
Biological male wins women's cycling world championship for 2nd consecutive year - vinnyglennon
https://www.disrn.com/2019/10/21/biological-male-wins-womens-cycling-world-championship-for-2nd-consecutive-year/
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sudhirj
Oh come on. The distinction between men and women in sports has always been
based on biology and not identity. There’s no way Mike Tyson boxes in the
lightweight classes because he feels skinny on the inside.

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putzdown
I must have missed a memo. Why are men being allowed to compete in women’s
sports just because they claim to be women? Why would anyone think this was a
good idea?

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ASalazarMX
It's specially unfair in contact sports. If this keeps on, women champions
will be all men, a backwards step for feminism.

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RoyTyrell
I want to preface this with saying I am fully supportive of LGBTQ+ rights and
I believe that people can be born one way but their brain is wired for
another.

That being said, if a large majority of your biological self was a man while
you were growing up even though a lot of your brain was the opposite, then you
will likely have a significant advantage (athletically) over those that grew
up biologically as a woman.

This is in the early days of normalcy in society for trans people, so I think
eventually this will work out. Perhaps racing events need something like a
"weight" class like you find in some martial arts.

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ASalazarMX
> I think eventually this will work out.

This is a really hard argument to sell to top women athletes who will lose
their category to men who identify as women. Categorizing by weight won't
help, as women are have less muscle/bone per weight than men.

Sex is a biological trait, and it makes sense to categorize physical
competitions by sex. Gender is a sexual choice, and your sexual choice isn't
relevant to sports.

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belorn
Would it not be better to categorize directly on the physical beneficial
traits such as muscle/bone per weight? That way we can take out genetics from
sport altogether.

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golergka
OK, I agree that there's a small percentage of population for whom the binary
distinction for make and female fails. I believe that any adult person should
be able to do whatever they want to their body, so their transition is they
business (and their doctor's). I even agree that just to be civilized, we
should call these people with whatever names and pronouns they are comfortable
with – it costs nothing to me, and supposedly, it's important for them, so why
not.

But is it fair to allow a person with a make level of testosterone and muscles
to compete in a category that was created specifically for women?

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happytoexplain
For what it's worth, I found this to be one of the only thoughtful posts in
the entire thread, with the rest falling around either "garbage blog" or some
version or "men aren't women" dripping with inarticulate sarcasm or outrage.

I'm saying this because it's deeply depressing, as normally I put extreme
value in HN as perhaps the only place left I can see a group of thoughts where
the majority are sane.

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ses1984
>Real champions want stronger competition

OK, compete as a man.

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oh_sigh
Most often there is no such thing as a "mens" league - ie there is no gender
restriction or testing in the NFL, the premier league, etc. I wonder, do mens
track and field events in the Olympics even do gender tests?

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antientropic
According to this page, mixed teams are _not_ allowed in the Premier League:
[https://sports.stackexchange.com/questions/12206/can-a-
woman...](https://sports.stackexchange.com/questions/12206/can-a-woman-
feature-in-epl)

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oh_sigh
Oops, I should have just stuck with American sports which I know, but didnt
want to throw around only American centric acronyms like nba,nhl, etc

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Simulacra
I think this is absolutely unfair. Skeleton, muscle mass, there are too many
advantages to someone who went through puberty as a biological male.

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yostrovs
Congratulations to the champion. It'll get tougher once the disabled win
equality and are able to participate too using powered cycles.

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falcolas
This has already come up in running, but with the bionic (basically a big
carbon fiber spring) foot instead of a powered cycle. And it raised a huge
stink when the disabled person won.

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AnimalMuppet
That's in sprinting. And in marathons, there's a similar thing - the
wheelchair people are in a separate category, because otherwise they would
destroy the "able" people.

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falcolas
It would even matter in longer distance running as well - the spring being
more energy efficient than feet and ankles.

[https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a23133365/blake-leeper-
run...](https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a23133365/blake-leeper-running-
blades-data/)

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mensetmanusman
Not into sports at all, but what do people think the problem is if
evolutionary biology dictates that eventually our current sports setup will
trend towards being dominated by male athletics and trans athletic
competition?

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loco5niner
Women should be able to compete against other women to the exclusion of males.
Simple as that.

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mensetmanusman
Society only deemed this recently to be the case. It may end up that society
deems gender equality more important and therefore it may go away.

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loco5niner
> Society only deemed this recently to be the case.

Citation please.

> gender equality

Please explain how women getting what they want (getting to compete against
only other women) gets in the way of gender equality.

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diegoperini
Why are these sports categorized for gender instead of body weight? For
example, I'm a below average man in proportions and a 75 kilo biological
female would definitely beat me on many competitions.

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unicornmama
Women carry more body fat than men. Even adjusting for body weight, the top
men are stronger than top women.

[https://www.castironstrength.com/elite-strength-sports-
ipf-a...](https://www.castironstrength.com/elite-strength-sports-ipf-and-iwf-
a-comparision-of-sex-and-performance/)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Olympic_records_in_w...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Olympic_records_in_weightlifting)

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loco5niner
> McKinnon tweeted that “real champions want stronger competition,”

Ironic that he says this while not being willing to compete against other
males.

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senectus1
its an interesting conundrum.

I'm not anywhere near well informed enough to form an opinion or argument
around it. But it'll be fascinating to watch it develop.

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apta
The fact that a man is not a woman needs an argument to be made for it?

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tantalor
Less blog-spam propaganda, please.

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theon144
How is this Hacker News related?

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mensetmanusman
Some people argue that this is a route to hacking female sports. It’s hard to
argue this trend will not entirely upend the concept.

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eeZah7Ux
Please ban this garbage article.

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oh_sigh
Besides for LGBT activists being overrepresented among techies relative to the
population at large, this topic isn't really relevant to hn and is just going
to invite opinion based low effort posts imho.

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yostrovs
This post has been disappeared by the community.

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dang
I don't know what "disappeared" means, but when enough users flag an article
relative to upvotes, it falls in rank. That happened here.

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yostrovs
It's not a proper use of English, but I surmise you do know what I meant.

