[kelseyfrog]

The solution is simple: class every sport like boxing.

Pick a sports-relevant metric and split into divisions. Some sports will naturally fall into gendered divisions, while others will have varying degrees of co-ed competition among competitors of similar ability.

The way out of this is not to pick a better scissor of sex or gender, it's to pick a better scissor of ability.

[baumy]

This "solution" can really only be proposed by someone who has not played sports. This would simply result in women being unable to compete in sports professionally, outside of a couple small niches like ultra long distance swimming and a couple sub-disciplines of gymnastics.

I do not consider that to be a good thing.

[kelseyfrog]

It really depends on the way classes are divided. Dismissing the general concept demonstrates a fear of change rather than a legitimate openness to fair play.

[baumy]

No it doesn't, and no it doesn't. Proposing this concept demonstrates a profound ignorance of what competition at the top level of sports actually looks like.

The concept is just bad, unless your goal is to prevent women from being able to make a living playing professional sports.

[kelseyfrog]

The thing is, we're already using a scissor for ability, just a poor one with the exact problem you describe - it renders trans women unable to make a living playing professional sports. Throwing one group under the bus for another cannot be avoided so long as sex or gender are part of sports divisions.

Please let go of the need for this.

[baumy]

You are clearly out of your depth. Have you ever competed in high level sports? Please don't speak on things you know nothing about. It takes a lot of gall to tell someone 'please let go of the need for this' when they are pointing this out. I will do no such thing, but I likely will give up trying to educate you.

I won't respond further unless you pick an example sport, and propose how your "scissor for ability" would work, in concrete detail. If you do this, I will be happy to explain why this would result in neither women _nor trans women_ having any chance to make a living as professional athletes.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

I have competed in reasonably high level sports, and my wife was US Masters duathlete of the year a few years ago (with me as her coach). I think you're wrong, though it's easy to see why.

Currently, with sex-based categories, a woman can be declared "the best in the world" and most people won't waste much time on the question "yeah, but could she beat the best men?" (granted, some will). They will accept that, e.g. she has the fastest time over 26.2 miles in the world right now, even though a few hundred or a few thousand men worldwide are faster.

If you use performance based metrics to create the categories (the way that road cycling does, for example, though still within gender divisions), that "title" would go away, and likely a woman would only be "the best in the world in division X", other than in (as you noted) some endurance, climbing and gymnastics sports where an elite subset of women could potentially be the best of "top" category.

It isn't completely obvious that this is a negative - how much of a change it would be would depend on a lot of other changes (or lack thereof) in how sport was organized. Certainly if it continued to focus on only the top division, then women would be shut out of most opportunities to be professional. But that's not inherent in the design. I do concede, however, that it is quite a likely outcome of such a category structure.

[kelseyfrog]

Let's use the present scissor and the current state of affairs, which at present excludes some women for the sake of others. Which, I'll remind you, comes with all of the problems we currently experience.

[1718627440]

His proposal is to make divisions by whatever way it would be the justest way. If that would be the man/woman division for a given sport, than keeping it is part of his proposal. His proposal is not going to be less just than the current rules by definition, but it IS a bit vague.

[2muchcoffeeman]

Doesn’t Boxing use weight classes?

[lbreakjai]

Weight classes within gender classes. Women would have no chance to compete against men of identical weight, all else equal. Men have more lean mass.

[kelseyfrog]

Sounds like lean mass would be the right way to structure divisions then.

[fourseventy]

Men are stronger, faster, have more dense bones, have bigger lungs, bigger hands, etc, etc, etc. Men and women are different in hundreds of ways it's not just 'lean body mass'. Men are better at sports than women. Do you even live in reality? Have you ever completed in anything in your life?

[kelseyfrog]

Then create those divisions. Please be rational.

[mikkupikku]

For what conceivable reason would you want to recreate the male and female division using a dozen or more proxies for sex instead of just using sex, to wind up with people being placed into the same buckets they would have been if you just went by sex in the first place? This seems ideologically motivated.

[mr_mitm]

Those divisions already exists. Most sports have different leagues. There are international leagues, national leagues, regional leagues, all the way down to hobby leagues or beer leagues. If we assign everyone into a league independent of gender, the highest leagues (the most popular and most lucrative ones) will be exclusively men and women will only be present in the lower leagues. No one can want this outcome.

[machomaster]

And then you get a situation with as many divisions as there are people and everyone get a gold medal, everyone is a winner. The true woke paradise.

Fortunately, most people don't like to live in this hell and are against clear attempts to destroy women's sports by the clueless and/or purposefully malicious activists.

[baumy]

Good lord. Absolutely nobody is going to watch boxing divisions based on lung size and bone density.

Did you actually think that lean mass would be a sensible way to separate divisions in a gender neutral fashion? That would, again, just result in women being unable to compete professionally in virtually any sport. They would be relegated to Division N, for some very large value of N. Competing alongside multitudes of biologically male amateurs, where nobody cares and nobody pays to watch. To even entertain this idea betrays a total lack of understanding of the matter at hand.

Right now you are acting like Elon Musk storming into the government and having 20 year olds cut everybody's budget. You may think you're coming in with fresh outsider perspective and an open minded way to look at things and improve them, but everyone actually involved in the domain can see a trainwreck in progress. It's not a good look.

I am quite certain it's not your intention, but you're really coming across as someone who hates women's sports, and doesn't want them to exist. On behalf of my wife and sister and a lot of the women I've known in a lifetime of playing sports - kindly keep your awful ideas to yourself. Women fought tooth and nail for the right to have their own professional sporting opportunities. Don't you dare try to take it away from them.

[fourseventy]

Dude, men are better than women at virtually every single sport. What are you talking about.