there's some articles up about lia thomas not having standing to fight her competition ban because she's not a member of the usa team (which is legally convincing enough, and does point to her need to deal with the issue locally, first). i want to change the topic.

i'm not very interested in sports, but this kind of gets to the core of trans acceptance issues. i've pointed out before that there is no evidence that men are better at swimming than women and quite a bit of evidence pointing to the suggestion that women are actually better at swimming than men, but i'm trying to get my argument across that gender isn't a very useful way to create fair competition pools in the modern era and that more objective empirical characteristics should be considered instead. 

gender is really meaningless and should be seen as such. in swimming, the most important physical characteristic is height - taller swimmers perform better than shorter ones. so, the question that should be being asked shouldn't be if lia thomas' gender gives her some kind of advantage (there is literally no science supporting that idea, it's actually blatant sexist bullshit) but if her height does.

lia is in fact at the very extreme of variation in her competition pool, in terms of height. she is not substantively taller than her closest competitor, but she is at the very top of the list.

https://www.essentiallysports.com/us-sports-news-olympics-news-swimming-news-how-tall-is-lia-thomas-compared-to-usa-swimmings-best-female-athletes/

you could consequently argue that lia's height does give her the same type of advantage that the other elite competitors that are at or around 6 feet have over shorter swimmers. and, i would agree that something should be done about that.

instead of having women compete against women, and men compete against men, why not have pools based on height so that people that are 5" 4' can compete against people their own size, and people in the 6 foot or higher range can also swim against people their own size, as well?

if you find the fact that lia is intimidating at 6 feet tall, i'll point out to you that the elite male swimmers are all four or five inches taller than her. that isn't fair, either. her height is actually closer to female variation, in context.