> of youth sports have created clear incentives for them to prioritize competitive fairness over principles like inclusion, well-being, and fun.
In an event that is primarily focused on competitive fairness, what does inclusion have to do with it?
If playing sport is about fun, well-being, etc, then don't play in competitive events. You can't very well want to play in competitive events while complaining about competitive fairness.
Turning to some actual numbers - this 2024 survey tells us that only ~15% of respondents said that their children participate in club sports or independent training (note that the categories are not exclusive). The same survey also says that ~10% of respondants think that their child can compete in professional sports, or be a national level team member. Finally, a similar 10% say that the "only the best players should receive time in games" is a fair policy at your child's age and level.
https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Na...
I think the point of the article is to maybe highlight how large the gulf might be between an typical outsider (and looking at the numbers above... and reminding ourselves that only ~50% of American youth are involved in organized sports at all), someone who is somewhat "in the game", and those who are really playing it (that 10% from above).
Literally no trans athletes winning anything. I think hacker news skews scientific so we can do the math, if say 1% of the athletes are trans we would expect them to win 1% of the medals in a fair contest. As it is, they don't even come anywhere close. There has not been a single olympic medal won by a trans athlete, so clearly they do not have some kind of magical advantage, in fact (and common sense would make this pretty obvious) they seem to have quite a statistical disadvantage.
There is considerable evidence that they aren't. But that's not really relevant, because you have to remember segregation in sport has never been about competitive fairness, it has always been about allowing those who are socially superior to avoid the embarrassment of having to compete in an environment where they might be defeated by their social inferiors.
It is why women were long banned from competitions, and then shortly after exclusion seemed to harsh for evolving attitudes, they were segregated from men. And it is why trans people are being excluded from competition now. It's why racial segregation in sport was a thing. When competitive fairness is raised as an argument for segregation, it is pretextual, not the real reason, so counterevidence is irrelevant.
Is your argument actually that women don't generally compete with men in sports because the sports don't want to embarrass the male athletes if they lose? If so, I suspect this is a bad faith argument, but if not, you can simply do a little searching to find that there is often quite a bit of difference between the performance of top tier male athletes and top tier female athletes. For example, no woman has ever run a 4 minute mile in competition and more than 2,000 men have and even about 30 high school boys have. I am sure you can find other examples.
Why did Lia Thomas go from being nowhere near winning in the male division to getting fifth in the women's?
When competitive fairness is raised as an argument for segregation, it is pretextual
If sports were not sex-segregated, most events would never be won by a woman. How is that a pretext?
The moralizing parts of the conclusion of this article rejects it's own evidence. There are multiple studies cited by the article where the population average of the trans women group statistically significantly exceeds that of the cis women group. The article concludes:
"The exclusion of trans individuals also insults the skill and athleticism of both cis and trans athletes. While sex differences do develop following puberty, many of the sex differences are reduced, if not erased, over time by gender affirming hormone therapy. Finally, if it is found that trans individuals have advantages in certain athletic events or sports; in those cases, there will still be a question of whether this should be considered unfair, or accepted as another instance of naturally occurring variability seen in athletes already participating in these events."
Does it really insult the skill and athleticism of cis and trans athletes to exclude trans women from women's sports? I don't think it does, but the article could not help but claim that it does. Often in debates such as this one, there are multiple levels of sophistry that annoy me. Such as the sequence 1. there is no evidence that trans women have an advantage over cis women in sports (false. there is evidence) 2. if you believe that there is any evidence, you must be a bigot (well, obviously untrue, there is evidence).
Women's sports leagues often emerge due to the easy bifurcation of the population into two groups- the easiest fault line to judge this as is 1 group with the athletic benefits of natural testosterone, and 1 group without the athletic benefits of natural testosterone. People are free to make whatever sports leagues they want, and with freedom of association they can make whatever rules they want. I will just find it completely unsurprising that the women's divisions will be relatively "closed" and the men's (or more acurately the "open") divisions will include any person that has produced testosterone naturally or become a trans man (or most things in between). It's the easiest bifurcation that reduces questions of fairness. Weight classes in wrestling fall into a similar manner of thinking for me; even if it could be argued that the guy that barely couldn't make it into a lower weight class should be fighting within that class, you have to draw the line somewhere.