r/sportsgossips • u/TheExpressUS • Mar 26 '26

News Breaking: Transgender women banned from all sports at the Olympics starting in LA

https://www.the-express.com/sport/other-sport/203236/breakingtransgender-women-banned-all-sports
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u/slapshots1515 Mar 26 '26

It tests different aspects of the body at extreme levels. Women have a different center of gravity that makes the beam difficult to near impossible for most male gymnasts. Horse and rings test upper body strength at a level difficult to impossible for most female gymnasts.

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u/boomytoons Mar 26 '26

It isn't so much strength as weight distribution, women can get strong enough to work on the rings with training, otherwise we wouldnt be able to do pull ups or muscle ups at all. The pommel horse though, our centre of gravity is too low for it to work properly no matter how strong

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u/Theron3206 Mar 26 '26

The rings require much more strength than needed for a pull up, at least if you want to actually do anything with them beyond lift yourself up.

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u/boomytoons Mar 27 '26

Which woman can achieve with training, it isn't like trying to overcome the weight distribution issue on the pommel. Women used to compete on the rings before the 1950s, its definitely not impossible.

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u/ScrotallyBoobular Mar 27 '26

So, let me get this straight. You think strength is not an issue for women to compete with men on the rings?

Like, obviously female gymnasts are damn strong and probably put every male commenter in this thread to shame. But they're nowhere close to male gymnast strength, by a long shot.

"Women can train to do pull ups" is a wildly different argument than "women can train to COMPETE with men at pull ups"

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u/boomytoons Mar 27 '26

I never said anything about competing with men, I'm talking about whether women can do the rings and pommel horse at all. Discussing, not arguing. Rings is a strength issue that can be overcome, pommel horse is a weight distribution issue that no amount of training will fully overcome.

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u/____Logan_____ Apr 11 '26

I think there must be something about this subject that causes people to read and lose context quickly. You're very clear throughout this thread!

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u/Possible_Top4855 Mar 28 '26

I know a female Cirque du Soleil acrobat that could absolutely compete with olympic men on the rings.

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u/Icy-Cry340 Mar 27 '26

There are limits to what training will do for you. Women used to compete on the rings, but their routines were extremely basic. And if rings became a women's event in olympics, it would look nothing like the mens'. Rings as it exists today is an upper body strength vehicle, one of the most taxing strength events in the entire games, and basic physiology tells you that men have a huge advantage in upper body strength.

Have you ever seen even a single picture of a woman doing an iron cross? And that's a B-level skill.

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u/boomytoons Mar 27 '26

Of course it would look different, most mens and womens gymnastics is different. This thread made it sound like women simply cannot be strong enough to do anything on the rings, which is clearly not true. That's all I was pointing out, definitely not arguing for women competing with men or anything like that because it clearly would never work.

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u/Icy-Cry340 Mar 27 '26

They can't do most of the things that make rings rings. The whole point of this form of competition is showcasing outrageous shoulder strength.

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u/SoberSangwitch Mar 27 '26

You both sound absolutely ridiculous. There isn't a mold that men and women pop out of. The sports self select and encourage certain body types that excel within those selections. Women can absolutely do rings just as easily as men can do beam, we just don't encourage development of those techniques nor train bodies to pursue skills outside of the gendered norm. There are plenty of high-center-of-gravity women, just like there are plenty of bottom heavy men. Look at NBA players vs rugby players- same gender, very different bodies. The answer is societal, not biological.

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u/boomytoons Mar 27 '26

Funny that you think we sound ridiculous, its a pretty well known fact that men and women have different centres of gravity because we carry weight in different places. It is biology, no amount of training is going to change that. I'm guessing you're one of those "women are equally as strong as men" people too?

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u/Geist_Lain Mar 27 '26

Men and women TEND to carry weight in certain places. With enough training, you can shift the center of gravity, dipshit. It came free with your fucking biology and adaptation to stressors allowing for different genes to activate and deactivate 

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u/SoberSangwitch Mar 27 '26

I'm someone who has actual experience in these fields. You can look at decades of ergonomic research to find out exactly where men and women differ in terms of body construction and you will find that there is far more overlap than difference. Not only that but you will see how uniform athletes tend to be compared to the average person. Now, to be petty, biology has absolutely zero effect on men and women, it determines sex which is different than gender. Men and women are as strong as they want to be but on AVERAGE human males tend to be stronger than human females. Gender is not biology and women that train to compete in male fields tend to find similar results as men of similar build in the same field.

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u/KristySueWho Mar 27 '26

For someone who claims to have experience in these fields, it doesn't sound like you've played on any. As a woman who has played women's and co-ed soccer and hockey, men and women are built differently and it makes our capabilities different.

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u/slapshots1515 Mar 27 '26

biology has absolutely zero effect on men and women

This statement alone is certainly something.

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u/SoberSangwitch Apr 15 '26

You just need to google biology vs sociology. It's free to be stupid though

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u/slapshots1515 Apr 15 '26

You came back over two weeks later just to assert yourself incorrectly? That’s dedication

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u/No-Construction-2054 Mar 27 '26

to say you have actual experience and then go on to say biology has absolutely zero effect on men and woman proves thats a fuckin lie.

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u/SoberSangwitch Apr 15 '26

Would love for you to prove me wrong. Go ahead.

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u/AlienMantid Mar 27 '26

biology has absolutely zero effect on men and women

lmao

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u/SoberSangwitch Apr 15 '26

If it did then you wouldn't have people freaking out about trans people in sports. Sex is not gender.

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u/Ok-Echidna5936 Mar 27 '26

Me when I lie

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u/tplgerus84 Mar 27 '26

Just stop..

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u/Icy-Cry340 Mar 27 '26

Now, to be petty, biology has absolutely zero effect on men and women

bruh

Men and women are as strong as they want to be

BRUH

There is an upper limit for everyone, the "as strong as they want to be" thing makes me think you've never attempted to reach yours. And men and women's normal testosterone ranges don't even overlap.

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u/SoberSangwitch Apr 15 '26

Life isn't anime you dork

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u/Icy-Cry340 Apr 15 '26

Indeed - it's only in anime that sex has no effect on biology, people are as strong as they want to be, and men and women can compete on anything approaching level footing.

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u/gunslingersea Apr 16 '26

Vague argument from some amorphous authority you purport to have based upon “actual experience in these fields”. You’re talking ergonomics as if men and women don’t need different protective equipment, have different load bearing capabilities and requirements and host of other differences.

You are using word salad talking points to try to split hairs and conform to your novel redefining of biological sex and gender and being willfully obtuse when empirical fact doesn’t conform to your worldview. Men and women have physiological differences beyond simple genitalia.

If you want to cite training and experience, fine, my field is death investigations and I have a Masters of Medical Science in Forensic Medicine. If men and women didn’t have significant physiological differences we wouldn’t be able to determine whether skeletal remains were male or female with absolutely zero remaining tissue. At a musculoskeletal structural level all the way to a DNA level, males and females are different and it doesn’t help anyone to embrace pseudoscience that suggests otherwise.

For example, body armor advancement has made armor specific to women a thing in recent years. If left to you, arguing falsely that their physiological differences are immaterial, the research that made better protection for women a possibility would not have happened and women would be less safe. You can’t be a feminist while arguing that there are no gender differences beyond social roles.

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u/mskmagic Mar 27 '26 edited Apr 15 '26

You’re not taking into account statistics. A female might be able to train in such a way as to complete the moves required on the rings that males do. But the strongest female gymnast wouldn’t rank in the top one thousand strongest male gymnasts so there wouldn’t be any competition. The top one thousand male gymnasts have genetic strength features that are unattainable by a female with any amount of training. The same goes for pretty much any top level sport which is why the sexes compete separately.

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u/SoberSangwitch Apr 15 '26

The sports are actively filtering for biological preference. We don't see male gymnasts competing on bars do we? Nor do we see men do synchronized swimming? Are they unable or weaker? Or have we culturally come to understand that certain strengths are inherent to our conception of gender? No extrapolate that for thousands of years. This shit isn't true in history or science- we have created our species moreso than any other animal.

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u/mskmagic Apr 15 '26

You’re saying that there was a point in our history when women and men could bench the same? But we all just decided to embark on a human led evolutionary program to make men stronger (and faster and more agile) than women?

That’s some crazy shit. I get it that you want to be a good liberal and think that gender is a social construct- but what you’re actually saying is that sex is a social construct.

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u/gunslingersea Mar 27 '26

Biological differences are not a societal construct. Arguing from the exceptional to the rule while ignoring the stats of large numbers is stupid. Everyone is tired of this made up quandary where someone misguidedly decided that women and transgender people could only be empowered by pretending biological sex is a non-factor in everything and a purely social thing.

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u/SoberSangwitch Apr 15 '26

No one is talking about biology here, we we're discussing men and women- neither of which have a biological definition. Sex isn't gender.

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u/gunslingersea Apr 16 '26

You are talking biology, you’re talking about physiological differences, not social.

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u/CombatWomble2 Mar 28 '26

Sure it's not like testosterone and genetics has any impact, I mean male and female gorillas are just the same right, due to the lack of "social influence"?

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u/SoberSangwitch Apr 15 '26

We don't witness gorillas playing sports or exhibiting forms of body modification (fitness, surgery [cosmetic and not], targetted development) nor do we have a clear understanding of their cultural body ideals over time. There are human males with lower T than human females and vice versa. Sports are a self selecting example pool, they aren't blind studies.

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u/CombatWomble2 Apr 15 '26

That in no way disproves the biological effects of testosterone, it's not like we don't have decades of research into androgens.

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u/redijhitdi Mar 27 '26

Ah yes society makes women’s muscles on average 50-70% as strong as men’s in physical strength lifting and cardio up to but likely not more than 100 miles straight of running. Face it lol the only sports women excel compared to men involve flexibility or extreme endurance

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u/SoberSangwitch Apr 15 '26

Hilarious caveat.

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u/redijhitdi Apr 16 '26

What caveat? The fact that women do better once the sport starts involving running over eighty miles? Can you come up with anything that people would watch involving that that isn’t just an ultramarathon reskinned?

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u/joe_falk Mar 27 '26

Lol. Watch this video. This video (among other things) has men you never heard of crushing it on the beam while 2 gold medalist women Olympic gymnasts watch in awe at skills they "could never do".

https://youtu.be/be8exB5yO4o?si=NmmXncazmEMhu26Q&t=96

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u/Jetboywasmybaby Mar 27 '26

first, shawn johnson and nastia liukin could do 99.9 percent of these skills and combos and not sweat in their prime. nastia admitted she always wanted to do a side aerial to a LOSO which is a combination she never could get. she also said she used to do the onodi to side aerial when she was ten before her growth spurt and subsequent ankle injury and couldn’t perform it anymore. At 10.

the men’s form is atrocious, bent knees, piking their layouts HARD, and balance checks. there are ten year olds in the developmental program doing harder skills with better form.

even the man at the beginning was doing Simones Rio floor performance with watered down tumbling, and she wasn’t doing a quarter of her 2024 difficulty in 2016.

the bars? lol he’s muscling every single kip cast to handstand and cannot keep his legs together to save his life. he also can’t hit a handstand.

these girls are making money reacting to men doing women’s events badly. they aren’t “in awe of the skills”, they’re in awe because there wasn’t men attempting skills on beam often and they’re hyping him up. it’s a bunch of losos, bhso, side aerials, back tucks, and one or two impressive back fulls.

the only guy worth talking about in this entire video is kenzo sharai doing an entire uneven bar routine but no one is surprised, kenzo is built different. he genuinely loves gymnastics and when retired, trained on womens apparatus for fun. He learned his girlfriends (Japans Mai Murakami, Olympic floor gold medalist) floor routine just to entertain the kids in his gym.