Vorpal wrote:That's only opinion. And I admit that it's likely that some sports will see women struggling to compete in a mixed sex elite sport, possibly for as much as a generation or two.
The physiological differences aren't much when it comes down to person to person. What makes the difference is that many girls are discouraged from competing because it isn't feminine, or because of related cultural drivers. When they do compete, it is only against other girls and women who face the same disincentive. If someone consistently wins, where is the incentive to work that much harder, improve technique, etc.?
Also, women learn from an early age to use their bodies differently. Why do girls 'throw like a girl'? They learn to use their bodies in ways that allow them to appear feminine, and this results in things like 'throw like a girl' that has to be unlearned to play some sports.
Billie Jean King wanted to play baseball, but she wasn't allowed. So she learned the one ball sport that she was allowed to participate in. How many elite players have we lost over the years because girls were discouraged or not allowed?
Yes women are encouraged to participate in tennis, and female tennis has been popular and socially acceptable for a very long time. Yet men CRUSH women. It's not even the same sport in terms of the style of play, and that's a result of the fundamental differences between men and women. I'm not sure why you continue to labour under this delusion that somehow women are being held back from beating men by some sort of process of socialisation.
Unfortunately FIFA do not allow men and women to play together, at the international level. There is no reason not to allow women to play on the best elite teams, if they can make the squad.
They can't. Not even close. Every so often you hear about the best woman in some sport wanting to try out for the men. Does it ever happen? No, because physically, even on a team game, there's a fundamental lack of strength.
No, you keep posting things that don't say what you think they say. I covered this above:
viewtopic.php?f=46&t=125722&start=45#p1284758Women don't have 'hyperandrogenism', they have, typically PCOS, which results in testosterone levels below half the lowest male level. And they could have other conditions, but we should be specific about what we are talking about because 'woman with hyperandrogenism' is not meaningful, as it could refer to someone who has male biology.
This article you have just linked to is talking about intersex athletes, those who have a disorder of sexual development.
These people are NOT transgender. Caster Semenya has a genetic condition, quite likely 5-alpha reductase deficiency, which causes genitals which appear female, while having internal testicles producing testosterone. People with this condition have male chromosomes (XY) and male testosterone levels due to the ownership of testicles.
Clearly there are concerns about people who have come from a poor background, as Semenya did, been raised as female, being suddenly excluded from sport on the basis of a condition that they did not know they had. We should all have sympathy, even if we are not convinced they should be allowed to compete.
And by the way note for the record that is extremely difficult to prove conclusively whether a given, rare, intersex condition confers an advantage, since, as observed above, an elite rower is above the 99.2nd percentile for height, and it is to be presumed that in other, more popular sports, that the level of biological selectivity (before we get onto issues like training) is higher than that.
So on the one hand you have the entire pool of XX chromosome adult women to select from, with the slow/weak already selected out, and then on the other you have a tiny pool of people with XY chromosomes, and disorders of sexual development meaning that they were assigned female at birth. These people are legally recognised as female based on their birth certificates, even though they typically produce viable male sperm, and lack ovaries, uterus, menses, etc. So you can't even compare the two pools because the latter pool is too small.
Now the question of whether it is fair for this person who could, in a more developed country, have received a male birth certificate, but instead was raised as female, is open to some debate.
Because ultimately I'm not convinced it is possible to prove definitively if the tiny number of people with these conditions have 'male' or 'female' performance, even though doctors are clear that their skeletons are 'male'.
My position on this issue would be that people with male skeletons & male gonads should not compete as female.
But again I've already covered this, quite specifically here
viewtopic.php?f=46&t=125722&start=45#p1284730So I'm not really sure why you are sending me this link.
And in any case none of this has any bearing on the unfairness of having McKinnon 'change gender' from male to female as an adult and go on to dominate the sport of track cycling, which is heavily power-based, from nothing in the space of a couple of years. Clearly this is not a female performance. McKinnon took up cycling aged 34, did quite poorly at road cycling and has now gone on to track. The cause of this trajectory is very simple - McKinnon's male body.
) in the USA is mixed gender, and also in Germany, at least through teens. Unfortunately FIFA do not allow men and women to play together, at the international level. There is no reason not to allow women to play on the best elite teams, if they can make the squad.
