7 ms·

sports has everything to do with sex and nothing to do with gender Dividing by sex is a substitute for dividing by the things that really matter: height, we

sports has everything to do with sex and nothing to do with gender Dividing by sex is a substitute for dividing by the things that really matter: height, weight, strength, bone density, etc. If sports grouped competitors by a combination of those attributes, it would solve a lot of issues, including debate over transgender athletes.

nerdponx 5y ago
I agree, but unintended consequences abound. I wonder how this would apply in sports that don't typically have weight classes, like track & field. I imagine you'd start seeing athletes in pretty much every sport cutting weight like in boxing and wrestling, which I don't think is a healthy outcome. Are we at a level of biological science yet to create reliable divisions/classes on anything more sophisticated? And what about non-professional sports in schools?
- rjmunro 5y ago
  The Paralympic movement does something like this, and it's hard, e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-57404811 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-57404811. There's actually a campaign in wheelchair tennis to allow players who don't actually need a wheelchair to be allowed to compete. https://www.theaccessibleplanet.com/able-bodied-playing-wheelchair-tennis/ https://www.theaccessibleplanet.com/able-bodied-playing-whee...
  - robertlagrant 5y ago
    > There's actually a campaign in wheelchair tennis to allow players who don't actually need a wheelchair to be allowed to compete I've wondered about this - it's an interesting idea. Then the sport is just "Wheelchair tennis" and anyone can try.
    - ryanwinchester 5y ago
      I think people not confined to a wheelchair have more options for physical training. You could say that's an unfair advantage to people actually requiring the chair.
      - robertlagrant 5y ago
        True, and also it's possible that they would be able to get leverage from their legs in a way that not everyone could. It's a tricky topic.
- germinalphrase 5y ago
  While absolutely common, cutting weight is not universal in combat sports and wrestling. There are distinct athletic costs to cutting weight.
mastazi 5y ago
Most combat sports have weight classes so what you are suggesting is not completely unheard of.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
nimbleal 5y ago
Hmmmm. At that point are you not simply beginning to divide by ability? Basketball for short people? Weightlifting for weak people? It would seem to both go against the spirit of sport and be impossible to implement in practice (for e.g how many different ways do you cut it?) Perhaps the more fundamental question — once again leaning on apparently somewhat flimsy terminology — would be: is biological sex something worthy of celebration and note? Half of our species is born a certain way, whatever we call it. Is that grouping to be given certain opportunities to demonstrate their talents that would not be afforded them on a level playing field?
- crowf 5y ago
  Many sports have many categories. Boxers and wrestlers are separated based on weight
  - nimbleal 5y ago
    Yes, but as mentioned elsewhere weight alone would do little to solve this issue. Males would still dominate. So presumably you include other factors — but then you are simply dividing by ability. You could conceivably attempt to divide by innate ability (theoretically allowing competitors to compete against one another based on nurture, not nature) but that would be impossible to do fairly or in a way that would make sense to audiences.
    - trhway 5y ago
      >impossible to do fairly we're at HN - run PCA and clustering on the totality of athletes' results and biological data for the last N decades with end result being the groups based on identified parameters similar to boxing/wrestling weight groups. >that would make sense to audiences. we're already in situation which is harder and harder to make sense. Putting it on the firm basis of scientific analysis is the only way to move forward which would avoid all the pitfalls we're going to hit otherwise.
      - jefftk 5y ago
yerwhat01010 5y ago
Olympic weightlifting is already divided into weight categories. What you're advocating is the abolition of women's sports.
- uniqueid 5y ago
  Not that I made an argument for using weight alone, but it depends on the sport in any event. To avoid injuries, the physical attributes that matter to billiards differ from those that matter to rugby.
raffraffraff 5y ago
https://mobile.twitter.com/Scienceofsport/status/1407020003753349129 https://mobile.twitter.com/Scienceofsport/status/14070200037... Sports scientists do not agree
- uniqueid 5y ago
  That tweet addresses solely weight, but I'm not arguing for categories based solely on weight.
  - raffraffraff 5y ago
    https://mobile.twitter.com/Scienceofsport/status/1297915789530497025?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1297915789530497025%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fd-1151575293395086572.ampproject.net%2F2106120107000%2Fframe.html https://mobile.twitter.com/Scienceofsport/status/12979157895... Tweets are a dreadful way to read something like this, which would be easier to suggest in a blog post or paper. But I suppose Twitter gives people the right to respond, so swings-and-roundabouts.
    - uniqueid 5y ago
      Thanks, the entire thread makes more sense! I want to avoid sounding any more opinionated about sports medicine than I already do, since it's not a subject in which I have any expertise. That said, when I consider that a 'mens' category alone includes both Andre The Giant and Peter Dinklage, it's hard for me to understand how a richer mix of physical attributes could do any worse :)
      - raffraffraff 5y ago
        Well, you're not picking people at either end of a normal size scale. You're picking people with gigantism and dwarfism. But let's take Andre as an example: what sports Andre would truly excel at? He made a name in wrestling, but his gigantism was as much a cause of health problems as an "edge" in sport. And if size was the deciding factor, then why wasn't the largest woman with gigantism (Tanya Angus, 7 feet 7 inches and weighed 400lbs) beating the shit out of wrestlers like The Undertaker (6 feet 10, 309lbs)? Because size isn't all. Edit: now I'm taking weight! Ross Tucker made a point about safety, but also about fairness, about which he said (paraphrasing) that females would disappear completely from mixed sex sports, even with weight categories. His point about "fairness" categories is more like "how would that even work?"
xupybd 5y ago
I think life time testosterone levels would help too. Hard to define and monitor but a huge performance impacted
- sundvor 5y ago
  On a related note: One of the advantages of weightlifting (at least for a middle aged cisgendered male) is that it increases testosterone production. Significantly lowered levels can have some really bad outcomes as one age, ie killing energy levels, libido, physical strength etc.
  - xupybd 5y ago
    Yeah it really helps. I'd recommend heavy deadlifts to any middle aged male. It's a huge energy booster.
    - sundvor 5y ago
      I just wanted to say thanks for reminding me that deadlifts is the really big one. I've been mainly focusing on my squats in my garage gym (full Olympic barbell/bench/rack with spotter bars/extra Olympic EzyCurl bar) setup, but looking at my history I've let the big deadlift slip - 14 days since last session. So I took the 20 second trip to the gym last night to start fixing that, warmed up with squats and then just deadlifts - and can definitely feel the energy today (on top of the fatigue!). I've been struggling with energy lately due to a lot of change and stress, so hopefully a renewed focus on the deadlift will be helpful. Cheers.
3grdlurker 5y ago
> Dividing by sex is a substitute for dividing by the things that really matter: height, weight, strength, bone density, etc. You crucially missed an important variable which competitive sports of any kind fully hinge upon: skeletal muscle density… which hugely differs across biological sexes.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Someone 5y ago
In many sports, there’s selection for the level one competes at. You won’t see Messi play in third division football, for example, or me being offered a job by a top team. Top athletes want the challenge/fame/money of competing with better players. In other sports, there’s a rating system that effectively places people with competitors at their level (ELO in chess, tennis rankings) Either would work in any sport, except for the fact that huge classes of people wouldn’t ever be represented at top level. Prime examples are women and people with disabilities. In para-athletics, they try to solve that with an elaborate classification system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Para-athletics_classification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Para-athletics_classification) Problem is that training can sometimes move you between categories. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T42_(classification) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T42_(classification) has “impaired muscle power or impaired range of movement” as criteria. Those can get better with training. For women, it seems easier, but even ignoring transgenders, there’s various genetic rarities such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/46,XX/46,XY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/46,XX/46,XY that can put women at an advantage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foekje_Dillema https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foekje_Dillema) that we may or may not choose to call unfair (we don’t think it’s unfair for men over six feet to compete in basketball, though, even though that’s largely genetic)
GhostVII 5y ago
When you segment based on age and sex you are dividing up people based on their starting conditions - people who were born in the same year, and with the same sex, compete to see who is the best. When you divide based on the attributes that matter for the sport, you are basically just pre-ranking everyone and bucketing them so you only compete against those who we predict will do as well as you. Which is fine for more casual levels of sport, but isn't particularly interesting to watch. No one wants to watch a competition to see who is the "best of people we think are ranked 100-200" since it is an arbitrary grouping. They want to see people compete to be the best woman or man in the world. Dividing based on weight makes sense for some sports since it is an added constraint that people compete to optimize their strength against. But dividing based on strength just moves the competition from the actual competition, into the ranking process.
- belorn 5y ago
  A problematic aspect of segmenting based on age is that you get a very large bias towards people with specific birth months. Getting 11 more months compare to the competition is huge, and the data shows it. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24886927/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24886927/ https://danielkiikka.com/performance/birth-month-athletic-performance/ https://danielkiikka.com/performance/birth-month-athletic-pe...
splithalf 5y ago
I like this idea. It could also make the nba and nfl more racially diverse.
caeril 5y ago
Reaction times and spatial reasoning matter very significantly in sports, as well. These are things for which there are also rather persistent differences in distribution between males and females.
jhgb 5y ago
I strongly suspect that you'd discover that your data forms two major clusters.

nerdponx 5y ago

I agree, but unintended consequences abound. I wonder how this would apply in sports that don't typically have weight classes, like track & field. I imagine you'd start seeing athletes in pretty much every sport cutting weight like in boxing and wrestling, which I don't think is a healthy outcome. Are we at a level of biological science yet to create reliable divisions/classes on anything more sophisticated? And what about non-professional sports in schools?

rjmunro 5y ago
The Paralympic movement does something like this, and it's hard, e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-57404811 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-57404811. There's actually a campaign in wheelchair tennis to allow players who don't actually need a wheelchair to be allowed to compete. https://www.theaccessibleplanet.com/able-bodied-playing-wheelchair-tennis/ https://www.theaccessibleplanet.com/able-bodied-playing-whee...
- robertlagrant 5y ago
  > There's actually a campaign in wheelchair tennis to allow players who don't actually need a wheelchair to be allowed to compete I've wondered about this - it's an interesting idea. Then the sport is just "Wheelchair tennis" and anyone can try.
  - ryanwinchester 5y ago
    I think people not confined to a wheelchair have more options for physical training. You could say that's an unfair advantage to people actually requiring the chair.
    - robertlagrant 5y ago
      True, and also it's possible that they would be able to get leverage from their legs in a way that not everyone could. It's a tricky topic.
germinalphrase 5y ago
While absolutely common, cutting weight is not universal in combat sports and wrestling. There are distinct athletic costs to cutting weight.

mastazi 5y ago

Most combat sports have weight classes so what you are suggesting is not completely unheard of.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

nimbleal 5y ago

Hmmmm. At that point are you not simply beginning to divide by ability? Basketball for short people? Weightlifting for weak people? It would seem to both go against the spirit of sport and be impossible to implement in practice (for e.g how many different ways do you cut it?) Perhaps the more fundamental question — once again leaning on apparently somewhat flimsy terminology — would be: is biological sex something worthy of celebration and note? Half of our species is born a certain way, whatever we call it. Is that grouping to be given certain opportunities to demonstrate their talents that would not be afforded them on a level playing field?

crowf 5y ago
Many sports have many categories. Boxers and wrestlers are separated based on weight
- nimbleal 5y ago
  Yes, but as mentioned elsewhere weight alone would do little to solve this issue. Males would still dominate. So presumably you include other factors — but then you are simply dividing by ability. You could conceivably attempt to divide by innate ability (theoretically allowing competitors to compete against one another based on nurture, not nature) but that would be impossible to do fairly or in a way that would make sense to audiences.
  - trhway 5y ago
    >impossible to do fairly we're at HN - run PCA and clustering on the totality of athletes' results and biological data for the last N decades with end result being the groups based on identified parameters similar to boxing/wrestling weight groups. >that would make sense to audiences. we're already in situation which is harder and harder to make sense. Putting it on the firm basis of scientific analysis is the only way to move forward which would avoid all the pitfalls we're going to hit otherwise.
    - jefftk 5y ago

yerwhat01010 5y ago

Olympic weightlifting is already divided into weight categories. What you're advocating is the abolition of women's sports.

uniqueid 5y ago
Not that I made an argument for using weight alone, but it depends on the sport in any event. To avoid injuries, the physical attributes that matter to billiards differ from those that matter to rugby.

raffraffraff 5y ago

https://mobile.twitter.com/Scienceofsport/status/1407020003753349129 https://mobile.twitter.com/Scienceofsport/status/14070200037... Sports scientists do not agree

uniqueid 5y ago
That tweet addresses solely weight, but I'm not arguing for categories based solely on weight.
- raffraffraff 5y ago
  https://mobile.twitter.com/Scienceofsport/status/1297915789530497025?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1297915789530497025%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fd-1151575293395086572.ampproject.net%2F2106120107000%2Fframe.html https://mobile.twitter.com/Scienceofsport/status/12979157895... Tweets are a dreadful way to read something like this, which would be easier to suggest in a blog post or paper. But I suppose Twitter gives people the right to respond, so swings-and-roundabouts.
  - uniqueid 5y ago
    Thanks, the entire thread makes more sense! I want to avoid sounding any more opinionated about sports medicine than I already do, since it's not a subject in which I have any expertise. That said, when I consider that a 'mens' category alone includes both Andre The Giant and Peter Dinklage, it's hard for me to understand how a richer mix of physical attributes could do any worse :)
    - raffraffraff 5y ago
      Well, you're not picking people at either end of a normal size scale. You're picking people with gigantism and dwarfism. But let's take Andre as an example: what sports Andre would truly excel at? He made a name in wrestling, but his gigantism was as much a cause of health problems as an "edge" in sport. And if size was the deciding factor, then why wasn't the largest woman with gigantism (Tanya Angus, 7 feet 7 inches and weighed 400lbs) beating the shit out of wrestlers like The Undertaker (6 feet 10, 309lbs)? Because size isn't all. Edit: now I'm taking weight! Ross Tucker made a point about safety, but also about fairness, about which he said (paraphrasing) that females would disappear completely from mixed sex sports, even with weight categories. His point about "fairness" categories is more like "how would that even work?"

xupybd 5y ago

I think life time testosterone levels would help too. Hard to define and monitor but a huge performance impacted

sundvor 5y ago
On a related note: One of the advantages of weightlifting (at least for a middle aged cisgendered male) is that it increases testosterone production. Significantly lowered levels can have some really bad outcomes as one age, ie killing energy levels, libido, physical strength etc.
- xupybd 5y ago
  Yeah it really helps. I'd recommend heavy deadlifts to any middle aged male. It's a huge energy booster.
  - sundvor 5y ago
    I just wanted to say thanks for reminding me that deadlifts is the really big one. I've been mainly focusing on my squats in my garage gym (full Olympic barbell/bench/rack with spotter bars/extra Olympic EzyCurl bar) setup, but looking at my history I've let the big deadlift slip - 14 days since last session. So I took the 20 second trip to the gym last night to start fixing that, warmed up with squats and then just deadlifts - and can definitely feel the energy today (on top of the fatigue!). I've been struggling with energy lately due to a lot of change and stress, so hopefully a renewed focus on the deadlift will be helpful. Cheers.

3grdlurker 5y ago

> Dividing by sex is a substitute for dividing by the things that really matter: height, weight, strength, bone density, etc. You crucially missed an important variable which competitive sports of any kind fully hinge upon: skeletal muscle density… which hugely differs across biological sexes.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Someone 5y ago

In many sports, there’s selection for the level one competes at. You won’t see Messi play in third division football, for example, or me being offered a job by a top team. Top athletes want the challenge/fame/money of competing with better players. In other sports, there’s a rating system that effectively places people with competitors at their level (ELO in chess, tennis rankings) Either would work in any sport, except for the fact that huge classes of people wouldn’t ever be represented at top level. Prime examples are women and people with disabilities. In para-athletics, they try to solve that with an elaborate classification system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Para-athletics_classification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Para-athletics_classification) Problem is that training can sometimes move you between categories. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T42_(classification) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T42_(classification) has “impaired muscle power or impaired range of movement” as criteria. Those can get better with training. For women, it seems easier, but even ignoring transgenders, there’s various genetic rarities such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/46,XX/46,XY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/46,XX/46,XY that can put women at an advantage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foekje_Dillema https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foekje_Dillema) that we may or may not choose to call unfair (we don’t think it’s unfair for men over six feet to compete in basketball, though, even though that’s largely genetic)

GhostVII 5y ago

When you segment based on age and sex you are dividing up people based on their starting conditions - people who were born in the same year, and with the same sex, compete to see who is the best. When you divide based on the attributes that matter for the sport, you are basically just pre-ranking everyone and bucketing them so you only compete against those who we predict will do as well as you. Which is fine for more casual levels of sport, but isn't particularly interesting to watch. No one wants to watch a competition to see who is the "best of people we think are ranked 100-200" since it is an arbitrary grouping. They want to see people compete to be the best woman or man in the world. Dividing based on weight makes sense for some sports since it is an added constraint that people compete to optimize their strength against. But dividing based on strength just moves the competition from the actual competition, into the ranking process.

belorn 5y ago
A problematic aspect of segmenting based on age is that you get a very large bias towards people with specific birth months. Getting 11 more months compare to the competition is huge, and the data shows it. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24886927/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24886927/ https://danielkiikka.com/performance/birth-month-athletic-performance/ https://danielkiikka.com/performance/birth-month-athletic-pe...

splithalf 5y ago

I like this idea. It could also make the nba and nfl more racially diverse.

caeril 5y ago

Reaction times and spatial reasoning matter very significantly in sports, as well. These are things for which there are also rather persistent differences in distribution between males and females.

jhgb 5y ago

I strongly suspect that you'd discover that your data forms two major clusters.