Algerian Imane Khelif wins boxing gold medal after her gender was wrongly questioned

MicroWave@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 766 points –
Algerian Imane Khelif wins boxing gold medal after her gender was wrongly questioned
nbcnews.com
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Me: the boundary for yellow and red is arbitrary and visible light exists on a continuum anyway!

Actually me:

This is not binary, it’s a scale, and at some point there is a limit that is fixed in the rules.

I fully recognize that this is arbitrary, I fully recognize that any "limit" is somewhat arbitrary. The only difference is that I acknowledge that sex is a "good enough" proxy for now.

I still don't understand how would you avoid that women will never see a medal again in any combat sport, athletics, swimming, tennis and many other sports if you stop using sex as a category. What categories would you use, and are they pragmatic enough that they can be implemented easily?

You see how when you demand orange not exist, and that's apparently "good enough" for you, that it doesn't represent reality? Instead of demanding these boundaries, if testosterone matters, then organize people into classes by testosterone. This allows women with higher T to compete as well as men with lower T. For many categories, testosterone will be unnecessary to test anyway.

"Women will never see a medal again," hmm don't be so confident about that.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTNG16aYg/

It's often the way sports are designed that keep women out intentionally

You see how when you demand orange not exist, and that’s apparently “good enough” for you, that it doesn’t represent reality?

I am saying that it's better to have 10 corner cases that can be dealt with than 2000 corner cases.

It’s often the way sports are designed that keep women out intentionally

I am really curious how you would design running in a way that having stronger muscle doesn't help, or combat sports in a way that power doesn't help etc. Also, women have their own category with almost in all cases same rules. How does this keep women out?

hmm don’t be so confident about that.

Go check all time-trial based sports, let me know if any women would have won anything.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240731-the-sports-where-women-outperform-men

Øyvind Sandbakk, a professor of sports science at UiT The Arctic University of Norway and the director of the Norwegian School of Elite Sports (NTG), has found together with colleagues that the gaps in the average performance between elite female and male athletes have tended to plateau at around 8–12% difference in world-record results in favour of men. The gap can be significantly smaller for ultra-endurance swimming and larger for sports involving substantial upper-body strength, the study found.

There isn't a clear linear relationship between testosterone levels and performance, says Mertens, a journalist focusing on sports and gender. "In fact, a lot of very elite male athletes have pretty low testosterone levels overall on average." One endocrinology study found low testosterone concentrations in one-quarter of men competing in 12 of the 15 Olympic sports analysed. And Mertens says even women with hyperandrogenism, who can have testosterone levels that reach typical male ranges, don't have the same level of performance as men.

I give up. You have tons of data available that you can still compare from Olympic games that just happened. I specifically didn't mention "every sport ever invented", but I mentioned "most sports" and you quote something that is supposed to prove...what? Lol

Nevermind. Continue living in a fantasy world in which Phelps swims slower than Ledecky (at 15, but who cares?!), because denying reality is a great way to approach problems.