Really depends on the sport. In non-professional fencing and HEMA, practice tends to be coed. Men and women tend to perform equivalently - really height is the biggest “biological advantage”. More reach means more ability to hit an opponent before they hit you, and this goes the same for men and women. Sure, men can accelerate a bit faster and tend to be taller, women can plant their feet a little wider and tend to be more balanced and flexible - but these are just averages. Individual people vary wildly because biology doesn’t give a shit about the categories we create to describe it. And strategy can make up for a lot of those things in ways that you really just can’t with height discrepancies. We had to give our club’s tallest member a shorter axe just to make up for the reach advantage when she fought people she stood a head above.
Dividing strictly based on AGAB is not an even playing field and I feel trans athletes only draw attention to what’s already a significant problem in competitive sports. And once you get to a professional level, I understand there’s more nuance, but a vast, vast majority of athletes are not professional and the issue is blown far out of proportion for them. Anyone pushing to enforce divisions in kids’ sports via genital inspections has lost their goddamn minds.
i was in taekwondo as a kid. I was really good, imo. I competed at the national level and won several medals. But I still routinely got my ass handed to me on a silver platter by the women/girls I trained with whenever we’d spar.
In many combat sports like MT, BJJ, and MMA opinions are quite strong, and possibly rightly so when there is a risk of bodily harm. Some BJJ comps have put together rules where a trans person can enter their chosen division, as long as competitors agree to compete with them. That seems to be a common middle-ground, but still results in some people refusing and blocking that person from competing with their own gender. Some have just redefined the men’s categories to “open” and lumped trans people into that category.
Frankly, what I would love to see is a fully funded study, and a commitment from sporting bodies to both follow that guidance AND to commit to future funding to repeat experiments.
I fight people and have opinions!
Really depends on the sport. In non-professional fencing and HEMA, practice tends to be coed. Men and women tend to perform equivalently - really height is the biggest “biological advantage”. More reach means more ability to hit an opponent before they hit you, and this goes the same for men and women. Sure, men can accelerate a bit faster and tend to be taller, women can plant their feet a little wider and tend to be more balanced and flexible - but these are just averages. Individual people vary wildly because biology doesn’t give a shit about the categories we create to describe it. And strategy can make up for a lot of those things in ways that you really just can’t with height discrepancies. We had to give our club’s tallest member a shorter axe just to make up for the reach advantage when she fought people she stood a head above.
Dividing strictly based on AGAB is not an even playing field and I feel trans athletes only draw attention to what’s already a significant problem in competitive sports. And once you get to a professional level, I understand there’s more nuance, but a vast, vast majority of athletes are not professional and the issue is blown far out of proportion for them. Anyone pushing to enforce divisions in kids’ sports via genital inspections has lost their goddamn minds.
Some people just like to inspect kids’ genitals. Those are not the kind of people who should make these decisions, though.
i was in taekwondo as a kid. I was really good, imo. I competed at the national level and won several medals. But I still routinely got my ass handed to me on a silver platter by the women/girls I trained with whenever we’d spar.
In many combat sports like MT, BJJ, and MMA opinions are quite strong, and possibly rightly so when there is a risk of bodily harm. Some BJJ comps have put together rules where a trans person can enter their chosen division, as long as competitors agree to compete with them. That seems to be a common middle-ground, but still results in some people refusing and blocking that person from competing with their own gender. Some have just redefined the men’s categories to “open” and lumped trans people into that category.
Frankly, what I would love to see is a fully funded study, and a commitment from sporting bodies to both follow that guidance AND to commit to future funding to repeat experiments.