With the recent issues of transgender people in sports, why don’t we move some sports over to a weight-class system?
With the recent issues of transgender people in sports, why don’t we move some sports over to a weight-class system?
Obviously this won’t work for all sports, but things like football, track, soccer, it would allow for de-gendered team, even allowing athletes with the skills but not the genetically-endowed physical attributes to have a place to play.
Note: I know very little about sports and being on a sports team, so please point out anything that doesn’t make sense.
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Weight is the wrong criteria to use. Why not just have it classed by skill level. Enforce equity in school sports by mandating that a meaningful distribution of skill-based leagues are funded. This seems like a very simple solution to me that would address gender-based inequities in general as well as improve sports overall.
Because even matching skill levels, males have greater strength, endurance, cardiovascular capacity, etc, ad nauseam. They have greater glycogen stores, which means they can perform longer, and they recover faster.
Growth plates are different, bone density is different. Muscle density and structure is different.
Just look at the high school boys soccer team that tromped an Olympic women's soccer team.
Women have faster reaction times. They have a different/higher pain threshold. They can bear young.
This is just fundamental biology. Frankly it's baffling to hear your nonsensical arguments.
I literally cannot understand the argument that you’re making. People with different physiological characteristics are not going to have the same skill levels. Nothing you listed argues against my proposal. All the physiological advantages that you listed are fine. Some females may be better than some males at some tasks and vice versa. Why not let them compete against each other. Seems like creating a larger pool of competitive athletes would improve any sport. Carving out leagues that cater to different capability levels would open opportunities for more people. I’m proposing that we have more, better, more competitive and exciting sports. What exactly are you objecting to?
Oh the pride and joy I will experience when I finally get to be champion in the "Pretty shit" skill level running competition! Especially if I manage to defeat my handicapped neighbor, that prick keeps boasting about how he's been training hard every day for the past 10 years! I'm not sure you understand what competitive sports are about ...
We already basically do this with things like the differentiation between Varsity and JV. Not sure why this is such an offensive concept to some of you (just kidding, I’m pretty sure I understand exactly why y’all are offended). If competition is what is great about sports, then excluding some competitive participants because of arbitrary physiological characteristics actively diminishes the sport. But perhaps competition isn’t actually what some of you think is great about sports. I suspect that what some of you actually value about sports is to experience a kind of masterbatory high of seeing someone you can identify with, in shallow ways, achieving things that you yourself cannot.
I think it's clear that in this context, "skill" is being used to mean "achievement."