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   In #Flancia we'll meet (flancian@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 20-Feb-2026 09:47:00 JST In #Flancia we'll meet

   I've reviewed the [[transgender people in sports]] question and settled on thinking the Female/Open proposal is "most right".

   In case you haven't heard it, this proposal which is backed or already implemented by several sports governing bodies is about keeping the Female competition category for cis women exclusively and changing Male into Open (to all). This has a number of advantages, although I can imagine some trans women feeling this is not ideal.

   I initially thought Open/Non Binary could be a third category. But this was apparently already tried a few times and failed for lack of volume; maybe (hopefully?) it could be revisited later on.

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     Taylan (Now 18% More Deranged) (taylan@fedi.feministwiki.org)'s status on Friday, 20-Feb-2026 09:46:58 JST Taylan (Now 18% More Deranged)

     in reply to

     • Light
     @light @flancian Female bodies aren't simply "like male bodies but smaller on average." There's a variety of differences relevant to athletic performance, such as the amount of essential body fat (thus affecting how optimal your muscle to total weight ratio can be, rendering weight alone an insufficient metric), bone density, lung size (due to skeletal differences), the "Q angle" and so on and so forth. Here's an often cited infographic.
     realcaseyrollins ✝️ likes this.
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     Light (light@noc.social)'s status on Friday, 20-Feb-2026 09:46:59 JST Light

     in reply to

     @flancian
     Why not ability/weight classes like in boxing? Or no categories at all?

     realcaseyrollins ✝️ repeated this.
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     Light (light@noc.social)'s status on Friday, 20-Feb-2026 09:47:33 JST Light

     in reply to

     • Taylan (Now 18% More Deranged)

     @taylan
     Would that be bad? I'm not really a sports guy at all.
     @flancian

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     Taylan (Now 18% More Deranged) (taylan@fedi.feministwiki.org)'s status on Friday, 20-Feb-2026 09:47:33 JST Taylan (Now 18% More Deranged)

     in reply to

     • Light
     @light @flancian I'm not that big into sports either but I imagine it would be demoralizing to women. Also, it still introduces a kind of inequality: Men will consistently be getting medals / first place at the highest leagues that are de facto male only, whereas in the lower leagues that are mixed, women will only be getting first place half the time. So, even as the most talented woman in the world in a certain sport, you'll only be winning 50% of the time. This significantly reduces women's reasons to get into sports in the first place.
     realcaseyrollins ✝️ likes this.
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     Taylan (Now 18% More Deranged) (taylan@fedi.feministwiki.org)'s status on Friday, 20-Feb-2026 09:47:34 JST Taylan (Now 18% More Deranged)

     in reply to

     • Light
     @light @flancian If it were ability classes, you'd get this weird situation where the highest class or two are de facto male-only, then there would be mixed leagues in between where the world's most talented women have to compete against mediocre men, and the lowest ability classes would be mostly women and some men who are just fooling around.
     realcaseyrollins ✝️ likes this.
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     Light (light@noc.social)'s status on Friday, 20-Feb-2026 09:47:35 JST Light

     in reply to

     • Taylan (Now 18% More Deranged)

     @taylan
     I meant "ability classes". I put "/weight" there to include and make reference to weight classes from boxing.
     @flancian