As the debate about transgender participation in sport rages on, you see this argument being made increasingly frequently: we should do away with the ‘sex binary’ altogether and make sport ‘gender neutral’. How would this play out? So a thread on that:

The argument is humans have differing levels of talent and that’s all that matters. I thought it would be interesting to see what would actually happen if we were to go down this route. Instinctively, it seems obvious this would be terrible for female athletes, but let’s see

I wanted large data set so a marathon seemed obvious. Boston has been in the news as it will allow athletes to compete as the sex they identify as. The most recent data file I could find was for 2017 (for those interested, you can download a copy below) https://www.kaggle.com/rojour/boston-results

Some overall stats: There were 26,411 competitors and 14,438 were male and 11,973 were female. The mean male finishing time was 3:48:55 and the mean female time was 4:09:05. The mean competitor age was 44.77 years for males and 39.95 for females

So what would happen would happen if we made this gender neutral. Looking at elite athletes first, I was pleasantly surprised to see the prize funds are currently equal for male and female, as this is (unfairly) rarely the case in sports

So what would happen in a gender neutral event? If they kept only 15 prizes, no female would win any prize money. Edna Kiplagat (fastest female) finished 21st overall. If they kept 30 prizes (depending on how they were divided) the result would be roughly as below

There would no longer be a 50:50 male / female split in prize money. It would now be 99.1% male and 0.9% female. Needless to say, this would be the end of professional marathon running for female athletes

Perhaps it’s not as bad beyond the elite level? Like most marathons, Boston operates an age group system and very generously awards prizes to the top 5 men and women at Masters level. What would happen to these if we went gender neutral?

Assuming they kept the total number of winners at 10, no female master’s athlete would win a single dollar. The closest would be Dot McMahan who came 13th in the 40 – 44 group (she’s 40, elite and was 14th fastest female in the race, 115th overall)

They also give an award to the top 3 in each age group. This would be similarly terrible if you are female. Assuming they kept 6 overall awards for each age group, there would be 2 female and 64 male winners. Both female athletes are elite, inc. female winner Kiplagat

Incredibly, it gets worse: most of those women wouldn’t be in the race to get beaten in the first place. Most big marathons are oversubscribed & operate a ‘good for age’ (GFA) system. Many serious runners can’t raise $000’s for charity at multiple races and get a charity place

So they offer spaces first to GFA runners (so the fastest at their age). If you can’t get a GFA place, or can’t get a charity place, then you have to rely on getting a place in the lottery (with low chance of success). These are the current Boston GFA times

Assuming the faster male GFA times were used (and why wouldn’t they be?) the number of female athletes hitting the qualifying time would be 184 and the number of males would be 3228. It would breakdown by age group as below. It is almost total elimination of female athletes

So would doing away with the ‘sex binary’ be a good idea in sport? It would appear the only way you could possibly agree with this is if you hate women’s sport (or perhaps just hate women) and think they should just get back in the kitchen

It’s one of the most stupid ideas I’ve ever heard and, quite frankly, it’s becoming extremely fucking wearing explaining this to imbeciles. Sex exists, biology exists and if you want women to compete in sport (you should) then we obviously need to maintain sex separated sports

Any future ‘alternative reality’ that takes no account of sex is idiotic and hugely unfair if you’re female. It's not 'outdated'. Anyone with a brain bigger than a pea can see that. If you see someone make this moronic argument, feel free to point them at this thread /end