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It means you get to choose whether to watch men's tennis or women's tennis; men's gymnastics or women's gymnastics; men's track and field or women's track and f

It means you get to choose whether to watch men's tennis or women's tennis; men's gymnastics or women's gymnastics; men's track and field or women's track and field. It means you don't have to deal with as much social and sexual drama between team members for team sports, which I suspect (but don't have data because I don't think adequate studies have been done) distracts from practicing the sport. This is a similar problem to mixed-sex infantry squads. You can wish for all the equality you want, but you won't get it. It means you have many varieties of sports with women competing that girls and other women can look up to as role models or inspiration or motivation to participate in sports.

dragonwriter 8y ago
No, it doesn't mean any of that because sports governing bodies can divide up divisions irrespective of legal gender (e.g., the Olympics handles this, and their standard isn't “look at the legal gender of the athlete and stop there”.) There may be a good reason to segregate some sports by some traits linked to sex (but “genitals at birth” probably isn't the best standard for that), but even if there is it doesn't require immutable legal gender to do that.
- harshreality 8y ago
  So are you saying we should do away with legal gender only to have de-facto legal gender used for all sorts of things like sports or insurance policies? Who's going to standardize those determinations if it's not the government? If the government's standards aren't good, and are in fact simply "genitals at birth", then that needs to be fixed, but as far as I can tell that's not true, at least federally or for the state I checked. If you transition, you get a court document with a doctor's statement certifying it, and you update your gender on your official documents. Right? There probably need to be different legal standards based on the purpose the gender is being used for, too. Being a trans woman shouldn't allow you to compete in women's MMA, for instance; there's already been an instance of that happening and it was a disaster. What concrete problem or injustice are you trying to correct? That people can't decide to change genders for a day, or decide they want to be officially recognized as the opposite gender before they transition? Is that a problem? People seem to want [biological] sex labels to mirror how they present themselves to others, instead of mirroring (as closely as possible, based on the reason the gender label is being requested) the underlying sex characteristic / hormonal physical reality of their body. That strikes me as a problem. In the limited situations and cases where people are asking for [biological] gender and need to know, how you present yourself ceases to matter. If they don't need to know, they you can use whatever label you want. Same with your name, or your date of birth, or anything else. But it's almost always pointless to informally declare your gender, because anyone interacting with you is going to pick up on what gender you present yourself as (whether verbally, in temperament, or physically). Labelling yourself other than your biological gender isn't needed for enlightened, tolerant people, and will only antagonize people who aren't comfortable with the whole trans/non-binary thing.

dragonwriter 8y ago

No, it doesn't mean any of that because sports governing bodies can divide up divisions irrespective of legal gender (e.g., the Olympics handles this, and their standard isn't “look at the legal gender of the athlete and stop there”.) There may be a good reason to segregate some sports by some traits linked to sex (but “genitals at birth” probably isn't the best standard for that), but even if there is it doesn't require immutable legal gender to do that.

harshreality 8y ago
So are you saying we should do away with legal gender only to have de-facto legal gender used for all sorts of things like sports or insurance policies? Who's going to standardize those determinations if it's not the government? If the government's standards aren't good, and are in fact simply "genitals at birth", then that needs to be fixed, but as far as I can tell that's not true, at least federally or for the state I checked. If you transition, you get a court document with a doctor's statement certifying it, and you update your gender on your official documents. Right? There probably need to be different legal standards based on the purpose the gender is being used for, too. Being a trans woman shouldn't allow you to compete in women's MMA, for instance; there's already been an instance of that happening and it was a disaster. What concrete problem or injustice are you trying to correct? That people can't decide to change genders for a day, or decide they want to be officially recognized as the opposite gender before they transition? Is that a problem? People seem to want [biological] sex labels to mirror how they present themselves to others, instead of mirroring (as closely as possible, based on the reason the gender label is being requested) the underlying sex characteristic / hormonal physical reality of their body. That strikes me as a problem. In the limited situations and cases where people are asking for [biological] gender and need to know, how you present yourself ceases to matter. If they don't need to know, they you can use whatever label you want. Same with your name, or your date of birth, or anything else. But it's almost always pointless to informally declare your gender, because anyone interacting with you is going to pick up on what gender you present yourself as (whether verbally, in temperament, or physically). Labelling yourself other than your biological gender isn't needed for enlightened, tolerant people, and will only antagonize people who aren't comfortable with the whole trans/non-binary thing.