Transgender man wins women's 100 yd and 400 yd freestyle races.

Nope. I mean - straight up, you’re asking for my opinion, and that’s my opinion if the only thing that were to change is that sports competitions were no longer segregated by sex. There are 3.5 billion men in the world who will never achieve that kind of velocity either, and attributing the feat solely to biology is like taking credit for something that someone else has achieved by virtue of the fact that one shares characteristics in common with them.

Yes but if you step all the way down through those 3.5billion men and women and match them together based on training or fitness levels broadly evenly you still get the same results right through. Probably more women would beat men the closer you get to amateur level or novice level runners I suppose but it doesn’t just apply to elite level athletes. Maybe the spirit of sporting success by default flies in the face of equality. Not everyone can do it to a decent level.

The spirit of any kind of success flies in the face of equality of outcome. The spirit of sports, just like any other domain, is dependent upon equality of opportunity. What’s unsportsmanlike is being bitter about having lost and claiming your competition has a ‘biological advantage’. It’s not any different to a man claiming they lost out on a role in a company if a woman succeeds in attaining the role - he sees her sex as a ‘biological advantage’, as though he’s been robbed of something he imagines he is entitled to by virtue of his sex, as though sex is the only relevant factor.

You can imagine if the ‘biological advantage’ argument ever got legs how it could be used to argue for the exclusion of anyone who wins in competition. Even @Frank Bullitt uses it above where he’d have been grand leaving it at males, but he introduced the ethnic element, and on this occasion at least, he is factually correct -

Wells remains the last white male athlete without African ancestry to win the 100 metres at the Olympics.

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

I know what you said Frank, I didn’t say they were exclusively of West African descent either. I was pointing to the fact that the last white male to win the 100m at the Olympics was Alan Wells in 1980. I know well what your problem is - your logic has a fundamental flaw. You’re now trying the same badgering tactic with a different question which I never argued in the first place.

That’s your idea of plain English? It’s pointless continuing this conversation with you when it’s become evident beyond any reasonable doubt that you’re going to continue to post in bad faith.

You are right, I do find it enjoyable to make them trip over their own words at least.

How would more women beat men the closer you get to amateur level sport?

You are saying here that the average male club sprinter is slower than the average female club sprinter, if we compare across equal age groups?

Thats just entirely not true.

But maybe I am misunderstanding what you are saying.

Apologies if so.

could happen on a very small scale, but if you took the best male & female club sprinter at any any club aged 25, 35 and 45 and raced over 100m, the male sprinter would win in the overwhelming majority of cases.

98% plus.

If you compared club sprinters at ages 8, 9 and 10, you would see a much more even split.

still in favour of boys, but maybe more like 60%

They’re not missing it, because it’s not there, and because it’s not there, the strawman which followed - ‘why should we be lauding them at all?’ just doesn’t arise either.

Segregation by gender, or sex, whichever, take your pick, was never a necessity of biology or physiology in the first place, certainly not if one were actually interested in competition. We’re all familiar by now with the arguments which were used to prohibit women from competing in sports, that it was solely the domain of men and all the rest of it.

And that’s where the idea of the 3.5 billion men comes in - of those men, only a mere handful can do what they do. It’s also why the argument that there would be any decline in women’s participation in sports just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny - data shows that women’s participation in sports is increasing, as a result of initiatives to encourage their participation in sports. Unless there were some cataclysmic world changing event that women disappeared from the planet, women and women’s sports, and indeed men’s sports, will continue to thrive.

That is the objective reality, and more to the point - given what we know from history of the obstacles and barriers women have faced in sports and their ability to overcome those obstacles and barriers and continue to participate in sports, and the fact that there are only a handful of women who can do what they do, anyone pronouncing a decline in women’s participation in sports is catastrophising. I’d argue they had departed from reality but that’s kinda “I know you are but what am I?”, in response to the argument that an opposing viewpoint isn’t based upon objective reality.

Where the argument comes from is pretty simple - objectively, discrimination should be limited to circumstances where it is the only reasonable means of achieving a legitimate aim, with the idea that everyone should be treated as equals regardless of their gender or sex, because those are not the impediments to their participation in sports, no more than they are impediments in employment, housing, education, healthcare, etc. Sports are another means of participating in society which everyone should have the freedom to enjoy, and if they’re a competitive sort, they won’t need a morbidly obese, middle-aged fart who’s had his day telling them they need to try harder, they’ll know what they need to do themselves already, not to mention they’ll perceive it to be condescending anyway, and rightly so.

Now if only I could convince my son to pick any other sports besides equestrian, that’d be great, because I’m terrified of horses. Why couldn’t he just have been into football like any other normal teenage delinquent? 😒

You’re presenting an entirely false narrative though Wibbs while dismissing pretty much everything I’ve said out of hand. Even if it were Stevie Wonder, I’d bet he could still knock out a few bars of “what you’re presenting there isn’t science!” I mean he could like 😁

Trans agendas or whatever, the culture wars BS that goes on in countries with more wealth than they know what to do with? The concept isn’t limited to first world countries in fairness, it exists entirely separately from the political baggage in other cultures which aren’t as developed as our own, and when we’re talking about global organisations like the IOC, WA, etc, and the numerous international federations that govern sports, pretending that science supports your opinion and that’s the end of the discussion, is myopic at best.

But if there’s one piece of advice you’d always give anyone, it’s to follow the money, and when it comes to this stuff it seems you’ve a bit of a blind spot - if I were following a money trail, the one that runs through the IOC, WADA and CAS is smelling like fcuking weed! 😂

https://amp.theguardian.com/sport/2022/feb/21/the-olympics-face-an-existential-crisis-an-american-led-effort-could-save-them

As for the legalities involved- for every banned substance, there are therapeutic medical exemptions, which is useful for elite athletes who are athsmatic; higher incidence rate among athletes than among the general public, apparently (I’d love to see that data) -

https://amp.theguardian.com/sport/2016/sep/15/tue-fancy-bears-wada-leaks

And if WADA do catch you, provided you’re a child, you’ll probably get off lightly enough, even if you still have to face the music from your coach -

https://amp.theguardian.com/sport/2022/feb/14/kamila-valieva-free-to-compete-at-winter-olympics-after-provisional-doping-suspension-overturned

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/feb/18/tremendous-coldness-ioc-president-slams-kamila-valievas-entourage-over-skaters-treatment

Don’t expect that the President of the IOC would always have your back though, especially when it comes to being treated fairly when you’re no longer a child. If you’re of the opinion that the trans ideology is bullshìt (a fair point!), well we’ve already seen Seb’s attempt at diversity and inclusion performative nonsense, but Bach’s got him beaten -

The Olympic Games cannot prevent wars and conflicts. Nor can they address all the political and social challenges in our world. But they can set an example for a world where everyone respects the same rules and one another. They can inspire us to solve problems in friendshipand solidarity. They can build bridges leading to better understanding among people. In this way, they can open the door to peace.

The Olympics are a reaffirmation of our shared humanity and contribute to unity in all our diversity. As I learned through personal experience, ensuring that the Olympic Games can unfold this magic and unite the entire world in peace is something worth fighting for every day.

https://amp.theguardian.com/sport/2020/oct/24/the-olympics-are-about-diversity-and-unity-not-politics-and-profit-boycotts-dont-work-thomas-bach

Some whiff off that! 😁

I think you get the point though - it’s fcukall to do with science, but at least competitors aren’t expected to participate naked!

It would be crazy to suggest the male/female distinction is some kind of human invention.

Relax plodder, that’s not what I’m saying at all; in fact I wouldn’t nearly be so picky as yourself and I can say we can determine sex with 100% accuracy. We’ve never needed science to do that though, so you can rest assured too that I suffer no illusions about sex.

The invention is the classification system, benign in and of itself, but without question, it is the classification system has been used by some people to their advantage to further their own personal goals. It’s the implications of what they try to argue, which aren’t supported by scientific evidence.

It would indeed be crazy if we were to take a small cohort of scientists seriously (because they’re scientists) who would try to argue that dolphins are people too -

https://www.science.org/content/article/dolphin-person

And it would be just as ridiculous to characterise observed phenomena according to our own prior knowledge and understanding, and limit or even forego having to do actual research related to the phenomenon under observation. That kind of laziness, or just plain ignorance and not all that bothered about understanding the phenomenon, is just irresponsible and unethical IMO -

https://face2faceafrica.com/article/why-male-menstruation-was-an-expected-occurrence-in-egypt-in-the-1900s/amp

It’s the implications I’m more concerned with, than the idea of how inconvenient it is argued it would be to change the rules to incorporate new information, and pretending that the rules of any sports organisation were ever based upon scientific consensus to begin with, or that they must not change, or the sport as we know it will be ruined and just won’t be as entertaining or enjoyable any more.

I watched Matt Walsh's 'What is a Woman?' documentary last night, where he goes around asking various experts and people in the street this question and seeing what answer they give. At least, that's generally the first half. Seeing the Daily Wire logo at the beginning and the second half, makes it clear that this is not a neutral documentary and it ends up with Walsh giving an impassioned speech to a school board meeting about what he sees as the wrongs of transgender ideology in education, and I'd lost a lot of interest through the latter phase when he was talking to people about how 'furry' is a gender identity and playing up to the idea of litterboxes in schools.

The first half, though, was interesting in the sense of the answers this central question elicited. There certainly wasn't anything definitive offered. There were some long winded explanations given as it relates to the relationship between sex, gender and sociology. Although Walsh is being selective with his editing at times in this section of the documentary, it seems like this term is something you cannot easily define. I think because for most of human history, a man was considered to be an adult male and a woman was considered to be an adult female and there wasn't a conversation about definitions beyond that. What appears to be driving a lot of this culture war is the new idea that if you consider yourself to be a woman or man then you literally are that in not only a social sense where you are accepted as such by your peers, but also entitled to that legal categorisation, regardless of your physiology. Even then, I think the transgender debate, as it currently stands is only a microcosm of a larger debate about identity and whether anyone is actually anything or could be anything if they just consider themselves to be that thing. If one can be literally a woman or a man just be considering themselves as such, can a person literally be another race just by considering themselves to be so? Can they be literally another age just by saying so? Is there much that is solid or is it all subjective?