I think your point is getting a bit lost in this discussion. Anyone who can understand basic statistics can look at the relative differences in population averages.
What exactly is the hypothetical autistic teenager supposed to learn by comparing his performance to other women playing the same sport? It’s unlikely for him to be good enough that he can’t find a single woman who’s better than him. How is it supposed to discourage him from transitioning?
rae
4d ago
I don’t want to discount the psychological and physical benefits of but come on, it won’t stop anyone from being autistic, or even trans. I wish it did! I went to the gym and I just became an autist with a six pack. And it didn’t stop me from being trans either, unfortunately.
Plenty of athletic people I know are various flavours of neurodivergent or queer. Some trans guys I know are particularly into bodybuilding and powerlifting and it uh… has the opposite effect of making them conform to the social expectations of birth sex.
I don’t disagree that it’s appalling that physical fitness being neglected for the majority (although calling men “weak” and “feeble” as opposed to just unhealthy is an odd choice of language). It doesn’t really matter for the main point that there’s elite female athletes, but it’s still important to know that the delta is not that big at the extremes. The top female athletes are about ~10% worse than the top male ones, and if you look at something like a 5k run, the top females today are better than the top males from the 1930s. That’s way closer than most posters here would suggest, and to compete with female Olympians in most sports you’d still have to be in like the top 0.1% fittest men. The average Joe, even with a decent amount of training, doesn’t stand a chance.
But that’s getting aside from the main point. How exactly is knowing that he can easily surpass most women at sports with relatively little training supposed to dissuade the hypothetical autistic teenage boy from transitioning? If anything it might backfire and make him stop exercising altogether to match more female levels of performance/muscularity (and on estrogen, male performance is drastically reduced anyway).
Obviously the average man is much stronger than the average woman, and elite female athletes cannot compete at all against elite male athletes, but I think you and a few posters here are exaggerating the disparity because there’s no way the “slow boys” can compete with actual athletic women.
When I was forced to play basketball in high school PE class, there were some girls who played with the boys, and I can tell you from first hand experience, a clumsy autistic nerd who’s just getting into shape absolutely cannot just move a 5’10 elite female athlete with broader shoulders than him.
Like, I was in OK-ish shape and could do a 5k in 21min, and there were girls who did it in 17mim. Sure, there were boys who could do it in 15min, and most girls did it in 25min or more, but I didn’t stop to think about the statistical distributions, I just saw that there were both boys and girls way ahead of me.
Just look at female athlete records in any sport, compared to the mean or even advanced male performance.
That kind of transactional relationship sounds like the opposite of normal and healthy. A healthy relationship should be based around mutual love and desire; what you described sounds like being a sugar daddy, not a partner.
Plus it’s not like women need a man’s resources to have a successful life nowadays.
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