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there is a clear health risk in all combat sports, but two big dudes are allowed to beat parkinson’s disease into one another as are two small dudes. whether to draw a line at all and where to draw the line are arbitrary, even if you like the decision.

In that case all societal lines are also arbitrary because it's not like there's some magical science that dictates with pure objectivity where the line is supposed to be. However there is still intent behind the weight classes, so I wouldn't call it arbitrary in the sense that they're drawn on a whim.

not only is marathon running divided by gender, but shrieking transphobes threw a fit about a trans woman “beating 14,000 real women” in the new york marathon when she actually came in at about the 6,000th place

I didn't know that. I just know that my female friend can and has joined marathons that also have men running. As for the transphobe shrieking, fuck those guys.

chess is divided by gender. are you willing to defend the position that cis women can’t think? if so, how do you defend the stripping of titles from trans men that were earned when they competed as women?

I specifically left out chess because it doesn't have anything to do with physical abilities. Chess is divided by gender because some men are too much of an asshole to act civil around women. That's all. Also, I love how you try to put words in my mouth. Fuck you for that.

in the case of the dwarf olympics the difference is you’re banning a characteristic of an individual athlete that gives an advantage, not categorically banning all athletes who could potentially have that characteristic.

At no point did I say I'm against trans people competing. I just don't think there's enough empirical evidence to draw any conclusions and the whole process of transitioning has a lot of nuances that impact performance. I'm not saying anyone should get banned on a potential characteristic, but I will say that if for instance it becomes apparent that trans-women end up consistently out-competing biological women then there should be a line drawn unless women themselves are okay with this.

I'm not against people transitioning, I'm also not against them competing, but if they do start outperforming women (and to be clear, I am explicitly stating that there's not enough empirical evidence to say if they will or not) then I'm against them. The whole idea of womens leagues is for women to have an compete without having to deal with an obvious disadvantage (or sexism as the case with Chess). If transwomen end up being statistically better than biological women, then that puts biological women at an obvious disadvantage. If transwomen don't have any statistical edge then let them compete. So far it's not clear and if women don't have an issue with them competing then neither do I.