Thread by @FondOfBeetles

@RobynRyle 1. Socioeconomic and similar barriers are not ‘unfair’, they are examples of an ‘unjust society’. We can try to address that in sports as a general good. So broadening access by providing programmes, funding for equipment and coaching, and so on.

@RobynRyle 2. You say: it's deemed unfair for a 126 pound featherweight to compete against a 200-plus pound heavyweight.

Does use of ‘deemed’ mean you don’t actually agree such a match would be unfair?

@RobynRyle 3. On genetic advantages, you cite cyclists/runners with extraordinary muscular metabolism, basketballers/swimmers with skeletal syndromes and baseballers with superior vision.

@RobynRyle These are the types of genetic characteristics that stream you into a particular sport in the first place.

It is not unfair that people with different types of body play different sports. 🤦‍♀️

@RobynRyle What is unfair is two types of people - males and females - with the same set of, say, swimming genetics competing against each other, because the male has *additional* advantages unavailable to the female.

@RobynRyle A tall/long wingspan female with a favourable lactic acid profile would not match Phelps in the pool.

You know this, right?

Missy Franklin has near enough the same height:wingspan ration as him. She’s not as fast as him. Because he’s male.

@RobynRyle Serena Williams and Andy Murray have both been hothoused through tennis, with money thrown at them and the same excellent skill set and aptitude for the sport.

She wouldn’t take a point off him in a match. Because he’s male.

@RobynRyle 4. Your repeated assertions that trans athletes are being prevented from competing are simply false.

This is about categorisation, not exclusion.

@RobynRyle In fact, I would argue it is morally incumbent on us, in the case of required categories that ensure fairness, to provide opportunities for all categories.

Because the only thing you got right is that sports is a massive benefit for everyone.

@RobynRyle 5. And finally, even if one were to accept uncritically your arguments that sport is unfair because XYZ, that doesn’t mean we just throw our hands up and abandon reasonable efforts to make them fair.

Because Peyton Manning has a famous Dad, there’s no point in trying. 😂

@RobynRyle And annoyingly, Manning doesn’t have a sister 😉

Because one might think, with such a sporting pedigree and the leg up her family name brings, she’d have made a star quarterback too (note: you may not know, but there are no regulatory barriers to females playing NFL).

No?

@RobynRyle I’m going to add on to this point because you started to touch on the idea that someone with, say, Marfan has an unfair genetic advantage in, say, basketball.

That is, I think, a coherent argument, and I think there can be a logical argument for height categories in general.

@RobynRyle I’m not sure they’d deliver fairness in the same way weight categories do, but for sure, Short Basketball would open up the sport for a cohort of people all 0.5cm shorter than whatever cutoff one picks.