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0 pointsfxwin3mo ago0 comments

> It’s also mighty interesting how it’s always the male division that’s open, until you happen to have a sport where women are beating men at it, and then suddenly it’s the women’s division that’s the open one! (See shooting.)

Just in case you're referring to Zhang Shan winning Gold in 1992: the decision to bar women from competing in the 1996 Olympics was made before Zhang had won her medal. [0]

> Until men with genetic anomalies are equally banned from sports (for example, being an outlier in height for basketball)

We don't have height categories, we have categories based on sex. We have categories based on sex because there are physical difference caused by difference in sex that lead to advantages in sports competitions. As such, people who have physical advantages over others based on their difference in sex (e.g. going through male puberty vs. female puberty) shouldn't be able to compete in the category created to protect participants from precisely those differences.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Shan#cite_ref-nyt_4-0

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jakeinspace3mo ago

I would argue that it's the formerly presumed binary nature of sex/gender that made it a logical split for all sports. While marital arts and weightlifting tend to seperate by weight as well, that is because those particular events are particularly biased toward muscle mass and height/reach by proxy. Most sports are less clearly advantaged by size (soccer, for example). You just can't practically divide entire team sports by gradations of height, because there aren't enough players in a school for more than a few squads.

If you wanted to divide by height or weight in a binary fashion to reduce the number of teams, then obviously you'll just have some sports where everyone in the under-6' team is 5'11.5, which seems not optimal and unfair.

I wish there was a good solution.

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kixiQu3mo ago

> We don't have height categories, we have categories based on sex.

I mean, we do have weight categories in combat sports, right? I don't see why we couldn't come up with similarly neutral categories if we think it's good to segment people out by physical advantages. The parent comment is making a good point, though: it feels like some people care a lot about physical advantages that map onto gender stuff they care about, and not a lot about weird genetic anomalies that provide physical advantages that aren't gendered.

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2 comments · 2 top-level

jakeinspace3mo ago

I wish there was a good solution.

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kixiQu3mo ago

> We don't have height categories, we have categories based on sex.

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