this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2025
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What part of injecting a needle into someone's bloodstream to syphon their blood for genetic testing against their will is not personally invasive?
The part where you don't have to show your genitals.
And the part where we're drug testing anyways, for the purposes of weeding out people who are doping.
So uh - yeah. You just tack on an additional test and exclude people with the wrong chromosomal pairs.
Quick reminder that a) intersex people exist and they might not have one of your favourite chromosome combinations, b) just because something potentially (likely) worse is threatened doesn't mean that the other action is good, and c) why do you need to know whether or not somebody might have different genes from what you might expect?
A: One of my favorite people are intersex; they exist - but insofar as Intersex/Interested in Sports/Can Compete at a high level of sport is such a teeeeeeeny tiny portion of the population, maintaining solid definitions of men and women's sports is for the sake of the sport, not for the sake of the individual. If I'm born without legs, I'm not screaming at the world that I'm being discriminated against for not being allowed to compete in the 500 meter dash.
B: What?
C: Because that's what sport is. We've decided as a human populace, across the world, across all borders, across all of society -- That the top male athletes are generally, in most circumstances, better than women. In order to allow women to compete, we've separated out those games for their protection. It's a pretty cut and dry deal. It's the one thing on this earth that transcends borders, religions, institutions, etc. Humanity has agreed that this is the way to go. There are not enough intersex or transgender people to split off their own category - so we can't do that, so we simply deny men access to women's sports.
The opposite isn't true however - "Men's" sports is more like "Open" sports. Anyone can compete in men's sports without it being an issue; because there's no chance of unsportsmanlike advantage being there.
People who think this is arguable or something that needs to be changed are sick in the head. They would punish the 99.9% for the 0.1%
You're describing gender roles.
Feminist scholars have been theorizing about this stuff for a long time. Patriarchy demands and requires rigid gender roles.
You are absolutely off your rocker if that is what you think this is. Patriarchy has to deal with the "Ruling" class, not competition. Competition is like science. You control for variables to test things. In this case, the absolute limit of the human body.
You don't need to talk to me like that.
Sports were invented, they didn't just emerge naturally from evolution. That means the ruling class played a key role in their creation and propagation i.e. the patriarchs decided sports should be based around the men that watch and play them. They decide what sports get funding, state backing, and media attention.
We could have different sports, where biological differences don't have as much importance. In fact, sports don't even need to be competitive at all! But, those sports don't get the support they need to become popular so they remain niche hobbies.
No. Sports EVOLVED. Men and women have different sexual characteristics which make them better at different things. This wasn't a "decision" made by men to separate women out because they didn't want them included. Women just simply weren't included at ALL prior due to them not being able to compete on the same level, and were separated out SO that they COULD get more attention and more fair play.
It's the same reason boxing and wrestling have weight classes, it's the same reason children don't play sports with adults. They are separated out strictly for the PURPOSE of isolating skill-groupings so that people in those groupings can enjoy the sport as well.
This separation, ironically, INCREASES inclusion. It allows people to grow and compete with people on the same playing field as them, so that they can compete fairly.
Look at a game such as paintball, which doesn't have "mens" and "womens" leagues -- Women and men can compete on a level playing field, so there's no reason to divide the sport among sexual lines. Old and young compete on the same fields, because there's not a huge discrepancy in the skills required at the top of the game. The skills you need to have are simply, agility, good eyesight, fast thinking, and teamwork. None of which are sexually dimorphic traits that humans have. Nobody gives a shit about trans people in that sport either, because you literally cannot gain an advantage from the transition.
The traditional sports were literally invented, there was a "rational recreation" movement during the runup of industrialization when the ruling class were looking for ways to build teamwork skills among workers and discourage sedentary games with drinking and gambling.
Do you think the sport of baseball just emerged naturally from the Earth? No! It was intentionally designed from the ground up to increase productivity and work ethic, to teach workers to follow a coaches orders, to enforce a rules-based mindset, and to encourage competition. Patriarchs invented baseball.
We can make new sports, like your example paintball, that don't have this patriarchal baggage and that everyone can play without needing hierarchical or biological separation. We don't have to play the same sports forever.
I'm glad you are aware of intersex people, it does seem a bit mean to exclude them but I'm not a sports expert.
Regarding my point B: If somebody threatens to do something bad (check genitals) to check for a condition X and then somebody else suggests doing something else (take their blood for a blood test) to check for a condition X.
This does not make the second suggestion a good thing, it is merely a lesser evil. One should first check if the condition X needs to be known. In the case of bathrooms I'd argue that no it does not. In the case sports generally they would need to disclose it but I would like to note that it probably doesn't need to be publically known.
I just thought you might like to hear that the International Olympic Committee officially allowed trans athletes since 2004, while the International Association of Athletics Federations first allowed trans people who transitioned early enough. Nowadays both of their policies appear to be mildly more inclusive than they were originally.
At least according to the following sources after one or two years on hormone therapy when accounting for the weight difference (which I believe most sports already do and did previously as well by setting weight classes) there is no performance difference between transgender athletes and cisgender athletes. (One exception being that trans men completed more sit ups in one minute)
Sources: Effect of gender affirming hormones on athletic performance in transwomen and transmen: implications for sporting organisations and legislators
Effects of gender affirming hormone therapy on exercise performance in transgender athletes
Correction:Strength, power and aerobic capacity of transgender athletes: a cross-sectional study
I haven't looked specifically for it but I did not find a source claiming otherwise when trying to research trans athletes on hrt.