| > but gender reassignment surgery is going to look like giving people lobotomies. Unlike lobotomies, there will always be some subset of the population who needs those kinds of surgeries. That said, as they've become increasingly sought after I do sometimes wonder if there will be enough detransitiors to cause us to be more cautious about performing them as readily in as many situations. Especially at young ages. > Men and Women both compete at the same time but viewers are just aware that they have different capabilities; I doubt that'll happen. Not as long as we have sports with winners and losers. Too often it would mean that women would never (or almost never) win. Women would need to accept never stepping into the winners circle and taking the trophy home. Either that or we'd end up giving two trophies at the end of every game, one trophy for the best male winner, and another for the best female loser. At that point however, the men and women aren't really in the same competition with each other and you might as well just have two separate teams. There are also a number of sports where it would be dangerous for women and men to compete together. It works out fine when they're just taking turns running an obstacle course, but it's less fine when you've got men killing and causing serious harm to women in contact sports like rugby, MMA, and ice hockey. There are sports that many women wouldn't want to participate in at all if they had to play against men. We shouldn't deny those women the ability to play the sports they love on teams where they feel safe. That said, I've always felt that the men's teams should be open to anyone who wants to participate and can qualify (and often that's already the case today). Not to overly infantilize the fairer sex here, but imagine that same proposal only with children. We don't put 6 year olds on NFL teams for many of the same reasons. No amount of bonus points awarded to the kids for the handicap of their size/skill would make it acceptable. It'd be less safe, it'd be demoralizing for children to lose all the time, and it'd be less fun for the players and less fun to watch for spectators. People want to see the best of the best go head to head. We can compartmentalize them because even pitting teams of the best 10-12 year olds against each other is exciting. Everybody has a reasonably fair chance. What teams would even pick up the 8 year old football player when they could get even a poor adult player instead? I know that the differences between men and women athletes aren't as extreme but I think it illustrates the issues. Plus having separate teams for people of different sexes, ages, weight classes, and skill levels means that there are more games to play/watch/bet on/sell tickets for. |