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This includes the line:
I'm probably preaching to the choir, but this is utterly backwards. The default is that men can't compete in women's sports. If you want to assert that some set of procedures the man undergoes makes it fair for them to compete, that is what has to be demonstrated. One study with n = 8 doesn't cut it. I'm sure that a wokeist would screech in rage that obviously transwomen are women, but such claims are just definitional assertions that are not-even-wrong and convey no information.
This is true, and we could have many additional splits when it comes to sports. In fact, we do have other splits. An obvious one is by age (minimum or maximum), but we also have teams composed of only students from one school or university, we have weight classes in combat sports, etc. The goal is to make competitions that are relatively fair and competitive, although of course some people have massive natural advantages over others like being tall in basketball, and AFAIK there isn't really a "average height basketball league." It all seems somewhat arbitrary to me, to be honest, but I think the solution is something like a trans division (probably not enough population to make it competitive though).
I think even this is too charitable. Imagine if we proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that one-armed men perform the same in basketball as women. Should they be allowed to play in the WNBA? No... of course not, because they are men! They still had this advantage, it doesn't matter at all that they have some sort of compensating disadvantage, this is simply not how this works. The exact same thing is true for trans women.
That's fair as a point of view; I'm talking about the absolute bare minimum to consider allowing it.
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There was a minor professional basketball league, the World Basketball League, that existed from 1988 to 1992. It limited players to under 6'5" initially (later changed to 6'7").
Many cities also have men's recreational basketball leagues that limit players' heights to under some limit, e.g. 6'0". I guess sub-6-footers need something to do while their taller counterparts are crushing puss on Tinder. The competition in men's rec-leagues can be pretty stiff—many ex-pros and elite amateurs—even in the sub-6'0" leagues.
In American hand-egg, there's also a collegiate "sprint football" league that limits players to 178 pounds or less.
This jumps out as soon as you start to take any game or sport remotely seriously. The people that are good are really good, even at local levels. If you live in a city with a few hundred thousand people, the best guys are probably going to kick your ass at whatever hobby you pick, even if you're pretty decent. The average guy isn't very good at running, lifting, fighting, or gaming, but there are enough guys that are that you find out about levels to the game pretty quick.
Somewhat overlapping with this conversation, there are many less women that are competitive at any of these, even in things that are participate in at similar rates. If you go to a local running race, there are usually going to be about as many women as men, but there are usually many fewer women that are at something like ~70% of age standard.
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The Seattle Chinese Athletic Association has an Asian Basketball League
It's not quite a height limit, but it's close. There's a similar adult alumni league for past participants in the teenage league.
Asian-Americans aren't much shorter, on average, than other races and there are a decent number of big Asian dudes. When we're talking local basketball like this, you're apt to wind up with the dominant bigs just being 6'4" dudes rather than 6'7" dudes, which is a very different situation than a height cap! This actually seems like it lines up more with how sex segregation works out than something like weight classes.
A relatively small average difference can produce a relatively large difference when comparing how many are at some point near the tail of the distribution.
Sure, that's why I said that you'd see smaller bigs. Am I underestimating the effect in a way that isn't obvious to me?
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