Segregating sports by sex was always a flawed idea

At the Paris 2024 Olympics, women’s sports once again became a political football. Not only is the scientific and public consciousness finally starting to realise that the so-called sex binary isn’t so binary, but the far-right moral panic about trans people has reached such dizzyingly illogical heights that they have started harassing cisgender women because they are too good at sports, or something.¹

But let’s take a moment to question why we have segregated “women’s sports” in the first place. The motivation is somewhat clear, at least for the top level of competition: promote the sporting accomplishments of women. But the basic assertion that justifies this approach, namely “men are better at sports”, is not so easily justified. Meanwhile, sex segregation in sport actively advances a narrative of male physical superiority, so it is imperative that we question It thoroughly.

Evidence does seem to show that in the vast majority of commonly popular sports, men win in mixed contests. But it can only be claimed that men are better at sports in general if we assume that these sports are representative of the full category of possible sports.² This assumption is hard to justify, partly because “sport” is an extremely broad and ill-defined category and partly because there are sociopolitical reasons to think this might not be the case. I contest a new hypothesis: commonly popular sports are only representative of sports which were designed and popularised by men – and they were designed for men to win.

Why would that be so? Well, why wouldn’t it be so? Every sport possible is influenced in some way by physiology, and almost every popular sport in common practice today was designed deep in the throes of patriarchy, when most women were socially discouraged from inventing and competing in sports. So these sports were designed by men, for men. Why would men design a sport in which the finest athletes in the world were women? Even without conscious intent, it’s just the expected outcome that people design and popularise the things that they are good at. If this hypothesis is true, male dominance in sport does not follow from male physical superiority, it merely deifies the assumption of male physical superiority.

Which brings us to today. Now, I’m not quite saying we should completely desegregate sports. But the segregation that we do have should exist on a much more sport-by-sport basis and use measurable characteristics (which binary sex is simply not) and enable competition by all demographics. We have weight classes in boxing, why not, for instance, have height classes in basketball? Still, this is a secondary consideration; the most important thing for us to do is to be courageous enough to invent and platform sports in which women (and other underrepresented demographics) simply win in mixed contests.

But, I hear you say, surely such sports must be contrived, our male dominated sports, like “who can run the fastest” are so simple and elegant! Oh, really? If what you want is the simplest and most elegant show of physical ability, I’ll wager that it is simply “who can stay alive the longest”, which, last time I checked, women were winning by a huge margin. This doesn’t do so well as entertainment, but there are other simple sports already in contention in which women hold the title – for instance certain forms of gymnastics. Even in running, there are indications that for ultra-long marathons (200 miles or more), women may have an advantage.

Gymnastics is perhaps a positive case study here.³ When women’s gymnastics was added to the Olympics, different disciplines were chosen in order to better suit female physiology, and there is good reason to believe that men would not outperform women in these disciplines. It seems that in part this was able to happen because of the flexibility of gymnastics as a sport, in contrast to other sports in which male dominance is more deeply linked with their structure.

Of course, this strategy doesn’t just dismantle the narrative of male physical superiority, it also neatly sidesteps many of the problems that transfeminine people have in sports. Even if it were the case that trans women displace cis women’s sporting accomplishments (spoiler alert, they don’t in any meaningful way), this problem would essentially disappear if the top levels of competition also included sports in which female physiology is an advantage.

At the end of the day, which sports are popular is defined by what the TV networks will show and call a sport and what the people will watch and play. But even if we confine ourselves to displays of physical prowess, we as women need not simply resign ourselves to a second best league. We can do better than segregation.

Further Reading

Sport: Recreation or Competition?

The Question of Why We Ride

Trans People and Sports: Everything You Need to Know