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Why? We should just put everyone, including women, in a single open category and be done with it. Nicely solves all the problems.
Women's Sports exists much for the same reason the Special Olympics exists. It carves out a place for athletes with specific limitations to compete against others with the same specific limitations.
Then they belong in the Special Olympics with all the other carve-outs.
Women's Olympics is the carve out though. It just happens to be broadcast at the same time and place.
And is considered equivalent to. Olympic medal counts add together those won by Men and Women of some country, but do not add those won by disabled people.
That is just the foot in the door. If women atheletes wear burkas they will not be relegated to the special olympics nor is olympics OK with promoting beauty which appeals to straight men.
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"Just happens"? No, that's on purpose to make it seem like less of a carve out to mitigate the shame of needing such a carve out.
Ok, sure. Or there are some people who like to watch women's gymnastics and there is a market reason to have both on at the same time.
What is your point here? You accept that woman's sports are a carve out but demand they stay X feet or Y days away from a no-carve out sport?
No, I demand that they be explicitly recognized as a carve out for people who can't cut it otherwise instead of some kind of deserved response to perceived unfairness that some disadvantaged people are entitled to. I see the whole argument of whether or not to allow trans-women to participate as a red herring, as it ignores the fact that the choice of exactly which people who would badly lose in an open tournament instead get to stand up and pretend to be among "the best in the world" is arbitrary anyway. EDIT: If it is truly about "fair" competition, then there should be no problems facing off against trans-women or even men who perform at the same level. That there is a desire to exclude shows this is entirely about the resulting status.
I am a woman and I can recognize that the athletes in women's competitions have a similar strength as myself. I don't really have a problem looking at a female Olympic swimmer and saying, "Yeah, she's way better than me at swimming. She trained very hard to get there." She is "best in the world" in a category I belong to.
Meanwhile, I could look over at the high school boys team and say, "They are going through the exact same training regimen as myself, I'm even practicing in the same lane as some of them, but their race times are still faster than mine. Sexual dimorphism is weird." It's like we were two different species. I wouldn't try to race a barracuda.
I'm not arguing "fair competition" though some are in this thread. I'm arguing largely "freedom of association," our long lost freedom's last vestige. It should be possible for people with particular handicaps to set up leagues that only people with those specific handicaps can participate in. Why might they do this? if it doesn't appeal to you, don't worry about it. It appeals to a lot of people, hence Women's and Paralympic Games.
Sure. Now think of how boys who have physical development issues feel when they put in more effort than said girls, get less results because of their development issues, and are then told "tough luck, you lost the genetic lottery" while they see the girls who didn't work as hard as them celebrated. I have no problems with the existence of women's leagues. I only take issue with the lack of humility some people exhibit in demanding to be considered the equal of people who they have explicitly excluded from competing with them while sneering at those with other types of disadvantage.
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That logic taken to the extreme leads to "go away with separate sports and have 10000 people battle royale". Sport is a mix of showmanship, rivalries, sportsmanship, capabilities of the human body, and capabilities of the human spirit. To achieve optimal mix of those - we need rules even if they are somewhat arbitrary. And well - arbitrary rules means that some people are on the fence and some are on the other side of it. Also more even chances leads to better fun betting.
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I think most "mens" sports events are technically open?
I vaguely remember some paralympics athlete with synthetic legs who wanted to compete against people with regular legs, but I don't know how it turned out.
Oscar Pistorius.
He raced in London in 2012, murdered his girlfriend early 2013, and was released on parole this year.
An eye for an eye...
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I don't want to see Brock Lesnar sit on Mighty Mouse.
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