Do you really think it’s fair for a full blown man to fight women in the ring just because he identifies as a woman? Women will get very seriously hurt or possibly killed fighting someone assigned male sex at birth. I have no problem letting them do anything that doesn’t hurt others, but this is a case where I think we need to be more sensible.
If it’s about who might get hurt, maybe we should divide things up by something other than gender. I know plenty of women who could do a ton of damage with their fists and they aren’t even boxers.
It’s one thing to work within the limits of your physique to become stronger, better, etc. It’s another thing to have a totally different physique that gives you a starting point higher than can be achieved naturally by anyone else.
So many sports are entirely about the physique you inherited though. Yes there is some technique to swimming and obviously you have to train hard. But these are just prerequisites, not differentiators. If we start saying that winning because of your physique is no victory, then really half of the events become meaningless. To a large extent, the Olympics does measure inherited traits and I think we ought to recognize that that is its point. If you think back all those centuries, it was very obviously the point to prove that your people are genetically superior to their people.
So put those women in a higher class. There are plenty of women with “masculine” physiques… or are you going to claim Brittney Griner is also not a woman?
I don’t think it’s fair to penalize a woman who works all her life to get to a certain level and just make her compete against someone who maybe hasn’t had to work at all because they are physically male. If anything, we need to make a class for people who are physically male but presenting female.
Are you talking about Khelif? How do you know she is “physically male?” What does that even mean? Is Brittney Griner “physically male?” Because she looks bigger and stronger than Khelif.
As far as I can tell, that reliable information isn’t out there other than the fact that a Russian judge said she tested as XY and that she’s tested for high testosterone. I’d say XY is a pretty good starting place to call someone male or at least not traditionally female, if that test can be trusted.
But I think a lot of the controversy here comes from a lack of trustable info.
You mean the Russian judge who said that after she beat her Russian opponent? Cool. Let’s see the evidence.
You aren’t believing a Russian judge, of all people, without evidence, are you?
Also, does that mean anyone with XY gonadal dysgenesis needs to be genetically tested before they’re allowed to compete? If so, at what age should they be tested? The youngest Olympian this year is a 12-year-old skateboarder from China. The youngest Olympican ever was an 11-year-old figure skater from China.
Now… bear in mind that many women who have that particular condition are not even aware that they have it.
Would you be willing to support either genetic testing or genital examination of 11 or 12-year-old girls? Do you think that might make girls and women less likely to aspire to be athletes than they might occasionally have to compete against a “man?” Because I sure do.
Boxing has weight classes. As do most other martial arts.
The problem is not a 50kg men fighting a 70kg women in terms of injuries and power imbalance. And in that set up the women most likely wins. The problem is the typical situation of a 80-100 kg men smacking down on a 50-60kg women. And that is the image the demagogues try to conjure.
So if your full blown men is a 60kg feather to be able to compete against another 60kg women, the whole trope falls apart.
A man with the same body weight as a woman would still inherently have more upper body strength and higher ability to gain it as that’s just how men are built vs women. It’s still not a fair way of setting intersex classes.
I mean if they’re doing the exact same rigor and type of training, eating the exact same diet, have had the exact same level of boxing experience and fought the exact same opponents at the same skill level, then yes there would be an advantage to whoever is assigned male
No I can’t because there’s no data to go off of. I’m honestly unclear as to whether it’s a valid issue or not. Even in this case where the data we have seems to indicate there’s an issue, the data doesn’t seem entirely trustable. Anyone claiming complete certainty in this environment with no evidence is clearly just blindly pushing an agenda in bad faith.
They felt like concern trolling to me, but I admit I’m multitasking and posting this from next to my son’s hospital bed, so maybe my reading comprehension hasn’t been the best. I acknowledge that possibility.
Boxers and wrestlers have weight classes because weight confers a massive advantage and almost predetermines the outcome of the match. You might as well just award someone for weighing more, because skill can only overcome it to a point.
I would prefer if competitive classes were determined by things like weight which are universal and obvious and non-invasive to measure. However I don’t know if that works for everything. Hormones do in fact confer major advantages, as chemical doping does. Should we not test for doping either?
I do think it’s actually more invasive to try to measure if someone “lives as a woman” than it is to measure what’s in their blood. How do you even begin to define that, and aren’t you engaging in prescriptive sexism as soon as you start? I can tell that your suggestion comes from a place of wanting to support women and their autonomy but I don’t think you thought it through at all, at least not in the context of competitive sport. If you don’t care at all about fair sports competition, it’s all super easy. If you do want to enable fair sport competition, you have to actually deal with the complexities and not just fire off leftist slogans.
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Do you really think it’s fair for a full blown man to fight women in the ring just because he identifies as a woman? Women will get very seriously hurt or possibly killed fighting someone assigned male sex at birth. I have no problem letting them do anything that doesn’t hurt others, but this is a case where I think we need to be more sensible.
If it’s about who might get hurt, maybe we should divide things up by something other than gender. I know plenty of women who could do a ton of damage with their fists and they aren’t even boxers.
It’s one thing to work within the limits of your physique to become stronger, better, etc. It’s another thing to have a totally different physique that gives you a starting point higher than can be achieved naturally by anyone else.
So many sports are entirely about the physique you inherited though. Yes there is some technique to swimming and obviously you have to train hard. But these are just prerequisites, not differentiators. If we start saying that winning because of your physique is no victory, then really half of the events become meaningless. To a large extent, the Olympics does measure inherited traits and I think we ought to recognize that that is its point. If you think back all those centuries, it was very obviously the point to prove that your people are genetically superior to their people.
So put those women in a higher class. There are plenty of women with “masculine” physiques… or are you going to claim Brittney Griner is also not a woman?
I don’t think it’s fair to penalize a woman who works all her life to get to a certain level and just make her compete against someone who maybe hasn’t had to work at all because they are physically male. If anything, we need to make a class for people who are physically male but presenting female.
Are you talking about Khelif? How do you know she is “physically male?” What does that even mean? Is Brittney Griner “physically male?” Because she looks bigger and stronger than Khelif.
As far as I can tell, that reliable information isn’t out there other than the fact that a Russian judge said she tested as XY and that she’s tested for high testosterone. I’d say XY is a pretty good starting place to call someone male or at least not traditionally female, if that test can be trusted.
But I think a lot of the controversy here comes from a lack of trustable info.
You mean the Russian judge who said that after she beat her Russian opponent? Cool. Let’s see the evidence.
You aren’t believing a Russian judge, of all people, without evidence, are you?
Also, does that mean anyone with XY gonadal dysgenesis needs to be genetically tested before they’re allowed to compete? If so, at what age should they be tested? The youngest Olympian this year is a 12-year-old skateboarder from China. The youngest Olympican ever was an 11-year-old figure skater from China.
Now… bear in mind that many women who have that particular condition are not even aware that they have it.
Would you be willing to support either genetic testing or genital examination of 11 or 12-year-old girls? Do you think that might make girls and women less likely to aspire to be athletes than they might occasionally have to compete against a “man?” Because I sure do.
This is the correct answer. Divide competitors up by class, skill level, or anything else besides perceived sexual anatomy.
Boxing has weight classes. As do most other martial arts.
The problem is not a 50kg men fighting a 70kg women in terms of injuries and power imbalance. And in that set up the women most likely wins. The problem is the typical situation of a 80-100 kg men smacking down on a 50-60kg women. And that is the image the demagogues try to conjure.
So if your full blown men is a 60kg feather to be able to compete against another 60kg women, the whole trope falls apart.
A man with the same body weight as a woman would still inherently have more upper body strength and higher ability to gain it as that’s just how men are built vs women. It’s still not a fair way of setting intersex classes.
I mean if they’re doing the exact same rigor and type of training, eating the exact same diet, have had the exact same level of boxing experience and fought the exact same opponents at the same skill level, then yes there would be an advantage to whoever is assigned male
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Can you cite an example of this?
No I can’t because there’s no data to go off of. I’m honestly unclear as to whether it’s a valid issue or not. Even in this case where the data we have seems to indicate there’s an issue, the data doesn’t seem entirely trustable. Anyone claiming complete certainty in this environment with no evidence is clearly just blindly pushing an agenda in bad faith.
It seems odd that you’ve based multiple comments here on that example then, I think.
Did you actually read said comments? I’ve said this multiple times. It’s basically the thesis of my statements.
They felt like concern trolling to me, but I admit I’m multitasking and posting this from next to my son’s hospital bed, so maybe my reading comprehension hasn’t been the best. I acknowledge that possibility.
Boxers and wrestlers have weight classes because weight confers a massive advantage and almost predetermines the outcome of the match. You might as well just award someone for weighing more, because skill can only overcome it to a point.
I would prefer if competitive classes were determined by things like weight which are universal and obvious and non-invasive to measure. However I don’t know if that works for everything. Hormones do in fact confer major advantages, as chemical doping does. Should we not test for doping either?
I do think it’s actually more invasive to try to measure if someone “lives as a woman” than it is to measure what’s in their blood. How do you even begin to define that, and aren’t you engaging in prescriptive sexism as soon as you start? I can tell that your suggestion comes from a place of wanting to support women and their autonomy but I don’t think you thought it through at all, at least not in the context of competitive sport. If you don’t care at all about fair sports competition, it’s all super easy. If you do want to enable fair sport competition, you have to actually deal with the complexities and not just fire off leftist slogans.