Why male and female wrote:
belial wrote:
People keep using the phrase "unfair advantage." I guess this means there are fair advantages.
It's interesting that what we consider to be fair and unfair advantages has nothing to do with anything except our own biases.
I think Kipchoge has an unfair advantage; his genetics for distance running are better than mine. No fair. Or, maybe I have better genetics, but he was raised with a stronger work ethic. No fair.
Why are there two categories: male and female. Why do we not have all people race against each other?
I can imagine any number of reasons, encouraging participation in sport for the female demographic for one. People -- both women and men -- like to win. If women can't against females, however, then they won't be inclined to compete. This also relates to entertainment value. Arguably, having these male/female divisions increases the entertainment value of the sport. It's not hard to come up with reasons for having them, and reasons for not having them. It's a value judgement, not a science.
A similar argument likely holds for weight classes in fighting sports.
Sports are about rules. In a MMA match, you can't bite someone's toe. If you could do this, we'd likely see an entirely different distribution of winners and losers. Biting toes, however, probably negatively effects the long-term value of the sport (fine, in this case, other rules about safety outside of the sport take precedence). So, in running, and most sports in general, we have this rule about women being able to compete in women-only categories. I don't see many people challenging this rule except with respect to the corner-cases, e.g., intersex. This will likely motivate a new way of dividing the contestants up, e.g., testosterone levels or whatever, and as science makes it possible to eliminate differences between the physical strength of women and men, these rules will likely be further refined.