Ask Lemmy

Paralympic rugby has mixed teams with men and women.

I wish they could be split by something more meaningful like muscle mass or weight. But maybe we don't have the technology yet to come up with new categories. This split will likely correlate with gender anyway but it would give people on either end a chance to compete with others in their level

Who is we?

Someone sharper than I am came up with the suggestion of categorising people in a similar way to how it's done by disability in the Paralympics. As to what those categories should be and whether it's practical, let alone possible is another thing entirely.

Basically turn the "categorisation by disability" on its head and make it "categorisation by ability".

I'd be completely on board with that proposal. There are many differentiators in sports that contribute to your success. Your sex might be a very important one but definitely not the only one that matters.

I would group different athletes based on skill level, strength, height or whatever is relevant in that dicipline. Being born with a penis or not shouldn't matter.

If we say that for a specific kind of sport the level of testosterone is the most important factor to success, than that should be used for the grouping. That way, men with low testorone would be the same 'league' as woman with a medium testosterone level and woman with a really high testosterone level would play along men with a medium level of testosterone.

From my perspective, this would not only end all these gender discussions in sports but also make the lower leagues way more interesting and more fair for both genders.

No, that is stupid.

Generally yes, but I believe it is best done on a case by case (meaning type of sports, level and skillset) basis.

Generally on the recreational level, the differences between the sexes are much smaller than the differences within one sex. The best example that comes to mind is Tennis. Although it is physical in that it requires a lot of high-speed strength, which theoretically should be an advantage (on average) for young men, the skill difference between a man and another is far greater than that between an average man and an average woman. Go to a public court and you'll see a non-ignorable amount of women outplaying men (if they even dare to play each other) and what's even more baffling, older people beating younger people. On the absolute elite level though, they seem to almost play a totally different sport. Ball speed, running speed, ball spin and variety in spin on average are very different on the WTA compared to the ATP and therefore similar but different tactics and even technical styles are employed in the two. The difference within the Top 100 ATP or Top 100 WTA is much smaller than the average Top 100 WTA and average Top 100 ATP. So on that level, imho the segregation is merited.

As some others have already suggested, there might be better criteria to judge this separation on, like with weight class for martial arts. It is not always clear where that divider should be, though. As for tennis: Is it body weight or height? Maybe your fastest or average first serve? Maybe your fastest or average ground stroke? 30m Sprint time? Wherever you put that line might change the nature of the game played in that group and not even eliminate the de facto separation on sex or age, but in turn make it unattractive for some people to engage in a competition in the first place.

Which comes back to my initial statement of judging it case by case depending on the average difference between sexes and the difference within sexes.

edit: replaced gender with sex. Didn't think of it because in my native language this distinction isn't made.

Sports should be segmented out by testosterone levels.

Eh I'm so for just stopping sports. It at least spending all that wasted money on something meaningful, like feeding hungry people.