alt Hacker NewsThis also bans cis women with genetic anomalies. Until men with genetic anomalies are equally banned from sports (for example, being an outlier in height for basketball), this is nothing more than a misogynist attempt to make women’s sport as unimpressive and average as possible. Rules set by mostly old men of course.
Remember, sport is and has always been about statistical outliers competing. Fairness has never been, and will never be, a genuine consideration.
It’s also mighty interesting how it’s always the male division that’s open, until you happen to have a sport where women are beating men at it, and then suddenly it’s the women’s division that’s the open one! (See shooting.)
Stuff like this is why professional sports is widely seen as a cheater’s club where everyone tries to cheat as hard as possible just shy of getting caught, then acts completely innocent and indignant when someone else just barely crosses the line into getting caught.
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Well I think it bans women that thought/think that they are cis but actually aren't, which is a bit of a different story. A fairly tragic one. Intersex/trans/anything else people just don't really have a clean fit into a lot of places, which is unfortunate.
> this is nothing more than a misogynist attempt to make women’s sport as unimpressive and average as possible. Rules set by mostly old men of course.
Well, not really. 56%[1] of young women think that trans women should not be allowed in women's sports.
> It’s also mighty interesting how it’s always the male division that’s open, until you happen to have a sport where women are beating men at it, and then suddenly it’s the women’s division that’s the open one! (See shooting.)
IMO the "better" division should be open. If we are going to do two classes, and we find that one class has some sort of physical advantage inherently, then that class should be the "open" one.
> Stuff like this is why professional sports is widely seen as a cheater’s club where everyone tries to cheat as hard as possible just shy of getting caught, then acts completely innocent and indignant when someone else just barely crosses the line into getting caught.
A lot of people (the majority?) don't understand the extent of PEDs usage in sports. When everyone cheats nobody does. I've heard the argument before for going an "anything goes" division from friends for some sports, but then people are just going to start dying regularly from side effects like in body building.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/poll-american...
> It’s also mighty interesting how it’s always the male division that’s open, until you happen to have a sport where women are beating men at it, and then suddenly it’s the women’s division that’s the open one! (See shooting.)
It’s actually interesting. The claim in defense is that the decision was made prior to her win. This is often backformed in these committees though so on its own I wouldn’t believe it uncritically. However, it seems that other shooting sports were split already which does support this viewpoint. The real tragedy is that women weren’t allowed to shoot skeet at the Olympics after the split. Wild that flew.
Anyway, I still agree that it looks suspicious that the sport where women are quite competitive is one where this happens. I think it might just be not looking hard enough, though.
Equestrian sports are open in category and dressage is dominated by women, eventing leans female, and jumping leans male (just looking at Wikipedia medals - no expertise here). No split there. So the premise is not universally true and probably represents each sports federation differently.
Why should open divisions not work that way? They're meant to determine who's the best, regardless of sex or gender.
>>>> This also bans cis women with genetic anomalies. What are those? fwiw - I don't think they should be included in the ban. Genetic advantage people in their natural gender is how sports works. I'm 5'7" - Lebron definitely has a genetic advantage over me. Banning him from basketball isn't doing anyone favors.
> It’s also mighty interesting how it’s always the male division that’s open, until you happen to have a sport where women are beating men at it, and then suddenly it’s the women’s division that’s the open one!
Hypothetically you could have three divisions: open, men, and women. In many contexts it's more practical to have two, where one is open. In those cases, if the sex that didn't win more was also the open division, then people would complain because both divisions would be dominated by players of one sex.
Men who supplement testosterone are already banned if caught.
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The basketball league for short people would probably ban people who tested over 5’5” even if they were 6’10” but identified as short.
> It’s also mighty interesting how it’s always the male division that’s open, until you happen to have a sport where women are beating men at it, and then suddenly it’s the women’s division that’s the open one! (See shooting.)
Just in case you're referring to Zhang Shan winning Gold in 1992: the decision to bar women from competing in the 1996 Olympics was made before Zhang had won her medal. [0]
> Until men with genetic anomalies are equally banned from sports (for example, being an outlier in height for basketball)
We don't have height categories, we have categories based on sex. We have categories based on sex because there are physical difference caused by difference in sex that lead to advantages in sports competitions. As such, people who have physical advantages over others based on their difference in sex (e.g. going through male puberty vs. female puberty) shouldn't be able to compete in the category created to protect participants from precisely those differences.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Shan#cite_ref-nyt_4-0