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Women's Cycling Champion is a Man

Hungry81 said:
Ok, instead of grouping races by sex or gender, we now need to group the races by Chromosome. XX,XY,extra, less, indeterminate. Problem solved. Maybe. Can you identify as different chromosome?
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I never understood why, even if we accept that gender/sex are distinct concepts, that takes the option of separating things by biological sex off the table.
 
Brainster said:
I debated putting this in sports, but it seems to be more appropriate for a social issues and current events thread.



Note that in the photo accompanying the article, McKinnon does not appear to be presenting himself as a female, and the text makes it clear that he's operating with testosterone:



So all those radio ads have been lying to me?:D

My take? This is going to be a thorny issue for sports and society. I don't doubt that elite male athletes can defeat elite female athletes in virtually every sport. You may think that few men would compete in a women's event; to a large degree that depends on the money involved. Women's tennis players make as much as men; some guy ranked 700th in the world on the men's side would probably vault easily into the top position on the women's tour. Especially if it doesn't require you to do any surgical changes or have hormone treatments.

To me, the whole point of having women and men compete separately is so that the women can experience the joy of winning or at least having a chance to win.
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Two words. Tammy Thomas

amd-tammy-thomas-jpg.jpg
 
TragicMonkey said:
Suppose your doomsday scenario occurs, and women don't win these contests.

And? What's the harm in that? Aside from hurt feelings?

Every time someone comes up with a 'valid' reason to discriminate it always turns out to be over some trivial activity. Beauty contests. Acting jobs. Winning at sport contests.
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NSFW - salty language

 
Suck it up, gender is a social construct....isn't that what they say?

End gender segregation in sports....now

Come on feminists, isn't it sexist not to? Here's your equal playing field. Have fun.

We've been trying for decades to get more girls into freestyle BMX. There was a lot of armchair philosophy about them being better at gymnasitcs or flexibility or something, so they should have a good shot at totally dominating flatland and it just hasn't happened. But I can say at least its a hell of a lot closer than it seems to be in other sports. The best female flatlanders, in no uncertain terms, beat the living crap out of me. The best female street and ramp riders on the other hand, don't stand a chance on my worst IBS dominated day, and the worst competing males in street and ramps beat the hell out of me worse than that
 
Brainster said:
... To me, the whole point of having women and men compete separately is so that the women can experience the joy of winning or at least having a chance to win.
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So by that logic, weight classes in boxing, wrestling, MMA, etc., are merely feel-good measures to allow the small fry to have a chance to win and experience the feeling of victory as well.

Should minor leagues celebrate “championships” when clearly there are superior pro teams? Why do we class athletes by age? Should we dismiss the Senior PGA tour as a bunch of desperate old has-beens competing separately just so they can experience the joy of winning or at least having a chance to win?

It’s interesting to me that accommodations that are so routinely extended to men become such a troublesome conundrum when women want to participate.
 
citizenzen said:
So by that logic, weight classes in boxing, wrestling, MMA, etc., are merely feel-good measures to allow the small fry to have a chance to win and experience the feeling of victory as well.
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Eeeerrrrrr.... yeah.

Was anybody ever under any illusions they were anything but?

I mean "feel good" might not be the exact way I'd word it but they exist so bigger guys don't just dominate the sport.
 
Ziggurat said:
This is a stupid question trying to masquerade as a clever question, and failing.

It's important to the people who enjoyed watching the sport because people value enjoyment. It's important to the people who make a living from the sport because that's how they earn the money they need to live. No deeper answer is necessary.

The fact that it may not be important to anyone else doesn't stop it from being important to them. This should be obvious, it shouldn't need explaining. If you are indifferent to the issue (and I make no claim that you shouldn't be), then the logical choice is to not participate in the discussion. Crapping on others for having an interest in something you have no interest in isn't enlightened.
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:bigclap
 
JoeMorgue said:
Eeeerrrrrr.... yeah.

Was anybody ever under any illusions they were anything but?

I mean "feel good" might not be the exact way I'd word it but they exist so bigger guys don't just dominate the sport.
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Exactly. We traditionally created accommodations of all sorts to allow men to compete and win even though they were nowhere near the best.

So there should be no question why women enjoy similar accommodations that allow them to compete and win even though they were nowhere near the best.
 
TragicMonkey said:
In the greater scheme of things exactly how important are sporting competitions? What is the downside to Person A winning Event B instead of Person C? These are games, aren't they? By definition recreation, not work?
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Exactly, why is it so important that the trans person play? Is just a game, she can go do something important.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Some people make careers from singing, playing video games, or performing magic tricks. That doesn't make those things terribly important activities for everyone.



Very likely. Unfortunately fairness is not guaranteed in life. A competitor with 0.02 percent better lung capacity has an unfair advantage over one who does not. Who decides where the lines of fairness should be drawn?
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Governing body of the sport.

More important is how they decide this. With logic and reason, or due to bullying and shame?
 
Paralympics. Different classes based on ability to win. And the public are expected to watch and enjoy the competitons - and no doubt many of them do.
 
citizenzen said:
Exactly. We traditionally created accommodations of all sorts to allow men to compete and win even though they were nowhere near the best.

So there should be no question why women enjoy similar accommodations that allow them to compete and win even though they were nowhere near the best.
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Well, I think it depends on how you define "the best". In a martial arts competition the winner of a lighter weight class may be the best technically, but because of size advantage someone in a higher weight class would dominate him. Having a way to compete to see who is has the best technique seems useful to me. Of course it's flawed because within a weight class there are also other factors that come into play: even at the same size speed, power, etc. are not necessarily equal, but we still get to see people competing more on the basis of technique than raw size.

That's similarly true of segregating the genders. Women with everything in place except for the size, strength, or other athletic advantages of men can have a place to compete on the basis of skill.
 
citizenzen said:
So by that logic, weight classes in boxing, wrestling, MMA, etc., are merely feel-good measures to allow the small fry to have a chance to win and experience the feeling of victory as well.

Should minor leagues celebrate “championships” when clearly there are superior pro teams? Why do we class athletes by age? Should we dismiss the Senior PGA tour as a bunch of desperate old has-beens competing separately just so they can experience the joy of winning or at least having a chance to win?
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Yes, no, to give athlletes who are young or past prime a chance and yes, although in the case of the PGA Tour they have the advantage of being known quantities.

It’s interesting to me that accommodations that are so routinely extended to men become such a troublesome conundrum when women want to participate.
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What?
 
Pterodactyl said:
The deliberative body that oversees the sport I assume.
I think everyone understands that fairness isn't guaranteed. The heart of the debate is to whom do you award the fairness?

The transgender who wants to be treated as a female, or the female who wants to compete against only other females.
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Surely just up to the governing body of whatever sport says? Many sports governing bodies have had to make rules about who is eligible for decades based on "biology" (East German woman's shot putters come to mind).

It will probably take a few years but I'm sure they'll come up with new and still arbitrary rules and the fuss will disappear.
 
MikeG said:
Pretty damned important to the people taking part. Like all-encompassing. More hours and effort than anyone in a normal job ever puts in. The one expectation that they all have is that they'll be competing on an equal footing. That there'll be fairness.
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But fairness is entirely a personal view, is it fair that one person competing in a sport can dedicate 100 % of their time because they have a trust fund that supports them whilst someone else has to to work full time so can only dedicate 30% of their time?

Sport is choc-a-bloc with unfairness from top to bottom yet is doesn't seem to suffer from a lack of participation or interest.
 
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