Posted: Jun 08, 2019 6:26 pm
GrahamH wrote:Thommo wrote:
We have far, far more sophisiticated systems of leagues and qualifications and levels of competition than just the diamond league in place already. We don't want the best women competing against men from Southern league division 4. It simply wouldn't recognise the incredible talent and hundreds of hours of gut wrenching, puke inducing literal blood, sweat and tears they've had to put in to achieve what is a frankly ordinary time for a man.
So you are not actually disagreeing.
I disagree with the bit I disagreed with - the purpose of women's sport is not to act as a crude proxy for athletic ability.
The point of having women's sport is the benefits it affords (primarily to women and girls). The separation of events is required to achieve that aim, *not* to achieve the aim of separating out athletic ability via a crude proxy.
You could use gender as a crude proxy for athletic ability, but there's simply no reason to. If you want to know how good any of these athletes is at the 800m you have a vastly better data set available - their times.
GrahamH wrote:I assume nobody wuld object to some other categories so long as women athletes are able to compete.
I have no idea why you would assume that, you would need to explain and support that assumption. I would expect a majority of people to object. Women need to be able to compete on a basis that is perceived as fair relative to the aims of women's sport (which again, are the role models, celebration of values and so on, not the segregation itself). People also typically object to both spurious and extraneous categorisations.
We might even conjecture that we could use the CAS ruling itself to articulate the boundary of objection: it would need to follow a "necessary, reasonable and proportionate means" of achieving a legitimate sporting objective, else face such objections.
If you had only open categories, but allowed the best 2 women into the contest and they had no chance of winning, people would object. If you had weight categories in athletics, people would object.
If you had the existing categories (with their testosterone and other requirements intact) and added in additional categories, which left them largely alone, for a legitimate purpose (such as the inclusion of trans and intersex athletes on their own somewhat level playing field) then less people would object. Even then, some people would object.
GrahamH wrote:Some sports segregate by weight classes, or use weight handicapping. Wouldn't a more direct measure of performance indicator work for athletes of any gender?
Although this follows on from what seems a spurious assumption or two, it seems exceptionally dubious in itself anyway. Can you actually name any single factor which makes a comparable 10-12% performance difference to testosterone at the 400m, 800m, 1500m or mile events?
GrahamH wrote:There must be male athletes that can't compete with the elites because of lower T levels.
That is, again, an unsupported assumption.
GrahamH wrote:If those are "men from Southern league division 4" who have sweated just as much "puke inducing literal blood, sweat and tears" constrained by their genetics why would you exclude them?
Men in Southern league division 4 have typical levels of testosterone, typically.