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submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by Pandantic@midwest.social to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world

Obviously this won’t work for all sports, but things like football, track, soccer, it would allow for de-gendered team, even allowing athletes with the skills but not the genetically-endowed physical attributes to have a place to play.

Note: I know very little about sports and being on a sports team, so please point out anything that doesn’t make sense.

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[-] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago

Forget weight limits.....I think baseball is the perfect place to start.

I've watched baseball for 30 years. I don't like change. I understood the need for an automanic runner on 2nd during the covid years. It made sense for the context of it's time. That time has ended, and so should that rule. I hate the pitch clock. For me, baseball is sometimes not even about the game. Some men have a hard time admitting to others, or even to themselves that they enjoy the company of other men. But the truth is, we wouldn't hang out every weekend, get drunk, and watch sports together if we truely didn't care for each other. So even though you know your buddy cares about you, and you care about him, there still needs to be a game on. Now you're trying to make the game shorter? I am not a fan. I will happily watch a double header with the boys. We want MORE sports, not LESS.

I'm also not a fan of the sensitivity of how balks are called now. Balks used to be so rare, that I had to be explained at age 19 what just happened when I saw one. This after watching baseball for 9 year already. These days it seems like EVERY game has a balk. Sometimes it's just a twitch of the leg, with no pitching gesture. In NO WAY can some of these balks be realistically interpreted as an intentional fake out pitch movement.

As you can see, I'm a grumpy old set in my ways grey haired curmudgeon. However, even I wouldn't even mind at all if women played with men. If they can hit a 97 mph fastball, and beat out the throw to home, why WOULDN'T you want them on their team?

The first one to break that barrier would be just as iconic as Jackie Robinson. At least you would THINK so. The reality of the situation is, women HAVE played on official MLB teams. The fact that I don't remember their names or their decades that they played is only testiment to how unfairly they were viewed. If MLB wants to promote diversity, and progressive views, we get Jackie Robinson and Larry Dolby. When the MLB wants to kill the idea, you never hear a word about it officially from them. Instead you only hear about it on youtube videos about obscure MLB facts.

The point is, on a regular basis, I would still support competitive women playing on every team. There are some truely crappy players in the MLB (looking at you, Bartolo Colon), and if they get replaced with better playing women, then the MLB as a whole is stronger for it.

...........that being said, women and men should NOT play hockey together. It just wouldn't be right.

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[-] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

There’s a big issue with using weight classes in team sports: player weights vary dramatically. Take the NFL for example. Setting aside the enormous differences in weight between linemen (offensive and defensive) and all other position players, there are also huge weight differences within a given position. For example, quarterback Jared Lorenzen was 6’4” and weighed 275 lbs whereas Russell Wilson is 5’11” and weighs 211 lbs. That’s a huge weight difference!

You can find similar weight differences across players in other leagues (NHL, NBA, and MLB). Weights don’t really correlate with overall skill level though they do somewhat correlate with position and skill set (and height of course).

How would you classify by weight in team sports? You might think to do it by position but none of the leagues require a player to remain at a single position for their career. Players can and do switch positions, and many even do so multiple times during a game. Sports like NBA basketball don’t even have any particular rules about what a player at any given position is allowed/not allowed to do, so the positions on team rosters are more like a suggestion than a requirement.

[-] Snapz@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago

For team sports, don't all firefighters have to go through the some physical stress test to show they can all operate on the same basic level? Maybe there is that minimum physicality test and if you can pass it, male or female, you become NFL eligible - maybe it's a combine thing? You can then have since that are more of less fit and capable, as with firefighters, but they've all met that standardized minimum to start. How does that not solve this?

For broader need, maybe you could just start with the majority of the Olympics being co-ed and weight class?

In that scenario, I think people may need to be ready to accept that there could still be a "natural" separation in performance by sex to start as even strong athletes may still be socialized to play differently. Give it a generation or so though and I think the weight class thing could normalize competition level as birth-assigned boys and girls grow up playing with each other on the same fields.

[-] MapleEngineer@lemmy.world 7 points 4 months ago

The issue isn't gender. Gender is a social construct. The issue is sex. Female sports were always intended to be for female athletes. Female athletes who choose to play female sports to have a more level playing field and to play against other female athletes find it unfair to be forced to play against male athletes playing female sports. Trans women are women but they aren't female.

[-] flying_sheep@lemmy.ml 7 points 4 months ago

Nah, that's simply not true if you look at the actual data about how well trans athletes perform.

[-] MapleEngineer@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago

What's not true? That trans women aren't female? That's undeniably true. That female atheletes who choose to play female sports to have a more even playing field and to play against other female atheletes find being forced to play against male atheletes unfair? That's undeniably true as well. That female sports were intented for female atheletes? That's undeniably true. That gender is a social construct? I mean...that's a central pillar of the platform so we have to agree that that's true.

Your beliefs don't change reality and simply waving your hand in the air and declaring undeniable truths to be untrue does NOT make them untrue.

[-] flying_sheep@lemmy.ml 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

That cis women playing against trans women is unfair. As said above, the actual data proves that this is not the case. Of course it's undeniably true that reactionary dudes (and maybe even women) feel like things are unfair, but the actual facts invalidate that feeling.

The discretized, simplified middle school biology you're invoking here is simply not a precise enough model to depict reality.

Trans women aren't “male” from a muscle development perspective, as they don't have a male hormone profile lol.

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[-] MichaelTen@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago
[-] berryjam@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

Wait, judo has mixed-gender brackets?

[-] A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago

I feel like it'd probably be better to group based on performance. I don't see why this wouldn't work for pretty much all 1v1/FFA/small-team sports/games.

[-] Nomecks@lemmy.ca 5 points 5 months ago

I think they should have classes limited by hormone level and just let people supplement to equality.

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[-] doingthestuff@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

Just create a trans league. Trans men and trans women all in the same league. Id watch that shit, it would make money. So why don't we have this yet?

[-] bane_killgrind@slrpnk.net 6 points 5 months ago

That's like .001% of athletes and everyone would hate it.

[-] vierbl00m@feddit.de 5 points 4 months ago

Makes me wonder how many trans people you think there are lol

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[-] chocosoldier 5 points 4 months ago

The "issue" with trans people in sports is nothing but moral panic founded on propaganda narratives and fueled by hatred, ignorance, and lack of scientific data thanks to centuries of systemic oppression and erasure.

Studies so far show that trans athletes are overall physiologically at a slight disadvantage compared to their cisgender peers, and this is borne out by real world statistics wherein trans athletes (NOT the edge cases the media likes to stir shit about) tend to underperform.

Last I checked underperformance by a specific demographic isn't considered an issue. The rest is hot air and warmed-over gay panic with the end of excluding trans people from public life, and you ought to respect yourself enough to not legitimize this hateful crock in this manner.

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this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
293 points (100.0% liked)

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