Did any of you read the full article? I agree those excerpts are cringe in isolation. This seems more like poor writing/editing because the larger point of the article was that sex is not the best distinction between sport participants if the point of that distinction is to reduce harm or maintain fairness. The author is saying not all boys are bigger/stronger/more athletic than all girls, not that on average that isn't the case. That's entirely reasonable. The article points out two cases where a girl wanted to play on a boy's team and a boy wanted to play on a girl's team. Both were subjected to rigorous biological tests/standards. Meanwhile you may have children playing within their own sex segregated leagues that are further apart from average in size, strength and athleticism than these two cases may have been from the opposite sex and yet face no such hurdles. It seems reasonable to me to call this arbitrary and unfair.

I haven't read the article and I dont know if this is covered. Another aspect of the sexism about women being weaker is 'cut down' versions of sport for women. A victory in criccet where the next ashes the will be the full 5 days

cricket365.com/latest-news/heather-knight-hails-special-moment-as-five-day-womens-ashes-test-announced/

The most glaring example of this sexism is tennis where the women are too weak to play 5 sets like the big strong men do. Absolute nonsense.

The Atlantic is far from obscure, and the fact that they passed that ludicrous anti-scientific article for publication is indicative of just how mad US 'liberals' (who are not and never were actual liberals but a strange breed of bourgeois, 'orthodoxy-sniffing' authoritarians) have gone. Opposition to gender-identity ideology, which is a profoundly reactionary, misogynistic and homophobic religion, does not come only or mainly from the far right (Martina Navratilova is hardly far-right), and particularly not in Britain where many left feminists not surprisingly have very serious issues with this cultural-imperialist lunacy imported from the US and spawned by 'postmodern queer theory' in elite US universities.

Wow politics has ressumed with a bang today. Fracking, energy, interest rates, ukraine ....

Therese Coffey is aiming for ABCD on the NHS. I fear she will actually obtain an E or an F (just trying to be first with this joke)

Finally!

If the author was actually interested in writing a balanced article, they might have taken the time to actually get a proper scientist to comment, rather than a genderqueer sociologist with very little grasp of actual reality, never mind science.

With regard to the bolded point, when it comes to strength, nearly all men are stronger than nearly all women. Just because the author was rigorous enough to find two outliers (but somehow couldn't find a biologist...) doesn't change this fact. Here is the data on handgrip strength for example



What this does show is very little difference before testosterone hits the boys. However, even when I was at primary school, we played mixed PE and had mixed sports day, so no one has any problems here. There are also lots of sport societies on campus where men and women train together. I did karate at university; it was mixed sex and I got to spar with some pretty formidable women. Indeed, my partner is a black belt in karate. However, despite my limited training, she wouldn't stand a chance in a fight with me - if she punched me as hard as she could in the head, the most likely outcome is a broken hand for her as women have lower bone mineral density, and men have thicker skulls.

Segregating men and women is safer and fairer, and no member of the blue-haired Taliban is going to convince me otherwise unless they start using actual data and science.

Tories really going for help the rich with this budget

sure it won't backfire at all

I'm going to join in the productivity drive by going down the pub early.

And fantalise about such real politics coming from the left

This is a ****ing disaster.

Yay back to the 80s!

Separating boys and girls for sports is a practical shorthand for safety and fairness, it is not the most safe and fare way to organize sports. That's not an ideological belief, that's fact. Your grip strength graph shows that prior to 20, even after the averages diverge, they are closer than at any point after 20 until old age. Too bad it's not more granular at under 20 but it is still obvious that in the teenage years there is more overlap than in adulthood. Strength is not the only factor when it comes to safety. There is also significant overlap between boys and girls in terms of height and weight in the teen years.



https://www.cincinnatichildrens.org/.../normal-growth


That article is not suggesting that standards for sports be abandoned, that all boys should be able to play with all girls and vice versa, just that sex is not the safest and fairest differentiator.

If we want to share anecdotes, I actually played lacrosse in highschool in the league and against the schools mentioned in the article. There were common and significant height, weight and strenght differences between male players. Nearly every significant injury (broken bones, concussions) I witnessed was the result of a collision between players of great differences in size. Every game had some players who were over 6 ft 200+ lbs and others who were closer to 5.5 ft 140 lbs. There were a couple of girls on our girls team who were easily bigger and stronger than the smallest weakest males. They played on a coed hockey team in the winter to no ill effect. Our lacrosse team would have been stronger had they been on it and the weakest smallest males not. Everyone would have been safer as well.

Sorry to everyone else for the derail.

Pretty much as mental as I expected.

How on earth do they do nothing on VAT/business rates?

Pure pump and dump economics.

Except for sports where the rules determine height to be an important determinant of achievement, (e.g., Basketball and high jump), what does height, independent of other biological differences between males and females, have to do with athletic ability?

In other words, can you show data where there is a correlation between height and performance in general athletic ability?

The point here is height predicts maybe 2-3% of the variance in athletic performance. Sex predicts probably >90% in strength and probably not much less than that in general athletic performance.

So yeah, maybe we could spend a great deal of time and money putting children through physiological tests to determine what category they get to play in.

Or just do girls and boys and avoid the lawsuits.

Oh, and wtf at that budget? What an absolute clown show.

Truss won't make it to Christmas at this rate.

It's height and weight, the general size of participants that I was comparing, which matters a lot in terms of safety in collision sports. If you're 5.5 140 lbs and can squat triple your body weight, you're still going to go flying when the 6.25 ft 220 guy who can only squat body weight body checks or tackles you. Athleticism and strength aren't going to save you.

I admitted sex segregation is a practical shorthand, I was just opposed to the idea that it's the best way if the given point is to keep participants safe and play fair when there is so much variation of morphology within the sexes themselves at this time of life. If the point is to do that cheaply and easily then yes that's probably the best way but possibly there's a cheap and effective series of tests that could work as well. I have no idea and I don't care enough to look into it but I don't see the point of closing the door to the idea.

So, if I attempt to summarise your position, what you are saying is a 5'6" woman who is 140lb should have the right to choose to compete with a 5'6" 140lb man in collision sports?

If i was right wing I would love this budget. I also think truss and the politcal nous behind this budget is maybe being underestimated but that's a seperate issue.

Totally agree with https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63007287

Got to save something for future budgets

No, I think my position is pretty clear by now but I understand you're trying to find a way to say, "aha, you're an ideological science denier". I'll state it one last time. Separating sports by sex may be the most expedient way to achieve fairness and safety but it's likely not the best way to achieve fairness and safety if expedience is not a priority. In such a system where expediency is not a priority it's possible that it would be safer and fairer to have some girls playing in a league mostly made up of males and it's possible that it would be safer and fairer to have some boys play in a league that is mostly populated by females. Depending on the sport and age groups those leagues might be more or less sex heterogeneous.

The "upside" of the tax cuts dont come into effect for 8 months, in April.

80% of the downsides start right away.

Pound has fallen making imports more expensive, so inflation, and more pressure to raise IRs, a probability of an intra meeting raise is now being priced in.

Government borrowing costs are shooting up because lending to the UK is already seen as a bigger risk etc.

So people have to live through 8 months of pain before they get to any jam.

By the time people see any increase in their wage packets they will have already lost what is gained in inflation and higher debt costs.

This will appeal to the hard core faithful traditional economically ideological right, but to the key floating voter and blue north its electoral cancer.

Keir Starmer will be planning on winning on just not being Tory and whilst that is **** in so many ways, I would say its more than enough to win the next GE if all things remain equal.

Electorally, tories want the downside now. Even better if labour think they can coast it.

Then come the election maybe things are plateauing or even starting to improve. Now labour will be faced with no big policies and challanged about raising taxes and looser union laws.

Tories may well still lose but it's not like that wasn't well baked in. So what for the right who are coining it? Will KS and his timid ****ers even undo the lurch to the right since truss came to power? That's probably the worst case for the right and still damn unlikely.

Labour need to be bold. Tinkering and maybe managing the status quo better is being right wing now.

There will be pain, which carries on well after the Jam arrives, 8 months of near double digit inflation will absolutely nuke any uplift in your disposable income you get from 1p off income tax.

It is a pump and dump, but its failed to be even that as the dump comes first.

The pump phase is going to amount to eating half a mars bar after being on a 50KM run, with another 40KM to go, its just not going to be noticed and the legacy pain will be the only thing people are aware of.

They needed to do something that was felt right away and had a dump phase closer to an election.

Not sure if that was even possible.

Ultimately the effects of yesterday are going to be so bad for so many people that appealing to a small ideological element of your cohort is not going to make up for the carnage.

Im not so sure but again so what for the right if labour remain so timid?

Where's the downside?