For what it's worth, I don't think sports are typically segregated by gender except for government programs where we have female-specific teams for some measure of regulatory-compliance or fairness.
If you consider racing a sport, there are women NASCAR drivers. And there's no rule against a woman playing in many sports leagues such as the NBA or NFL or NHL or even college football. Hell there was a woman kicker in for a few snaps as a PR stunt at Vanderbilt just a year or two ago. It's just probably the case that ~99.999% of women cannot come close to competing with post-pubescent male athletes.
As far as women's sports in general, sometimes they can be better than their male counterparts due to women's physicality.
I'm not a huge tennis watcher, but the slower serves means that the match can feel a little more creative and strategic.
I believe that women are naturally more flexible than men, making many gymnastic activities much better with women.
And women's volleyball is very interesting: the strategy of the game comes out a little better rather than being a constant setup for powerful spikes and blocks. And being a little lower to the ground and more flexible means that women have perhaps a better chance to keep some amazing rallies going.
My opinion though is that some women's sports just cannot ever possibly work such as basketball. Besides the obvious problems with watching the WNBA, basketball is a vertical game and the lack of power becomes too apparent for even the best conceivable teamwork to overcome.
I feel like more people should've stolen this idea by now. Why not create height divisions in basketball? Weight divisions in football?
Because those are team sports. Weight classes only apply to individual sports. Maybe cross country skiing and swimming would stand to benefit from biometric divisions, but those two aforementioned in the article are bad examples.
The article's point isn't entirely clear though, and some of its statements are just wrong. The conclusion: "We watch sports not to see who's best, but to see who's better" is obviously false: people do like the thrill of an equal match up, but they also care about records being broken, or fawn over their favorite athlete like a god, taking delight in seeing them destroy everyone else, even unworthy competitors. Ronda Rousey brought in a lot more money than many male MMA combatants in her heyday even though she wasn't the absolute top, nor women's MMA being the big money maker. She doesn't have to out-earn Serena Williams, nor does it say anything about women vs. men.
I'm pretty sure some places do have weight divisions for football. I know for certain that one of my wife's cousins had to change to a different nominally-age-based division because he was simply too big for the division he was in. So the fact that these are team sports doesn't completely preclude weight-based or height-based partitioning.
Broadly, I think so many of these issues get tough because of the wildly different roles "sports" can play for people and we end up conflating them. As in, are they:
- Elite competitions to see who is the best at a thing?
- Child and teen activities for health and cameraderie?
- Million dollar entertainment that exists mostly for the fans?
etc. etc. All of these are different enough such that it almost makes no sense to try to use the same "gender analysis" stuff for all of them. They serve different goals.
I'll try to rephrase the question this article poses more briefly:
If the performance diversity between genders is big, but there is a similarly big performance diversity among individuals of the same gender, why not create divisions for people of different sizes rather than different genders? Weight classes in boxing and MMA are a positive example of this (besides those being divided by gender before weight).
As the article says,
> Why not create height divisions in basketball? Weight divisions in football? Why not segregate athletes based on bone density, testosterone levels, or lung capacity? Gender is too reductive a framework to reasonably classify physiology. Ask transgender and Paralympic athletes. Or look at Kenyan runners [...] if it was up to me I'd go ahead and create a division for people on steroids
Actually, sports fans just care about who is best at a given discipline that they can also identify with. There's more money in male brackets because there are more males sports fans and males prefer to watch other males compete. And yes, males perform better at many sports, this just contributes to the incentives.
Sports fans historically don't care that physiological categories are fair. It is reasonable to think that male/female categories in sports is a historical relic. It is also reasonable to think that the best competitors (often males) form the first category, and the largest group who are excluded form the second category (often females).
There are categories for people on steroids. In bodybuilding the steroid class is called "bodybuilding", where the non-steroid class is called "natural bodybuilding". In bicycling the steroid class is called "Tour de France". Performance enhancements will be controversial as long as transhumanism is a fringe philosophy.
Side note: I misread the title as "Women's sportswear has a crotch problem".
6 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 24.3 ms ] threadIf you consider racing a sport, there are women NASCAR drivers. And there's no rule against a woman playing in many sports leagues such as the NBA or NFL or NHL or even college football. Hell there was a woman kicker in for a few snaps as a PR stunt at Vanderbilt just a year or two ago. It's just probably the case that ~99.999% of women cannot come close to competing with post-pubescent male athletes.
As far as women's sports in general, sometimes they can be better than their male counterparts due to women's physicality.
I'm not a huge tennis watcher, but the slower serves means that the match can feel a little more creative and strategic.
I believe that women are naturally more flexible than men, making many gymnastic activities much better with women.
And women's volleyball is very interesting: the strategy of the game comes out a little better rather than being a constant setup for powerful spikes and blocks. And being a little lower to the ground and more flexible means that women have perhaps a better chance to keep some amazing rallies going.
My opinion though is that some women's sports just cannot ever possibly work such as basketball. Besides the obvious problems with watching the WNBA, basketball is a vertical game and the lack of power becomes too apparent for even the best conceivable teamwork to overcome.
Because those are team sports. Weight classes only apply to individual sports. Maybe cross country skiing and swimming would stand to benefit from biometric divisions, but those two aforementioned in the article are bad examples.
The article's point isn't entirely clear though, and some of its statements are just wrong. The conclusion: "We watch sports not to see who's best, but to see who's better" is obviously false: people do like the thrill of an equal match up, but they also care about records being broken, or fawn over their favorite athlete like a god, taking delight in seeing them destroy everyone else, even unworthy competitors. Ronda Rousey brought in a lot more money than many male MMA combatants in her heyday even though she wasn't the absolute top, nor women's MMA being the big money maker. She doesn't have to out-earn Serena Williams, nor does it say anything about women vs. men.
- Elite competitions to see who is the best at a thing?
- Child and teen activities for health and cameraderie?
- Million dollar entertainment that exists mostly for the fans?
etc. etc. All of these are different enough such that it almost makes no sense to try to use the same "gender analysis" stuff for all of them. They serve different goals.
If the performance diversity between genders is big, but there is a similarly big performance diversity among individuals of the same gender, why not create divisions for people of different sizes rather than different genders? Weight classes in boxing and MMA are a positive example of this (besides those being divided by gender before weight).
As the article says,
> Why not create height divisions in basketball? Weight divisions in football? Why not segregate athletes based on bone density, testosterone levels, or lung capacity? Gender is too reductive a framework to reasonably classify physiology. Ask transgender and Paralympic athletes. Or look at Kenyan runners [...] if it was up to me I'd go ahead and create a division for people on steroids
Actually, sports fans just care about who is best at a given discipline that they can also identify with. There's more money in male brackets because there are more males sports fans and males prefer to watch other males compete. And yes, males perform better at many sports, this just contributes to the incentives.
Sports fans historically don't care that physiological categories are fair. It is reasonable to think that male/female categories in sports is a historical relic. It is also reasonable to think that the best competitors (often males) form the first category, and the largest group who are excluded form the second category (often females).
There are categories for people on steroids. In bodybuilding the steroid class is called "bodybuilding", where the non-steroid class is called "natural bodybuilding". In bicycling the steroid class is called "Tour de France". Performance enhancements will be controversial as long as transhumanism is a fringe philosophy.
Side note: I misread the title as "Women's sportswear has a crotch problem".
Women's sports don't have a crotch problem.
The western world has a gender problem.
Sports fans continue to watch sports.