We Should Abolish Gendered Sports

That’s the fairest Solution for Transpeople, Cispeople. . .and Short People.

We should eliminate the distinction between men’s and women’s sports altogether. We could then replace it with other sets of distinctions which don’t specifically mention gender, but would still cover the inequities the old system was designed to rectify.

Sometimes Ciswomen are not allowed to compete as women because they have a certain kind of masculine bone structure. Were these women permitted to compete against men? I don’t know, but they certainly should have been. However, If women like these are going to be in the category competing against men, why refer to the categories as “Men” and “Women”? We could have lots of different categories, based on the science of what body types give advantage in what sport, and make no mention of gender in those categories.

We already have weight class distinctions in some sports, such as wrestling. Wheel Chair basketball (AKA Murderball) has a very complicated system for measuring the handicap levels of each player, determined by factors such as who has the most functioning limbs, and how well they function. Fencing has competitors grouped by age as well as gender. We could replace the gender distinction all together with distinctions of this sort carried to a higher level of refinement.

This would eliminate the humiliation that can come whenever any committee makes a judgment about permitting or forbidding any woman, either Trans or Cis, to compete as a woman. And it would insure that everybody got a chance to compete in ways that measured their commitment and effort, and not just their luck. Why shouldn’t shorter men be permitted to play basketball against women, if they don’t have the advantages that male players usually have over female players? And once that is permitted there is no longer any reason to refer to those teams as “Women’s teams”.