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On July 03 2026 06:27 Slydie wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Honestly, I think a blanket ban is the only option. You should only be allowed to compete in women categories if you were born a woman. Even fringe cases with natural hormone disturbances etc. need very clear rules.
Why is this even a debate?
Because people feel helpless about the genocidal expansionism, surveillance state, rampant corruption, wealth disparity, etc. Meanwhile, staking out a position and offering "solutions" to "trans problems" feels manageable and they can imagine tangible things being done.
I'm sure some of you have heard of it as some variation of the "law of triviality"
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United States44398 Posts
On July 03 2026 06:01 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Well for one, in some sports, you'd need to have thousands of competitors before you get the first female, so the sheer logistics of it makes it impossible.
Excel can definitely handle thousands of rows. I've checked.
Like right now the world championship in football for men is happening. If you make this event co-ed, you get the exact same number of women participating.
So literally no damage done. If we made the FIFA World Cup co-ed nobody would even notice. It doesn't bear thinking about.
In fact, if football was co-ed, the best female players in the world would struggle to make a second division team in Norway
Drone, you seem confused here and I don't get it because you're smart. Within your example you've clearly not abandoned the idea of teams with arbitrarily defined requirements, you're specifying "second division team in Norway". Imagine I were to insist on the impossibility of a Norwegian national side because Messi exists, you'd be the first to point out that Messi isn't Norwegian and therefore wouldn't be eligible. In a world in which there is a second division Norwegian team there is obviously also woman's football. And in a world in which woman's football teams are impossible because we refuse to separate people there isn't a Norwegian team either for the same reasons. There's no world in which soccer has no more separation into groups to make the game more fun to watch but we still have divisions.
Personally, I don't want to eliminate women's sports in the fight against discrimination.
Okay but nobody is doing that.
if the 50th best man can choose to identify as a woman and then win the Olympics and all the money that comes with being the best female athlete, I'd assume this would happen at some point.
Sports don't exist in a vacuum, there needs to be popular interest and investment for there to be a sport. That's why nobody knows who the Vanilla Starcraft champion is, you don't automatically get medals and prize money for being the best at something, there have to be fans/sponsors/viewers. So let's say an organization decided to permit this. All that would happen would be an immediate fork and the one that permitted men would find itself without viewers while the exclusionary one gave out the medals and prize money.
The entire scenario is nonsense, it assumes that the prize money exists completely outside the structure of the sport. It supposes that the medal descends from heaven and the trans fakers will steal it if we let them and so the only solution is to get rid of all the trans. You might as well worry about what happens to the Tour De France when someone wins on a motorbike.
So - just let all trans people participate, then?
Nobody is saying that.
We're keeping the idea of arbitrary divisions and weight classes and geographic restrictions and college sports and age groups and so forth. We're just not pretending that the only way any of these can work is if we build it all on a foundation of trans erasure.
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All top level sports are coed. There is nothing stopping any gender from competing in any major pro league.
The exclusions are in the professional women’s league, or top competitive women’s league with other exclusions (age, professional status).
So the question is, is it fair to also exclude trans women, and should some trans women be allowed or a blanket ban.
And no answer to that question is going to make everyone happy.
On top of that, it is pretty funny to have a side sexism discussion, with lots of blame being thrown around. When it is all men having this discussion. And for the record if sexism is the only issues, women are way more sexist than men.
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Norway28914 Posts
Have you ever watched a track and field event in the Olympics or world championship or diamond league or any other highest tier of competition? Spoiler alert, they're not letting 1000 people compete in the various events. Not having separate competitions for men and women would - even if you doubled the amount if participants - lead to 0 women being part of the competition. Coed will work just fine for a marathon (and marathons and other long races are often already not gender segregated other than through the Excel sheet at the end), but there are so many sports where this would in fact eliminate women from competition. Unless, of course, you did something like say, mandating that half the competitors need to be women, at which point I'm like, maybe just give them their own competition then, rather than have them compete for the 51st-100th place spots.
For football, the point is that right now, the women have their own world cup. They have their own Norwegian national league. They have their own champions league. While money is obviously much less than for men, it is possible to be a professional female football player. If you forced them to play with men, it wouldn't be. The best female player in the world would be playing in a league where there's either no salary or a very low salary. And it would be like this across the board, for most sports.
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United States44398 Posts
On July 03 2026 07:39 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Have you ever watched a track and field event in the Olympics or world championship or golden league or any other highest tier of competition? Spoiler alert, they're not letting 1000 people compete in the various events. Not having separate competitions for men and women would - even if you doubled the amount if participants - lead to 0 women being part of the competition. Coed will work just fine for a marathon (and marathons and other long races are often already not gender segregated other than through the Excel sheet at the end), but there are so many sports where this would in fact eliminate women from competition. Unless, of course, you did something like say, mandating that half the competitors need to be women, at which point I'm like, maybe just give them their own competition then, rather than have them compete for the 51st-100th place spots.
For football, the point is that right now, the women have their own world cup. They have their own Norwegian national league. They have their own champions league. While money is obviously much less than for men, it is possible to be a professional female football player. If you forced them to play with men, it wouldn't be. The best female player in the world would be playing in a league where there's either no salary or a very low salary. And it would be like this across the board, for most sports.
1000 people literally do compete in the Olympics.
Let's say we accept your claim, you've disproved the Olympics, it's simply not possible for every nation to compete, there isn't enough room on the track. But as you know we have feeder events and multiple rounds. That's how you get a hundred men to compete for a medal on a track with only 8 lanes. The Olympics manages to narrow billions of men into a world champion, there's plenty of room.
For football you're still not making any sense. If the fans wanted to see cis women playing cis women and the sponsors wanted to fund that why wouldn't the cis women play in that league? In your example you're keeping all the rest of the arbitrary separations that result from the fans/sponsors so why wouldn't that also exist? You could also have a league with all women, including trans women. If nobody wanted to sponsor it they could still happily play among themselves and throw an ice cream party for the winning team.
In a world where we have geographic leagues, age restricted leagues, weight classes, national leagues, collegiate leagues, and so forth I'm fine with a cis league. What gets me is when people insist that there are a million different arbitrary groups and that trans people belong in exactly none of them.
My stance is that ultimately we don't decide any of this and even the organizations involved don't really decide any of this. If I decided it then it would involve a whole lot more Brood War.
Sport is a reflection of the interests of the society that plays. American society isn't somehow worse or poorer because the best natural sumo wrestlers aren't getting paid what they might be paid in Japan, those people aren't being discriminated against, they're off living their lives and not thinking about it at all. I might personally feel that the best US Starcraft player is hugely underpaid but they're objectively not, the sponsorship money simply doesn't exist because society doesn't value them.
Society will allocate resources in accordance with the beliefs of the people. In a hypothetical world in which nobody cared at all about the distinction between cis and trans and all the prize money in women's leagues went to trans women that'd be fine. Right now all the prize money in women's basketball is going to tall women and I don't lose any sleep over that.
There's a movement that says that the foundation upon which all social sports must be built is no trans, but then after that it's a complete free for all. That's clearly bullshit. The "fairness" fanatics don't care that some national teams are easier to get onto than others or whatever. They don't care that an over the hill English national side player might get to continue to compete internationally by remembering he was born in Wales. Fairness is a construct.
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Norway28914 Posts
Yes lol but not in the same sport, what the fuck. To compete in the 100 meter, where in 2016 (last year where the wiki was updated) you had 84 participants, men needed to have ran at 10.16 the same year to qualify. That's more than half a second faster than what the fastest woman ran in 2016 - make it a 200 person competition, and you have 200 men.
I genuinely don't understand what you are trying to say about football. Don't really see the point in going further with this tbh.
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United States44398 Posts
On July 03 2026 08:06 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Yes lol but not in the same sport, what the fuck. To compete in the 100 meter, where in 2016 (last year where the wiki was updated) you had 84 participants, men needed to have ran at 10.16 the same year to qualify. That's more than half a second faster than what the fastest woman ran in 2016 - make it a 200 person competition, and you have 200 men.
I genuinely don't understand what you are trying to say about football. Don't really see the point in going further with this tbh.
Do you not understand what a qualifier is? The people who didn't qualify for the final round were still competing for the cup, they got knocked out at the qualifier stage.
There were way more than 84 people trying to win the men's 100m. The 8 lanes on the track does not represent a hard cap.
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On July 03 2026 08:12 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2026 08:06 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Yes lol but not in the same sport, what the fuck. To compete in the 100 meter, where in 2016 (last year where the wiki was updated) you had 84 participants, men needed to have ran at 10.16 the same year to qualify. That's more than half a second faster than what the fastest woman ran in 2016 - make it a 200 person competition, and you have 200 men.
I genuinely don't understand what you are trying to say about football. Don't really see the point in going further with this tbh. Do you not understand what a qualifier is? The people who didn't qualify for the final round were still competing for the cup, they got knocked out at the qualifier stage. There were way more than 84 people trying to win the men's 100m. The 8 lanes on the track does not represent a hard cap.
You're being deliberately dense. But you already solved it in your previous post. You said you're fine with a league in which there are arbitrary cutoffs, such as a womens' league. The cutoff of what a woman is, is arbitrary. If they draw that line to exclude all trans women, and also a bunch of AFAB women, are you okay with that? The line is arbitrary after all, and commercial interests somewhere backed it up with TV rights or so.
And yes, everyone who can't compete in the women's league can, of course, compete in the coed league, which we generally call the men's league, because non-men get knocked out early on in the qualifiers. In fact, they generally do even worse than foreigners do in Brood War.
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United States44398 Posts
On July 03 2026 08:23 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2026 08:12 KwarK wrote:On July 03 2026 08:06 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Yes lol but not in the same sport, what the fuck. To compete in the 100 meter, where in 2016 (last year where the wiki was updated) you had 84 participants, men needed to have ran at 10.16 the same year to qualify. That's more than half a second faster than what the fastest woman ran in 2016 - make it a 200 person competition, and you have 200 men.
I genuinely don't understand what you are trying to say about football. Don't really see the point in going further with this tbh. Do you not understand what a qualifier is? The people who didn't qualify for the final round were still competing for the cup, they got knocked out at the qualifier stage. There were way more than 84 people trying to win the men's 100m. The 8 lanes on the track does not represent a hard cap. You're being deliberately dense. But you already solved it in your previous post. You said you're fine with a league in which there are arbitrary cutoffs, such as a womens' league. The cutoff of what a woman is, is arbitrary. If they draw that line to exclude all trans women, and also a bunch of AFAB women, are you okay with that? The line is arbitrary after all, and commercial interests somewhere backed it up with TV rights or so. And yes, everyone who can't compete in the women's league can, of course, compete in the coed league, which we generally call the men's league, because non-men get knocked out early on in the qualifiers. In fact, they generally do even worse than foreigners do in Brood War.
Yes, it’s their money, sponsors can choose what they sponsor and viewers can choose what they view. If they want a cis league that also excludes cis women with hormone disorders or whatever then good luck to them. I can’t make them go along with my vision for basketball where everyone wears stilts of various lengths to equalize the height. I can only choose which events I watch and which leagues I support.
That’s more or less my point about the Excel sheet. You can imagine everyone in competition with everyone else if you like but people can filter it by whatever matters to them personally. Someone can insist as much as they like that the fastest female sprinter is really in 5000th place or whatever and so their participation is irrelevant but they can’t stop other people giving them medals. The fastest woman is still the fastest woman in an open contest. Same for the fastest person in the over 60s category, the fastest representative of a given nation, and so forth. We make up categories and we decide what importance we place on them.
That’s the difference between me and the transphobes. I think if a league decides to allow trans people under whatever restrictions it has decided to enact then that’s basically fine. The transphobes disagree. They may not watch women’s college swimming and they may not care about women’s college swimming but they’ll kill to prevent a trans woman getting 5th in the 200 yard freestyle.
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On July 03 2026 08:30 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2026 08:23 Acrofales wrote:On July 03 2026 08:12 KwarK wrote:On July 03 2026 08:06 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Yes lol but not in the same sport, what the fuck. To compete in the 100 meter, where in 2016 (last year where the wiki was updated) you had 84 participants, men needed to have ran at 10.16 the same year to qualify. That's more than half a second faster than what the fastest woman ran in 2016 - make it a 200 person competition, and you have 200 men.
I genuinely don't understand what you are trying to say about football. Don't really see the point in going further with this tbh. Do you not understand what a qualifier is? The people who didn't qualify for the final round were still competing for the cup, they got knocked out at the qualifier stage. There were way more than 84 people trying to win the men's 100m. The 8 lanes on the track does not represent a hard cap. You're being deliberately dense. But you already solved it in your previous post. You said you're fine with a league in which there are arbitrary cutoffs, such as a womens' league. The cutoff of what a woman is, is arbitrary. If they draw that line to exclude all trans women, and also a bunch of AFAB women, are you okay with that? The line is arbitrary after all, and commercial interests somewhere backed it up with TV rights or so. And yes, everyone who can't compete in the women's league can, of course, compete in the coed league, which we generally call the men's league, because non-men get knocked out early on in the qualifiers. In fact, they generally do even worse than foreigners do in Brood War. Yes, it’s their money, sponsors can choose what they sponsor and viewers can choose what they view. If they want a cis league that also excludes cis women with hormone disorders or whatever then good luck to them. I can’t make them go along with my vision for basketball where everyone wears stilts of various lengths to equalize the height. I can only choose which events I watch and which leagues I support. That’s the difference between me and the transphobes. I think if a league decides to allow trans people under whatever restrictions it has decided to enact then that’s basically fine. The transphobes disagree. They may not watch women’s college swimming and they may not care about women’s college swimming but they’ll kill to prevent a trans woman getting 5th in the 200 yard freestyle.
You don't need to be an expert of the sport to agree or disagree whether trans should or should not have joined the competition in the first place.
If trans should not have joined in the first place, the "poor result" don't matter, it's as much of a talking point for you, as it is if they got 1st place for "transphobes". Every single spot taken is a spot that is removed for a girl/woman.
The entire reason we have women only league, is to foster and empower females. Quite a few are not even generating profit to sustain. All the more reason a strict ban for trans to compete, so it doesn't come to an extra cost for woman.
Why would anyone be shocked that there is a large push back, and not many are looking to organise an extra league for trans?
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United States44398 Posts
On July 03 2026 09:00 ETisME wrote:
The entire reason we have women only league, is to foster and empower females.
Is it though? It’s nothing to do with the women themselves wanting to play? And nothing to do with the fans? Just maximizing empowerment? And if you let all women in then the empowerment gets diluted so you need to make it cis only to concentrate that empowerment.
But even then that still seems a bit broad honestly. There’s 30 year old women are sharing the same empowerment as the 20s and that completely ruins it. They should have separate leagues. Also there’s not enough empowerment for redheads so we should have a redhead only league.
And if you’re against my redhead league for being overly narrow then may I remind you that the only purpose of leagues is to empower redheads. Every spot taken by a brunette in the open league is literally stealing from a redhead.
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Canada11607 Posts
On July 03 2026 00:39 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2026 00:33 Billyboy wrote:On July 02 2026 22:48 LightSpectra wrote:On July 02 2026 09:26 Billyboy wrote:
Some of why men and women are different is cultural and some is societal, but some is also biological. It is OK that men and women are different. And it’s OK that we don’t know exactly where that line is, but we do there is a line. The entire point of this discussion is that you can't simultaneously argue "trans women have an unfair advantage against AFAB women that's so vast that they must be banned" but also "the advantage from biological sex is unquantifiable". At that point you're using the exact same logic that was used to justify racial segregation. On July 02 2026 16:09 Acrofales wrote:On July 02 2026 10:42 KwarK wrote:On July 02 2026 09:33 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I honestly really don't care about trans women in sports. A vast majority of trans women don't really care about competing in sports, they just want to live their lives without being attacked or harassed for being who they are, and the focus on sports is, largely, used as a cudgel to attack them in a way that is more acceptable, because more people will agree that it's unreasonable that someone who is biologically male can compete in women's sports than that it's unreasonable that people can choose to identify as another gender than the sex they were assigned at birth.
But I think the best way to drop that point of attack is actually to just go like, yeah. If you were born male and you experienced a male puberty and you as a consequence have certain biological advantages - then maybe you can't compete in professional women's sports. I mean, I think you can just evaluate on a case to case basis whether the person in question had any real advantage, but I feel like, for example, Lia Thomas should not be allowed to compete as a woman. It sucks for her and there's no resentment from me towards her when I say this - I just think she's likely to have gotten certain benefits (like being 1.85 tall) from undergoing male puberty which have translated to other advantages later on. But like, there are so few of these situations that this can all be done on a case to case basis, and I have 0 issues with trans women competing on an amateur level.
Like Simberto alluded to, I almost feel like this is, to some leftists, an equivalent of gun rights to NRA. Oppose even sensible restrictions because those sensible restrictions are a slippery slope to removing the right to bear arms be trans. But I think in both instances, this is unreasonable - especially because we're talking about like, a literal handful of people. I also think it'd be good if gun nuts went like 'well obviously we should have background checks before people get to buy guns'. Way more than 99% of trans people currently exist without being professional athletes, this isn't a big deal. And honestly - while I'm uncertain on just to what degree biological differences steming from undergoing a male puberty will continue to manifest later in life after you undergo hormonal therapy - (and this is why I'm saying, let's this decision to some medically qualified panel of experts on a case to case basis) - you seem to be arguing that the reason why men are better than women at sports (not involving trans people into this) is societal rather than biological in nature. This, I believe is absolutely bonkers nonsense, even when accepting - as always - that societal factors are also factors. If a sporting org already has rules against hormone disorder competitors competing as women then logically it wouldn’t need a specific trans policy. Whereas if it had a trans exclusion policy it would still need a second policy for the genetic outliers. It stands to reason that trans women aren’t the issue, competitors with bone density/strength/musculature outside normal bounds are the issue. To return to my reply to Falling’s rugby safety concern, if a participant is making the game unsafe it really doesn’t matter what sex they were assigned at birth. Trans status isn’t relevant, they wouldn’t feel somehow safer if assured that the person hospitalizing them was cis female and produced in a Chinese lab. We can see this in action with a lot of the trans sporting hysteria being incorrectly directed at cis women. There can be literally no trans women in a tournament and JK Rowling will still lose her mind over their participation. At a certain point you have to recognize that this really isn’t about fairness or safety etc., even if they’re excluded they’ll still be blamed. You can’t satisfy the transphobes on this issue. That's a totally fair counterpoint. The thing is that setting up such a fairness cutoff is always going to be necessarily inaccurate. I'm glad you and lightspectra have seemingly dropped your arguments for coed sports and have realized that there should be a separate league for "women" If you re-read my posts you'll see that my argument is that a) women's leagues exist for social reasons, not pure athletic measurement, and b) all sports would be co-ed in an (immeasurably distant) Star Trek-esque future where sexism has been completely abolished, which isn't the world we currently live in. Nope, not even close. Basically people are trying to be nice to you because you generally have really good posts and are knowledgeable. But you clearly are clueless when it comes to sports, and that is OK. What isn’t is that you are so stuck in a really terrible argument that will make people question your confidence and intelligence in other issues. The current position of the trans exclusionary side is "yes, there are clear social barriers to women competing in non-physical sports like Chess to the point where women are almost nonexistent in the highest echelons... But sure, terrible arguments or something lol.
Quite frankly, you haven't even established your Chess example. You've claimed this is so but never once offered any evidence whatsoever, and I even said you would also need to control for group and personal preference. But I care less about you demonstrating this bare minimum defense, and I'd be far more fascinated to see you try and prove how girls as a whole are discouraged from playing volleyball (and conversely how boys are more encouraged to play volleyball over girls) which leads to the various performance differences I've already laid out.
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On July 03 2026 09:13 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2026 09:00 ETisME wrote:
The entire reason we have women only league, is to foster and empower females. Is it though? It’s nothing to do with the women themselves wanting to play? And nothing to do with the fans? Just maximizing empowerment? And if you let all women in then the empowerment gets diluted so you need to make it cis only to concentrate that empowerment. But even then that still seems a bit broad honestly. There’s 30 year old women are sharing the same empowerment as the 20s and that completely ruins it. They should have separate leagues. Also there’s not enough empowerment for redheads so we should have a redhead only league. And if you’re against my redhead league for being overly narrow then may I remind you that the only purpose of leagues is to empower redheads. Every spot taken by a brunette in the open league is literally stealing from a redhead.
>It’s nothing to do with the women themselves wanting to play? And nothing to do with the fans?
Wanting to play in a fair manner? Sure.
If there's no tournament nor players, then fans of what?
>There’s 30 year old women are sharing the same empowerment as the 20s and that completely ruins it.
Ruins it for who? This has nothing to do with gender. Plenty of sports have legendary players outshining younger ones.
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United States44398 Posts
On July 03 2026 09:36 ETisME wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2026 09:13 KwarK wrote:On July 03 2026 09:00 ETisME wrote:
The entire reason we have women only league, is to foster and empower females. Is it though? It’s nothing to do with the women themselves wanting to play? And nothing to do with the fans? Just maximizing empowerment? And if you let all women in then the empowerment gets diluted so you need to make it cis only to concentrate that empowerment. But even then that still seems a bit broad honestly. There’s 30 year old women are sharing the same empowerment as the 20s and that completely ruins it. They should have separate leagues. Also there’s not enough empowerment for redheads so we should have a redhead only league. And if you’re against my redhead league for being overly narrow then may I remind you that the only purpose of leagues is to empower redheads. Every spot taken by a brunette in the open league is literally stealing from a redhead. >It’s nothing to do with the women themselves wanting to play? And nothing to do with the fans? Wanting to play in a fair manner? Sure. If there's no tournament nor players, then fans of what? >There’s 30 year old women are sharing the same empowerment as the 20s and that completely ruins it. Ruins it for who? This has nothing to do with gender. Plenty of sports have legendary players outshining younger ones.
It ruins it for empowerment maximalists like yourself. All sport must maximize empowerment of whatever group I’m specifically interested in. How will we maximize empowerment if the legendary players are outshining younger ones? They must be forced into their own league.
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On July 03 2026 09:38 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2026 09:36 ETisME wrote:On July 03 2026 09:13 KwarK wrote:On July 03 2026 09:00 ETisME wrote:
The entire reason we have women only league, is to foster and empower females. Is it though? It’s nothing to do with the women themselves wanting to play? And nothing to do with the fans? Just maximizing empowerment? And if you let all women in then the empowerment gets diluted so you need to make it cis only to concentrate that empowerment. But even then that still seems a bit broad honestly. There’s 30 year old women are sharing the same empowerment as the 20s and that completely ruins it. They should have separate leagues. Also there’s not enough empowerment for redheads so we should have a redhead only league. And if you’re against my redhead league for being overly narrow then may I remind you that the only purpose of leagues is to empower redheads. Every spot taken by a brunette in the open league is literally stealing from a redhead. >It’s nothing to do with the women themselves wanting to play? And nothing to do with the fans? Wanting to play in a fair manner? Sure. If there's no tournament nor players, then fans of what? >There’s 30 year old women are sharing the same empowerment as the 20s and that completely ruins it. Ruins it for who? This has nothing to do with gender. Plenty of sports have legendary players outshining younger ones. It ruins it for empowerment maximalists like yourself. All sport must maximize empowerment of whatever group I’m specifically interested in.
You mean Male and Female? yes, like it's always been for hundreds if not thousands of years across the entire world.
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On July 03 2026 09:21 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2026 00:39 LightSpectra wrote:On July 03 2026 00:33 Billyboy wrote:On July 02 2026 22:48 LightSpectra wrote:On July 02 2026 09:26 Billyboy wrote:
Some of why men and women are different is cultural and some is societal, but some is also biological. It is OK that men and women are different. And it’s OK that we don’t know exactly where that line is, but we do there is a line. The entire point of this discussion is that you can't simultaneously argue "trans women have an unfair advantage against AFAB women that's so vast that they must be banned" but also "the advantage from biological sex is unquantifiable". At that point you're using the exact same logic that was used to justify racial segregation. On July 02 2026 16:09 Acrofales wrote:On July 02 2026 10:42 KwarK wrote:On July 02 2026 09:33 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I honestly really don't care about trans women in sports. A vast majority of trans women don't really care about competing in sports, they just want to live their lives without being attacked or harassed for being who they are, and the focus on sports is, largely, used as a cudgel to attack them in a way that is more acceptable, because more people will agree that it's unreasonable that someone who is biologically male can compete in women's sports than that it's unreasonable that people can choose to identify as another gender than the sex they were assigned at birth.
But I think the best way to drop that point of attack is actually to just go like, yeah. If you were born male and you experienced a male puberty and you as a consequence have certain biological advantages - then maybe you can't compete in professional women's sports. I mean, I think you can just evaluate on a case to case basis whether the person in question had any real advantage, but I feel like, for example, Lia Thomas should not be allowed to compete as a woman. It sucks for her and there's no resentment from me towards her when I say this - I just think she's likely to have gotten certain benefits (like being 1.85 tall) from undergoing male puberty which have translated to other advantages later on. But like, there are so few of these situations that this can all be done on a case to case basis, and I have 0 issues with trans women competing on an amateur level.
Like Simberto alluded to, I almost feel like this is, to some leftists, an equivalent of gun rights to NRA. Oppose even sensible restrictions because those sensible restrictions are a slippery slope to removing the right to bear arms be trans. But I think in both instances, this is unreasonable - especially because we're talking about like, a literal handful of people. I also think it'd be good if gun nuts went like 'well obviously we should have background checks before people get to buy guns'. Way more than 99% of trans people currently exist without being professional athletes, this isn't a big deal. And honestly - while I'm uncertain on just to what degree biological differences steming from undergoing a male puberty will continue to manifest later in life after you undergo hormonal therapy - (and this is why I'm saying, let's this decision to some medically qualified panel of experts on a case to case basis) - you seem to be arguing that the reason why men are better than women at sports (not involving trans people into this) is societal rather than biological in nature. This, I believe is absolutely bonkers nonsense, even when accepting - as always - that societal factors are also factors. If a sporting org already has rules against hormone disorder competitors competing as women then logically it wouldn’t need a specific trans policy. Whereas if it had a trans exclusion policy it would still need a second policy for the genetic outliers. It stands to reason that trans women aren’t the issue, competitors with bone density/strength/musculature outside normal bounds are the issue. To return to my reply to Falling’s rugby safety concern, if a participant is making the game unsafe it really doesn’t matter what sex they were assigned at birth. Trans status isn’t relevant, they wouldn’t feel somehow safer if assured that the person hospitalizing them was cis female and produced in a Chinese lab. We can see this in action with a lot of the trans sporting hysteria being incorrectly directed at cis women. There can be literally no trans women in a tournament and JK Rowling will still lose her mind over their participation. At a certain point you have to recognize that this really isn’t about fairness or safety etc., even if they’re excluded they’ll still be blamed. You can’t satisfy the transphobes on this issue. That's a totally fair counterpoint. The thing is that setting up such a fairness cutoff is always going to be necessarily inaccurate. I'm glad you and lightspectra have seemingly dropped your arguments for coed sports and have realized that there should be a separate league for "women" If you re-read my posts you'll see that my argument is that a) women's leagues exist for social reasons, not pure athletic measurement, and b) all sports would be co-ed in an (immeasurably distant) Star Trek-esque future where sexism has been completely abolished, which isn't the world we currently live in. Nope, not even close. Basically people are trying to be nice to you because you generally have really good posts and are knowledgeable. But you clearly are clueless when it comes to sports, and that is OK. What isn’t is that you are so stuck in a really terrible argument that will make people question your confidence and intelligence in other issues. The current position of the trans exclusionary side is "yes, there are clear social barriers to women competing in non-physical sports like Chess to the point where women are almost nonexistent in the highest echelons... But sure, terrible arguments or something lol. Quite frankly, you haven't even established your Chess example. You've claimed this is so but never once offered any evidence whatsoever, and I even said you would also need to control for group and personal preference. But I care less about you demonstrating this bare minimum defense, and I'd be far more fascinated to see you try and prove how girls as a whole are discouraged from playing volleyball (and conversely how boys are more encouraged to play volleyball over girls) which leads to the various performance differences I've already laid out.
I think the problem with the chess example (and LightSpectra's premise) is that it's so disconnected from reality by design that it's impossible to use. I don't mean that as an insult. It comes across more like a philosophical experiment such as 'If the sky were red instead of blue, what psychological and societal impacts would this have on the human race?" where the change is so big and general that it's hard to even agree on what base level changes would be (if any).
Similarly "If sexism didn't exist, would women win at Chess" is impossible to answer because you can't even be sure Chess exists without sexism.
I think I generally agree that the winners in competitive things would be different if the whole world was different, but I'm not sure what the fruit of agreeing with that is.
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United States44398 Posts
On July 03 2026 09:40 ETisME wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2026 09:38 KwarK wrote:On July 03 2026 09:36 ETisME wrote:On July 03 2026 09:13 KwarK wrote:On July 03 2026 09:00 ETisME wrote:
The entire reason we have women only league, is to foster and empower females. Is it though? It’s nothing to do with the women themselves wanting to play? And nothing to do with the fans? Just maximizing empowerment? And if you let all women in then the empowerment gets diluted so you need to make it cis only to concentrate that empowerment. But even then that still seems a bit broad honestly. There’s 30 year old women are sharing the same empowerment as the 20s and that completely ruins it. They should have separate leagues. Also there’s not enough empowerment for redheads so we should have a redhead only league. And if you’re against my redhead league for being overly narrow then may I remind you that the only purpose of leagues is to empower redheads. Every spot taken by a brunette in the open league is literally stealing from a redhead. >It’s nothing to do with the women themselves wanting to play? And nothing to do with the fans? Wanting to play in a fair manner? Sure. If there's no tournament nor players, then fans of what? >There’s 30 year old women are sharing the same empowerment as the 20s and that completely ruins it. Ruins it for who? This has nothing to do with gender. Plenty of sports have legendary players outshining younger ones. It ruins it for empowerment maximalists like yourself. All sport must maximize empowerment of whatever group I’m specifically interested in. You mean Male and Female? yes, like it's always been for hundreds if not thousands of years across the entire world.
The reality that you have to accept is that there is simply no opportunity for empowerment under your current plan. None.
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On July 03 2026 06:27 Slydie wrote:
Honestly, I think a blanket ban is the only option. You should only be allowed to compete in women categories if you were born a woman. Even fringe cases with natural hormone disturbances etc. need very clear rules.
Why is this even a debate?
Ok lets for a second acept this opinion. How do you make sure every woman competing in womens sports is a woman.
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On July 03 2026 09:43 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2026 09:40 ETisME wrote:On July 03 2026 09:38 KwarK wrote:On July 03 2026 09:36 ETisME wrote:On July 03 2026 09:13 KwarK wrote:On July 03 2026 09:00 ETisME wrote:
The entire reason we have women only league, is to foster and empower females. Is it though? It’s nothing to do with the women themselves wanting to play? And nothing to do with the fans? Just maximizing empowerment? And if you let all women in then the empowerment gets diluted so you need to make it cis only to concentrate that empowerment. But even then that still seems a bit broad honestly. There’s 30 year old women are sharing the same empowerment as the 20s and that completely ruins it. They should have separate leagues. Also there’s not enough empowerment for redheads so we should have a redhead only league. And if you’re against my redhead league for being overly narrow then may I remind you that the only purpose of leagues is to empower redheads. Every spot taken by a brunette in the open league is literally stealing from a redhead. >It’s nothing to do with the women themselves wanting to play? And nothing to do with the fans? Wanting to play in a fair manner? Sure. If there's no tournament nor players, then fans of what? >There’s 30 year old women are sharing the same empowerment as the 20s and that completely ruins it. Ruins it for who? This has nothing to do with gender. Plenty of sports have legendary players outshining younger ones. It ruins it for empowerment maximalists like yourself. All sport must maximize empowerment of whatever group I’m specifically interested in. You mean Male and Female? yes, like it's always been for hundreds if not thousands of years across the entire world. The reality that you have to accept is that there is simply no opportunity for empowerment under your current plan. None.
What reality? Simone Biles, Serena Williams? Where do you think they get their sponsor, fame from?
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United States44398 Posts
On July 03 2026 09:52 ETisME wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2026 09:43 KwarK wrote:On July 03 2026 09:40 ETisME wrote:On July 03 2026 09:38 KwarK wrote:On July 03 2026 09:36 ETisME wrote:On July 03 2026 09:13 KwarK wrote:On July 03 2026 09:00 ETisME wrote:
The entire reason we have women only league, is to foster and empower females. Is it though? It’s nothing to do with the women themselves wanting to play? And nothing to do with the fans? Just maximizing empowerment? And if you let all women in then the empowerment gets diluted so you need to make it cis only to concentrate that empowerment. But even then that still seems a bit broad honestly. There’s 30 year old women are sharing the same empowerment as the 20s and that completely ruins it. They should have separate leagues. Also there’s not enough empowerment for redheads so we should have a redhead only league. And if you’re against my redhead league for being overly narrow then may I remind you that the only purpose of leagues is to empower redheads. Every spot taken by a brunette in the open league is literally stealing from a redhead. >It’s nothing to do with the women themselves wanting to play? And nothing to do with the fans? Wanting to play in a fair manner? Sure. If there's no tournament nor players, then fans of what? >There’s 30 year old women are sharing the same empowerment as the 20s and that completely ruins it. Ruins it for who? This has nothing to do with gender. Plenty of sports have legendary players outshining younger ones. It ruins it for empowerment maximalists like yourself. All sport must maximize empowerment of whatever group I’m specifically interested in. You mean Male and Female? yes, like it's always been for hundreds if not thousands of years across the entire world. The reality that you have to accept is that there is simply no opportunity for empowerment under your current plan. None. What reality? Simone Biles, Serena Williams? Where do you think they get their sponsor, fame from?
Literally none of them are redheads.
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EPT
