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Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

>by the very nature of things you have an advantage of strength, agility, speed and desire over your female peers.

By the very nature of things LeBron James has an advantage of strength, agility, and speed over me. (no clue why you included desire in your comment)

Basically every elite athlete is born with a genetic predisposition to be better at their sport than the average person. It takes a lot of determination and training to reach that full potential, but let's not pretend that people are born on equal footing.

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This is true but if we work with this line of logic, we should just remove the gender split in sports and make it purely a game for the best of the best.

What this means is that most females will be removed from sport since they can't compete with the average male athlete. Society has spoken already and decided they want to see female athletes which is why many male only sports have started their own female only sides.

This is a truly unfortunate edge case where trans people have an unfair advantage on one gender side and an unfair disadvantage on the other side. Perhaps the only fair way to do things would be to have trans only teams but the numbers probably don't work out. Or to have trans people pick sports where physical strength is not at play like motor racing, shooting, chess, etc.

> which is why many male only sports have started their own female only sides

Most of the popular sport leagues don't have any rules disallowing female competitors. I'm sure the NHL, NBA, NFL, MLS, MLB, Premier League etc. would love to have a female player that was good enough because it would be a marketing dream.

Male only may be a wrong choice of words. It's usually male dominated league with an alternative female-only league.

A woman has played in the NHL

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manon_Rh%C3%A9aume

> Or to have trans people pick sports where physical strength is not at play like motor racing, shooting, chess, etc.

Even at those non-physical sports, men still have a big advantage, it shows in all of the sports you listed and e-sport. Gender split in sports is there to protect women. The men sport is actually a game for "the best of the best", I don't think there would be any complain if there's a woman (cis or trans) want to challenge that space.

Ummmmm - we are talking about the differences between men and women. Not Lebron and you.

Also it’s been very well proven that testosterone leads to more desire/ambition call it what you will.

Women who take testosterone generally report feeling more ambitious and have more sexual desire as a by product.

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