The material difference between people we bar and do not bar is not large enough to constitute a difference against competing with people we assign within the same sex group [1][2][3]. This might feel counterintuitive, but please consider that trans people who have medically transitioned are not as different from cis people of the same gender than you expect. Hormones do a lot. [1] https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2026/01/22/bjsports-2025-... [2]https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2024/04/10/bjsports-2023-... [3] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10641525/

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chipotle_coyote 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

"This might feel counterintuitive" is precisely why the religious right has seized on transgender participation in athletics as a wedge issue. When they say "well, somebody who was born as a man obviously has a natural advantage over people born as women," it feels logical, right? The fact that it largely isn't supported by data rarely comes up, and when it does, it's easy to deflect with "maybe there's just not enough data yet" (which, of course, could just as easily be an argument against imposing such bans, but never mind).

It is infuriating how successful the "facts don't care about your feelings" crowd has been at pushing discriminatory legislation through in the last few years based largely on feelings rather than facts.

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frumplestlatz 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Let’s reverse this. Why should physical competition be classified based on sociological conceptions around gender?

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allreduce an hour ago | parent [-]

The classification has always been based on sociological conceptions and is still based on such after this change. There have always been outliers who are sociologically women, but don't have the biological makeup most women have.

That the criteria for admission are altered now to exclude some of them is motivated by anti-trans politics. Usually such rule changes are made when it becomes obvious that the old rules cause outcomes which go against the spirit of the sport. You cannot argue this here in good faith. There are not a lot of trans women competing and none have even won anything afaik.

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frumplestlatz an hour ago | parent [-]

You’re claiming female sports categories were not biologically rooted classifications?

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allreduce an hour ago | parent [-]

I'm claiming that there were always women with outlier biology which is not at all easy to classify and not obvious at a glance.

People caring about this issue in sports now and changing the objective admission criteria to exclude them is a political phenomenon more than anything else.

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frumplestlatz an hour ago | parent [-]

The categories were created at a time when “sex” and “gender” were universally considered synonymous, but they were created for the purpose of sex segregation — were they not?

This issue genuinely confuses me — and I don’t seem alone in that. Re-defining words does not redefine categories or change the underlying motivation for creating categories in the first place.

	▲	allreduce 30 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I'm not trying to define away biology here. Although "sex" is surprisingly hard to nail down. Rather, I'm arguing the underlying motivation for creating these categories was and is a sociological one. Why carve out womens sports, as opposed to short peoples sports, low testosterone sports (or other categories which would be similarly disadvantaged)? The only reason people pay attention to sex here is sociological, i.e. because of gender. This implies that the admissions criteria do not automatically have to follow strict biological lines -- and I see little reason to enforce them this strictly now. Why exclude trans people and why make yourself a headache trying to classify e.g. intersex people?

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peyton 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think the eye test is more reliable than the BMJ when it comes to international competition at the highest level. We’ve all seen the videos.