Transgender man wins women's 100 yd and 400 yd freestyle races.

I'm really not sure what your message is about, because it certainly wasn't a reply to the message you quoted.

I maybe be wrong though as it's hard for me to prove my international/provisional pedigree.

no-one has ever claimed that, that's just a strawman you made up

Utter nonsense

International caps. Christ. If your going to counter my point trying to wedge some pride organised sport with elite professional rugby players you're again not at the races

If you're trying to spoof that men and women of an elite level rugby played full contact rugby you can try your spoofing elsewhere to someone that might believe it.

This thread is a steaming pile of shite. I won't be debating against complete and utter nonsense. It goes both ways, men and women don't and shouldn't compete in sports where there is a natural physical advantage.

Where the sport doesn't require this advantage such as darts or snooker, I'm all for it. That young woman that competes at the darts and is beating the men, Good for her, she's super popular and well respected.

I don’t think the lids going back on that box tbh. Organisations and federations have to acknowledge gender in order to remain relevant and attract new players and participants into whatever sport it is.

You might have some sort of leverage if it wasn’t a thing where there are dozens of other criteria which give athletes advantages over their competition, whether it’s financial support or development of the sport in any particular country or even whether or not the sport is recognised by the IOC which took great pride in it’s attempt at gender equality in the 2020 Olympics in a country with what can only be described as an odd take on the concept of human rights -

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/24/japan-ruling-party-accused-of-violating-olympic-charter-over-lgbt-rights

Sports organisations and federations can only survive while they have support, and unless they move with the times, they will have the same fate as any organisation which is no longer fit for purpose. People simply drift away and form their own organisations among themselves, and corporate sponsorship doesn’t be long following.

Personally I imagine what is likely to happen is the same thing we have seen in other domains in society besides sports - people weren’t interested in middle ground, I don’t imagine anyone is interested in middle ground because that means compromise. All that happened is people simply gravitated to whatever suited themselves. There wasn’t social media 30 years ago so it was considerably more difficult for ordinary people to find other people who were just like them. That’s simply not the case any more.

I’ll bet you can think of numerous examples throughout history where someone warned everyone that their campaigning would do the opposite of what they were hoping for, except it didn’t, and people got that much closer to their aim of being treated as equals.

"Ledecky on the other hand, is something of a phenomenon, and her time in the 1,650m freestyle event could be enough to qualify her to race in the men’s event. The record in the men’s event is 14:22:41. It’s just impossible to do any sort of a real calculation.."

Ledecky is something of a phenomenon but she would have been around a 50 metre pool length behind the fastest male swimmers in some of her events. Which shows the average performance difference between men and women and the reason why we have different categories.

Eh? It doesn’t show the reason why we have categories at all? It DOES show that it’s possible to have categories in sports based upon ability, without discrimination as to either sex or gender. We don’t have individual competitions solely for each competitor so every participant gets a medal, cos they’re all winners in their own right. That’s a nonsense platitude that isn’t applicable outside of kindergarten.

We’re not talking about average men and women when we’re speaking in the context of sports. Sports have rules and regulations as another poster pointed out earlier, so to suggest participation and categorisation in sports is purely about biology is just nonsense from the get-go!

When I was participating in competitive swimming and I was the same age as Ledecky at 16, she would have easily been faster than me. I can’t remember my time but I know it was well outside 15 minutes, and I had to swim 2km in order to qualify for a certificate as a lifeguard. I was ineligible to apply for an outdoor certification because I was still only 16 at the time and at the time (30 years ago now) applicants had to be 18. That was the policy. It wasn’t anything to do with me as an individual and whether I could meet all the other criteria.

Having been born with a congenital hip defect which my parents kept passing off as just me putting it on didn’t stop me from wanting to compete either, it just made me even more determined, and I ended up with incredible upper body strength and chicken legs because I never used my legs when swimming. It was only in my 20s I had to go private to have an operation done to try and repair the damage caused by the medical professionals at the time missing out on what should have been an easily detectable condition that all babies are tested for at birth, more commonly known as a ‘click-hip’ -

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_dysplasia

Medical professionals make mistakes, it doesn’t mean anyone should have to live with the consequences of a mistake at birth which was someone else’s fault, and it should never mean that anyone should be subject to discrimination for something which is biological that they cannot change. I was fortunate enough that I’m able to change it, but people who are transgender are not so fortunate, and it doesn’t mean they should be prohibited or discriminated against from participating in sports in accordance with their gender because of what is recorded on their birth certificate.

It should be an obligation on organisations to change their policies, not an obligation on individuals to try and change who they are in order to be eligible to participate in sports without discrimination on the basis of their gender. The arguments about an invasion of men in women’s tennis didn’t happen in the 40 years since Renee Richards won the right to participate in women’s tennis, it was a specious argument then, and it’s as specious an argument now as is the whole trying to compare average men and women argument, ignoring all other context which doesn’t support your narrative.