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Racism, sexism etc in sport.

But surely this is not sufficient where sports are concerned. To use the terminology you describe, I, male and man, can decide that from midnight I will be a woman. But unless I take medical measures to increase my "womanness" no sports body will accept me as a woman and I will not be able to, say, compete in single sculls against women. (Not that they'd be at all worried, in my case).
You can identify as you want, whether a sporting body agrees is up to them.I don't know the rules, but what I describe is the current usage AIUI for transgender people if not necessarily athletes.
 
Until 1988 there were no female classes in Olympic yachting. Britain sent Cathy Foster to Los Angeles in 1984 in the 470 class, she had a male crew I think. She was an outlier, if not unique.

So presumably classes for women were introduced to increase participation, and the classes differ according to physical characteristics. Laser Radial for women, Laser for men. For example. The 470 is shared though, it would be really interesting to mix that fleet up and see what happened.
Sailing really did ought to be a sport where men and women can compete equally, I would have thought. The same goes for things like shooting and archery.
 
Same could go for snooker and darts, but is there an argument that fully mixed sports might put off girls/young women from taking it up to begin with if they know they have to compete against men?

Maybe by segregating some sports there is an element of motivating females to take it up and to keep higher levels of participation and nothing to do with viewing them as inferior or less skilled.
 
Same could go for snooker and darts, but is there an argument that fully mixed sports might put off girls/young women from taking it up to begin with if they know they have to compete against men?

Maybe by segregating some sports there is an element of motivating females to take it up and to keep higher levels of participation and nothing to do with viewing them as inferior or less skilled.
there's a parallel debate in education, I believe. Maybe some of the teachers here know the details.
 
Unfortunately there is the widespread feeling that the male world champion, in practically any sport, has greater prestige and glamour than the female. Many more people know who "The fastest man on Earth" is than know who the fastest woman is. Admittedly the man is faster, but still....I suppose culturally it is rooted in the past, when sports were something for men rather than women, as were military activities.
But something is definitely changing. When I started rowing, recreationally, around 1980, there was about 1 woman for every 10 men. Today, in the two clubs I frequent, there are definitely more women than men, starting with the teenagers all the way to the so-called "masters," which is a nice way of saying old. And in passing glances at tennis courts, it seems there are more women there, too.
 
Sailing really did ought to be a sport where men and women can compete equally, I would have thought. The same goes for things like shooting and archery.
Sailing is very physical. And dinghies tend to have an optimum mass for each member of the crew. Which all tends to mitigate against equal competition at the higher levels.

I don't know about shooting and archery. I suspect that there is a further factor of male aggression and competitiveness that tends to drown out female participants. Female categories allow the development of female competition on its own terms, and I think increasing participation is generally a good thing, even it technically the playing field could be level.
 
Until 1988 there were no female classes in Olympic yachting. Britain sent Cathy Foster to Los Angeles in 1984 in the 470 class, she had a male crew I think. She was an outlier, if not unique.

So presumably classes for women were introduced to increase participation, and the classes differ according to physical characteristics. Laser Radial for women, Laser for men. For example. The 470 is shared though, it would be really interesting to mix that fleet up and see what happened.
Yes, the 470 class is a good example of mixing it up. It makes sense to have a male gorilla on the wire, and a lady helm - you could clean up in the heavy stuff. I started sailing with a 7 stone lady last year in one of my boats, and it was a revelation going downwind. Normally (with a lump of fat on the wire, plus my porkage), we normally plod downwind looking forward to the next beat.
 
There is no reason why shooting should not be mixed. The competitor lies on their stomach, holds the rifle in their hands with weight on the elbows, and has to keep as immobile as possible. All about breathing and concentration and relaxation. And estimation of wind. The .22 ammunition used has no recoil worth mentioning. So I can't see why a man or woman should be able to do it better or worse.
 
And you argue black's white to "win"the argument and play the disingenuous card until any desire to have a discussion is spent. . I'm not wearing it. It's blindingly obvious what relevance male/female biological differences have to a debate about transgender athletes, we discussed male puberty earlier. I'm not wasting further electrons on someone who is wilfully deaf to listen.

So give over with the disingenuous schtick and make your point, or just carry on as you are pretending not to understand until everyone else making a point has packed up and walked away in search of something more interesting.

Senior visiting fellow at the Global Health Justice Partnership at Yale University Katrina Karkazis, co-author of Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography, describes “the erroneous representations about the science of sex biology, intersex, and the relationship between testosterone and athleticism.”

It is easy to overestimate the effect of testosterone on performance. The “scientific fact” suggest that Semenya’s testosterone gives her a “huge” 8 to 12 percent advantage over her competitors. But Semenya does not beat her competitors by anything like these margins. Even the lower end of that would mean winning the 800 metres by a margin of 9 or 10 seconds — the gap between first and last in the 2016 Olympic final was less than half that. Semenya stands fourth in the all-time list of fastest women 800 metre runners.

There are no trans Olympic medal winners. Cyclist Rachel McKinnon is one of two trans world champions in an Olympic sport. She loses more races than she wins.

East African men have been amongst the most successful long and middle distance runners. Research suggested an evolutionary ability to process oxygen more efficiently as a result of training at high altitude. Finland’s Eero Mantyranta, who won seven gold medals for Nordic skiing, had a condition that enabled his body to naturally produce 65 percent more red blood cells than the average male. Swimmer Michael Phelps has an unusually large “wingspan” and huge feet that effectively act like flippers owing to his double-jointed ankles. All of these confer as much advantage as the supposed testosterone conferred advantages of trans athletes. There are numerous factors involved in a specific sporting prowess. Objecting to trans women, and only trans women, in sport, says much more about the motivation of objectors.
 
Could we have all non-sporting, but relevant to sport, discussions about racism, sexism etc in sport here?

A certain thread is at risk of being dominated by fishes who’ll never even agree to disagree, so go for it!
bu there is another thread on here where i said lewis hamilton is irritating. after that it turned into a load of racism bollocks. and you were part of it!
 
There is no reason why shooting should not be mixed. The competitor lies on their stomach, holds the rifle in their hands with weight on the elbows, and has to keep as immobile as possible. All about breathing and concentration and relaxation. And estimation of wind. The .22 ammunition used has no recoil worth mentioning. So I can't see why a man or woman should be able to do it better or worse.
They don't lie down for most of them from skim-reading these: https://olympics.com/en/news/olympi...ions-rapid-fire-air-pistol-shotgun-trap-skeet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISSF_25_meter_rapid_fire_pistol
 
Not many women on this forum (a strong guess) & I think it is easy to talk about trans rights from a male perspective.

It’s a very difficult issue that I don’t really have a position on.
 
There are numerous factors involved in a specific sporting prowess. Objecting to trans women, and only trans women, in sport, says much more about the motivation of objectors.
Remembering what "female" East German field athletes used to look like tells you how hard countries try to cheat for medals. I bet we start to see genetically engineered athletes by the end of this decade. Defining human will get challenging
 
Objecting to trans women, and only trans women, in sport, says much more about the motivation of objectors.

No it doesn’t, the discussion is about protecting womens’ sport in order to protect fairness - ie female participation. The reason that trans women (biological males) are mentioned is that trans men (biological females) do not have an impact on mens’ sport.
 

I was thinking of shooting at targets from 50 meters with rifles using .22LR ammunition. But you are right, I believe the routine is 50 rounds prone, 50 rounds kneeling, and 50 rounds standing. But in any case I don't see why a woman should not be just as proficient as a man. Or, for that matter, in any other kind of shooting. With trap, with a shotgun at clay pigeons, there is a hefty recoil, but women routinely shoot birds so it should not be a problem.
 
so you were part of turning a thread about lewis hamilton into a racism thread. and then you start this thread to try and keep that kind of hting out of it, but you were part of it! seems odd.
A lady can change her mind!

The argument on the 2023 F1 thread wasn’t allowing any other posts to be noticed. This thread is already five pages old, so I think it was a reasonable idea. It might be absorbing similar from other threads too.
 
bu there is another thread on here where i said lewis hamilton is irritating. After that it turned into a load of racism bollocks.

Unfortunately, it seems that even the slightest criticism of Lewis Hamilton will get you branded as a racist by certain of our members here. It's unfortunate, but it is what it is.

(That last sentence probably qualifies for the "Ghastly Expressions" thread.)
 


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