This.

The reason there is sex segregation in sports is that, unless there is, no woman can win. No woman would even qualify for any high-level competition. Any national or world champs would be male-only. That may not be a problem for some. I see it as a very bleak scenario. If you aggregate men's and women's sports the result will be - prediction: (1) men-only sport above the local level; (2) much lower participation amongst women generally; and (3) women working out between themselves unofficially who the female winner is.

If a person born male was included in a race I was in (I'm a woman), I would simply ignore the placing of the person, but since for me it's about whether I'm 10th or 11th in a local sprint, no-one (not even me) cares. For the women/girls dedicating their lives to training to win, being excluded from any possibility of victory simply by the participation of a trans person must be pretty awful.

The poster who said that women should simply sit down on the start line when a man is entered into their race has a point, but in the current climate that would take a lot of courage. It's unfair to put that much onus on the athletes.

It would also be very unkind to the trans person at that moment. The difficulty I have, and I think many of us who don't buy the gender-theory orthodoxy have, (put simply, that a person has a "gender identity" that may be different to his/her sex and that - and this the crucial point - that identity is more important than biological sex when determining social policy) is that we still want to treat people who live atypical lives with kindness and compassion. This means it's difficult to call out a trans woman as a man, even if that is clearly what s/he is.

I agree with much of what you said, but disagree with the underlined part. I do not feel sorry for any trans who is a biological male competing against biological females. That person has a distinct advantage and should know it. They are purposely entering the race and putting all other biological females in an awkward position. It is one thing in a triathlon if they are not competing for places, but not in these instances.

The rights of the biological females to compete in a fair race is more important than their need to be included in such a race if they are stand a chance at taking one of the top spots.

The trans athlete is imposing their will and their advantage on chromosomally female competitors, and deserve no empathy in that context. They deserve to be treated no differently than anyone else in any situation, and to demand inclusion and acceptance as a female competitor violates that principle.

They don't get to transfer their problems to other people and call it justice. It couldn't be more unjust.

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The devil made me do it the first time, second time I done it on my own - W

But isn't that where our society is? Aren't we now a society in which the majority is to kowtow to the underrepresented and/or historically maligned? And isn't questioning or skepticism silenced or even cancelled by the faux-moralistic ad hominem -ist or -phobe labels (or, really, just the fear of being labelled as such)? I mean, never mind facts or science; feelings are our society's new currency.

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War is god

I completely agree. Society reasons with it's feelings and places the highest value on "living your truth" while ignoring THE truth.

I found it fascinating, from a writing perspective, that the AP article I read on this yesterday used no pronouns for the first half of the piece. Then it quoted another source using a feminine pronoun and then the article began using pronouns.

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War is god

And Mario Lopez is just today's latest victim.

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◼︎ We shall soon be in a world in which a man may be howled down for saying that two and two make four, in which people will persecute the heresy of calling a triangle a three-sided figure, and hang a man for maddening a mob with the news that grass is green. - Chesterton

Ironic because your argument tactic here is claiming victimhood and conspiracy. Which is, itself, a feelings-based, rather evidence-free technique.

...more "victimhood"....

That's not a true statement. Women have both qualified and even won competitions outright vs. the male competition.

It's not common, but it happens. Particularly in ultra-endurance events.

Nothing in what I wrote claims victimhood. It's an objective observation of how society's trajectory is being affected, and is irrefutable by anyone paying attention.

Conspiracy? Um. No. A conspiracy is people agreeing to violate the law and then actually doing so. No laws are being violated here. And it doesn't even take multiple people to execute what I've described above.

Lastly, I never claimed to be above it all.

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War is god

Can you provide some examples?

Happens not infrequently in ultra running.

Famously, Chrissie Wellington placed 2nd OA in the Alp D'Huez long course triathlon. So she certainly was "qualified" to compete with the elite men.

Neither Camille Herron or Courtney Dauwater (or any other women) are truly capable of truly competing against the men at the highest levels.

Camille's 12:47 100 mile WR is well adrift of the men's WR of 11:28 by Oleg Kharitonov. Yiannis Kouros even ran 100 miles in 12 hours flat, en route to setting a 24 Hour WR of 183 miles.

Also see what I wrote about Courtney's ultra performances previously:

https://forum.slowtwitch.com/..._at_a_Time_P6810283/

And here's the palmares of the journeyman pro who beat Chrissie at Alp D'Huez. She's was hardly mixing it with the best men.

https://www.triathlon.org/...5772/marcus_ornellas

Come on now, have a little male security. :)

Those are "high level competitions" by my definition. Maybe you want to keep turning up the dial until you feel safe.

Did you even read what I wrote in the women's forum? Elite women are as far behind the elite men in ultra running as they are in shorter distances.

And you're really missing the point of Alexxm that you initially contested.

So what if Chrissie was competitive against a relatively weak male field on a single occasion when she was at the height of career? Without sex-segregated professional triathlon, Chrissie wouldn't have been afforded the career opportunities to develop into the athlete capable of that Alp d'Huez performance.

In a unified-gender sporting world, talent identification, role models, sponsorship and professionalism would all disappear for female athletes, irrespective of their sporting potential.

Without sex-segregation, in any elite sport that requires a modicum of physical strength or endurance to be competitive, elite competition would equal male competition.