Maybe ciswomen should get their own special events at the Paralympics?
Jose Mourinho prefers not to speak
Sounds like a perfect case to explain why the “open” category exists within most sports.
She’s a cis woman, being intersex doesn’t change that. I think it’s very funny how the people who ‘can always tell’ can’t tell at all.
This situation demonstrates the futility and the problems with trying to cut sex and gender into neat boxes when nature just doesn’t work that way. If you want different sports divisions based on height, testosterone levels, muscle density or whatever specific phenotypic trait then by all means do so to allow a fairer competition, but broad categorization such as “birth sex” contain too many variables and is frankly too nebulous to be a catch-all term for this kind of stuff. Naturally, the criteria (and related testing) should take the sport itself into consideration, because they test different aptitudes. It’s kind of a no-brainer. With bans on transgender women in sports, we’ve had trans women excluded from chess tournaments and darts competitions, and I sincerely hope that we can agree that these blanket bans are silly. I think it’s high time for us to make more educated decisions in regards to these regulations given we have the knowledge and the technology to do so, and it definitely should be in the hands of sports leagues and the experts behind them rather than on politicians who are using the issue of sports to lampshade attacks on vulnerable minority groups.
5 comments
Maybe ciswomen should get their own special events at the Paralympics?
Jose Mourinho prefers not to speak
Sounds like a perfect case to explain why the “open” category exists within most sports.
She’s a cis woman, being intersex doesn’t change that. I think it’s very funny how the people who ‘can always tell’ can’t tell at all.
This situation demonstrates the futility and the problems with trying to cut sex and gender into neat boxes when nature just doesn’t work that way. If you want different sports divisions based on height, testosterone levels, muscle density or whatever specific phenotypic trait then by all means do so to allow a fairer competition, but broad categorization such as “birth sex” contain too many variables and is frankly too nebulous to be a catch-all term for this kind of stuff. Naturally, the criteria (and related testing) should take the sport itself into consideration, because they test different aptitudes. It’s kind of a no-brainer. With bans on transgender women in sports, we’ve had trans women excluded from chess tournaments and darts competitions, and I sincerely hope that we can agree that these blanket bans are silly. I think it’s high time for us to make more educated decisions in regards to these regulations given we have the knowledge and the technology to do so, and it definitely should be in the hands of sports leagues and the experts behind them rather than on politicians who are using the issue of sports to lampshade attacks on vulnerable minority groups.