[scoofy]

The issue is that “woman’s sports” is itself intentionally discriminatory. That the issue of discrimination comes up is to be expected.

The idea of competitive sports exists in a framework of discrimination means that you will always have unhappy people.

The good news is that sports, for the most part, is mostly symbolic, and rarely affects ones livelihood.

[TurdF3rguson]

Assuming you have already procured food and shelter, everything important in your life is symbolic.

[scoofy]

Right, which is why civil rights laws tend to be about employment and housing.

[TurdF3rguson]

Civil rights are symbolic, I'm not sure I understood the point you were making.

[bluescrn]

> The issue is that “woman’s sports” is itself intentionally discriminatory.

Just about anything competitive is discriminatory. People are disadvantaged by genetics, disability/health issues, age, wealth inequality, and more.

But as a society we love competitive activities, so the best we can do is come up with rules to try and impose a reasonable amount of fairness.

[mikestorrent]

Right, the purpose is to actually arrange for legitimate competition. Ideally, we would split by whatever facets actually make sense; consider something like fighting disciplines where the split is by weight, or auto racing where it's by the class of vehicle, power-to-weight ratio, etc.

The problem is that there is only so much attention to go around, so we cannot have too many splits; depending on the sport it might just not be financially doable. We also don't want the split to be effectively "the best" and "the second best", because nobody is going to fund millions in advertising for the second best. So, a split like men/women is not surprising as a historical compromise to ensure there's still some attention on those competing in a lighter weight class.

Generically changing it to lightweights/heavyweights might be a reasonable compromise as well, or an age line, or something like that; it will depend on the sport and the market to draw that out. I wouldn't at all be surprised if the thing that makes sense is to continue with the existing split, though....

[leoedin]

I’m the same age as my wife. More or less the same height and weight too. Neither of us have a history of weight training.

I’m much stronger than her. I’ve got 2x the lung capacity she does.

If you’re going to divide competition by one trait, sex is the clear winner.

[lolc]

Just comparing genes, a male human is more closely related with all male chimps than with any female human.

[TimorousBestie]

Unfortunately pointless, mostly symbolic things attract the most hysterical reactions from people.

[peyton]

Five billion people followed the Paris Olympics. It’s actually kind of important.

[AlOwain]

I doubt that 5 billion people could watch the Olympics at all.

Where I am from, there is so little interest in the Olympics that I doubt even half my countries' population would be interested. I have never watched the Olympics ever, and amongst my family and friends, there is little to no mention of it. It is a minor cultural phenomena. This seems to me like there were large extrapolations made.

[adrian_b]

I assume that you are relatively young.

During the last few decades, for various reasons the interest in several kinds of sports events, including the Olympics, has become much lower than before. Other forms of entertainment that were popular in the past have been similarly affected.

However, when I was a child, a half of century ago, the Olympics was not a minor cultural phenomena, but a really major event in which the majority of the people all over the world would be interested.

[AlOwain]

You are very much right, I appreciate your comment.

[squigz]

How do you even measure that at that scale? I'm sure I would be counted among that 5 billion, yet my "following" was searching medal counts every couple days to see how poorly my country was doing, yet I would never describe it as "important" to me in any way.

[secondcoming]

You're most likely part of the 2bn that showed no, or a passing interest, in the Olympics.

[squigz]

I sincerely doubt more than half the population of the entire planet showed more than a passing interest in them, and I'm still curious how it'd be possible to measure that.