sports has everything to do with sex and nothing
to do with gender
Perhaps the more fundamental question — once again leaning on apparently somewhat flimsy terminology — would be: is biological sex something worthy of celebration and note? Half of our species is born a certain way, whatever we call it. Is that grouping to be given certain opportunities to demonstrate their talents that would not be afforded them on a level playing field?
So presumably you include other factors — but then you are simply dividing by ability. You could conceivably attempt to divide by innate ability (theoretically allowing competitors to compete against one another based on nurture, not nature) but that would be impossible to do fairly or in a way that would make sense to audiences.
we're at HN - run PCA and clustering on the totality of athletes' results and biological data for the last N decades with end result being the groups based on identified parameters similar to boxing/wrestling weight groups.
>that would make sense to audiences.
we're already in situation which is harder and harder to make sense. Putting it on the firm basis of scientific analysis is the only way to move forward which would avoid all the pitfalls we're going to hit otherwise.
Also, if trans women are supposed to go to women competition, does it mean that trans men are supposed to go to men competition? Wouldn't that mean pretty much condemning them to having no chance of winning from the start in the most sports where sheer mass, power, etc. play major role?
Anyway, if we don't put it on the firm scientific basis today, i can see how tomorrow a number of male athletes form China and Russia would suddenly start to feel like they are women, may be would take some hormones to satisfy some doubts/requirements (giving the doping already going on i don't see any obstacles here), and that will be the end of female sports.
While I understand the sentiment, but I think we need to speak of skill vs physical factors. The division of weightlifters in weight classes is to deal with the latter rather than the former.
Similarly - WADA does this already by banning doping. PEDs don't make you a high-skill athlete, they enhance physical capabilities (stronger, faster recovery etc).
Laurel Hubbard is in an unfortunately unique position, where she's at a natural advantage due to higher testosterone levels earlier in life.
It might be impossible to end up with a fair division, but I don't think "no division" is a good answer.
Is it fun to watch a bunch of length skiers that all have a similar rare medical conditions that enables an endurance and oxygen uptake that is way beyond what is possible for the wast majority of the population? Dividing by genetics seems as a good option, but would that then go against the spirit of the sport?
Sex is simply just a bunch of common genetic traits, but they are not the only traits that matters in sport. There are a long list of them, especially in extreme strength or endurance sports.
No one wants to watch a competition to see who is the "best of people we think are ranked 100-200" since it is an arbitrary grouping. They want to see people compete to be the best woman or man in the world.
Dividing based on weight makes sense for some sports since it is an added constraint that people compete to optimize their strength against. But dividing based on strength just moves the competition from the actual competition, into the ranking process.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24886927/
https://danielkiikka.com/performance/birth-month-athletic-pe...
You crucially missed an important variable which competitive sports of any kind fully hinge upon: skeletal muscle density… which hugely differs across biological sexes.
In other sports, there’s a rating system that effectively places people with competitors at their level (ELO in chess, tennis rankings)
Either would work in any sport, except for the fact that huge classes of people wouldn’t ever be represented at top level. Prime examples are women and people with disabilities.
In para-athletics, they try to solve that with an elaborate classification system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Para-athletics_classification)
Problem is that training can sometimes move you between categories. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T42_(classification) has “impaired muscle power or impaired range of movement” as criteria. Those can get better with training.
For women, it seems easier, but even ignoring transgenders, there’s various genetic rarities such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/46,XX/46,XY that can put women at an advantage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foekje_Dillema) that we may or may not choose to call unfair (we don’t think it’s unfair for men over six feet to compete in basketball, though, even though that’s largely genetic)
One of the advantages of weightlifting (at least for a middle aged cisgendered male) is that it increases testosterone production.
Significantly lowered levels can have some really bad outcomes as one age, ie killing energy levels, libido, physical strength etc.
I've been mainly focusing on my squats in my garage gym (full Olympic barbell/bench/rack with spotter bars/extra Olympic EzyCurl bar) setup, but looking at my history I've let the big deadlift slip - 14 days since last session.
So I took the 20 second trip to the gym last night to start fixing that, warmed up with squats and then just deadlifts - and can definitely feel the energy today (on top of the fatigue!).
I've been struggling with energy lately due to a lot of change and stress, so hopefully a renewed focus on the deadlift will be helpful. Cheers.
I wonder how this would apply in sports that don't typically have weight classes, like track & field. I imagine you'd start seeing athletes in pretty much every sport cutting weight like in boxing and wrestling, which I don't think is a healthy outcome.
Are we at a level of biological science yet to create reliable divisions/classes on anything more sophisticated? And what about non-professional sports in schools?
There's actually a campaign in wheelchair tennis to allow players who don't actually need a wheelchair to be allowed to compete. https://www.theaccessibleplanet.com/able-bodied-playing-whee...
I've wondered about this - it's an interesting idea. Then the sport is just "Wheelchair tennis" and anyone can try.
These are things for which there are also rather persistent differences in distribution between males and females.
Sports scientists do not agree
Tweets are a dreadful way to read something like this, which would be easier to suggest in a blog post or paper. But I suppose Twitter gives people the right to respond, so swings-and-roundabouts.
Edit: now I'm taking weight!
Ross Tucker made a point about safety, but also about fairness, about which he said (paraphrasing) that females would disappear completely from mixed sex sports, even with weight categories. His point about "fairness" categories is more like "how would that even work?"