RunRagged wrote:
my prediction wrote:
Every athlete deserves to complete on a level playing field. But why focus on leveling the field when we can level the athlete? To this end, I propose that going forward sports governing bodies replace existing categories with a single "neutral" category, in which every athlete participates.
Quite reasonably, it follows from this approach the implementation of a program in which all athletes must satisfy a range of relevant performance factors in order to compete.
In one embodiment, a mandate is included that each athlete must continually maintain testosterone levels between 3 and 5 nanomoles per liter.
This mandate, as embodied, would typically require that biologically female athletes undergo a program of masculinizing hormone therapy, while biologically male athletes would need to undergo a program of androgen suppression therapy. Thus, all athletes, whether male, female or otherwise, are freed from the systemic forces that seek to divide them into arbitrary gender categories.
Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away.
I realize that you are being facetious, but for the sake of the people who don't get what the issues are I must object.
The mandate in your scenario would necessitate that persons of both sexes undergo medical interventions to alter their natural sex hormone levels during important phases of life, including: embryonic and fetal development; the mini puberty of infancy that takes up 5 of the first 6 months of life after birth; the longer puberty of adolescence; the entire span of life that comprises adulthood.
The only way your plan could be achieved would be if all pregnant women, newborn babies, children and everyone else participating in sports were subjected to invasive, coercive sex hormone monitoring and tinkering.
You suggest that fairness between the two sexes in sports would be achieved if rules were in place to insure that "each athlete must continually maintain testosterone levels between 3 and 5 nanomoles per liter."
This is sexist and misogynistic. The normal levels of testosterone jn young adult females is 0.02-1.68 nmol/L.
If you're going to require all athletes have testosterone in the same range, why should the range you decide on be one that is unhealthy for females?
Also, why is testosterone, the predominant male sex hormone, the sole focus?
In another embodiment, the range is 1-1.5. We can do things like VO2 max, too.
No single set of rules will favor all groups equally.
Canceling of groups is, however, the eventual goal.
Losing to men isn't all that bad, if men can be women.
Unless you're a sore loser.
Surely we can get past all that, though.
Imagine there's no countries. It isn't hard to do.
Or the erasure of all categories. Until we're all deconstructed, too.
Not only that, the updated term is "pregnant people".