Should we stop splitting sports by gender and just let everybody compete together?
Should we stop splitting sports by gender and just let everybody compete together?
No more men's and women's league, no more "gender eligibility" requirements, a common dresscode, same standards and rules for all.
Edit: since it looks like people missing the word let: the suggestion isn't to force desegregation. It's to allow it or even make it the default. Someone else made a good suggestion: segregate by attributes specific to the sport. In boxing it's weight class, in basketball it could be height, in biking it could even be doped and non doped. Sex and gender need not be the very first thing to segregate by.
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I'm all for removing gender as the first dividing line, but there needs to be some divisions in place.
As an example, in martial sports they are often separated by weight class to balance the fact that a larger, heavier person would have an advantage over a smaller, lighter person.
Without that, basketball would be dominated by the tallest people only, but that means there is no reason for anyone who isn't tall to even play the game. Break it into height classes and suddenly you meet have a league of skilled, average height players that could be very compelling to watch.
Height classes for basketball actually sounds really cool. It'd be interesting to see the different strategies that come into play when people physically can't reach the ring for example. Or at least I assume it would, I know nothing about basketball but it sounds like it'd be pretty interesting.
As the shortest person in most Basketball games during my childhood, I would have loved this so much! I enjoyed the game very much, but I always had to work twice as hard as my taller friends.
Height classes in basket ball. Hadn't thought of that. I would suggest that it be optional though, so that people who don't want to be excluded because of their height get to compete in the "common" league.