Sports and sex segregation

[Ennuid]

The Roland Garros and the women's football WC this week reminded me again what I hate about sports : sex segregation. It simply reinforces the idea that men's sports are the real deal, while women's sports are a second-class. What we need to do it stop segregating boys and girls at young ages, just let them play in the same teams or events as they do before the teenage years. This way society won't see women as ''physically inferior'' and a sort of sub-par version of men. No team should be called the male or female this or that and not allowing the other sex to join, if good enough, should be illegal. Something similar happened in the US around the middle of the last century : black athletes were not allowed to compete against whites not only because of pure racism, but also because blacks were considered inferior athletes. The moment they were allowed to compete against whites was the moment they started taking over US sports and these days they almost completely dominate the most popular sports across the pond.

Women are not inferior, sub-par or a lesser version of men. They shouldn't be forced to compete in their own leagues and events. Sports are a huge part of our society and great for building confidence and teaching structure to young people. What kind of message do girls get so early in life when they are told that they should go play in a league of their own because boys are better? No wonder women grow up believing they can't go for a STEM degree or negotiate their salary ''like a man''!

wtf dragon!!!!

Loving these

"Only if it has some decent strong male leads obv."

Do we need to page Dr Freud? Or just Joss Whedon?

No No I meant it I was channelling OP

I thought it might be that

Ooh, what if Joss Whedon wrote a Doctor Who episode?

whirlpool and yonic

Thank you

[laurel]
[olympic]

As far as I can make out from a bit of googling, darts and snooker have both signed up to the WADA code including banning the mind bogglingly long list of anabolic androgenic steroids (testosterone and all its friends). I reckon any sport which has any list of prohibited substances includes testosterone on the list. Wondering why women don't often beat men at the majority of sports is like wondering how clean cyclists didn't manage to beat Lance Armstrong in all those Tours.

Another bit of googling yielded the info that the average female resting heart rate is 10 beats/minute faster than that of males due to smaller capacity. So perhaps the difference in numbers of top level male and females competing in darts, snooker and shooting isn't entirely cultural.
So, OP, for your original suggestion to work, women should be allowed to take a wee dose of beta blockers or testosterone depending on their chosen sport, to level the playing field. On second thoughts, let's not.

Oh, and EPO too, since men have a higher PCV on average ( a measure of the number of red cells and hence oxygen carrying capacity of the blood), and also a higher blood volume.

So, basically, compared to women, men are all naturally doped to the eyeballs to start with.

Haha nodding, love that way of putting it!

Apart from the few exceptions posted earlier, mixed sport would be absurdly unequal:

There are innate differences between make & female physical limits for sports, which are determined by genetics and hormones: height, weight, muscle mass, bone density, body fat and aerobic capacity.

For example, higher estrogen levels cause women to have a higher % body fat than men, with women requiring a minimum of roughly 12% and men 5% to maintain essential body functions.

In contrast, testosterone enables men to develop larger skeletal muscles as well as larger hearts.
Men have a larger proportion of Type 2 muscle fibers, which generate power, strength and speed.
Testosterone also increases the production of red blood cells, which absorb oxygen, giving men an even greater aerobic advantage.

The world speed records of women, for all kinds of athletic events and all distances, have remained about 10% worse than men since 1983, e.g. Atlantic Article

ntbo, if men weren't on average so much physically stronger, women would not be so vulnerable to male violence.
This disparity in physical power has been the basis of the oppression of women since pre-history: equal intellect overwhelmed by brute force.

Ennuid, a few questions for you:

Are you male or female?

Which sports do you actually care about? Which do you watch? Which do you play?

Have you ever played any mixed sport at any level?

If you're not prepared to answer these questions I shall assume that you are a troll who has simply started this thread to be a goady fucker.

(For the record, I'm a middle aged woman - middle aged= much of this in the past tense. I have in my time climbed, rowed, played football, both in single sex groups and in mixed groups. Mixed 5-a-side is a fantastic game, because the small pitch and the no-contact rule favours short accurate passing and intelligent reading of the game over brute strength and speed - so it really works. Mixed 11 a side, the strength and speed discrepancy is just too much. Rowing is an interesting one because even within each sex there are weight divisions).

When and my little boy is old enough to be into sports, if one of them takes his fancy he'll be going to both men's and women's games. I'm not sure what else can be done. Women's sports is marginalised because we choose to marginalise it (by we I mean society!).

If more people started watching women's teams regularly, then sponsors will take note and more money and prestige will start to flow.

Yes dervel, it is a vicious cycle. Women's sport doesn't get the attention it deserves because of things like lack of media coverage and sponsorship. It doesn't get those things because of not much attention/ attendance.

Lurcio- rugby which would obviously be very difficult to have joint teams, does have joint touch/tag teams. Like football 5 a side, played with less players and it's very minimal contact. It's a great fun game to play Altho it's very different to actual rugby ( which might be a plus or minus depending on your view point