The development comes after a presentation to the International Olympic Committee by its medical chief, which highlighted the potential physical advantages of competing in women’s sport after being born male.
The development comes after a presentation to the International Olympic Committee by its medical chief, which highlighted the potential physical advantages of competing in women’s sport after being born male.
Couldn’t there just be an open category in addition to men’s and women’s?
Men’s IS the open category
Thank you for clarifying.
To reiterate my reply to another user, I don’t really watch or care about the Olympics or sports in general. I just out of my ass about things I know nothing about.
Still seems weird to me, though.
I don’t think men need a protected category for most sports, so having both would just be duplication.
If nothing else, it’s just options for someone to pick from. Why allow one person more choices and not another? Everyone should have the same ability to choose.
We already have that. Men can join the men’s sport, which is usually open, like the NHL, but a restricted group can join the women’s sport. So women already have two choices - join a group where they are statistically unlikely to win, or compete against a group which is a better representation of her peers.
If you want more restricted groups, sure, why not? But the more groups there are, the more most sports will be diluted.
Thank you for the insight. I don’t watch or care about the Olympics or sports in general, so this whole conversation is moot. But to clarify, I was thinking more broadly about events at the Olympics, not just traditional sports. I’d think something like archery or fencing or something that’s not purely strength related would be more even.
There are some interesting cases. It took a long time for men to break into synchronized swimming, where women typically have the advantage. Archery still has some strength elements that could be relevant, but shooting should be pretty egalitarian and is still split, as far as I know.
I have never been particularly into sports, and stopped watching the Olympics very much when the amateur requirements were relaxed (when hockey was dominated by NHL stars). There may be some nuances I’m missing, and there is also the aspect of making a sport/competition more welcoming to women, such as women’s chess. While those are interesting social/cultural aspects, they have much less bearing on capabilities of a given sex/gender.
It would be dominated by men.
Thats not necessarily true. Depends on the event.
Having a choice of being in a men’s only vs an open category would allow them the choice as opposed to forcing all men to be in the open category, there by reducing the number of men entering in the open category. There would be less opportunity for that to happen.