Yeah, that's true! But just thinking out loud now, variations in body shape and size are an occupartional hazard of competitive athletics, and swimming is one of those categories. What do we do with a person like Michael Phelps, with his famous wing span? Elite male swimmers half his size had to compete against him, knowing they didn't stand a chance. He was an outlier in terms of size, but also in terms of talent. Generally speaking, competitive athletes will gravitate towards a sport that their body type is best suited for but sometimes the superior biology of an opponent will just win out. But height isn't everything. Look at how tall and muscular Lia Thomas is. He still couldn't swim his way out of a paper bag when competing against other men.
As a rule, I'm completely opposed to allowing males to compete against females in any context. I'm even opposed to Caster Semenya competing in women's sports, because Semenya has XY chromosomes, and the Y is obviously expressed. Semenya is not CAIS. But CAIS strikes me as a very ambiguous intersex category in which an occasional superiority in height or strength might not make the individual a true outlier. Probably, for the sake of consistency, they should be banned from women's athletics, but I have experience some ambivalence saying that.
Caster Semenya was a 5-alpha-reductase male who should never have been allowed to compete with actual women. However, that's not a very PC view. In real life, somehow the Associated Press, Reuters, NY Times, NPR, Washington Post, and BBC failed to mention that Caster Semenya has XY chromosomes. I am sure that the failings of the Soviet state were not mentioned under Stalin either.
Yeah, not PC. But that has never been me. I discovered Semenya's status by doing a lot of digging. The information is out there, but it's hard to locate. To this day most people think Semenya is a woman with naturally higher testosterone.
Sex categories, age categories, and weight categories are all asymmetrically exclusionary in sports. An Under -15 league can have a 12 year old player, but not a 16 year old player.
A 185lb fight match can have a fighter show up weighing 180lbs, but not 190 lbs. For sex categories, the men's division can have people with extra X chromosomes, but the women's division can't sustain competitors with extra Y chromosomes. I think that's the only way to make it work.
Yes, you are right. Consistency matters, and we have to draw the line somewhere. The formulas for professional athletics are tried and true, and we should simply abide by them.
Height is also an advantage in swimming
Yeah, that's true! But just thinking out loud now, variations in body shape and size are an occupartional hazard of competitive athletics, and swimming is one of those categories. What do we do with a person like Michael Phelps, with his famous wing span? Elite male swimmers half his size had to compete against him, knowing they didn't stand a chance. He was an outlier in terms of size, but also in terms of talent. Generally speaking, competitive athletes will gravitate towards a sport that their body type is best suited for but sometimes the superior biology of an opponent will just win out. But height isn't everything. Look at how tall and muscular Lia Thomas is. He still couldn't swim his way out of a paper bag when competing against other men.
As a rule, I'm completely opposed to allowing males to compete against females in any context. I'm even opposed to Caster Semenya competing in women's sports, because Semenya has XY chromosomes, and the Y is obviously expressed. Semenya is not CAIS. But CAIS strikes me as a very ambiguous intersex category in which an occasional superiority in height or strength might not make the individual a true outlier. Probably, for the sake of consistency, they should be banned from women's athletics, but I have experience some ambivalence saying that.
Caster Semenya was a 5-alpha-reductase male who should never have been allowed to compete with actual women. However, that's not a very PC view. In real life, somehow the Associated Press, Reuters, NY Times, NPR, Washington Post, and BBC failed to mention that Caster Semenya has XY chromosomes. I am sure that the failings of the Soviet state were not mentioned under Stalin either.
Yeah, not PC. But that has never been me. I discovered Semenya's status by doing a lot of digging. The information is out there, but it's hard to locate. To this day most people think Semenya is a woman with naturally higher testosterone.
Sex categories, age categories, and weight categories are all asymmetrically exclusionary in sports. An Under -15 league can have a 12 year old player, but not a 16 year old player.
A 185lb fight match can have a fighter show up weighing 180lbs, but not 190 lbs. For sex categories, the men's division can have people with extra X chromosomes, but the women's division can't sustain competitors with extra Y chromosomes. I think that's the only way to make it work.
Yes, you are right. Consistency matters, and we have to draw the line somewhere. The formulas for professional athletics are tried and true, and we should simply abide by them.