I think it's important to point out here that we do know that exposure to exogenous testosterone promotes the creation of satellite cells which are important when it comes to the maximal force...
Fundamentally, the problem is that we do not know how long-term estrogen- and antiandrogen-based HRT affects bone density and musculature. We do not know whether trans female athletes have a systematic advantage, and we do not know if that advantage disappears with time.
I think it's important to point out here that we do know that exposure to exogenous testosterone promotes the creation of satellite cells which are important when it comes to the maximal force production of a muscle.
Satellite cells never go away, and it's a huge problem in strength based sports where you can only test for abuse of steroids at a certain point in time. If someone joins a league after they've done steroids, its nearly impossible to detect.
Otherwise I think you hit on an important point here, which is that we don't really understand hormones as well as we need to, in order to make a truly scientific reasoning for why or why not people should or should not be excluded from gender split sports.
One issue is how inconsistent we apply these rules. If a genetic/biological advantages are a bad thing - which is why under that theory we have a league for male and a league for female - then we...
One issue is how inconsistent we apply these rules. If a genetic/biological advantages are a bad thing - which is why under that theory we have a league for male and a league for female - then we also need leagues for any other traits. For example a basketball league for small people. Another solution would to give a penalty proportional to your genetic advantage, for example small people would have to run only 70 meters while tall people would have to run 100.
In the end the fact that the division is often made on sex is a sign that it's rather a sociological process that leads to it that some rational thought about fairness, and I'm not convinced people want to go where the rational thought brings you.
An interesting opinion article on the issue of how to decide who is female or male enough when it comes to sports. Navratilova's point is an interesting starting point for reflection. It is...
An interesting opinion article on the issue of how to decide who is female or male enough when it comes to sports.
Navratilova's point is an interesting starting point for reflection. It is probably true that transsexual womens' bodies are not changed enough that they could be considered women just because of their gender reassignment procedure. But then, the limits of male/female, and the line between the two are blurred enough to make it hard to decide. On one hand it is obvious that if performance is directly related to sex, and the male history of trans women gives them a clear advantage, then there would be injustice in that. On the other hand, it seems not well defined where the limit between men and women is, should one accept that the former is better than the latter athletically speaking.
One thing I think of is this: generally speaking, if we accept that on average men are stronger, faster and larger than women, is the relation with sex truly causative or is it a product of a bias where larger men and smaller women are more readily preferred as mates in reproductive context? And, is such observation true to begin with?
I think in sports we should move on from sex (and to a certain extent maybe age?) categories to performance based categories that do not discriminate based on sex. Because otherwise it is a mess. I think the only barrier to promiscuous athletism is tradition.
Wouldn't that be the same thing with men being at the top and women at the bottom ? If the categories were performance based, then nobody would watch the women since they would be so far down the...
I think in sports we should move on from sex (and to a certain extent maybe age?) categories to performance based categories that do not discriminate based on sex.
Wouldn't that be the same thing with men being at the top and women at the bottom ? If the categories were performance based, then nobody would watch the women since they would be so far down the line.
I remember Serena Williams being easily beaten by a man ranked ~200. They estimated that the n°1 female tennis player is equivalent in skill to the rank 600 male.
Imagine if they were enough transsexual athletes. Wouldn't it be more fair for them and for women if they had their own league ?
I don't know why people want to make competitive sports so equally distributed. People want to watch the best athletes regardless of their sex. There are plenty of sports where women could dominate. I think sometimes they have worst results than men just because of statistics. Since less women are interested in the sport, the chances of having an incredible woman athelte is slimmer.
That's exactly why the chinese dominate the olympics. Not because they are somehow genetically superior, but because the high number of chinese people that pick up those sports at a high level is enough for incredible talents to emerge.
This really depends on the sport and how categories are matched. In a contest of pure strength, such as weightlifting, you'll find world records somewhat similarly placed between men and women...
If the categories were performance based, then nobody would watch the women since they would be so far down the line.
This really depends on the sport and how categories are matched. In a contest of pure strength, such as weightlifting, you'll find world records somewhat similarly placed between men and women because they are separated by weight category (and in some cases age). This indicates that the difference between the best male and female players in a sport may have more to do with their size than anything else (and how many people get into the sport).
I think the key is to create categories that make sense for the sport in question. For some sports, you can't really do that - football and basketball both have players of all shapes and sizes (the former even moreso than the latter), so we may need to continue to segregate certain sports to allow more of a female representation.
I was very interested in your comment, but I'm afraid it doesn't quite seem to be the case, at least, if wikipedia was to be believed. For a given common weight class (69kg), the men's record for...
I was very interested in your comment, but I'm afraid it doesn't quite seem to be the case, at least, if wikipedia was to be believed. For a given common weight class (69kg), the men's record for the snatch was fully 43kg heavier than the women's. (Via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Olympic_records_in_weightlifting)
I otherwise don't have any good ideas about the issue at hand other than to agree that we should attempt to group people with similar raw ability, so practice, effort and skill win the day. Perhaps a better metric than weight could be established (blood testosterone? I have no idea.) but it's pretty clear that nature makes it exceptionally hard to form discrete categories.
Apologies I didn't specify, I actually meant powerlifting and not olympic records, but upon further inspection it really depends on the weightlifting league. In some cases I was able to find a...
Apologies I didn't specify, I actually meant powerlifting and not olympic records, but upon further inspection it really depends on the weightlifting league. In some cases I was able to find a pretty small variation (within 5%) but in other cases it was quite stark. That being said, a numbers game is probably part of the problem, with much less female weightlifters existing.
Oh, interesting! I was, as I hope I conveyed, intrigued by the suggestion that weight was a handy metric by which we could group people of like raw ability.
Oh, interesting! I was, as I hope I conveyed, intrigued by the suggestion that weight was a handy metric by which we could group people of like raw ability.
I really don't think there's a difference, it's certainly not true for animals in general or even for the great apes, wikipedia tells me that Chimpanzees are about the same size regardless of sex....
is the relation with sex truly causative or is it a product of a bias where larger men and smaller women are more readily preferred as mates in reproductive context? And, is such observation true to begin with?
I really don't think there's a difference, it's certainly not true for animals in general or even for the great apes, wikipedia tells me that Chimpanzees are about the same size regardless of sex.
I think in sports we should move on from sex (and to a certain extent maybe age?) categories to performance based categories that do not discriminate based on sex. Because otherwise it is a mess. I think the only barrier to promiscuous athletism is tradition.
It would make sense, I have to imagine it would be heavily opposed though if (and I have no data for this, just conjecture) the category breakdowns ended up being such that they effectively excluded women from the top-tier of competition.
I think it's important to point out here that we do know that exposure to exogenous testosterone promotes the creation of satellite cells which are important when it comes to the maximal force production of a muscle.
Satellite cells never go away, and it's a huge problem in strength based sports where you can only test for abuse of steroids at a certain point in time. If someone joins a league after they've done steroids, its nearly impossible to detect.
Otherwise I think you hit on an important point here, which is that we don't really understand hormones as well as we need to, in order to make a truly scientific reasoning for why or why not people should or should not be excluded from gender split sports.
One issue is how inconsistent we apply these rules. If a genetic/biological advantages are a bad thing - which is why under that theory we have a league for male and a league for female - then we also need leagues for any other traits. For example a basketball league for small people. Another solution would to give a penalty proportional to your genetic advantage, for example small people would have to run only 70 meters while tall people would have to run 100.
In the end the fact that the division is often made on sex is a sign that it's rather a sociological process that leads to it that some rational thought about fairness, and I'm not convinced people want to go where the rational thought brings you.
An interesting opinion article on the issue of how to decide who is female or male enough when it comes to sports.
Navratilova's point is an interesting starting point for reflection. It is probably true that transsexual womens' bodies are not changed enough that they could be considered women just because of their gender reassignment procedure. But then, the limits of male/female, and the line between the two are blurred enough to make it hard to decide. On one hand it is obvious that if performance is directly related to sex, and the male history of trans women gives them a clear advantage, then there would be injustice in that. On the other hand, it seems not well defined where the limit between men and women is, should one accept that the former is better than the latter athletically speaking.
One thing I think of is this: generally speaking, if we accept that on average men are stronger, faster and larger than women, is the relation with sex truly causative or is it a product of a bias where larger men and smaller women are more readily preferred as mates in reproductive context? And, is such observation true to begin with?
I think in sports we should move on from sex (and to a certain extent maybe age?) categories to performance based categories that do not discriminate based on sex. Because otherwise it is a mess. I think the only barrier to promiscuous athletism is tradition.
This topic is somewhat related.
Wouldn't that be the same thing with men being at the top and women at the bottom ? If the categories were performance based, then nobody would watch the women since they would be so far down the line.
I remember Serena Williams being easily beaten by a man ranked ~200. They estimated that the n°1 female tennis player is equivalent in skill to the rank 600 male.
Imagine if they were enough transsexual athletes. Wouldn't it be more fair for them and for women if they had their own league ?
I don't know why people want to make competitive sports so equally distributed. People want to watch the best athletes regardless of their sex. There are plenty of sports where women could dominate. I think sometimes they have worst results than men just because of statistics. Since less women are interested in the sport, the chances of having an incredible woman athelte is slimmer.
That's exactly why the chinese dominate the olympics. Not because they are somehow genetically superior, but because the high number of chinese people that pick up those sports at a high level is enough for incredible talents to emerge.
This really depends on the sport and how categories are matched. In a contest of pure strength, such as weightlifting, you'll find world records somewhat similarly placed between men and women because they are separated by weight category (and in some cases age). This indicates that the difference between the best male and female players in a sport may have more to do with their size than anything else (and how many people get into the sport).
I think the key is to create categories that make sense for the sport in question. For some sports, you can't really do that - football and basketball both have players of all shapes and sizes (the former even moreso than the latter), so we may need to continue to segregate certain sports to allow more of a female representation.
EDIT: wording
I was very interested in your comment, but I'm afraid it doesn't quite seem to be the case, at least, if wikipedia was to be believed. For a given common weight class (69kg), the men's record for the snatch was fully 43kg heavier than the women's. (Via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Olympic_records_in_weightlifting)
I otherwise don't have any good ideas about the issue at hand other than to agree that we should attempt to group people with similar raw ability, so practice, effort and skill win the day. Perhaps a better metric than weight could be established (blood testosterone? I have no idea.) but it's pretty clear that nature makes it exceptionally hard to form discrete categories.
Apologies I didn't specify, I actually meant powerlifting and not olympic records, but upon further inspection it really depends on the weightlifting league. In some cases I was able to find a pretty small variation (within 5%) but in other cases it was quite stark. That being said, a numbers game is probably part of the problem, with much less female weightlifters existing.
Oh, interesting! I was, as I hope I conveyed, intrigued by the suggestion that weight was a handy metric by which we could group people of like raw ability.
I really don't think there's a difference, it's certainly not true for animals in general or even for the great apes, wikipedia tells me that Chimpanzees are about the same size regardless of sex.
It would make sense, I have to imagine it would be heavily opposed though if (and I have no data for this, just conjecture) the category breakdowns ended up being such that they effectively excluded women from the top-tier of competition.