With the recent issues of transgender people in sports, why don’t we move some sports over to a weight-class system?

MapleEngineer , 12 days ago

The issue isn't gender. Gender is a social construct. The issue is sex. Female sports were always intended to be for female athletes. Female athletes who choose to play female sports to have a more level playing field and to play against other female athletes find it unfair to be forced to play against male athletes playing female sports. Trans women are women but they aren't female.

flying_sheep , 12 days ago

Nah, that's simply not true if you look at the actual data about how well trans athletes perform.

MapleEngineer , 12 days ago

What's not true? That trans women aren't female? That's undeniably true. That female atheletes who choose to play female sports to have a more even playing field and to play against other female atheletes find being forced to play against male atheletes unfair? That's undeniably true as well. That female sports were intented for female atheletes? That's undeniably true. That gender is a social construct? I mean...that's a central pillar of the platform so we have to agree that that's true.

Your beliefs don't change reality and simply waving your hand in the air and declaring undeniable truths to be untrue does NOT make them untrue.

flying_sheep , 12 days ago

That cis women playing against trans women is unfair. As said above, the actual data proves that this is not the case. Of course it's undeniably true that reactionary dudes (and maybe even women) feel like things are unfair, but the actual facts invalidate that feeling.

The discretized, simplified middle school biology you're invoking here is simply not a precise enough model to depict reality.

Trans women aren't “male” from a muscle development perspective, as they don't have a male hormone profile lol.

MapleEngineer , 12 days ago

Go back and point to ANYWHERE that I said that it was unfair for trans women atheletes to play against female atheletes. I'll wait...

No? I didn't say that. You made that up. What I said was that female atheletes who choose to play female sports to have a more level playing field and to play against other female athelets feel that it's unfrair to be forced to play against male atheletes playing female sports.

THAT is absolutely undeniably true.

Female atheletes understandably feel that it is unfair to have male atheletes breaking female atheletic records by such margins that no female athelete will ever be able to break them.

petrol_sniff_king , 12 days ago

What are you even talking about, then? "The problem is sex, but it isn't sex actually"?

If trans women can play in women's leagues just fine (after hormonal treatment I think is the typical rule), what is "females don't want to play with males" supposed to mean?

Is it just the hormonal treatment? You have to understand how confusing it is to phrase this point that way.

MapleEngineer , 12 days ago

It's only confusing to you because it doesn't fit into your narrative and your carefuly rehearsed arguements don't work.

petrol_sniff_king , 12 days ago

My friend,

Trans women are women but they aren't female.

Female atheletes understandably feel that it is unfair to have male atheletes breaking female atheletic records

where I said that it was unfair for trans women atheletes to play against female atheletes.

Explain to me how I am supposed to resolve these.

If you're not anti trans athletes, then whatever, but come on.

MapleEngineer , 12 days ago

Trans women are women but they aren't female. Gender is a social construct. Sex is not. You can choose to be a woman but that doesn't make you female.

Female atheletes understandably feel that it is unfair to have male atheletes breaking female athletic records. I mean...that's pretty obvious, isn't it?

I'm trying to explain to you why a female athelete who chose to play a female sport to have a more level playing field and to play against other female atheletes might feel that is is unfair to be forced to play against a male athelete and why they might feel that it is unfair to have a male athelete break a female athletics record by such a margin that no female athelete could ever hope fo break it again.

This is not a difficult concept. Gender is a social construct but we're not talking about gender. We're talking about male and female. A male can decide to identify as a woman but she can never be female. A female can decide to identify as a man but he can never be male. You can be equally socially but you will always be different sexually. That's just reality.

You want to live as a woman and be called a woman I'm totally on board with that. You just can't force people to believe that you've magically changed sexes because you haven't.

You can want against all want for it to be different but it isn't and it never will be.

I am not transphobic. Not by the longest of shots and labelling anyone who doesn't buy into the group think as a transphobe completely devalues anything else you might say. I absolutely believe in social equality but trans women and females will never be the same thing.

vatlark Mod , 9 days ago (edited 8 days ago)

This post was reported for transphobia. Specifics weren't given. It seems like you use the term "female" to mean someone that was assigned female at birth. I'm not sure if language is changing in this area and I certainly don't know technical definitions. Female does seemed to be used as a gender identity as well. For example the opening paragraph here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_woman

I think many cultures are learning how to be more welcoming to people from all walks of life, which is great, and conversations like this one are good for discussing some of the nuance.

Please keep things civil and assume the best of other's intentions. We are all learning. We are all human.

Edit: spelling

MapleEngineer , 9 days ago

I meant "female" in the context of biological sex as opposed to the social construct of gender as in, "woman" which may be a person who is either male or female. I am FAR from a transphobe and using the word and the reporting system on Lemmy as a bludgeon to try to silence anyone who doesn't buy into the extremist group think utterly devalues anything else that the extremists say. One of my oldest friends is a trans woman. She would VERY much disagree that I am a transphobe. My lesbian daughter whose trans and non-binary friends I interact with every day would also very much disagree.

I would like to counter report this as a false report by an extremist pushing a political agenda and trying to silence anyone who has different ideas than them.

vatlark Mod , 9 days ago

It sounds like you have a lot of experiences that others could learn from, but you will likely push people away if you attack them directly (calling them extremist) rather than only attacking their positions.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

One tactic that I like is asking them questions that lead them to point out the flaws in their own arguments. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method

Would you be more or less likely to learn from someone that calls you an extremist?

MapleEngineer , 9 days ago (edited 8 days ago)

I have a lot of experience and I am very LGBTQ+ friendly. I only label as extremists those who push beyond the bounds of, "Everyone has rights, gender is a social construct and you can identify as whatever you want" into denying that male and female are things or claiming that identifying as a woman somehow magically makes you female. The whole, "You can't question what we believe or you're a transphobe" is EXACTLY the same as, "You can't question the actions of the state of Israel or you're an antisemite." It's utter nonsense. Those are both examples of extremism.

MapleEngineer , 9 days ago (edited 8 days ago)

Sorry...I didn't answer these parts of your comment.

One tactic that I like is asking them questions that lead them to point out the flaws in their own arguments. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method

They have a carefully rehearsed circular logical set of arguments that are self-confirming. I can explain and explain and explain but it doesn't confirm their bias so they just keep going around in circles. I don't expect to reach them but I may help someone who isn't so closed minded to understand.

My daughter goes to pride festivals every year as a vendor in the market. Last year was hopping. This year was dead. My wife and I wondered if all the pushing to force biological males into the places that biological females fought for decades to get wasn't turning a lot of people off. That would be extremely sad since the LGBTQ+ community has worked so hard to get to where it is now.

Would you be more or less likely to learn from someone that calls you an extremist?

I have Asperger's so I don't care what people call me (other than calling me a transphobe or antisemite with the new definitions written by the extremists.) If they're making a cogent argument I will generally respond in kind.

Phegan , 12 days ago

The recent issue with transgender people in sports is manufactured as a tool to spread trans hate. It's a non issue that preys on Americans's sense of fairness.

Cosmicomical , 12 days ago

For team sports you can assign a point value to each player and force the team to deploy a maximum total value, like for armies in WH40K

cupcakezealot , 13 days ago

or why don't we just keep everything as is because it's not a big fucking deal despite what bigots say

if you really wanted to "fix" or "save" womens sport, just start by fucking paying them the same as men and giving women's sport the same attention on tv

Kolanaki , 13 days ago

I say fuck it and let everyone compete together. Ain't no reason men and women couldn't compete with each other in baseball, basketball, hockey, tennis, golf, etc. Even if you believed men are capable of being bigger and supporting more muscle, there's tons of sports where that isn't going to be the most useful thing to win.

How would you know this gender or that gender is better anyway unless you actually let everyone compete together, regardless of what's in their pants or their heart?

kava , 13 days ago

Male sports typically don't have a gender requirement. Women just can't compete. This is why women's leagues were created. So they can compete with people around similar physical potential.

Look at chess for example. Anyone can compete in the world open, but you'll see 98~99% men. So, they make a woman's league.

Women have the option of playing in both. This is the same for most sports.

Kolanaki , 12 days ago

Using chess as an example after saying women wouldn't be able to compete makes it seem like you believe men and women aren't even on even ground with intelligence and that's absolute fucking bullshit.

kava , 12 days ago

Men and women are the same intelligence on average. There are more men at the extremes of the distribution curve for certain attributes, though. And when you are talking about chess players, you are taking a sample of the ends of the distribution curve.

There's also evidence that chess ability and visiospatial cognitive ability are positively correlated with chess ability. Men tend to perform better than woman on average. (Stuff like rotating imaginary 3d shapes for example)

This may be partially why we only see 42 out of 2500 worldwide grandmasters being women. Men may only perform 2.5~4% better, but when you're talking about the extremes (best chess players in world) that small % means a lot.

Tldr: It's not because they aren't on equal intelligence. Women for example score better on verbal cognition tests.

And on average men and women have the same IQ

petrol_sniff_king , 12 days ago

Is any of this true? Or is it just post-hoc, evo-psych bullshit taken from the era of scientific racism to justify the results men see after gatekeeping their very special hobby.

Oh, hi, wikipedia.

kava , 12 days ago

Every claim I've made can be double checked by going on Google scholar or libgen. You'll find multiple studies and recent studies.

petrol_sniff_king , 12 days ago

And the ones I've made can be double-checked by taking a sociology class.

If I am to be charitable, I think you're just glazing over the elephant in the room. When a little girl is told "they're not as able," they're not as likely to continue. If only 13% of players are women at all, then yeah, duh, they won't be represented in the grandmasters.

kava , 11 days ago

Women make up roughly 15% of USCF members yet they only make up roughly 1.5% of grandmasters.

That means they are underrepresented by about an order of magnitude. Women on average are about 200 ELO lower than men.  It’s a very large difference and there has been research done to figure out why.

There are no real conclusive findings (as with much of this type of sociological research) but we have evidence for various different reasons. One, women are not encouraged to play chess at the same level that men are. Similar reason that more men go into Computer Science or Physics. It’s not a built in biological difference, but a cultural one.

Another one is that women are younger by 11 years on average, so their ratings haven’t peaked yet. So we should see this gap close in the coming decades. There are also various other inequities between men and women (like for example stereotype threat).

So that explains at least some of the gap. What I’m trying to say is that beyond these factors, there is also a biological difference that results in men being overrepresented in the top chess players. Notice I’m not saying average chess players, but specifically the best in the world (the grandmasters).

Why?

Well, there’s evidence for something called the "greater male variability hypothesis”. Think of every person sitting somewhere on a normal distribution. Pick a trait like aggressiveness or competitiveness.

There are the extremes on both sides of the bell curve. On the left, super passive and on the right super aggressive. Most people clump at the mean, in the center of the bell curve.

There’s evidence that more women cluster around the mean relative to men. Men are overrepresented at the extremes of the bell curve, even though the average is the same as women. Only by a little bit, but it’s statistically significant. That means that if you took a sample of all the super-aggressive and super-passive people, the majority would be men.

When you look at top chess players, they are more likely to have extreme attributes (being ultra-competitive for example helps you get better at chess).

This same effect is also theorized to be why we see that vast majority of prisoners are male. Vast majority of homeless, etc. Because extreme attributes tend to either be really good or really bad.

So that’s one biological difference. The other is the visospatial intelligence. Men tend to score better on visospatial tests when compared to women. This effect is already visible by 2 or 3 months of age, so it’s unlikely to be some sort of cultural effect.

Visiospatial cognitive ability is positively correlated with chess ability. Another biological difference between men and women that likely has some non-zero effect on chess ability.

So why are women underrepresented in grandmasters when compared to males? There is evidence for both

a) external social factors

and

b) innate biological factors

Nobody knows what % of the difference is due to a) or b). We just know there is some non-zero effect for both.

I encourage you to fact check every claim I’ve made. Don’t just look for one  research paper that confirms your argument. Each claim I’ve made I’ve seen multiple studies on. There are studies that will say the opposite, but look at it in aggregate. Look at metaanalysis studies.

kilgore_trout , 13 days ago

soccer

"Male" soccer is not restricted to men. Both genders are allowed. There are only men because they outperform women.

edit: Although FIFA forbids women from access to the main World Cup. Also the statement above is true generally, but not everywhere.

LifeInMultipleChoice , 13 days ago

The NFL isn't male only either. Not supporting anything but agreeing that some sports are segregated by performance

vierbl00m , 13 days ago

ok cool what about the op's thoughts?

kava , 13 days ago

He addresses them with that statement. There are plenty of women that are in similar weight classes as men but you don't see any in male sports.

Even though male sports does not have a gender requirement. This is essentially an indirect way of saying that there are biological differences between male and female that go beyond weight.

There are various differences you could point out. Males have lower body fat %, which means more muscle. Their bones are shaped differently and are more dense. Men tend to be more aggressive and competitive. Men tend to have stronger bones, joints, tendons, and ligaments.

Men have more red blood cells, their hearts are bigger so they can pump more blood, and greater lung volume relative to body mass. So even a male and women same weight and height the man will be able to circulate oxygen more quickly.

There are many more examples if you go do some reading.

One of the differences may not be huge by themselves. But when you take the differences above and combine them, it creates a situation where in almost all sports, men play virtually unopposed by women.

Look up the Serena Williams interview. She's undoubtedly the best female player in the world. She doesn't stand a chance against a the 203rd best tennis male player.

This difference even applies to areas like chess. The highest ranking a woman ever got was 6th in the world, Judith Pulgar. Amazing player, but out of the 2500 or so grandmasters in the world, 42 are women.

Some of these differences can be explained by women around the world not being encouraged to play chess, but that does not explain all.

There are large biological differences when you look at the population in a statistical sense. And when you look at the most extreme samples from the edge of the normal distribution.. that's where the best athletes / chess players are going to come from.

JovialMicrobial , 13 days ago

The chess one isnt quite right. There's been experiments where if a woman player didn't know her opponent was a man she would perform better. It's called stereotype threat phenomenon.

It also happens when a male player knowingly goes up against someone higher in the league than himself and he performs below his own standard average.

Basically people in general psyche themselves out of their best performance when going against someone they perceive to be better than them whether that's factual or not. Confidence and undermining confidence can change a whole lot about how a person does in any given game or task.

kava , 13 days ago

You think that accounts for the differences? 42 of 2500 grandmasters are women because all the women are scared and intimidated of the men?

Maybe this plays some small effect but I doubt it's statistically significant enough in this context

Like you said, it happens to men playing higher rated men. In order to go up in ranking, you need to play and beat progressively higher rated opponents.

By the very nature of being a high level player, that player would have had to go through that.

JovialMicrobial , 13 days ago

It's a phenomenon that's been observed across multiple sports, not just between men and women chess players.
It's particularly poignant in men vs women's chess... because of people repeatedly telling women they are inherently worse than men. Like you are doing right now.

There's been multiple studies on this. So yes, I side with the data that stereotype threat phenomenon has a significant impact on women's performance in chess against men.

kava , 13 days ago

Show me. Link me a couple.

I don't think this effect can account for more than a small fraction of the difference. Let's look at the research. I couldn't find anything from a quick search but maybe I'm using wrong terms.

LordGimp , 13 days ago

The bigger difference imo is the brain development due to hormones in the womb. Old TLC program had a whole section on this suggesting it's why STEM fields are generally male dominated. Turns out hormones that determine biological gender also very much effect the development of the brain, and the male chemicals tend to develop the spatial reasoning part of the brain faster/more thoroughly than those who get don't get the male chemicals and stay female. This average higher spatial reasoning capacity creates an advantage in tasks or objectives where complex visualizations are necessary, like visualizing chess moves in your head.

It's not some massive, overwhelming difference, but it's enough to tilt the table. Play out that average enough and you have 42 women out of 2500 chess grandmasters

zbyte64 , 12 days ago

TLC is name I have not heard on a long time. Did they really use the term "biological gender"?

LordGimp , 12 days ago

Bro they had a lot of wild shit back in the day. I remember that term specifically because they couldn't use the word "sex" on the program and had to bend over backwards using every other possible phrase.

uis , 12 days ago

Chess? What percent of woman players are GMs and what percent of male players are GMs? Because it sounds like sampling bias.

kava , 12 days ago

Women make up roughly 15% of US Chess Federation members. They make up roughly 1.5% of grandmasters.

That's an order of magnitude difference.

givesomefucks , 12 days ago

Here's a podcast about a study

https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/mens-chess-superiority-explained-08-12-29/

Normally I'd just link studies...

But I feel like if you're this opinionated about things we figured out long ago, maybe listening would help more than reading.

Because it wouldn't have taken much for you to Google this at some point and realize we've been studying this for decades, and maybe, just maybe, science is better than your assumptions.

There are a lot of factors in play, and you seem to think it's because of...

What exactly?

Like it seems like you're just arguing women are bad at chess?

kava , 12 days ago

I've read multiple papers on this topic. I'm a 2000 rated player and have tutored girls in chess. This is an interest of mine.

There is a very large gap in performance. The research overall implies a complex variety of factors. This includes what you mentioned, along with other inequities. It also includes the fact that women players are roughly 11 years younger on average and therefore haven't peaked yet, which will account for some.

But there is evidence that there is also an innate biological difference. Men score better on visuospatial intelligence tests when compared to women. Chess, especially at a high level, involves a lot of this type of thinking.

I'm not arguing that women are bad at chess. Humans are individuals and there are varying levels of players in both genders.

Just that if you look at the extremes (which the top chess players will be) you're going to see a higher level of males even if we fixed all of the inequities currently influencing the gender gap in chess.

We don't know if the 10x difference is 5% due to biology or 50% due to biology. But we know it's a non zero number

Essentially I used it as an example in the wider context of why we have women's leagues and men's league in sports.

doingthestuff , 13 days ago

Just create a trans league. Trans men and trans women all in the same league. Id watch that shit, it would make money. So why don't we have this yet?

reddithalation , 13 days ago

because lots of (most?) trans people don't want to be "trans", they want to fit in with the gender they know they are, and being labeled as not a real man or woman in the normal sports leagues, but a trans man or woman in the trans league, is insulting.

mctoasterson , 13 days ago

Just make an "open class" where any identification, body mods, and performance enhancing drugs are unregulated. The best athletes that science can create.

someguy3 , 13 days ago

Everyone would die of heart attacks. I'm glad no one is trying this, the death rate would be through the roof.

PeriodicallyPedantic , 13 days ago

You're wrong, they are trying it. Search for the Enhanced Games

Vilian , 12 days ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumo

sumo wrestlers life expectancy is 15 years shorter than an average japanese, they were already doing that

PeriodicallyPedantic , 12 days ago

That's not due to performance enhancing drugs and body mods though, right? That's due to diet and associated lifestyle.

Although I think I still see your point; some sports not only encourage but require the top echelon of the sport to sacrifice their long-term health for the sake of a competitive edge.
I'd use sumo as a cautionary tale as to why it's a bad idea, rather than proof that athletes are willing to make that sacrifice.

bear , 14 days ago

Because a man tends to be stronger, faster, and more athletic than a woman of the same weight. It won't work for football, track, or soccer.

possiblylinux127 , 13 days ago

It would work for marathons though. Figure that out

jimbolauski , 12 days ago

Testosterone also increases red blood cell count, so even male endurance athletes have an advantage. Look at Tigst Assefa who holds the women's World record for a marathon at 2:11, she's 120 lbs, the top 5 male marathon runners are all at 120 lbs too and run 10 minutes faster.

Steve , 14 days ago

The purpose is to oppress the queers, logical compromises are not welcome.

ShareMySims , 14 days ago

Ding ding ding, we have a winner.

(edit to be completely clear: being queer myself, this is not something I am celebrating, just pointing out that you have the correct answer)

Ashyr , 14 days ago

I think because guys are pound for pound stronger than girls. I've read stories on Reddit years ago by girls who are wrestlers or fighters and get into a playful tussle with some random guy and they describe it as terrifying.