Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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With the recent issues of transgender people in sports, why don’t we move some sports over to a weight-class system? (midwest.social)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Obviously this won’t work for all sports, but things like football, track, soccer, it would allow for de-gendered team, even allowing athletes with the skills but not the genetically-endowed physical attributes to have a place to play.

Note: I know very little about sports and being on a sports team, so please point out anything that doesn’t make sense.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I could see this working better than the current system and would undermine bigots argument about an unfair advantage. Though there are people that think being transgender gives people an advantage in chess somehow.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Women (and trans women) naturally carry a higher body fat percentage than men (Incl trans men) a "male" athlete can more safely and more easily carry a lower body fat % and therefore more muscle per kilo. So the weight classes wouldnt be able to be 1:1 if you wanted a level playing field.

There is still the inherent biological advantage in being born male and going through male puberty and developing a male muscular/skeletal system before transitioning. Very difficult to rule around every nuance of this though.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

This is exactly right and what many people fail to understand. In studies, even after 3+ years of hormone therapy, trans-women still have significantly more muscle tissue than CIS women.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

And that's without looking at cardiovascular differences, or even as subtle as glycogen storage.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Your last sentence made me search up women's chess... and it exists! That sound like a bold assumption or assertion that women are dumber in chess... Like what? I don't know why chess has to be gender divided. Maybe it exist to increase representation of women in it but the idea seems stupid. Maybe they have to split it for trans too if its already divided for cis women.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

https://theconversation.com/whats-behind-the-gender-imbalance-in-top-level-chess-150637

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

It sounds so but the gap is still too large to say it. The "stereotype threat" shown here should not really affect every one of theese female players. For most other feilds, women can easily take upto 30-40% participation