Too Much Testosterone? Hey, You're a Guy!

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Under the IAAF rules, female athletes with naturally high testosterone levels would have to race against men or change events unless they took medication to reduce those levels.

Is it just me or is this a stupid rule? Yes, such women have an advantage. Any athlete with natural talent has an advantage be it a more robust cardiovascular system, height, weight, musculature, the list is endless. So making testosterone an issue to me makes we wonder what these people are thinking. You're not playing much professional basketball if you're 5'4" tall because someone that's 6'11" has a huge advantage over you.

This is just stupid beyond stupid imho.

 

[Gun Nut]

The powers that be are desperately trying to Me Too themselves into the "everyone is the same" ballgame. It is a solution in search of a problem so they can bandwagon.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Why have male and female sports in the first place? Let them all compete against each other.

 

[bigfield]

Why have male and female sports in the first place? Let them all compete against each other.

If we did that, then women would not qualify to compete at any level in many sports, including almost all of the most popular ones.

So we could do that, or we could have separate women's competitions/classes for sports, so that women can do competitive sport from local to international level. This drastically increases the number of people playing sport, which is desirable for a variety of reasons.

We also have weight classes in combat sports to increase the number of participants, and it's the same sort of thing in the sense that it opens up sport to a more genetically-diverse group of people. We also have sports for people with disabilities, with various classes based on the nature of one's disability. Once again, this increases the number of people who can compete, who otherwise would not be able to.

 

[bigfield]

Good chat.