[scottmsul]

Suppose we took this line of thinking to its natural conclusion. If we wanted to be completely neutral, in theory we could have no male/female division at all, and just compete for the "best human" in each sport. But because of the vast biological differences between men and women, men would win every single time, hands down. This goes back to why do we have men and women divisions in the first place? Because we want a space for people without the vast advantages from male physiology to compete fairly with each other. Allowing for people who are technically "women" based on their reproductive anatomy, but have all the male physiological advantages otherwise, feels like it defeats the entire purpose from having separate women divisions.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

What about a universal ranked system. For example, take tennis. There are already ranking systems so imagine a single one where all players regardless of gender/age/etc are all on a single list. Competitions will only allow you to play against someone within X rankings from you. So regardless of gender/age/etc, matches will always be reasonably fair and people move up and down based on what they win or lose.

So, now comes the part of whose the best DESC. Want to know the top female, just see the highest ranking one? Top person over 50? Under 20? Top person who isn't taking performance drugs? Top person who is? etc. You can get whatever top ranking you want. All matches are fair. Everyone can play.

[snapplebobapple]

This is actually the right answer though. Have one unrestricted category and then run the most popular retarded (I apologize, i can't find a better word, I have tried. It literally means poorer performance because of some specific identifiable physical trait in this case https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/retard#h1) category next (which will often be women but could be men or something else in some instances) Relegate the rest to different events and promote/demote if popularity of some retardation (again, apologies) changes.

[chabes]

> …feels like it defeats the entire purpose from having separate women divisions

Key word: “feels”

That’s on the person/people doing the feeling

[brailsafe]

> men would win every single time, hands down

I think this is probably broadly true, but not always, maybe not even that commonly. Particularly in sports where raw power and endurance aren't the singular determining factor in the result. I'm optimistic that in some sports, if competition at a high-level started leaning into it, competitor performance from both would eventually converge in a way that makes the divide less clear. Some of those sports, by the nature of reduced exposure, just don't have remotely similar access or exposure among women, which is one of the factors that would change over time.

I'm thinking of climbing, skateboarding, where although speed, power, and endurance are factors, they're sort of relative factors compared to the person's bodyweight and how the routes/courses are set. Skateboard is much more divided for now than climbing as far as I can tell, but climbing is quite a lot closer, and the women's competition is generally more interesting to me to watch.

I feel like people aren't thinking enough about how much time each generation of new competitors has in terms of exposure to high-level athletes from the previous cohort, and how much of a compounding effect that can have. If you're clearly someone who'd be in the female category of sport, and you're divided into that category from the day you start, and the selection of people from the previous generation is 10% of the amount available among the other category, there's a very limited surface area for pushing harder.

In skateboarding, this pretty much meant anyone coming up 10 years ago had basically 2-5 notable figures who made anything of themselves skateboarding, and maybe half of them either stopped doing the sport or became reclusive. Ideally, you need to skate with the boys and compete with yourself and any other girl you can find. This period of time produced exactly what you'd expect; more women than in the previous generation got at least 50-75% better than the top competitors they would have looked up to. This compounds, and now those women are the inspiration for the current cohort, but they're only ever going to get as good or a bit better whichever rare individuals they have to compete with. Big fish, small pond.

In my opinion, we don't yet know how close those can get, and in some cases I'd like to see how that could change. In others, that possibility doesn't really come down to how driven or creative someone is, there's limited surface area for optimization and muscle growth, a clear dividing line where only mutant abnormalities would clear the gap at the highest level, since everyone on either side are already mutants.