As an egalitarian, I also inherently dislike divisions in competition based on demographic. Here’s my understanding of why they exist (though my stating the justification here doesn’t mean I tacitly agree):

Chess: currently, only about 40 of the 1600 grandmasters are women. To attain a balance, we ought to be encouraging women to play chess. Women-only competitions are a great way to do this. (There are almost no transgender chess grand/masters, so the same logic ought to apply here – I don’t understand any reason other than bigotry to exclude transgender women from such tournaments)

Sports: I think it comes down to a Schelling division. Now sure, there are other genetic advantages, perhaps race or leg length or height or other aspects influence one’s athletic ability too – top basketball players are generally many standard deviations above average height. However, those are spectra – ranges – so there’s no obvious place to split into two categories. There are basically only two obvious, bright-line, ostensibly binary dichotomies that people tend to believe categorize humans: (a) sex, and (b) disabled status (see: paralympics).

Now, imagine there was a genetic allele that causes humans to be 9 feet tall. About half of humans get this allele. Then obviously we’d add a new category for these super-tall humans, just so that less-tall humans would have the option to compete in sports.

Some sports make divisions on a spectrum, like heavy-weight, medium-weight, light-weight boxing and so on. But these are pretty arbitrary, certainly not Schelling points, so it’s less common for sports to use these divisions.

Now, I often find myself thinking, shouldn’t those certain cis men who happen by nature to be less able than a typical woman be permitted in the women’s category? My gut answer is yes – but the problem here is that there’s just no way to measure someone’s natural capacity for ability. There’s no bright-line, Schelling-point way to sort out these less-capable cis men. It sucks.

Just, this. Haven’t anyone risen the point that in boxing there is segregation by weight? And in some sports by age? Also, clearly, black people in general have genetic superiority in (i think) explosive force and inferiority in swimming because of muscle fiber density.

However, wouldn’t segregate athletes by “race” be called racist? Why doing so by “sex” isn’t “sexist”?

Why aren’t athletes segregate by testosterone levels, however way this should be measured? Or height? Or weight? Or foot length? Or age? Like, poor post-35 athletes, they can’t have a fair race against 20-somethings, they have a natural disadvantage. Or, I don’t know, just “marks”, and let compete people with similar marks together, and let’s see what people in different marks or categories have to offer. Anyone know whether if in boxing lighter fights are like faster or more agile than heavier?

All this biologicist criteria of “poor women” is bullshit. Yes, where there is a clear T gap and this gives cis women a fair competition and representation, and it has value, but it is taken to the absurd like with chess, as it’s been already said.

Outside of sports, the definition of a “biological women” is also racist and eurocentrist. Like, european cis-women tend to have more hair than east-asian men. And african/black women tend to muscle up way easier than white men. Also, height difference betwen “sexes” isn’t a thing in the Andes, it’s just not real. And taking andinian people, they may be shorter in height and may not run as fast as a whitie, but take that race to 4000 m above sea level and let’s see who can endure half a marathon and is “naturally superior”.

I am really fed up by racist and patriarchal arguments trying to hide behind a science with overfunded biases.