It is interesting that you bring up the fact that not many transwomen are winning medals. Would it be a problem if they were? If so, what percent of women’s medals going to transwomen would make you decide that transwomen shouldn’t be allowed in women’s sports?
The point of all leagues/divisions/brackets is to foster community and competition. Consistent domination of any one group of people stifles that.
If people with green eyes started winning every single javelin competition it would be a reason to consider making a green eyed javelineer league assuming their was the numbers and interest to support it (otherwise you’re just banning green eye’d javelineers de facto).
Fascinating! This is a take I think I’ve never come across. Am I right in assuming that you think there should be light-skinned and dark-skinned events in the Olympics then? There are many events that almost always go to dark-skinned individuals. The same thing holds for many professional sports.
This is a really interesting idea. I doubt it will happen, but if it did, I wonder if we would see the same people claiming that female athletes dont get paid enough claiming the same for white male athletes.
I have to say, I am quite surprised by your response. I really appreciate that! Thank you very much!
I don’t really know enough about ethnicity and sporting performance. Crude divisions like melanin levels seems obviously flawed because I’m not sure what a Kenyan has in common with a Fijian in terms of athletic propensity.
Idk if like white marathon runners feel like they can’t compete in their sport because of whatever advantages the people written about in that born to run book are supposed to have.
I’ve only heard claims about stuff like white people and swimming and sub Saharan African people and sprinting at the Olympic level and I’ve never bothered to look into them because that’s basically irrelevant. Olympic athletes are a tiny minority, it’s not what funds careers and it’s not what most athletes do. Almost all athletics is on a much more local level where difference like this should they be real, again I’ve never fact checked this, don’t manifest.
Like all sport is unfair, that’s inherently the point of it. When I run a race I’m seeing how well my arthritic ruin of a body compares to spry athleaisure mums. We only divide stuff if it’s preventing people from playing because of insurmountable (or the perception thereof, e.g. women’s vs open chess) barriers.
Realitically wealth and support have much larger effects than any of the weird things I’ve seen highlighted, so it’s all Pearl clutching at this point.
