PBS asks and answers:

Are the 2024 Paris Olympics gender equal? That depends how you measure it.

Well how about measuring it as the same number of women competing as men competing? Crazy, I know, but that’s what I understand “equal” to mean in this context.

The last time the French capital played host to the Olympic Games, 135 women competed out of the more than 3,000 athletes – a participation rate of about 4.4 percent.

A century later, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has dubbed the 2024 Paris Games the #GenderEqualOlympics, with half of the athlete spots available to men and half to women, the organization says.

Cool; do they mean the “women” part?

The reality is more complex. Experts say that while the IOC has made substantial progress in leveling the playing field for women in its decades long push for gender parity, there is still a lot of work to do, for women, transgender and nonbinary athletes.

Nonononononono that’s not the question at all. Women; not “transgender and nonbinary.” Focus.

This year’s Games are the first to impose a cap on the number of participating athletes, which had steadily grown to more than 11,000 at Tokyo 2020. The IOC has since limited the Games to 10,500 athlete spots, half of which were designated for men and half for women. This year’s game schedule also works to balance the number of women’s and men’s events held daily.

The reasons are not always to do with fairness to women, you won’t be amazed to learn.

Skeet shooting was an open sport in Barcelona in 1992, when Zhang Shan, a Chinese woman, won the gold medal. Subsequently, skeet shooting became segregated by gender.

“There’s nothing in the record that says, ‘And then once a woman won, we decided to have gendered categories,’ but the timing is notable,” Donnelly said.

“Oops, a woman won, that won’t do – we’ll have to give them their own competition so that men will be guaranteed wins.”

In striving for gender parity at the Olympics, the IOC has also reinforced a gender binary that categorizes athletes as male or female, experts say. That overlooks transgender and nonbinary athletes, whose participation in sport is often contested or flat out banned.

Fuck off. All the way off. Yes, now, right now.