So, I fully support trans people competing with cisgender people in sport. I also think there's loads of sports where you could gender desegregate it - basically all the sports that don't rely on strength and size.

So I said that bit, but then I also said that if you desegregated sports like swimming, football, rugby, etc etc, then you would never see a woman in a top team or on the podium at the Olympics ever again. Is that not factual? Even Ledecky, who is a ridiculously good swimmer, would not even make the men's swimming final at the Olympics.

I think you could desegregate sports at lower levels too - I've seen it done and experienced it. I was in a middle tier team in cricket with a bunch of dinguses, and the sometimes Women's A Team players would join our matches. They were as capable or better than the blokes most of the time. However, these women went on to play internationally, on TV, picking up contracts and stuff by playing against other women. If it was desegregated she'd be playing with shmucks like me who never even really liked cricket.

Am I wrong?

  • NewAccountWhoDis [she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Personally as someone who gives no fucks about sports and little about competition anyway, I've never seen much of a worry for "oh no what if it's unfair?". Like ok ok, I don't care about sports so obviously I'm going to defer to people who do but shouldn't we just all be aiming to have fun at the end of it?

    Like you even see this obsession that like local Middle School sports teams where people are just crazy over whether or not they win or lose. Like come on, just enjoy it bros.

    Edit: Let me tell you a story about some of my dogs when I was a kid. So we had two small dogs and we ended up taking a bigger dog for a friend for about a year or so. the dogs would like to play fight and wrestle and they eventually realized the big dog had an advantage because of her size. Do you know what the dogs did? Well the big dog she started playing lower to the ground rolling on her back and just generally being softer in it.

    Meanwhile I have a friend who told me about how hard the men slam the balls at her local sports balls game even though they know the women and older players struggle to match up. They're focused on winning instead of letting their opponents rally back and forth.

    So a DOG of all things understood that it's about everyone having fun. Why can't people?