A MODEST PROPOSAL FROM THE BOSTON GLOBE:
Here’s the actual article: Trans girls playing girls’ sports? How about a more radical idea: Abolish the gender divide in athletics altogether.
Bekker, a health professor at the University of Bath, and Mumford, a philosophy professor at Durham University, both in England, offer up a radical remedy for this inequality: Abolish the gender divide at all levels of sports.
Sound outlandish? They make a more compelling case than you might imagine.
As they point out, the argument for a separate category of women’s sports usually revolves around issues of fairness and safety. But if those are our chief concerns, then why do we divvy up athletes by gender? After all, there can be big disparities in size and strength and skill within gender. Why not separate based on those attributes instead?
We already do a version of this in youth sports. An exceptional 13-year-old soccer player competing in the under-14 division is allowed to move up to the under-17 division in search of stiffer competition.
Women, the authors contend, should be given the same opportunity.
After Lindsey Vonn proved herself one of the greatest skiers of all time, male or female, she asked to race against men — and was denied.
Does that make any sense?
