You mean "country" there is only one country where women can't drive cars. Saudi Arabia. Your comment implies there is a widespread problem with muslim countries banning women from driving, which would be incorrect.
akerro got it factually incorrect and may be trolling. However, the gist of the point is correct. Womens' rights in predominantly Muslim countries are lagging quite a bit.
I think it's more accurate to say that women's rights in underdeveloped countries and dictatorships are lagging quite a bit. Whether Muslim or Christian.
E.g. the rollback of domestic abuse laws in Russia.
There is no question, at least in my mind, that womens' rights in Muslim controlled countries lag very far behind those is non-Muslim majority countries on average.
The fundamental question is whether this is correlation or causation.
For example, in general more secular countries (regardless of religion) have "better" women's rights. However does this mean that religion causes mistreatment of women? Or is it that more developed countries are generally both more secular and have more women's rights?
Predominantly Christian western countries have dominated the 21st century as much through historical accident as through merit. Had the Renaissance began in Constantinople instead of Florence we may be living in a very different world today and questioning why all these Christian countries have such a poor track record on women's rights.
Shows how far we have come as a nation when it comes to equal rights. When she ran the first time, there was blatant discrimination against her because of her gender. Nowadays, it ain't no thang.
I'm not sure how the Boston marathon works, but in other marathons there is also a blatant gender discrimination, after all, you have separate start and ending and prizes for men and women.
If we aim for total indiscrimination, shouldn't we just have a single category, let anyone run as long as they don't have any unfair external advantage and just give prizes and recognition to the first places?
EDIT: I find it funny that some people got worked out for me writing it "out loud" the truth that positive gender discrimination in favour of one gender is also actually gender discrimination against other gender.
That would work if we didn't tend to organize events which favor men. As it is, athletic and sporting events have mostly been constructed around male affinities so your supposed indiscrimination would result in women being sidelined on the whole.
To be clear I'm claiming that the individual sports themselves are socially constructed, not that "betterness" is. Women's bodies have advantages in flexibility and stamina. Had women been socially dominant for centuries I would expect us to have come up with sports which demonstrate their strengths.
A lot of people underestimate the speed of marathon running, probably because the distance alone is so intimidating. However, winning times hover around 5 minutes per mile, a speed I'd wager most able-bodied people cannot hit at all, let alone sustain. Marathons are a stamina sport and a speed sport.
Who is "us" in this circumstance? Is someone preventing women from inventing this mystical sport where they will excel?
Also; sports are constructed by individuals, not society. Society has no agency and no cognition. It is a leaky abstraction mainly used by poor thinkers to make incorrect rhetorical points. It doesn't actually "do" anything absent individual human action.
Barring one gender from participating is not the same thing as having different categories per gender. There are also different categories for different age groups. That is just a reflection of the difference in athletic abilities.
No reasonable person is claiming that men and women have the same athletic abilities. That doesn't mean women shouldn't be allowed to run.
I never defended that women shouldn't be allowed to run, quite on the contrary. I just find it odd that people keep pushing for equal access and opportunities but then gladly accept complete gender discrimination in some occasions like these ones.
It is in a few tournaments. The Wendy's 3-tour Challenge and the JCPenney Classic were two with mixed gender, players teeing off from different tees. (Seniors in the 3-tour Challenge had a closer tee, women even closer.)
Understanding and recognizing the physical differences between men and women is in fact discrimination, but not in the way you're using it.
Events have different age groups as we recognize children, teens, adults, and mature adults have different physical capabilities. Should we get rid of age groups?
Many sports have weight classes as we recognize that a 150LB fighter is most likely at a disadvantage compared to a 260LB fighter. Should we get rid of weight classes?
There are plenty more examples available and are no different than having different events for men vs women.
The lower age group categories are kind of silly. The oldest Boston Marathon winner was 41 so I think it's only fair to group everyone at or below that age compete in a single category.
I wouldn't say it is gender discrimination (today) so much as acknowledging the undeniable difference in physical capabilities of the sexes. The fastest female marathoners do not even remotely compete with the top men - top men run just a smidge over 2 hours, with the top women running 2:15:00+. Maybe someday there will be an equalizing of physical abilities, but that end does not seem to be in sight.
In fact, I don't think there is a single professional sport where women would even finish in the top 10 when competing against male opponents.
In the same vein, most sports have recreational, amateur, professional, and masters (older people) competitions, because there are undeniable physical differences between the old and the young. It doesn't have anything to do with ageism or discrimination. I mean, I can off-the-couch trounce any octogenarian in (probably?) any sport - pitting the two of us against one another is not really a competition, or fun, for either one of us.
I see, aren't we denying people that are better at the job to compete this way just because of their gender? Clearly this must be gender discrimination.
Let me explain: If I divide a competition between 100 men and 100 women instead of the 200 best humans and then give prizes to the 3 best men and 3 best women instead of the 6 best humans, I'm actually denying place to 100 men and denying 3 men a prize just because of their gender (assuming as true your predicate that men timings are clearly superior to woman).
Isn't it funny how this is not gender based discrimination?
Discrimination has multiple definitions. You're using the general definition, which is just "recognizing the difference between two things". Gender discrimination uses the other definition, "the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things". Gender discrimination in sports is usually not unjust or prejudicial, because it's based on real insurmountable biological differences between the sexes.
In the Boston marathon, only the elite runners (a few dozen) are segmented by gender/sex, and elite women are the first to leave, followed by the elite men, followed by the top qualifying times of either gender.
From watching the race along the road yesterday, there were no elite men who caught the main pack of women (though a few straggling women did fall back into the elite male pack). Following that, while it was mostly a male non-elite pack at the beginning, there were a few women scattered throughout, and then it was fairly blended about 15 minutes later.
So while they stagger men and women to prevent interference in the race at the very highest levels (and a woman crosses the finish line first), women below that tier have a ton of opportunity to push themselves against men.
Edit: Also, they do track overall finishers, time-wise, regardless of gender. So a woman might see that she was the 4th finisher in her division (young women), and 16th overall.
Thank you for cheering yesterday. This was my third Boston. The Boston Marathon is an experience that in my mind is unique in sport.
The analogy I make is this. It's like getting to play on the field after the Super Bowl or World Series or World Cup just after the pros leave the field with a bunch of other amateurs while the crowd is still there cheering for you.
I can't think of another sport where you get to participate on the same field of play right after the pros and the fans are still there for you.
In Boston especially the entire city treats the runners like royalty the whole weekend and Marathon Monday. Everyone asks how you did. It's truly amazing and I'm honored and thankful I can participate.
I've run other big city marathons including New York and Chicago and while they are great races too, there's really nothing like Boston.
So again, thank you. And if you're a runner of any sort and the marathon is at all appealing to you, do the work you have to do to get to Boston. Making that left turn on Boylston and running to that finish ... I just have no words to describe the thrill.
Great way to sum up the experience of the Boston Marathon; glad to hear from another HNer who also did Boston yesterday.
I agree that if you're at all interested in marathons, the effort to qualify for and run in Boston is well worth it. I've done it a few times and the experience is never short of magical.
IIRC women have to start before men for their records to hold, as otherwise women could gain from the faster men's slip stream. Of course, there are still pace makers so even men can take advantage of that, and men can run behind each other and their records would still hold. I think the reasoning is that at least they're running behind/ahead of racers who are competing with them, whereas if women and men started together, the front runners of the women's race would be able to run behind men with whom they are not really competing, and who would thus be less careful about giving them a lift.
> The fastest female marathoners do not even remotely compete with the top men - top men run just a smidge over 2 hours, with the top women running 2:15:00+
Random side note: Interestingly, the shortest and longest races (at least out of Olympic events) are where men and women are most competitive [0]. And, when Paula Radcliffe ran 2:15 in 2003, the marathon world records for men and women were only separated by ~8%.
Compared to weightlifting, where male and female world records are separated by >25%, running is pretty close. Swimming, too. Perhaps that's intuitive.
How about target shooting? There's no physical reason that women and men couldn't compete on an equal basis in an Olympic event like 10m Air Rifle. Size and strength don't help.
I know absolutely nothing about air rifle shooting but your comment made me curious as to if there would actually be a difference. It looks like there is a massive difference in qualification shooting but not in the final score, not sure what the difference between qualification and final is and why it would have such an impact from the final scores.
You're mixing meanings of discrimination. Barring women from participating in an event is completely separate from how prizes are handed out. Mixing these two senses of the word 'discrimination' like your doing is equivocation. "Isn't it odd how people argue for equal rights but are perfectly willing to only turn left in some cases." No - it's not odd at all. Words can have multiple senses.
You clearly (either willingly because it suits your narrative or because you didn't actually read anything) are accusing me of something I not only clearly didn't do but something that I actually spoke against.
Again: I'm all for opening doors for everyone that "doesn't have any unfair external advantage" (i.e. doping) to compete. What I'm questioning is barring the fastest runners from competition and from the prizes just because of their gender.
In no way I was asking for barring anyone from anything, so stop mixing everything up just to suit your narrative.
They're not barred from competing. They're split into different subsets to more closely match them with people with similar potential exactly to make the races more competitive.
I would have some sympathy for your argument if you argue against womens only races or men only races, but most sports do not arbitrarily deny access to a given group, but split people into groups and try to counter effects beyond competitors control, such as gender, age, so that training plays a bigger role in the results distribution.
The point is that we are seeking to give prices to those who have gotten closest to their maximum potential, not for their genetic starting point or circumstances. Yes, we can not counter everything without splitting things up too much, but we can aim to equalise the playing field somewhat.
This is not discrimination. This is seeking to reduce "unfair external advantage". It's the opposite of discrimination.
And in drag racing, we should put top fuel dragsters up against streetable Honda Civics and get rid of brackets because equality. No age groups at Boston, or any other race. Let the old guys past their prime line up with the college kids.
My suspicion is that you've never raced anything in your life, be it cars, cockroaches, or your own two legs. Which is fine, not everyone need fall into the money pit that is racing in most of its forms. But I would suggest sticking to pontificating about things you know.
Lovely to see ad hominen attacks are fine as long as it's against someone that doesn't share the extreme prejudiced views of the few that control the voting system in HN about social matters.
While the most galvanizing image was the one where Jock Semple attempted to pull her off the course, another thing that disturbed me was Boston Athletic Association director Will Cloney's quote afterward: "If that girl were my daughter, I would spank her."
Boston: The Documentary is being released nationwide in select theaters for a single day (tomorrow). I highly recommend you all see it. I was able to attend the premier in Boston and it was incredible. There wasn't a dry eye in the room. Kathrine Switzer (the woman featured in the article, who was the first woman to officially run Boston with a bib) and Bobbi Gibb (the first woman to run Boston) are both interviewed. The documentary covers the entire history of the marathon and is also in large part about the 2013 bombing.
Once we have a suitable way to grow meat or a meat substitute, future generations will be repulsed by the way we currently treat animals in industrial farming.
I think it is a lot like the situation with the Boston Marathon 50 years ago. We were born into a world where poor treatment of animals was already happening. For those born afterward, it will be unthinkable.
I enjoy a lot of animal flesh. I have no idea how I can find out which bits came from nice farmers. I imagine that most of it comes from terrible places. I am eager to see a substitute.
I for one just don't give a shit and will completely admit I just eat whatever's cheap and tasty. I doubt many people will admit this, but I bet there are many in the same boat.
If we can get lab-grown meat below the cost and/or of improved taste to dead animal meat, it's likely to do very well and open people up more to the moral argument which will cement it. Right now it fails miserably on both fronts.
And I'm sure there will be pushback from the "organic"/"all natural" what-have-you crowd which exists now about how lab grown meat has evil chemicals or some equally silly thing.
Could you imagine yourself at any sort of turning point? Or are you at the point where you'd just as gladly kill animals for food yourself?
Not trying to criticize, it's how humans have existed for thousands of years — I'm just genuinely curious what a realistic "oh wait, I'm going to not do this" point is for people who eat meat.
> Or are you at the point where you'd just as gladly kill animals for food yourself?
Just to be clear in my case as I originally responded: There is a distinction between killing animals to feed oneself and outsourcing the killing to a farm which causes those animals to spend their entire life suffering (e.g., chickens confined to a small cage). That is not how humans existed for thousands of years.
> Or are you at the point where you'd just as gladly kill animals for food yourself?
If you're not willing to look the animal in the eyes and kill it, you shouldn't be eating it. I'll go one further and say if you haven't actually butchered a cow or chicken, you shouldn't be eating that meat. (I'll say the same about pork, bison, ostrich, snake, rabbit, sheep, etc... too but those are less common)
I grew up on a farm/ranch, I've looked cows in the eyes that I fed daily to fatten them up just for this purpose. I genuinely don't care about it, its a part of life. So for myself that point probably doesn't exist.
You can look at it in two ways philosophically, one, which seems predominant on this forum is that any human inflicted "suffering" is wrong and should be avoided.
One other view, which I think most cattle producers would think philosophically, is that you brought into the world more animals than if you didn't exist. Note, I'm just ignoring feed lots here as that isn't what I grew up around, nor does anyone I know support them.
Presupposing however that only the former viewpoint regarding suffering is correct is a bit of criticism however. Additionally, if you've ever watched how most predators take down prey, humans are vastly more humane about it.
I'd rather we separate out the feedlot question from the actual killing question. The former is an economic issue, the latter I think of in many ways as the Lakota did.
If you haven't actually poured asphalt, you shouldn't be using that road. If you haven't actually connected a pipe to city sewage, you shouldn't be using that flush toilet. If you haven't actually nailed shingles to a roof, you shouldn't be using that roof.
Oh come on. Many jobs are miserable and dangerous. I've been 20 feet away from a pig as the guts were removed, and that was more than enough odor. (the pig was full of shit)
I don't have a problem with the "look the animal in the eyes" thing though. Animals are just food. I butchered a duck. That didn't smell much, but I was a bit worried about being bitten by external parasites. A cow though... if that thing falls off the crane/hoist/lift thing it'll squish you to death. This isn't some wimpy emotion thing. Squish! Oh, and probably lots of ticks, and prior to death it may kick you or gore you. Cattle are not to be messed with unless you have special training and equipment.
> If you haven't actually poured asphalt, you shouldn't be using that road. If you haven't actually connected a pipe to city sewage, you shouldn't be using that flush toilet. If you haven't actually nailed shingles to a roof, you shouldn't be using that roof.
The reason for actually having done it is to understand the reality of where food comes from, not to try to instill a view that everyone must do everything themselves to be able to use anything in the world.
Buy it from somewhere that you can get that information, like a farmer's market. Alternatively, call your favorite suppliers and demand that they furnish you with such information. It's your choice to find out, or not.
Yes, there is one in my town. I had a meal there. It was a lot of fun. We ate celery. Unfortunately, the meat had to come from another farm as the proprietors had their hands full trying to grow celery.
I think the idea behind farm to table is not that the owners of the restaurant supply everything they serve themselves but know their suppliers personally, maybe have been to the suppliers farm, and can answer detailed questions about their restaurants supply chain.
These excuses are getting increasingly silly. If you want to know where your food comes from it's not that hard to find out. If you don't, that's your choice.
I don't know what it is like where you live. Where I live, there aren't many farm to table restaurants. I attend plenty of events and end up in situations (e.g., airports) where I have limited control of what I eat. I look forward to a day where cruelty to animals is illegal, so one doesn't have to believe in some free market fix.
If your teeth are like mine, then they are sharp at the front, designed for the cutting and tearing of flesh.
Industrial farming is about as humane as any other method for killing I've seen/practiced.
People argue that hunting keeps one more connected with the concept of meat as quarry, but the end result is the same. I shot a scimitar oryx through the heart a few years ago (before the ban) and it still ran 100 yards before it dropped. I'm pretty sure stun guns and captive bolt pistols remove the concept of pain faster.
When I think about the cruelty of industrial farming of animals, I'm concerned more with the way some animals are kept suffering confined to claustrophobic cages for their entire lives than I am about how they are killed. I know that some killing is done humanely.
They are unclear, but not arbitrary. I enjoy shrimp. I don't think a shrimp is capable of experiencing suffering. I feel no guilt about the treatment of shrimp raised for me to enjoy. It is completely obvious to me that higher mammals such as dogs and pigs experience suffering. I enjoy pork. I don't feel bad about a pig being humanely killed so that I may enjoy pork. I do feel bad about a pig being made to suffer for his entire life as some do on factory farms.
Just because it is difficult and subjective to know what suffers doesn't mean we shouldn't think about it.
Edit: downvote welcome. I have lots of fake internet points to spare. I'm not going to dignify a subjective, semantic argument with anything more. Fuck, "meh" is more than 99% of HN comments deserve.
Our teeth and mouths are shaped mostly to cut and tear fruit, not flesh.
Most of our metabolism is tailored towards fruit. That doesn't mean it has issues with meat: it'll deal quite well.
But anatomic capability and morality are totally unrelated. My body is well-designed to rape women, but I won't use that as an argument to do so either.
Many are embarrassed by this today, and it's a clearly growing trend. The amount of vegan restaurants popping up all over the place evidence this There's alos laws here and there forbidding animal testing (and alike), and constant activisms on the subject.
I'm already embarrassed by how many people don't understand the difference between a joke and actions. I really thought humans were somewhat smarter than that. It won't take me 50 years to shake my head
I wish I could say that I have hope that we'll be embarrassed by this, but I don't have much hope outside of marginal swings in opinion driven primarily by old people dying off and young people intentionally eschewing the ways of their parents.
I have several direct and extended family members that still think Jane Fonda should be publicly executed for treason, think the civil rights act and equal rights amendments were communist plots, and that Richard Nixon was the victim of an impeccably well executed Democratic Party plot to frame him. Amazingly, despite not being alive for any of it and despite the absurdity of the claims, some of their children have the same views. It took several centuries for western nations to realize slavery was bad, but an additional century after that to realize that institutionalized racism was bad enough to publicly address with laws, and we still aren't out of doing it in more nefarious underhanded ways. Running in a marathon was low hanging fruit and got lucky with timing. The rest of your list is going to take a few hundred years before we really feel that way as a unified society.
I think there is a distinct difference between the things that can be viscerally demonstrated, and those that people can not easily see as a yes/no proposition.
This woman set out to prove she could run marathons. Her ability to finish was visceral proof that at least some women can run marathons. The guy that tried to push here provided additional fodder to make it look idiotic to refuse them to try to run.
In comparison, many of the others things are not something you can see is wrong with your own two eyes, and can see repeated anytime you care.
It's harder to see for yourself that one race isn't better than another, especially not when you're looking at things with a biased starting point. Even when you meet nice/smart/law-abiding people of another race, you can write it off as "but not you - you're different" and hold on to the stereotypes. It takes many more examples to overcome for someone who has first gotten convinced by the stereotypes.
A woman running a marathon on the other hand, is such a simple thing to show, and it takes very few repetitions, that can be delivered in a very short amount of time, to prove that it's not a fluke or a single abnormal person. You might write it off as fake if you read about it, but not if you see a marathon go by or hear about female friends running one. And once it's happened a few times it sounds remarkable unremarkable.
But unfortunately that means a whole lot of issues are likely going to take a very long time to resolve because they are not nearly as easy to demonstrate.
In 50 years they will consider our current medical treatments for the mentally ill as barely better than the ancient practice of drilling holes in their skulls to let the demons out.
The people who care most about that list of issues aren't reproducing biologically, and the progressive memeplex is having trouble finding new willing converts, since most of the people with a foundationally Christian belief system have already converted (and progressivism does not spread well to anyone else).
The world will be inherited by the people who show up - Amish, evangelicals, conservative Muslims, orthodox Jews, etc.
So you may be right about the 50 year time-span, but looking onto the 100+ year span, your list of issues should likely look more like:
-Public blasphemy
-Public acceptance of homosexuality
-Lack of God in government
-Allowance of abortion
etc.
Just because things have gone one way for a while doesn't mean they'll keep going that way. For better or for worse.
The birth rates draw a pretty clear picture. But you have to also take into account that some of those people get an education and end up with mainstream beliefs rather than propagating regressive extremism.
It's more than some. A huge number of secular liberals were raised as religious conservatives. Religion and politics are not transmitted the way genetic attributes are. Obviously there's a greater chance that you'll end up like your parents, but it's far from a given.
If being overwhelmed by demographics with higher birth rates was something that could actually happen, it already would have happened, and low-birthrate populations never would have occurred in the first place.
I'm embarrassed by the fact that we've largely forgotten this kind of thing and by how much misogyny that I see on the internet today. It reminds me of how much we've changed in 50 years and how many people today have no context for the equality struggles that are currently going on because some of these defining events occurred in their parents generation, as if that doesn't have a huge effect on current generations.
Any time PC culture and white privilege and social justice warriors I can't help but feel sad that we almost seem to be moving backwards while many groups are still fighting for equality as if at some point (unbeknownst to any minority) we achieved total equality and now its the majority that is being discriminated against.
The Roman civilization went longer before regressing, depending on when you date the beginning of their fall. Perhaps the USA is exceptional because the core homeland isn't really an empire at all in that it barely includes any conquered people. Almost all of the original inhabitants were killed, either through disease exposure or intentional genocide.
This is what I'm afraid of. People always bring up historical trends to show that things are great and getting better all the time. Life expectancy is up, crime is down, poverty is down, etc., and these trends all go back hundreds of years.
But what says they have to continue just because they've been going on for centuries? What if this is the peak?
Eating meat. I think in 50 years we'll be looked back on as savages for killing animals to eat them. I should note here that I am in no way a vegan or vegetarian and eat animals on a daily basis. But I'm still pretty sure we'll look back on ourselves in shame for doing it once lab grown meats are commonplace.
I would be very surprised if the mainstream of 50 years from now considered people "savages" for eating food the way it's been eaten since humans first started consuming meat, especially considering we don't have the technology to make lab-grown meat currently. People 50 years from now who still eat animal-grown meat might be savages, but current-day people just have a limitation.
How often do you look back in shame at people who did not use a cell phone in the 1960s? The answer is you don't. You understand that cell phones didn't exist back then and are glad technology has improved.
I think much like ancient societies and slavery the judgement for meat eating wouldn't be based so much on the fact that we did it but more on the extent that we do it and methodologies we employee behind it.
In most developed nations it is not a requirement to eat meat to survive, or even to be healthy. We are not physically limited in being unable to stop consuming meat in the way someone in the '60s is limited in being unable to use a cell phone.
No we won't. If there's one thing that has a cultural significance almost as deep as language or nationality, it's food. People will still happily consume meat 50 years from now, although more meat substitutes will be available.
Eh, institutionalized misogyny was pretty deeply ingrained in every pre-modern culture. Obviously we haven't completely gotten rid of it, but its died off pretty quickly in just a few generations. I suspect meat consumption will die off a lot quicker than that if decent substitutes become available.
(and I say this as someone who eats meat, and doesn't have any particular ethical problem with doing so.)
> institutionalized misogyny was pretty deeply ingrained in every pre-modern culture
This is an extremely simplistic view that ignores millennia of men being injured or killed for the sake of women. How many lifeboats have been recovered packed with women and children and not a single grown man? Was all that done out of hatred? If we really want to be simplistic, let's look at history and sum it up that women are indifferent toward the safety of men. That's about equally accurate.
I think that could swing two ways. I can envision (but don't look forward to) a world where people wonder how we ever allowed thiefs to have a long career or murderers to kill a second time. If you RFID tag every expensive object and every human at birth (multiple times, if needed), add plenty of cameras that use face recognition to verify that tags don't move around, and implant a couple of remotely read sensors for bodily functions, it would become a lot easier to solve crimes (yes, people still could game the system, for example by committing suicide while in the company of someone they hate, but that would be rare)
To be logically consistent, which things do you right now think are okay but will be regarded with horror about 50 years from now? Can you not imagine that one of your dearly-held beliefs will be widely regarded as terribly wrong in the future?
The world is a much better place than it ever was. Sure we have problems but we are generally pessimistic about the future. I have high hopes that we will make great strides to solving some of this problems.
I disagree with most of these, but I'll pick on one in particular: the death penalty.
I think, or at least hope, the usage of the death penalty will increase. Some people definitely can't be rehabilitated, and life imprisonment is an inhumane and cruel punishment.
My first thought at looking at those pictures is just how small-minded and petty this is. What on Earth was he hoping to accomplish? At first I thought it was some random weirdo, but then I read the article and realized he's the co-director of the marathon!
At the time he claimed he had no problem with women running, as it's public property and anyone can run down the street, but they weren't allowed to officially sign up as the event was run by the AAU and they didn't allow women in long distance events. Sort of a "I don't make the rules, I just enforce them" excuse.
Technically Switzer was not the first woman to run the marathon, Bobbi Gibb finished the year before but wasn't an official participant because they had denied her application for a bib.
This guy seems to have been an all around meathead.
He had been in the long-time habit of physically attacking those he perceived to be "non serious" runners competing in the race, whether officially entered or running the course unofficially. In a 1968 interview with Sports Illustrated, he called them "These screwballs! These weirdies! These MIT boys! These Tufts characters! These Harvard guys!" According to fellow race official Will Cloney: "He hurls not only his body at them, but also a rather choice array of epithets... Jock's method of attack is apt to vary." In 1957, Semple had narrowly escaped arrest for assault after attempting to tackle a runner in swim fins and a snorkeling mask
But seems to have come around eventually:
Later in life, Semple reversed his position on women competing in the marathon. According to Marja Bakker (a later organizer of the race), "Once the rule was adjusted and women were allowed in the race, Jock was one of their staunchest supporters. He was very progressive."[7] Semple later publicly reconciled with Switzer
Both Katherine Switzer and Bobbi Gibb defend him. The explanation is that Boston was an accredited marathon and that Switzer had obtained her entry via false pretenses. He was conerned that if he allowed her to finish with her bib, the entire race could be discredited. So he was defending his race. It wasn't that she was running it that upset him, but that she was trying to do so as an official entrant against the rules.
At least, that's the explanation I heard from Bobbi Gibb on Sunday.
I had heard that at the time the race was under the auspices of the AAU. But I'm not sure if that's exactly correct. Switzer writes that Semple was upset about having been duped:
Runner No. 261 had violated the sacred code of the institution that was his baby. She deserved to be punished – and if Cloney couldn’t do the job, then Jock Semple would. “This wasn’t just about me being a girl,” Switzer said. “Jock probably would have left me alone if I was just running along like Bobbi. It was the number that got him. I had made him look like a fool.”
These days U.S. road races are run under the rules of U.S.A Track and Field (USATF) which is an affiliate of the IAAF. The rules only really matter though if the course is to be record eligible. Many of your local 5K/10K charity runs may not be certified.
Regarding Boston, to run it one first has to complete a marathon in a qualifying time on a course that is certified by the USATF/IAAF. This basically means the course is correclty measured for distance, has a certification number, and follows the USATF/IAAF rules. Here's the certification procedure:
"My first thought at looking at those pictures is"
In my opinion the more interesting picture(s) are of the 70yo K.S. herself.
We live in an extremely sedentary culture where obesity has become normalized and it is jarring to see what people of (relatively) advanced age actually look like.
My wife just ran her first Boston Marathon this year. It was an honor for her to run with Kathrine Switzer. Something my 36 year old wife knows to be common, was not the case just a short time ago. While I'm sad it's taken us so long to get here. I'm excited that we've proven that we can grow.
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[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 141 ms ] threadE.g. the rollback of domestic abuse laws in Russia.
For example, in general more secular countries (regardless of religion) have "better" women's rights. However does this mean that religion causes mistreatment of women? Or is it that more developed countries are generally both more secular and have more women's rights?
Predominantly Christian western countries have dominated the 21st century as much through historical accident as through merit. Had the Renaissance began in Constantinople instead of Florence we may be living in a very different world today and questioning why all these Christian countries have such a poor track record on women's rights.
If we aim for total indiscrimination, shouldn't we just have a single category, let anyone run as long as they don't have any unfair external advantage and just give prizes and recognition to the first places?
EDIT: I find it funny that some people got worked out for me writing it "out loud" the truth that positive gender discrimination in favour of one gender is also actually gender discrimination against other gender.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarathon#IAU_World_Best_P...
Also; sports are constructed by individuals, not society. Society has no agency and no cognition. It is a leaky abstraction mainly used by poor thinkers to make incorrect rhetorical points. It doesn't actually "do" anything absent individual human action.
No reasonable person is claiming that men and women have the same athletic abilities. That doesn't mean women shouldn't be allowed to run.
Events have different age groups as we recognize children, teens, adults, and mature adults have different physical capabilities. Should we get rid of age groups?
Many sports have weight classes as we recognize that a 150LB fighter is most likely at a disadvantage compared to a 260LB fighter. Should we get rid of weight classes?
There are plenty more examples available and are no different than having different events for men vs women.
In fact, I don't think there is a single professional sport where women would even finish in the top 10 when competing against male opponents.
In the same vein, most sports have recreational, amateur, professional, and masters (older people) competitions, because there are undeniable physical differences between the old and the young. It doesn't have anything to do with ageism or discrimination. I mean, I can off-the-couch trounce any octogenarian in (probably?) any sport - pitting the two of us against one another is not really a competition, or fun, for either one of us.
Let me explain: If I divide a competition between 100 men and 100 women instead of the 200 best humans and then give prizes to the 3 best men and 3 best women instead of the 6 best humans, I'm actually denying place to 100 men and denying 3 men a prize just because of their gender (assuming as true your predicate that men timings are clearly superior to woman).
Isn't it funny how this is not gender based discrimination?
From watching the race along the road yesterday, there were no elite men who caught the main pack of women (though a few straggling women did fall back into the elite male pack). Following that, while it was mostly a male non-elite pack at the beginning, there were a few women scattered throughout, and then it was fairly blended about 15 minutes later.
So while they stagger men and women to prevent interference in the race at the very highest levels (and a woman crosses the finish line first), women below that tier have a ton of opportunity to push themselves against men.
Edit: Also, they do track overall finishers, time-wise, regardless of gender. So a woman might see that she was the 4th finisher in her division (young women), and 16th overall.
The analogy I make is this. It's like getting to play on the field after the Super Bowl or World Series or World Cup just after the pros leave the field with a bunch of other amateurs while the crowd is still there cheering for you.
I can't think of another sport where you get to participate on the same field of play right after the pros and the fans are still there for you.
In Boston especially the entire city treats the runners like royalty the whole weekend and Marathon Monday. Everyone asks how you did. It's truly amazing and I'm honored and thankful I can participate.
I've run other big city marathons including New York and Chicago and while they are great races too, there's really nothing like Boston.
So again, thank you. And if you're a runner of any sort and the marathon is at all appealing to you, do the work you have to do to get to Boston. Making that left turn on Boylston and running to that finish ... I just have no words to describe the thrill.
I agree that if you're at all interested in marathons, the effort to qualify for and run in Boston is well worth it. I've done it a few times and the experience is never short of magical.
Random side note: Interestingly, the shortest and longest races (at least out of Olympic events) are where men and women are most competitive [0]. And, when Paula Radcliffe ran 2:15 in 2003, the marathon world records for men and women were only separated by ~8%.
Compared to weightlifting, where male and female world records are separated by >25%, running is pretty close. Swimming, too. Perhaps that's intuitive.
[0] https://zigapskraba.com/2016/09/15/womens-world-records-comp...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_meter_air_rifle#Post_1_Janu...
Again: I'm all for opening doors for everyone that "doesn't have any unfair external advantage" (i.e. doping) to compete. What I'm questioning is barring the fastest runners from competition and from the prizes just because of their gender.
In no way I was asking for barring anyone from anything, so stop mixing everything up just to suit your narrative.
I would have some sympathy for your argument if you argue against womens only races or men only races, but most sports do not arbitrarily deny access to a given group, but split people into groups and try to counter effects beyond competitors control, such as gender, age, so that training plays a bigger role in the results distribution.
The point is that we are seeking to give prices to those who have gotten closest to their maximum potential, not for their genetic starting point or circumstances. Yes, we can not counter everything without splitting things up too much, but we can aim to equalise the playing field somewhat.
This is not discrimination. This is seeking to reduce "unfair external advantage". It's the opposite of discrimination.
My suspicion is that you've never raced anything in your life, be it cars, cockroaches, or your own two legs. Which is fine, not everyone need fall into the money pit that is racing in most of its forms. But I would suggest sticking to pontificating about things you know.
http://bostonmarathonfilm.com/
What things today are we going to be deeply embarrassed about 50 years from now? I have a few guesses:
- Our abysmal stewardship of the environment
- Mass incarceration
- The death penalty
- Domestic surveillance
- Police militarization and lack of accountability
- The drug war
- Transgender oppression (e.g. NC bathroom bill)
- The travel ban
- That we elected a president who bragged about grabbing unknown women by their genitals
If we can get lab-grown meat below the cost and/or of improved taste to dead animal meat, it's likely to do very well and open people up more to the moral argument which will cement it. Right now it fails miserably on both fronts.
And I'm sure there will be pushback from the "organic"/"all natural" what-have-you crowd which exists now about how lab grown meat has evil chemicals or some equally silly thing.
Not trying to criticize, it's how humans have existed for thousands of years — I'm just genuinely curious what a realistic "oh wait, I'm going to not do this" point is for people who eat meat.
Just to be clear in my case as I originally responded: There is a distinction between killing animals to feed oneself and outsourcing the killing to a farm which causes those animals to spend their entire life suffering (e.g., chickens confined to a small cage). That is not how humans existed for thousands of years.
If you're not willing to look the animal in the eyes and kill it, you shouldn't be eating it. I'll go one further and say if you haven't actually butchered a cow or chicken, you shouldn't be eating that meat. (I'll say the same about pork, bison, ostrich, snake, rabbit, sheep, etc... too but those are less common)
I grew up on a farm/ranch, I've looked cows in the eyes that I fed daily to fatten them up just for this purpose. I genuinely don't care about it, its a part of life. So for myself that point probably doesn't exist.
You can look at it in two ways philosophically, one, which seems predominant on this forum is that any human inflicted "suffering" is wrong and should be avoided.
One other view, which I think most cattle producers would think philosophically, is that you brought into the world more animals than if you didn't exist. Note, I'm just ignoring feed lots here as that isn't what I grew up around, nor does anyone I know support them.
Presupposing however that only the former viewpoint regarding suffering is correct is a bit of criticism however. Additionally, if you've ever watched how most predators take down prey, humans are vastly more humane about it.
I'd rather we separate out the feedlot question from the actual killing question. The former is an economic issue, the latter I think of in many ways as the Lakota did.
Oh come on. Many jobs are miserable and dangerous. I've been 20 feet away from a pig as the guts were removed, and that was more than enough odor. (the pig was full of shit)
I don't have a problem with the "look the animal in the eyes" thing though. Animals are just food. I butchered a duck. That didn't smell much, but I was a bit worried about being bitten by external parasites. A cow though... if that thing falls off the crane/hoist/lift thing it'll squish you to death. This isn't some wimpy emotion thing. Squish! Oh, and probably lots of ticks, and prior to death it may kick you or gore you. Cattle are not to be messed with unless you have special training and equipment.
The reason for actually having done it is to understand the reality of where food comes from, not to try to instill a view that everyone must do everything themselves to be able to use anything in the world.
That works just as well for restaurants.
But I can imagine life in coastal areas where fish is the only option.
For those who kill the animals they eat, do you ever feel attached to it? I can't imagine killing my dog for food. It's like cannibalizing my child.
Industrial farming is about as humane as any other method for killing I've seen/practiced.
People argue that hunting keeps one more connected with the concept of meat as quarry, but the end result is the same. I shot a scimitar oryx through the heart a few years ago (before the ban) and it still ran 100 yards before it dropped. I'm pretty sure stun guns and captive bolt pistols remove the concept of pain faster.
Your oryx was able to run.
These moral/ethical lines are completely arbitrary.
Just because it is difficult and subjective to know what suffers doesn't mean we shouldn't think about it.
Edit: downvote welcome. I have lots of fake internet points to spare. I'm not going to dignify a subjective, semantic argument with anything more. Fuck, "meh" is more than 99% of HN comments deserve.
Moar Edit: Heil Trump!
Most of our metabolism is tailored towards fruit. That doesn't mean it has issues with meat: it'll deal quite well.
But anatomic capability and morality are totally unrelated. My body is well-designed to rape women, but I won't use that as an argument to do so either.
In the future what we will find horrifying is that we waited for this excuse, as if without a meat replacement the preceding abuse was justified.
I have several direct and extended family members that still think Jane Fonda should be publicly executed for treason, think the civil rights act and equal rights amendments were communist plots, and that Richard Nixon was the victim of an impeccably well executed Democratic Party plot to frame him. Amazingly, despite not being alive for any of it and despite the absurdity of the claims, some of their children have the same views. It took several centuries for western nations to realize slavery was bad, but an additional century after that to realize that institutionalized racism was bad enough to publicly address with laws, and we still aren't out of doing it in more nefarious underhanded ways. Running in a marathon was low hanging fruit and got lucky with timing. The rest of your list is going to take a few hundred years before we really feel that way as a unified society.
This woman set out to prove she could run marathons. Her ability to finish was visceral proof that at least some women can run marathons. The guy that tried to push here provided additional fodder to make it look idiotic to refuse them to try to run.
In comparison, many of the others things are not something you can see is wrong with your own two eyes, and can see repeated anytime you care.
It's harder to see for yourself that one race isn't better than another, especially not when you're looking at things with a biased starting point. Even when you meet nice/smart/law-abiding people of another race, you can write it off as "but not you - you're different" and hold on to the stereotypes. It takes many more examples to overcome for someone who has first gotten convinced by the stereotypes.
A woman running a marathon on the other hand, is such a simple thing to show, and it takes very few repetitions, that can be delivered in a very short amount of time, to prove that it's not a fluke or a single abnormal person. You might write it off as fake if you read about it, but not if you see a marathon go by or hear about female friends running one. And once it's happened a few times it sounds remarkable unremarkable.
But unfortunately that means a whole lot of issues are likely going to take a very long time to resolve because they are not nearly as easy to demonstrate.
Right now our only tool is a hammer...
* listening to animal rights advocates
* not incarcerating more
* not using the death penalty even for minor violations
* not forcing everybody to have a cam in their bedroom (of course, strictly for access by security forces)
etc...
The only thing standing between your and my vision of the future is how we act - not our wishful thinking how things should turn out.
The world will be inherited by the people who show up - Amish, evangelicals, conservative Muslims, orthodox Jews, etc.
So you may be right about the 50 year time-span, but looking onto the 100+ year span, your list of issues should likely look more like:
-Public blasphemy
-Public acceptance of homosexuality
-Lack of God in government
-Allowance of abortion
etc.
Just because things have gone one way for a while doesn't mean they'll keep going that way. For better or for worse.
This isn't supported by basically any demographic trend.
If being overwhelmed by demographics with higher birth rates was something that could actually happen, it already would have happened, and low-birthrate populations never would have occurred in the first place.
Any time PC culture and white privilege and social justice warriors I can't help but feel sad that we almost seem to be moving backwards while many groups are still fighting for equality as if at some point (unbeknownst to any minority) we achieved total equality and now its the majority that is being discriminated against.
But what says they have to continue just because they've been going on for centuries? What if this is the peak?
How often do you look back in shame at people who did not use a cell phone in the 1960s? The answer is you don't. You understand that cell phones didn't exist back then and are glad technology has improved.
(and I say this as someone who eats meat, and doesn't have any particular ethical problem with doing so.)
This is an extremely simplistic view that ignores millennia of men being injured or killed for the sake of women. How many lifeboats have been recovered packed with women and children and not a single grown man? Was all that done out of hatred? If we really want to be simplistic, let's look at history and sum it up that women are indifferent toward the safety of men. That's about equally accurate.
- Mass Muslim immigration
- Gender/Racial Politics
- Anti-White Racism
I think that could swing two ways. I can envision (but don't look forward to) a world where people wonder how we ever allowed thiefs to have a long career or murderers to kill a second time. If you RFID tag every expensive object and every human at birth (multiple times, if needed), add plenty of cameras that use face recognition to verify that tags don't move around, and implant a couple of remotely read sensors for bodily functions, it would become a lot easier to solve crimes (yes, people still could game the system, for example by committing suicide while in the company of someone they hate, but that would be rare)
- Meat eating
These two for sure.
I think, or at least hope, the usage of the death penalty will increase. Some people definitely can't be rehabilitated, and life imprisonment is an inhumane and cruel punishment.
Of a few of those, I dare say the majority is embarrassed about. Especially from outside the US.
Prior to that, the most memorable thing that happened with it was when Rosie Ruiz won it by taking the subway.
http://www.weei.com/sports/boston/general/jerry-thornton/201...
http://www.gettyimages.com/license/515108138
Technically Switzer was not the first woman to run the marathon, Bobbi Gibb finished the year before but wasn't an official participant because they had denied her application for a bib.
He had been in the long-time habit of physically attacking those he perceived to be "non serious" runners competing in the race, whether officially entered or running the course unofficially. In a 1968 interview with Sports Illustrated, he called them "These screwballs! These weirdies! These MIT boys! These Tufts characters! These Harvard guys!" According to fellow race official Will Cloney: "He hurls not only his body at them, but also a rather choice array of epithets... Jock's method of attack is apt to vary." In 1957, Semple had narrowly escaped arrest for assault after attempting to tackle a runner in swim fins and a snorkeling mask
But seems to have come around eventually:
Later in life, Semple reversed his position on women competing in the marathon. According to Marja Bakker (a later organizer of the race), "Once the rule was adjusted and women were allowed in the race, Jock was one of their staunchest supporters. He was very progressive."[7] Semple later publicly reconciled with Switzer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jock_Semple
At least, that's the explanation I heard from Bobbi Gibb on Sunday.
All I can think of is 1. Verified distance
Runner No. 261 had violated the sacred code of the institution that was his baby. She deserved to be punished – and if Cloney couldn’t do the job, then Jock Semple would. “This wasn’t just about me being a girl,” Switzer said. “Jock probably would have left me alone if I was just running along like Bobbi. It was the number that got him. I had made him look like a fool.”
These days U.S. road races are run under the rules of U.S.A Track and Field (USATF) which is an affiliate of the IAAF. The rules only really matter though if the course is to be record eligible. Many of your local 5K/10K charity runs may not be certified.
Regarding Boston, to run it one first has to complete a marathon in a qualifying time on a course that is certified by the USATF/IAAF. This basically means the course is correclty measured for distance, has a certification number, and follows the USATF/IAAF rules. Here's the certification procedure:
http://www.usatf.org/Products-/-Services/Course-Certificatio...
Interstingly, the Boston Marathon is not eligible for setting world records since its net downhill is greater than the allowable amount.
In my opinion the more interesting picture(s) are of the 70yo K.S. herself.
We live in an extremely sedentary culture where obesity has become normalized and it is jarring to see what people of (relatively) advanced age actually look like.
What are we doing so the next generation can say the same?