Womens Sports

[leftace53]

So while watching my first FIFA match of the season (gogo North Korea?), I realized that the most watched/widely broadcast sport is the mens aspect of soccer/football. Questions that come up with me include, why aren't women's sport such widely broadcast? Why can't women check people in (ice)hockey and men can? Why don't women have a pummel horse and rings in gymnastics/why don't men have the balance beam?

I guess its silly to ask these considering the state of gender/sex equality these days, but is there any other reason for these?

Once again, I don't know if this belongs here or maybe discrimination.

[sunfarstar]

我觉得我们的论坛太有趣了！:rolleyes:我们也许是世界上最好的论坛了。:rolleyes::l ol::lol::lol::rolleyes::lol::lol::lol::rolleyes::r olleyes::lol::rolleyes::thumbup1:

[Sankofa]

I've always thought it was silly to have a separate "women's team" for every sporting event.

Women are definitely capable of keeping up with the guys in "man sports", but unfortunately the WPFL (Women's Professional Football League) and WNBA are small and hardly get any attention from the main stream sports media.

In a more progressive society, I'd imagine all sports would be integrated.

[manic expression]

As much as I believe in the self-evident equality of men and women and everything in between, it's simply untrue that the best women can keep up with the best men in the vast majority of sports. It's not even close, the levels of performance are completely different. There might be some exceptions in stuff like gymnastics and motor-sports, but in most cases it's reasonable to separate them because women have practically no chance when you get to the highest levels. At least, as it stands, but I doubt physical qualities are going to change that much with the abolition of capitalism. Maybe integration could be done lower than the highest levels, but I don't know.

On the OP, yeah, I think it's stupid and patronizing to have different sets of rules for men and women. Lacrosse is probably the most absurd example...it's barely even the same sport. The rules should be made the same, there's no reason to have "softer" versions for women...none.

[guybob1000]

I've always thought it was silly to have a separate "women's team" for every sporting event.

Women are definitely capable of keeping up with the guys in "man sports", but unfortunately the WPFL (Women's Professional Football League) and WNBA are small and hardly get any attention from the main stream sports media.

In a more progressive society, I'd imagine all sports would be integrated.


I think the approach needs to happen like so. There are obvious physical requirements to being able to play professional football. If there is a woman who can actually play it and succeed then a team should be able to draft her.
I'm sure there is some beastly chick out there who could tackle just as well as the players currently out there.

Basically, a requirement on physical aptitude is alright. A requirement on gender is not.


Although I did just get a weird Jim Crow sorta vibe from what i just said. Laws and rules seemingly made without racial (in this case, gender) requirements but in effect excluding one group of people.

Anyone got any thoughts on that?

[Tablo]

I do want integration of sports, but at the same time both sides do have somewhat significant differences in the physical capabilities. I do not at all want to appear sexist in any way as I see both sexes as equals, but in certain athletic realms it appears men are more capable of certain athletic feats. This could be due to biological differences or due to the fact that a larger portion of men are pushed into the athletic realm than women.

I really don't know how to explain this, but all I can say is I support integration.

[Foldered]

Because we live in a sexist, gender segregated society that at this point would be unable to come to terms with non-sex/gender-segregated sports because everyone has been exposed/brainwashed to media that says these sports must be segregated by sex/gender.

[FreeFocus]

Lacrosse is probably the most absurd example...it's barely even the same sport. The rules should be made the same, there's no reason to have "softer" versions for women...none.

I agree. I'm a big lacrosse fan and that always seemed ridiculous to me. They've attempted to make women's lacrosse some type of non-contact lacrosse, which simply doesn't work.

But yeah, you can have some integration, e.g. co-ed sports in middle school and some high schools, but in the pros it is pretty difficult. Imagine a female center from the WNBA trying to post up on Dwight Howard. I mean, seriously.

[NGNM85]

So while watching my first FIFA match of the season (gogo North Korea?), I realized that the most watched/widely broadcast sport is the mens aspect of soccer/football. Questions that come up with me include, why aren't women's sport such widely broadcast? Why can't women check people in (ice)hockey and men can? Why don't women have a pummel horse and rings in gymnastics/why don't men have the balance beam?

I guess its silly to ask these considering the state of gender/sex equality these days, but is there any other reason for these?

Once again, I don't know if this belongs here or maybe discrimination.

To say that this is exclusively the product of sexism and discrimination is completely off-base. I know I'm committing heresy, here, but gender is a biological reality, and there are, in fact, differences between genders. As much as we're not supposed to acknowledge it, these differences exist. It's probably been noticed there are anatomical differences which we can notice quite obviously, there are also deeper, internal differences in organ structure and positioning, hormones, susceptibility to certain diseases, and even behavioral differences. For example, a survey I read recently that when propositioned by attractive strangers in their age group for a one-night-stand, a substantially greater percentage of men were receptive, whereas most of the female respondents were not, which should surprise absolutely no-one.

Frankly, I've always thought sports were a waste of time, as Chomsky put it; 'a training course in irrational jingoism." I just did some quick research on the interwebs, and I found a perfect example, a guard for the Dallas Cowboys by the name of Montrae Holland. Montrae, who is a fairly modest height, just over six feet, and presently about 326 lbs. I'm guessing an abnormal fraction of that is pure muscle. I don't want to speculate what this fellow benches. How many women, realistically, could handle a tackle from Mr. Holland? Many of the men who are professional athletes are absolute monsters. These guys aren't just playing in a different league, it's a different sport. I'm not saying there aren't some exceptions that are the product of silly ideas, or perhaps some other practical mundanity, but there are, in fact, practical reasons.

[leftace53]

To say that this is exclusively the product of sexism and discrimination is completely off-base. I know I'm committing heresy, here, but gender is a biological reality, and there are, in fact, differences between genders. As much as we're not supposed to acknowledge it, these differences exist. It's probably been noticed there are anatomical differences which we can notice quite obviously, there are also deeper, internal differences in organ structure and positioning, hormones, susceptibility to certain diseases, and even behavioral differences. For example, a survey I read recently that when propositioned by attractive strangers in their age group for a one-night-stand, a substantially greater percentage of men were receptive, whereas most of the female respondents were not, which should surprise absolutely no-one.

Frankly, I've always thought sports were a waste of time, as Chomsky put it; 'a training course in irrational jingoism." I just did some quick research on the interwebs, and I found a perfect example, a guard for the Dallas Cowboys by the name of Montrae Holland. Montrae, who is a fairly modest height, just over six feet, and presently about 326 lbs. I'm guessing an abnormal fraction of that is pure muscle. I don't want to speculate what this fellow benches. How many women, realistically, could handle a tackle from Mr. Holland? Many of the men who are professional athletes are absolute monsters. These guys aren't just playing in a different league, it's a different sport. I'm not saying there aren't some exceptions that are the product of silly ideas, or perhaps some other practical mundanity, but there are, in fact, practical reasons.

To clarify, I was not questioning the fact that we have mens leagues and womens leagues (I haven't quite made up my mind on that yet). Rather I was wondering about why there are different rules for both (since women play with women, why can't they tackle each other if it is allowed in men vs men games), or why women's sports are not given as much attention by the media as mens sports are.

Would the norm for femininity have to do with this? as women are simply supposed to be submissive, or "lady-like".

[9]

Because we live in a sexist, gender segregated society that at this point would be unable to come to terms with non-sex/gender-segregated sports because everyone has been exposed/brainwashed to media that says these sports must be segregated by sex/gender.

Men and women are physically different. I don't think it has much of anything to do with social oppression. And in fact, I think a large part of the reason women are actually able to play many sports competitively is because of 'segregated' leagues. For example, I played volleyball in high school. I am in the lower half of the 5 ft range, which is a very average height for women, and nonetheless it is a huge disadvantage in volleyball to be average height. I was over four inches shorter than everyone else on my team. I wouldn't have made it on the team at all because of my height, were it not for the fact that I was a libero/defensive specialist, which is the one player on the team who can get away with not being a giant because they play the backrow and have to stay low to the floor in order to dig all the hits that get past the block. However, coaches will overwhelmingly prefer a taller player - even if she is a defensive player - to a shorter one. Had boys been allowed on the team, I certainly wouldn't have had the chance to play at all. Further, men's volleyball uses a considerably higher net than women's. This makes sense since men are considerably taller than women, on average. The point I am trying to make is that if men and women's volleyball were integrated, it would simply have the effect of pushing all of the women out of the competitive league. I suspect this would be the case with most sports.

[GPDP]

Interestingly enough, I was thinking about this very subject myself today while watching the Spain-Honduras game. And yes, it definitely is a thorny subject. I kept thinking to myself "what if there was a woman who was good enough to play alongside these guys? Shouldn't she be able to be drafted and play?"

And while I do agree at the top levels, men on average are on another league than women on some sports, shouldn't women who just happen to be on that level be able to participate? I mean, it's not like every man on every team is a prodigy. How many players have come and gone that have not been spared the usual "you suck!" heckle? Perhaps the best women are better than the "professional" guys who "suck" (relative to the best, of course; even the worst football player would absolutely play circles around me). I say, let them play. It can only make teams better by widening the pool of potential prospects.

But then what about the rest of the women who are good for their gender, but not good enough to hang with the best of the guys? Perhaps the guys who are good, but not so good that they're not yelled at by couch potatoes who can't play the sport for shit should play at that level. Just a thought.

Of course, such a thing will never happen in our current society, but hell, it's a vision for the future.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Sports are segregated because female athletes might beat male athletes and capitalist society would shit its pants:

http://i.cdn.turner.com/sivault/multimedia/photo_gallery/0702/gallery.genderequity/images/SPORTS_S%282%29.jpg
(Bille Jean King, not the guy won this "battle of the sexes" match in 1973 - The Williams sister could probably do as well as any male player, but almost 40 years after the above match, pro-tennis is still segregated).


In recent years, a persistent urban legend (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_legend) has arisen, particularly on the Internet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet), that the rules were modified for the match so that Riggs had only one serve for King's two, and that King was allowed to hit into the doubles court area. This is false: the match was played under the normal rules of tennis. Perhaps this notion comes from the fact that a third "Battle of the Sexes" match was played at Caesars Palace (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesars_Palace) in Las Vegas, Nevada (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Vegas_metropolitan_area) in September 1992 between Jimmy Connors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Connors) and Martina Navratilova (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martina_Navratilova). For this match, Connors was allowed only one serve per point and Navratilova was allowed to hit into half the doubles court. Connors won 7–5, 6–2.
There was also widespread speculation that Riggs had purposely lost, in order to win large sums of money that he had bet against himself.[citation needed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed)] As Kramer writes, however, "Billie Jean beat him fair and square. A lot of men — especially around our age — were so stunned when he lost that they figured he must have tanked. Budge is convinced of that. But what motive would Riggs have for that? Bobby Riggs, the biggest ham in the world, gets his greatest audience — and purposely looks bad? There's no way. If he had beaten Billie Jean, he could have kept the act going indefinitely. Next they would have had him play Chrissy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Evert) on clay."Based on all these urban legend attempts to "correct" reality to match conservative bourgeois ideology, I'd say that many people in modern society would see sports integration as a threat to ideas about our social order.


I don't think there is any reason sports should be involuntarily segregated. I can understand why women might not want to play against men if they could be harassed or something, but in pro-sports, there really is no justification for it. I mean segregated golf!???! Come the fuck on!


I think female baseball, basketball, soccer, and even football (in most positions) players could be competitive with male athletes. There are physical differences, but other than being a linebacker, I don't think these physical differences would be prohibitive.

[The Vegan Marxist]

^ That picture is a bit disturbing, I must say.

[4 Leaf Clover]

of course equallity should be introduced in some sports , but there are still some clear biological differences , so far, for example man can build muscle weight more , and faster , man have 5 million erythrocytes , while women have 4.5 and similar. Differences in gender exist deffinitely but it is not a handicap , it is rather a gift :thumbup1: