Guest post: The distinction between disproportionate advantage and category advantage

Originally a comment by Sackbut on We need to be asking “fair to whom?”

I think here again the distinction between “disproportionate advantage” and “category advantage”, as described by Jon Pike in his recent paper, become important. We don’t look at individual adults to see if they are within the skill capabilities of children before deciding whether these particular adults are allowed to participate in children’s sports, we have separate categories for children based on the idea that children have abilities and needs different from adults, and beyond that we don’t test any further. Age grouping is a category advantage. Sex grouping is also a category advantage.

NPR recently interviewed an endocrinologist (why not a sports physiologist?) who basically shrugged his shoulders and said “We simply don’t know” regarding trans athletes having an advantage against “cis” athletes, again missing the point. We do know that men have significant advantages against women, and we have sex grouping in sports partly (partly!!!) for that reason. It isn’t “trans versus cis”, but “men versus women”. They are arguing that men should be allowed to compete in the women’s division, but only those extra-special men who claim to be women, not other men. Some people are explicitly arguing that all sex divisions should go away, but most do not seem to realize that’s what they are arguing, ultimately.

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