Mmh, no, you were the one speaking about fairness. I just pointed that the very existence of women's sports is based on this.
Okay, which is why I pointed out the difference between men being excluded, and trans women being excluded. Which the article also talks about. The unfairness is predicated on the athletes having nowhere else to go, whereas men obviously do.
But it does show that exclusion doesn't inherently means unfairness (just like weight categories, it's not "unfair" that someone weighting 110 Kg can't compete in the 60 Kg bracket).
Sure it does. The fact that men have a set of categories they can compete in to remedy the unfairness of being excluded (though, historically, I have to point out it was the other way around, and women were excluded or explicitly not allowed to participate in a bunch of events), doesn't mean the exclusion is fair. There's a complex history there (not least the original exclusion of women) that is kind of a tangent, because the current point of discussion is excluding trans women. Trying to say that "men are excluded so it's not unfair" is missing the point.
There is also a relevant third opinion provided by Patel in the last part of the article, for the record.
I don't think he's meaning to beyond the mention of (cis) men's inclusion in sports (which is, uh, the default and has been historically since stuff like the modern Olympics was created). Holding out hope that the comparison isn't intentional, anyhow!
Good point about the fact that women were excluded to begin with, it certainly does poison a bit the well.
Once again, you're reading too much here. I was pointing on exclusion being fundamental to the existence of women's sports, that's all. I haven't ever said or implied that men being excluded from women's sport is unfair.
I found this part to be a bit of mess, TBH. Sounded more like "we don't really know what to do with all that".
I certainly think segregating by gender (because the biological arguments are relatively new, and the original segregation of women was founded purely on gender roles of the era) has kinda had its day. I don't have a good answer on where sports should go with something like this, but I certainly think excluding a specific group of athletes based on some kind of biological upper limit (be it testosterone or whatever) is short-sighted at best, and outright discriminatory at its worst.
Making a case to restrict an individual's freedoms is difficult. I think this is a part that people advocating, or even sympathising, with the removal of trans women from competitive sports fail to realise. I'm often told that I shouldn't support things that can be abused in the future. Often by people (not aiming this at you, Akka) that then support stuff like this. It's baffling at times.
But it is "unfair" isn't it? That seems to be part of the point. I mean "fairness" can mean a bunch of things, but in sports it often refers to everyone competing according to the same rules, with the same rights and privileges. Its a bit of a conundrum. Women's sports seek to achieve "fairness" through "unfairness", ie giving women a "fair" chance to compete, by "unfairly" excluding men, due to their "unfair" advantages over women. But when you start examining the more specific reasons why we think men are unfairly advantaged over women, the reasons for excluding trans women start to make less sense. Just for example, if its really about size, strength, height, then those would be the deciding metric for how athletes are classed, rather than gender.
One point about this can be seen in weight lifting where there is size thresholds. Eg. snatch record for 61 Kg men = 142 Kg, snatch record for 64 Kg women = 108 Kg.
Not really. It's the "gender" study that is new, not the biological differences between men and women.
TBH I don't really have a strong opinion on it, I do see fair points with both.
Well, it's all about correlation, and sex has a pretty strong correlation with physical power.
They weren't using biological reasoning when they first excluded women from the original (modern) Olympics. It was purely gender roles r.e. stereotypes of the "fairer sex", and what sports they were subsequently allowed to compete in.
That's because you see both as separate while they were not making the distinction.
It sounds like they THOUGHT they were using biological reasoning, in that they did not want to impair their childbearing capacity:
That's because they weren't using actual biological reasoning.
Which is basically just gender roles. It might be biology that a cis woman can give birth, but the social framework that spun up around that (chiefly by men) is purely based on preconceptions of gender (as well as the assumption that all women would always want to have children).
It totally was just based on gender roles, as viewed through the eyes of the most privileged in society (what the poor would have thought of the idea that women should not have strenuous labour I do not know). However, from their point of view they were the pinnacle of scientific liberalism, showing the rest of the world how to be civilised. They were the only ones who even knew about biology, and they were rationally applying its tenants.
I understand the larger implications of your point, and I think that this general concern sometimes plays a substantial role in why people like keeping sports segregated in to men's and women's categories... the worry that even the best women will never be able to consistently succeed against the best men, and so will gradually be pushed out of sports almost entirely.
