advantage in chess somehow.

    • Delphia@lemmy.world
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      Women (and trans women) naturally carry a higher body fat percentage than men (Incl trans men) a “male” athlete can more safely and more easily carry a lower body fat % and therefore more muscle per kilo. So the weight classes wouldnt be able to be 1:1 if you wanted a level playing field.

      There is still the inherent biological advantage in being born male and going through male puberty and developing a male muscular/skeletal system before transitioning. Very difficult to rule around every nuance of this though.

      • JesterIzDead@lemm.ee
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        20 days ago

        This is exactly right and what many people fail to understand. In studies, even after 3+ years of hormone therapy, trans-women still have significantly more muscle tissue than CIS women.

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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          I mean, the average person is obeese these days…

          Transitioning is a huge dedication to making their appearance fit with their identity, it just seems common sense for them to take more pride in their new appearance

        • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
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          20 days ago

          And that’s without looking at cardiovascular differences, or even as subtle as glycogen storage.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        Testosterone is literally a PED.

        Its why trans women can compete at a decent level, they’ll still rarely be at the absolute top of their sport.

        They have to have their testosterone and other hormones monitored and held to average levels. That will always put them at a disadvantage at elite levels versus women who don’t have the same requirement.

        There is still the inherent biological advantage in being born male and going through male puberty and developing a male muscular/skeletal system before transitioning

        Which is completely solved by access to puberty blockers before transitioning.

        I did see some article claim that hip to knee ratio didn’t translate to athletic performance, and it was so ridiculous I even downloaded the linked PDF that said it was a study, and it was just a pamphlet repeating the exact same claim with no further source.

        I mean, there’s a clear correlation already with women’s sports already. Lots of runners peak early and have worse times by graduating highschool. But it’s literally physics. Wider hips just means less efficient running.

    • mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      Your last sentence made me search up women’s chess… and it exists! That sound like a bold assumption or assertion that women are dumber in chess… Like what? I don’t know why chess has to be gender divided. Maybe it exist to increase representation of women in it but the idea seems stupid. Maybe they have to split it for trans too if its already divided for cis women.

    • TechNerdWizard42@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      For real though, the only sports competitions I’ve been to live in the past decade have been robot sports.

      Why would I pay money to see a human take a ball from another human, when I can pay less to watch a robot shoot flames and saw open another robot gladiator style?!

      • ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world
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        19 days ago

        I mean…

        ‘The word itself derives from the Czech word “robota,” or forced labor, as done by serfs. Its Slavic linguistic root, “rab,” means “slave"’

  • doingthestuff@lemmy.world
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    19 days ago

    Just create a trans league. Trans men and trans women all in the same league. Id watch that shit, it would make money. So why don’t we have this yet?

    • reddithalation@sopuli.xyz
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      19 days ago

      because lots of (most?) trans people don’t want to be “trans”, they want to fit in with the gender they know they are, and being labeled as not a real man or woman in the normal sports leagues, but a trans man or woman in the trans league, is insulting.

    • zbyte64@awful.systems
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      Let’s just say it’s a good thing that everything that would make money, does not exist in society.

    • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      Segregated sports based on a demographic like that isn’t as trans affirming as you would think… My gut reaction as a trans person is about the same aversion I imagine a person of color would experience if a white person tried to put forward a “People of Color sport league”.

      Ditching us all into a new category like we’re quarantined in sport away from other athletes because we’re implicitly not cis… Isn’t something I would appreciate.

      • kava@lemmy.world
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        19 days ago

        The unfortunate reality is that men are much better at women at sports. This is why we have women leagues. There are pronounced biological differences that would essentially prevent women from competing if everything was one league.

        MTF trans, because they were born male, have all of these advantages. They can take hormone blockers / estrogen pills and that reduces some of the advantage. But not all.

        So it results in a MTF trans being a) weaker than males and b) stronger than females

        What other solution except a trans league would be just to all parties involved?

        • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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          19 days ago

          I have pointed out to people before that trans women athletes in practice tend to not outperform all women in the sport. The data we have puts them as no more competitive as women with naturally high testosterone and depending on sport can actually be at a disadvantage…

          But there’s another underlying assumption. You assume your athlete went through masculinizing puberty first and then a female puberty second. If you skip that first step then you don’t see major differences of frame, weight distribution or muscle mass.

          Where this stings is that laws are forcing people to go through that first puberty regardless of the wishes of the paitent, the patients families, the paitents doctors and the concensus of the medical associations of those doctors… And then the government sits back and demonizes those people based on their physicality as a logistical social problem for the rest of their lives and ostracizes them based on this logic.

          Athletes squew young. If you allowed through trans athletes who went through the transition process young enough or looked at sport with trans populations and statistically assessed whether any excessive advantage was afforded and allow in those instances where none was found you could solve for any statistical stand out issues within a decade…

          But no, we are having this inane conversation because it suits some government parties to make people feel that trans people are a threat or a problem that must be stopped and that there is zero reasonable inclusion policies.

          • kava@lemmy.world
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            19 days ago

            This is why my personal opinion is we should allow trans athletes if they didn’t go through male puberty. If they did, sorry you’re out. If they didn’t, it’s OK.

            And you’re right not all mtf athletes are going to end up at the top echelon but given enough time statistically speaking they will be drastically overrepresented.

            Edit: also the data is quite clear trans women are stronger, have more lung capacity, etc even 5+ years into hormone therapy. Iirc I even saw 10+ years on a paper once

            But the ones that went through male puberty. I think this is why we should try and find gender dysphoria earlier and treat b4 puberty. It’s much more effective the younger you start

            Of course issue is you don’t want to be too broad with diagnosis because of false positives and the conservatives going nuts. So it’s a difficult thing to do. Maybe we will identify what causes gender dysphoria some day and that will help

            • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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              19 days ago

              I think it’s a lot more black and white being trans than people realize and I have my own pet theories about what gender euphoria /dysphoria is that I observe as being two independent factors.

              Half of the problem I think in reaching people is that the vast majority of cis people don’t have an observed internal gender preference. We are trying to build empathy with something we as trans people assume they have too - but maybe only a small minority of cis people experience it. I don’t think we actually understand cis people, we just assume a bunch of things about them using trans people as a false opposite.

              Thing is… If I am correct, the assumed massive earth shaking regret of what would happen if a cis person went through gender reassignment… Is they might just adapt and be fine.

        • zbyte64@awful.systems
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          19 days ago

          Hormones aren’t binary though, some men are born with higher T levels than others. And some women have bigger bones than some men. If leveling the “hormone” advantage is desired, then drug test all participants and rank them that way.

          • kava@lemmy.world
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            19 days ago

            Virtually all men with functioning testicles have higher T than all women. This is because testicles produce T at 10-50x the rate of ovaries.

            Men going through puberty see permanent changes to the body. You cannot undo this. It gives MTF permanent advantages compared to women.

            They are stronger than women on average even after years of being on estrogen.

            As for the variance naturally seen, you’re right. But consider this

            Who ends up becoming a top athlete? The very best, right? So they are already near the top of the bell curve. So when you compare athletes, you’re not pulling random samples from the entire population.

            You’re pulling a random sample from the people with highest T, densest bones, highest rate of fast twitch muscles, etc.

            The male maximum and the female maximum is vastly different. This is why we see such a massive difference in performance.

            Presence of hormones currently in the blood does not entirely measure this.

            • zbyte64@awful.systems
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              19 days ago

              You’re pulling a random sample from the people with highest T, densest bones, highest rate of fast twitch muscles, etc.

              Yeah, isn’t that the point? I mean you are talking averages but OP is talking about how to handle the outliers (trans folk).

              • kava@lemmy.world
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                19 days ago

                All athletes tend to be outliers, regardless of gender. A small % difference in ability is the difference between 1st place and 300th

                Which is why Serena Williams, the #1 female tennis player, loses dramatically to the 203rd male tennis player.

                If the 203rd male tennis player became trans, he would instantly become the world’s #1 female player overnight.

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    19 days ago

    I’m still a fan of just removing all the rules around drugs and bodies. Let’s see what 21st century science can do!

    • noobnarski@feddit.de
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      19 days ago

      It would be a kinda fun league to watch, but I dont want to hear about athletes dying because they took obscene amounts of steroids to be the best.

      • MataVatnik@lemmy.world
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        19 days ago

        We already have racers dying regularly in Isle of Man TT. Blood sports never died, they evolved. Why not sprinkle some steroids over it.

      • cmbabul@lemmy.world
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        19 days ago

        I want to say that because understanding of steroids and sports medicine they could be done in a way to prevent that for many sports. But o also know that would require rigorously enforced regulation which athletes would then try to game, which would probably lead to more deaths on the field.

        • PsychedSy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          19 days ago

          Fuck that. You wanna go nuts on steroids then shoot up meth and cocaine before a race, go ahead. We’ll put defibrillators every 10m around the track. Catch that dragon, sports person.

          • n3m37h@sh.itjust.works
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            19 days ago

            I’d pay to see a feild full of tweakers, put a massive rock on one of those dog race things place random weapons around the track

    • cRazi_man@lemm.ee
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      19 days ago

      I imagine it would be like The Fast and The Furious where he presses the nitrous button till the screws/bolts all come out and the car falls apart very quickly.

  • 🇰 🔵 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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    19 days ago

    I say fuck it and let everyone compete together. Ain’t no reason men and women couldn’t compete with each other in baseball, basketball, hockey, tennis, golf, etc. Even if you believed men are capable of being bigger and supporting more muscle, there’s tons of sports where that isn’t going to be the most useful thing to win.

    How would you know this gender or that gender is better anyway unless you actually let everyone compete together, regardless of what’s in their pants or their heart?

    • AchtungDrempels@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      Ever left your computer and went out to play some sports?

      I am a bit surprised that so many pro trans people seem to pick up the bait of the right and make these over the top suggestions like abolishing womens sports. Certainly proposing stuff like this will help the trans cause a lot and not make them look crazy at all.

      • 🇰 🔵 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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        18 days ago

        I have played sports my whole life. Mostly in mixed gender leagues.

        I am a bit surprised to see so much sexism in this thread from people who seriously think men and women can not compete at the same level in things where physical strength isn’t the be all end all of the sport.

        • kava@lemmy.world
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          18 days ago

          We’re not talking hobbyists. We’re talking top level athletes. Men aren’t just stronger. There are dozens if not hundreds of items they outperform women on.

          The sports where women can actually compete with men are rare. For example marksmanship or long-distance marathon. Virtually every sport men have distinct and significant advantages.

          Men have larger hearts, more lung volume per body mass, more red blood cells, more clotting factors which means they recover quicker and have a higher pain tolerance.

          Testosterone allows for more rapid muscle gain as well as better recovery. So two people training the same exercises an identical amount of time, the man would have gained significantly more muscle mass and strength.

          Men have higher blood pressure, which means they feel fatigue less than women. Men don’t lose iron to menstruation, which means there’s more iron for oxygen circulation in the blood.

          These items basically make it so men are much better at almost all sports.

          For example soccer. The US Women’s national team lost to a team of high school age boys.

          Men can kick harder, sprint faster, run longer, train longer & they gain more from training & they recover faster from training so they can do it more, they feel less pain so they can stay at max exertion longer, they can convert oxygen into energy faster so they can sustain all of this more than women,

          Etc

          There’s a reason we have women’s leagues. If we didn’t have it, women wouldn’t get to compete at a high level.

          At a lower level, like hobbyist or local leagues the story may be different. There’s more variance among the general population than amongst top athletes.

          Serena Williams, #1 woman tennis player, can’t hold a candle to the 203rd best man. Look up her interview about it. She’s under no illusions about this

    • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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      19 days ago

      I believe that would make it so basically no women can compete at the highest levels.

    • LANIK2000@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      The classic kung fu paradox. We can’t compete, because this technique is so powerful it would kill the opponent! That’s why they perform so well in MMA. /s

    • kava@lemmy.world
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      Male sports typically don’t have a gender requirement. Women just can’t compete. This is why women’s leagues were created. So they can compete with people around similar physical potential.

      Look at chess for example. Anyone can compete in the world open, but you’ll see 98~99% men. So, they make a woman’s league.

      Women have the option of playing in both. This is the same for most sports.

      • 🇰 🔵 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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        18 days ago

        Using chess as an example after saying women wouldn’t be able to compete makes it seem like you believe men and women aren’t even on even ground with intelligence and that’s absolute fucking bullshit.

        • kava@lemmy.world
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          18 days ago

          Men and women are the same intelligence on average. There are more men at the extremes of the distribution curve for certain attributes, though. And when you are talking about chess players, you are taking a sample of the ends of the distribution curve.

          There’s also evidence that chess ability and visiospatial cognitive ability are positively correlated with chess ability. Men tend to perform better than woman on average. (Stuff like rotating imaginary 3d shapes for example)

          This may be partially why we only see 42 out of 2500 worldwide grandmasters being women. Men may only perform 2.5~4% better, but when you’re talking about the extremes (best chess players in world) that small % means a lot.

          Tldr: It’s not because they aren’t on equal intelligence. Women for example score better on verbal cognition tests.

          And on average men and women have the same IQ

            • kava@lemmy.world
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              18 days ago

              Every claim I’ve made can be double checked by going on Google scholar or libgen. You’ll find multiple studies and recent studies.

              • petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                18 days ago

                And the ones I’ve made can be double-checked by taking a sociology class.

                If I am to be charitable, I think you’re just glazing over the elephant in the room. When a little girl is told “they’re not as able,” they’re not as likely to continue. If only 13% of players are women at all, then yeah, duh, they won’t be represented in the grandmasters.

                • kava@lemmy.world
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                  18 days ago

                  Women make up roughly 15% of USCF members yet they only make up roughly 1.5% of grandmasters.

                  That means they are underrepresented by about an order of magnitude. Women on average are about 200 ELO lower than men.  It’s a very large difference and there has been research done to figure out why.

                  There are no real conclusive findings (as with much of this type of sociological research) but we have evidence for various different reasons. One, women are not encouraged to play chess at the same level that men are. Similar reason that more men go into Computer Science or Physics. It’s not a built in biological difference, but a cultural one.

                  Another one is that women are younger by 11 years on average, so their ratings haven’t peaked yet. So we should see this gap close in the coming decades. There are also various other inequities between men and women (like for example stereotype threat).

                  So that explains at least some of the gap. What I’m trying to say is that beyond these factors, there is also a biological difference that results in men being overrepresented in the top chess players. Notice I’m not saying average chess players, but specifically the best in the world (the grandmasters).

                  Why?

                  Well, there’s evidence for something called the "greater male variability hypothesis”. Think of every person sitting somewhere on a normal distribution. Pick a trait like aggressiveness or competitiveness.

                  There are the extremes on both sides of the bell curve. On the left, super passive and on the right super aggressive. Most people clump at the mean, in the center of the bell curve.

                  There’s evidence that more women cluster around the mean relative to men. Men are overrepresented at the extremes of the bell curve, even though the average is the same as women. Only by a little bit, but it’s statistically significant. That means that if you took a sample of all the super-aggressive and super-passive people, the majority would be men.

                  When you look at top chess players, they are more likely to have extreme attributes (being ultra-competitive for example helps you get better at chess).

                  This same effect is also theorized to be why we see that vast majority of prisoners are male. Vast majority of homeless, etc. Because extreme attributes tend to either be really good or really bad.

                  So that’s one biological difference. The other is the visospatial intelligence. Men tend to score better on visospatial tests when compared to women. This effect is already visible by 2 or 3 months of age, so it’s unlikely to be some sort of cultural effect.

                  Visiospatial cognitive ability is positively correlated with chess ability. Another biological difference between men and women that likely has some non-zero effect on chess ability.

                  So why are women underrepresented in grandmasters when compared to males? There is evidence for both

                  a) external social factors

                  and

                  b) innate biological factors

                  Nobody knows what % of the difference is due to a) or b). We just know there is some non-zero effect for both.

                  I encourage you to fact check every claim I’ve made. Don’t just look for one  research paper that confirms your argument. Each claim I’ve made I’ve seen multiple studies on. There are studies that will say the opposite, but look at it in aggregate. Look at metaanalysis studies.

      • Klear@sh.itjust.works
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        19 days ago

        Notably Judit Polgár, probably the strongest female chess player, never competed for the Women’s World Championship and only rarely played in women-specific events.

  • xenomor@lemmy.world
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    20 days ago

    Weight is the wrong criteria to use. Why not just have it classed by skill level. Enforce equity in school sports by mandating that a meaningful distribution of skill-based leagues are funded. This seems like a very simple solution to me that would address gender-based inequities in general as well as improve sports overall.

    • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
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      20 days ago

      Because even matching skill levels, males have greater strength, endurance, cardiovascular capacity, etc, ad nauseam. They have greater glycogen stores, which means they can perform longer, and they recover faster.

      Growth plates are different, bone density is different. Muscle density and structure is different.

      Just look at the high school boys soccer team that tromped an Olympic women’s soccer team.

      Women have faster reaction times. They have a different/higher pain threshold. They can bear young.

      This is just fundamental biology. Frankly it’s baffling to hear your nonsensical arguments.

      • xenomor@lemmy.world
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        20 days ago

        I literally cannot understand the argument that you’re making. People with different physiological characteristics are not going to have the same skill levels. Nothing you listed argues against my proposal. All the physiological advantages that you listed are fine. Some females may be better than some males at some tasks and vice versa. Why not let them compete against each other. Seems like creating a larger pool of competitive athletes would improve any sport. Carving out leagues that cater to different capability levels would open opportunities for more people. I’m proposing that we have more, better, more competitive and exciting sports. What exactly are you objecting to?

        • Kill_John_Lennon@lemmy.world
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          20 days ago

          Oh the pride and joy I will experience when I finally get to be champion in the “Pretty shit” skill level running competition! Especially if I manage to defeat my handicapped neighbor, that prick keeps boasting about how he’s been training hard every day for the past 10 years! I’m not sure you understand what competitive sports are about …

          • xenomor@lemmy.world
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            20 days ago

            We already basically do this with things like the differentiation between Varsity and JV. Not sure why this is such an offensive concept to some of you (just kidding, I’m pretty sure I understand exactly why y’all are offended). If competition is what is great about sports, then excluding some competitive participants because of arbitrary physiological characteristics actively diminishes the sport. But perhaps competition isn’t actually what some of you think is great about sports. I suspect that what some of you actually value about sports is to experience a kind of masterbatory high of seeing someone you can identify with, in shallow ways, achieving things that you yourself cannot.

      • Bgugi@lemmy.world
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        20 days ago

        I think it’s clear that in this context, “skill” is being used to mean “achievement.”

  • Phegan@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    The recent issue with transgender people in sports is manufactured as a tool to spread trans hate. It’s a non issue that preys on Americans’s sense of fairness.

  • Maple Engineer@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    The issue isn’t gender. Gender is a social construct. The issue is sex. Female sports were always intended to be for female athletes. Female athletes who choose to play female sports to have a more level playing field and to play against other female athletes find it unfair to be forced to play against male athletes playing female sports. Trans women are women but they aren’t female.

    • vatlark@lemmy.worldM
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      16 days ago

      This post was reported for transphobia. Specifics weren’t given. It seems like you use the term “female” to mean someone that was assigned female at birth. I’m not sure if language is changing in this area and I certainly don’t know technical definitions. Female does seemed to be used as a gender identity as well. For example the opening paragraph here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_woman

      I think many cultures are learning how to be more welcoming to people from all walks of life, which is great, and conversations like this one are good for discussing some of the nuance.

      Please keep things civil and assume the best of other’s intentions. We are all learning. We are all human.

      Edit: spelling

      • Maple Engineer@lemmy.world
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        16 days ago

        I meant “female” in the context of biological sex as opposed to the social construct of gender as in, “woman” which may be a person who is either male or female. I am FAR from a transphobe and using the word and the reporting system on Lemmy as a bludgeon to try to silence anyone who doesn’t buy into the extremist group think utterly devalues anything else that the extremists say. One of my oldest friends is a trans woman. She would VERY much disagree that I am a transphobe. My lesbian daughter whose trans and non-binary friends I interact with every day would also very much disagree.

        I would like to counter report this as a false report by an extremist pushing a political agenda and trying to silence anyone who has different ideas than them.

        • vatlark@lemmy.worldM
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          16 days ago

          It sounds like you have a lot of experiences that others could learn from, but you will likely push people away if you attack them directly (calling them extremist) rather than only attacking their positions. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

          One tactic that I like is asking them questions that lead them to point out the flaws in their own arguments. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method

          Would you be more or less likely to learn from someone that calls you an extremist?

          • Maple Engineer@lemmy.world
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            16 days ago

            Sorry…I didn’t answer these parts of your comment.

            One tactic that I like is asking them questions that lead them to point out the flaws in their own arguments. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method

            They have a carefully rehearsed circular logical set of arguments that are self-confirming. I can explain and explain and explain but it doesn’t confirm their bias so they just keep going around in circles. I don’t expect to reach them but I may help someone who isn’t so closed minded to understand.

            My daughter goes to pride festivals every year as a vendor in the market. Last year was hopping. This year was dead. My wife and I wondered if all the pushing to force biological males into the places that biological females fought for decades to get wasn’t turning a lot of people off. That would be extremely sad since the LGBTQ+ community has worked so hard to get to where it is now.

            Would you be more or less likely to learn from someone that calls you an extremist?

            I have Asperger’s so I don’t care what people call me (other than calling me a transphobe or antisemite with the new definitions written by the extremists.) If they’re making a cogent argument I will generally respond in kind.

          • Maple Engineer@lemmy.world
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            15 days ago

            I have a lot of experience and I am very LGBTQ+ friendly. I only label as extremists those who push beyond the bounds of, “Everyone has rights, gender is a social construct and you can identify as whatever you want” into denying that male and female are things or claiming that identifying as a woman somehow magically makes you female. The whole, “You can’t question what we believe or you’re a transphobe” is EXACTLY the same as, “You can’t question the actions of the state of Israel or you’re an antisemite.” It’s utter nonsense. Those are both examples of extremism.

    • flying_sheep@lemmy.ml
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      18 days ago

      Nah, that’s simply not true if you look at the actual data about how well trans athletes perform.

      • Maple Engineer@lemmy.world
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        18 days ago

        What’s not true? That trans women aren’t female? That’s undeniably true. That female atheletes who choose to play female sports to have a more even playing field and to play against other female atheletes find being forced to play against male atheletes unfair? That’s undeniably true as well. That female sports were intented for female atheletes? That’s undeniably true. That gender is a social construct? I mean…that’s a central pillar of the platform so we have to agree that that’s true.

        Your beliefs don’t change reality and simply waving your hand in the air and declaring undeniable truths to be untrue does NOT make them untrue.

        • petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          18 days ago

          that’s a central pillar of the platform so we have to agree that that’s true.

          Watch out, man. The bees are starting to pollinate your mind. You should probably take another shower.

        • flying_sheep@lemmy.ml
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          18 days ago

          That cis women playing against trans women is unfair. As said above, the actual data proves that this is not the case. Of course it’s undeniably true that reactionary dudes (and maybe even women) feel like things are unfair, but the actual facts invalidate that feeling.

          The discretized, simplified middle school biology you’re invoking here is simply not a precise enough model to depict reality.

          Trans women aren’t “male” from a muscle development perspective, as they don’t have a male hormone profile lol.

          • Maple Engineer@lemmy.world
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            18 days ago

            Go back and point to ANYWHERE that I said that it was unfair for trans women atheletes to play against female atheletes. I’ll wait…

            No? I didn’t say that. You made that up. What I said was that female atheletes who choose to play female sports to have a more level playing field and to play against other female athelets feel that it’s unfrair to be forced to play against male atheletes playing female sports.

            THAT is absolutely undeniably true.

            Female atheletes understandably feel that it is unfair to have male atheletes breaking female atheletic records by such margins that no female athelete will ever be able to break them.

            • petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              18 days ago

              What are you even talking about, then? “The problem is sex, but it isn’t sex actually”?

              If trans women can play in women’s leagues just fine (after hormonal treatment I think is the typical rule), what is “females don’t want to play with males” supposed to mean?

              Is it just the hormonal treatment? You have to understand how confusing it is to phrase this point that way.

              • Maple Engineer@lemmy.world
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                18 days ago

                It’s only confusing to you because it doesn’t fit into your narrative and your carefuly rehearsed arguements don’t work.

                • petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                  18 days ago

                  My friend,

                  Trans women are women but they aren’t female.

                  Female atheletes understandably feel that it is unfair to have male atheletes breaking female atheletic records

                  where I said that it was unfair for trans women atheletes to play against female atheletes.

                  Explain to me how I am supposed to resolve these.

                  If you’re not anti trans athletes, then whatever, but come on.