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What stands out to me is that the people worrying the most about trans people in womens' sports are the same ones who were making fun of womens' sports specifically right up until they realized they could use it to attack trans people.
The way I always interpreted it was that any artificial environment necessitates artificial constraints which will always 'sample' from a 'population'. Sports are an artificial environment actively ensured to be such for some purpose. Whether that be entertainment, social bonding, profit, etc.
The sampling can have methods of organizing, say in a simple ordering of individuals based on skill with certain qualities. Think weight classes in boxing and the ranking of within them. It doesn't need to be so, and it seems that it tends to be the case to make it easier to conceptualize the relationships between the people who participate.
Of course in such an artificial environment certain traits like physical strength, coordination, flexibility, endurance, or whatever, in isolation or combination determine the likelihood one may succeed according to the artificial constraints. Are we to be surprised individuals who have been the primary enjoyers and participants, i.e. men, perform 'better'? It's what would be expected if the conflict of interest of fascicle chauvinism is accounted for rather than ignored for reasons of self-interest.
What I never understood was, say there are participants of some group in some sport who are overwhelmingly unlikely to win. This would be true for the participants, what about the coaches? If you open up the artificial environment from some small scale to something bigger, say at the level of winning teams, where are the differences then? In the case of owners of teams, where the amount of risk or investment the owner wants to take is then the primary metric? As you move further and further away from the artificial environment to the real world, the differences matter less and less.
Sure, my wife is not as tall as me, if I am around I'll help grab something on top of the fridge. That isn't the only environment she finds herself in. We have a step stool she uses to get stuff, she can rearrange things to bring it lower, or find some alternative item. There are any number of solutions or strategies one can take outside of an artificially constrained environment.
It's really as though these individuals want to hate women and trans people, or any marginalized group, then find the environments which may be hostile, make them actively hostile, and then when their plan succeeds and they have oppressed or disadvantaged these groups enough they claim victory due to their perceived superiority.
There's a quote from Catch-22 I think of when this sports talk comes up:
"Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else."
Yeah like Street Fighter. Which of course the Gamer(TM) types have no problem with when they play with a girl character... But put a trans woman in there an all of a sudden they explode.
Wait SF has weight classes? Haven't played 6 yet so idk if that's new or not
Yeah, zoners and grapplers
Oh, I thought you meant like actual weight classifications for characters. My brain takes things literally a lot.
Oh I'm not even the person who brought up SF, I just dropped in with a dumb joke