this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

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Obviously this won’t work for all sports, but things like football, track, soccer, it would allow for de-gendered team, even allowing athletes with the skills but not the genetically-endowed physical attributes to have a place to play.

Note: I know very little about sports and being on a sports team, so please point out anything that doesn’t make sense.

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[–] [email protected] 125 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Hot take: Sports are not that important, and it's not the end of the world if someone in the other team is "physically better" than you.

Sports should be just played for fun and for making exercise, not as a profession. And the whole sports industry should be taken down all together. Make all sports amateur and just for the fun of it and suddenly it really doesn't mather who is on your team or in the other team.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 10 months ago (8 children)

But how will all those people survive with out their million dollar salaries????

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Not to mention how many sports betting sites will go out of business 😱💸

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[–] [email protected] 100 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I think because guys are pound for pound stronger than girls. I've read stories on Reddit years ago by girls who are wrestlers or fighters and get into a playful tussle with some random guy and they describe it as terrifying.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 10 months ago (3 children)

On average, but there's outliers.

Like, there are women out there with higher testorone than the average man, and crazy is a huge factor.

I played rugby in college and we hung out with the women's team and drunk coed wrestling was definitely a common thing.

Every once and a while a non rugby player would think it was just an excuse to roll around with a hot chick, and they would get absolutely demolished. Like I'm not talking about underestimating the woman and losing quickly due to technical skill. Just getting absolutely manhandled by a girl without the socially ingrained fear of violence and pain. Like, I was one of the biggest guys on the men's team and had wrestling experience, I still lost to some of them. Women almost a foot shorter and that I had more than 50 pounds on. Because they really wanted that W and kept trying till they got it.

Hell, for two years we had coed practice including full speed tackling and scrimmages. Top end speed was usually the only clear difference, and even then the fastest five players on the field was never all guys.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Like, there are women out there with higher testorone than the average man

No, that doesn't happen, the adrenal glands and ovaries do not produce enough t to reach even very low male levels, testosterone for the most part is produced in the testicules which cis women do not have. that much testosterone would transition a woman into a man, they would grow beard and get a deeper voice, that's how HRT works for FtMs.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (15 children)

they would grow beard and get a deeper voice, that’s how HRT works for FtMs.

Plenty of people with XY chromosomes can't grow facial and have a high pitched voice well into their 20s or even after

And plenty of people with XX chromosomes shave/wax/bleach facial hair and have deep voices.

Hormones aren't binary, there's a bunch of different hormones that can be in a lot of different ranges

And that's not even getting into the other options besides XX/XY

Stop trying to make everyone conform to your binary views on gender.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They'd be better off wrestling a bear

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

What sports would it work in? Do you think people will care about the best tennis player that weighs 140 pounds? The best 240 pound soccer players? The fastest 130 pound swimmer? No one wants to watch any of that. It barely works for boxing.

All that aside from the fact that you're still pretty much ruining competitive sports for most cis women by doing it. The reason there's a female "insert sport here" competitive league to begin with is so many women have a reason to compete and can win. A 150 pound trained male athlete will still wipe the floor with a 150 pound female athlete. It's far, far, from just a weight thing. The Williams sisters were the best female tennis players the world knew, and they went out and proved they couldn't beat a man that was ranked over 200th. The world champion austrailian female soccer team couldn't beat a boys highschool team. The fastest woman to ever run the 1500m did it in 3:49. A 5' 9" guy did it in 3:26.

Weight and size is only a little portion of physical differences.

If there's so many Trans athletes, why don't they just have a category of their own?

[–] [email protected] 42 points 10 months ago

If there's so many Trans athletes, why don't they just have a category of their own?

Because there aren't, and this whole thing is much ado about nothing.

But hey, it keeps the morons distracted and voting, so that's a plus.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yes, splitting teams by sex/gender has never made sense, instead it should be by physical attributes that may or may not happen to align with sex, but irrespective of if they do.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Below the elite level, relative skill differences can be large enough that a skilled cis women can outcompete a lesser skilled cis men. And that’s where 99% of sports are played so these rules/laws just serve to make cis men not feel threatened by potentially losing in a softball game to a woman.

At the more elite levels, though, the skill gaps are much smaller, and being faster or stronger are the difference. Most WNBA players can’t dunk, most NBA players can. Elite men run 100M a full second faster than elite women. At those levels, men have a distinct physical advantage.

There have been some studies indicating trans women still have higher lung capacity than cis women, more strength etc, but there’s still some uncertainty because the number of studies are limited, and there’s even one study that indicated cis women may have an advantage over trans women.

But considering the laws currently being passed, they aren’t targeting elite athletes, and are instead targeting kids, and not out of the spirit of competition, but out of hate.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (22 children)

soccer

"Male" soccer is not restricted to men. Both genders are allowed. There are only men because they outperform women.

edit: Although FIFA forbids women from access to the main World Cup. Also the statement above is true generally, but not everywhere.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

The NFL isn't male only either. Not supporting anything but agreeing that some sports are segregated by performance

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 10 months ago (9 children)

Just make an "open class" where any identification, body mods, and performance enhancing drugs are unregulated. The best athletes that science can create.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

Ah yes, the Enhanced Games brought to you be Peter Theil and a dozen of the worst tech bros you haven't heard of yet.

Part of the problem is that pro sports is already full of illicit doping. Another big part of the problem is that athletic exceptionalism is as much about winning the genetic lottery, getting lucky with no injuries at the peak of your career, and having the luxury of sponsorship/rich parents at an early age as it is doing lots of drugs.

The only real benefit you get out of an Enhanced Games exhibition is to sell dipshit frat bros the same promise Wheaties and Nike and GMC have been selling for decades - use our brand of steroid and you'll be a world champion, too. And frankly, that market is already kinda flooded.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Everyone would die of heart attacks. I'm glad no one is trying this, the death rate would be through the roof.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 10 months ago (1 children)

PSA: The preferred term is “transgender people”, not “transgendered people”.

https://glaad.org/reference/trans-terms/

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago

Thanks for the heads up.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

or why don't we just keep everything as is because it's not a big fucking deal despite what bigots say

if you really wanted to "fix" or "save" womens sport, just start by fucking paying them the same as men and giving women's sport the same attention on tv

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The purpose is to oppress the queers, logical compromises are not welcome.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Unfortunately that’s just not true. There are a ton of people who use this as an excuse to oppress, and fuck them. But pound for pound, a person assigned male at birth is still going to have competitive advantage over someone assigned female at birth.

I don’t love the way this study words the problem, but I’ll quote it here: “Male physiology cannot be reformatted by estrogen therapy in transwoman athletes because testosterone has driven permanent effects through early life exposure.”[1]

I really wish it were as simple as it feels like it should be: trans men have the testosterone levels to compete with cis men, and the same for trans women and cis women. It’s really not that simple though, and pretending like the only barrier is hate won’t help things.

1 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9331831/

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Ding ding ding, we have a winner.

(edit to be completely clear: being queer myself, this is not something I am celebrating, just pointing out that you have the correct answer)

[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago (6 children)

Martial arts already has weight classes and gender on top. Weight doesn't cover gender differences

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Nobody's making the obvious suggestion to chemically sterilise all athletes.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago

The recent issue with transgender people in sports is manufactured as a tool to spread trans hate. It's a non issue that preys on Americans's sense of fairness.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I could see this working better than the current system and would undermine bigots argument about an unfair advantage. Though there are people that think being transgender gives people an advantage in chess somehow.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Women (and trans women) naturally carry a higher body fat percentage than men (Incl trans men) a "male" athlete can more safely and more easily carry a lower body fat % and therefore more muscle per kilo. So the weight classes wouldnt be able to be 1:1 if you wanted a level playing field.

There is still the inherent biological advantage in being born male and going through male puberty and developing a male muscular/skeletal system before transitioning. Very difficult to rule around every nuance of this though.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago (2 children)

This is exactly right and what many people fail to understand. In studies, even after 3+ years of hormone therapy, trans-women still have significantly more muscle tissue than CIS women.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

And that's without looking at cardiovascular differences, or even as subtle as glycogen storage.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago (5 children)

I'm still a fan of just removing all the rules around drugs and bodies. Let's see what 21st century science can do!

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago (4 children)

It would be a kinda fun league to watch, but I dont want to hear about athletes dying because they took obscene amounts of steroids to be the best.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

When I was thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that sports that don't require confrontation should just evolve and give up on the competitiveness. Swimming, javelin, whatever shouldn't have the winner be the best out of every contestant, we should celebrate each and everyone's force of will to better themselves first. We already have that with high jumping, where individual performance is rated Vs their height goal.

Give up competitiveness in sports where it isn't needed, and you no longer have people melting down because someone has more muscular mass, or a different gender than expected.

Give up competitiveness in sports and you return to a celebration of the human body and it's physical prowess, instead of childishly fighting for who's best.

Obviously this doesn't work in football, or sports with direct confrontation, that i haven't found a solution yet, maybe during the next shower ?

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

At a minimum men are born with more muscle fibres and process energy a little more effectively. Puberty is not a factor.

If we could wave a magic wand and make transitions change the multitude of differences it'd be great but the science isn't there yet. We're left with reality.

Weight classes won't cut it unfortunately.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I feel like weight class doesn't do it. Women have higher body fat %. Is a welterweight woman athletically equivalent to a welterweight man? I don't think so.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Weight is the wrong criteria to use. Why not just have it classed by skill level. Enforce equity in school sports by mandating that a meaningful distribution of skill-based leagues are funded. This seems like a very simple solution to me that would address gender-based inequities in general as well as improve sports overall.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Because even matching skill levels, males have greater strength, endurance, cardiovascular capacity, etc, ad nauseam. They have greater glycogen stores, which means they can perform longer, and they recover faster.

Growth plates are different, bone density is different. Muscle density and structure is different.

Just look at the high school boys soccer team that tromped an Olympic women's soccer team.

Women have faster reaction times. They have a different/higher pain threshold. They can bear young.

This is just fundamental biology. Frankly it's baffling to hear your nonsensical arguments.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Testosterone level AND weight. Wait til they find out what happens when you're on hormone blockers.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

BMI

Muscle mas doesn't equal weight.

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