Thread by @FondOfBeetles

Sex, sports and role-playing games: an analogy

Let’s imagine a battlefield RPG. Each player is randomly allocated a character. Each character is described by a set of metrics - SIZE, SPEED, STRENGTH, STAMINA, SKILL – from 0-10 points.

At BASELINE, all characters have broadly similar metrics, around 5 points for each.

One character may score a point higher on SIZE and a point lower on SKILL. Another scores a point higher on STAMINA but sacrifices a STRENGTH point. And so forth.

How does this look on the battlefield?

There’s not much overall difference between players right now. It’s pretty much luck who wins any given fight, and we'd expect a broad share of victories across players over multiple battles.

Each player then receives a BONUS adding 5 points to a random BASELINE metric. Now, each player has a special metric, and this score exceeds the typical score for the player group.

Some players find themselves scoring 10 points for SIZE, others 10 points for SPEED, and so on.

Back to the battlefield?

Strategy becomes part of winning. A player with good SIZE and excellent STRENGTH chooses a melee approach, a player with good STAMINA and high SKILL opts to slingshot from a distance.

Each player then receives a BOOST that offers either a unique metric or a multiplier. It’s 50:50 which BOOST you get.

Half the players acquire the new metric of STRETCH, while the other half DOUBLE all their BASELINE metrics.

The battlefield looks very different.

Swinging an axe is still the right strategy for a strong yet unskilled player. But now, a strong yet unskilled – and newly STRETCHy – Player 1 is up against strong yet unskilled – and newly DOUBLEd - Player 2.

Player 1 doesn’t stand a chance against Player 2.

In fact, Player 1 can no longer beat Players 7, 9, 14, 17 and 27, who were weaker at BASELINE, but whose luck at drawing a DOUBLE card has put them ahead of Player 1 on STRENGTH points.

We would soon see a battlefield strewn with the injured bodies of STRETCH players, with only the DOUBLE players left fighting.

Play repeatedly, and the single consistent characteristic of every battle winner, however that battle plays out, is that they received a DOUBLE BONUS.

(Oh hang on, I can see some STRETCH players over there, clambering around castle walls. If they can tempt any DOUBLE players to give chase while they stick out a STRETCHy foot, they may stand a chance of watching a DOUBLE player plummet to their death, I guess)

So what are Player 1’s options here?

Hit the gym and add a few STRENGTH points, try to catch up to the DOUBLEs of the game? Well, no surprise that the DOUBLEs are doing the same (and adding DOUBLE the STRENGTH points STRETCH players are capable of adding).

If I were Player 1, receiving STRETCH instead of DOUBLE, I’d realise that there’s no point in me even turning up for battle. Unless every DOUBLE is forced to face them on the castle walls, no STRETCH has a chance of claiming victory.

As a STRETCH, I’d excuse myself to the kitchen with all the other STRETCH players, drinking while the DOUBLEs fight it out.

Maybe playing our own game in the kitchen. STRETCH players only. No DOUBLES allowed.

------------------------

And in the real world.

When we think about sports and sporting categories, particularly in reference to sex, there are many strands to consider, and many conflations made.

BASELINE metrics represent the natural variation of physical metrics outside of sex - those (non-sex) genetic sequences that make your muscles slightly bigger, the good nutrition permitting optimal growth, and so on.

The BONUS feature describes a favourable physical advantage that gives a person a decent shot at sport, while the battlefield strategy is their specific sport.

Just as strong yet unskilled fighters swing axes, tall people play basketball.

This BONUS is only a bonus, not an ensured route to success. You may be tall, and that will help at basketball, but you don’t need height if you are blessed with speed and a gigantic leap. There are no height entry regulations in basketball, it’s simply a selected advantage.

The BOOST is, of course, sex.

Two people with the same BASELINE and BONUS metrics, and thus the same sporting advantages and aptitude for a given sport, will be reliably, for almost all sports, separated by the type of BOOST their sex confers.

Males are DOUBLEs and females are STRETCHes.

If sport is an endeavour that rewards those with aptitude over those without, and where the random presence of a BOOST should be no barrier to having aptitude rewarded, then we must separate DOUBLEs from STRETCHes.

If you believe that sport is an endeavour that rewards only that final number for a given metric, regardless of which multiplying BOOSTs you are lucky enough to have, you are arguing for the removal of sporting categories altogether.