Trans women in sport vs funding - arguments

[CoffeeTeaChocolate]

I know that many, including myself, are trying to raise awareness of the difference in physical ability between natal men and natal women due to male puberty. I sometimes use the chart which compares college boys with female Olympic athletes.

I was discussing with a feminist friend who has a very sporty daughter and she initially did not want to have the conversation. It appears that these charts and statistics are used by other groups to justify lower pay for female athletes.

I was unaware of this . I think it may be useful to mention this double whammy in discussions, I.e used to justify lower pay for women whilst simultaneously being ignored to steal part of whatever money is left from natal women. Before leading the discussion to missed opportunities and risk of physical harm.

Has this already been discussed here?

What do people think?

So when the subject of equal pay comes up, it frustrates me because I know firsthand that I, like you, have done the same work and made the same sacrifices as our male counterparts. I would never want my daughter to be paid less than my son for the same work. Nor would you. Venus Williams

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/nov/29/dream-big-open-letter-serena-williams-porter-magazine-incredible-women-of-2016-issue-women-athletes

equal pay is right because athletes put in the same work

sex based sports is right because it's a physical biological category

Yes people will use anything they can do justify lower wages

The climbing community tends to recognise and value the differences. Yes men will have greater upper body strength and reach, the women tend to have great technique... balance and flexibility, because they start to learn that much earlier in their climbing career

So if your focus is only on power routes, you can justify lower wages for women.

If you switch your focus to routes that need balance and flexibility , you could justify higher wages for women ?

Not sure if this applies to other sports

The whole issue of accepting differences is fraught. Women on average will have more time away from work since they are the only ones who get pregnant. So their lifetime contributions in terms of worked hours will be less, hence they will slip back compared to men , because we reward presenteeism

That is a great article! I completely agree with it. I believe that most women with sporty daughters do.

My worry is that some women may be so used to defending pay (and trans issues have flown under the radar) that we lose natural allies unless he address both issues simultaneously.

The people arguing for lower pay for women based on them being slower are missing the point or being deliberately obtuse.

People watch women's sport to see women competing against each other, without reference to men. Also, women's sport can be equally or more graceful and skilled and tactical.

Anybody with a brain cell already knows that on average women aren't as strong or fast as men. I mean it's kind of the starting point for the category existing! So I wouldn't worry about using the graph when it's so useful for highlighting the unfairness of trans gatecrashing.

They don't argue lightweight boxers put in less work than middleweight boxers, do they?
Or that all boxing categories except heavyweight should be scrapped or given less respect because they aren't as strong.

I have to say, I hate boxing. I don't think it is a 'sport'. Clearest example I could give though.

@Cailleach1

They don't argue lightweight boxers put in less work than middleweight boxers, do they? Or that all boxing categories except heavyweight should be scrapped or given less respect because they aren't as strong.

I have to say, I hate boxing. I don't think it is a 'sport'. Clearest example I could give though.

I agree, can't bear the sight of people whacking each other and trying to knock their opponent out - I just find it barbaric.

Good analogy though.

Antibles, I agree with you. My point is that my friends is quite active in working for female rights. She has been horrified about the way support for sports has been allocated between men and women in Covid times (based on ticket sales in some countries).

Luckily we now agree, but unless we had been good friends, she might have rejected my arguments without listening properly.

I believe that it may be important to address (if only in passing) the fact that the data is also used in a way to justify lower pay if it is a new discussion or someone with a keen interest in women’s sports.

I will definitely keep using the chart, it is so self-explanatory and brilliant. I will just think carefully about how to address the fact that it may have been used against women in the past...

Yup, damned if you do, damned if you don't. The trick that's been used on women for decades.

But sport (as a commercial venture) is about watching fair and exciting competition between evenly matched opponents. There's always a good audience for the women's finals at Wimbledon, for instance, and it's hard to get tickets (friend of mine got tickets in the ballot a few years back after decades of faithfully going to Wimbledon every year - he was so chuffed).

Women's rugby, for instance. I love watching it, because it's like a time machine back to the glory days of Welsh rugby in the 70s - open, flowing play, with an emphasis on the backs, brilliant runs, selling your opponent a dummy and heading off down the pitch leaving them for dust. It's what men's rugby was before the England physios in the 1990s worked out you could turn your forwards into a battering ram if they spent enough time in the gym - result, a boring, forward-dominated game of attrition, about as exciting as watching paint dry.

Ditto women's cricket - the top speeds for bowling may not be as high, but someone skilful with the bat, or a clever spin bowler (or ideally a battle of wits between these two) is a joy to watch, regardless of sex.

Or, TL:DR - Venus Williams is right.

Interesting little snippet of info from football (which was my sport before my knees got knackered). Because women are on average smaller than men (one of the most obvious aspects of sexual dimorphism in humans), it would make sense if the goals were smaller. The goals are 8 foot high and 8 yards wide - physiologically a hell of a lot harder for a woman, even a highly athletic, tall woman (5'8, 5'9") to cover.

Arguably, if the goals were smaller, it would favour skill, accuracy, better positional play, a cleverer game, more fun to watch. It would also get rid of the 8-1, 9-2, 10-0 drubbings that are a feature of women's football. If your team has a small (by female standards) and small centre halves, and your opposition has a forward who can accurately hit the top corners of the goal, then you're stuffed with current goals. (I know - mine was the team that was always on the receiving end of scorelines like that ).

But making the goals smaller was resisted strongly by the US soccer authorities and TV - and at the time, they were the only commercial, professional league in the world. Why? Because Americans like high score lines - American audiences think "high score" = "exciting to watch". Not for them a cold Saturday afternoon on the terraces watching your local team grind out a 0-0 draw, which you feel satisfied about because it keeps you out the relegation zone for another week! So no smaller goals, because big goals in the women's game keep the scorelines nice and high.

Following that logic on goal sizes to its natural conclusion, that's an argument for keeping the goals the same size for women and increasing their size proportionately for men, isn't it?

I thought that sportsmen and women got paid commensurate with the popularity of the sport. How many people want to pay to see it etc.

It doesn't matter how big goals are. It's the same for both teams.

Unless you're advocating only making one of the goals bigger? 😂😂

They don't argue lightweight boxers put in less work than middleweight boxers, do they?

Exactly. Does anyone know if they are paid differently? Or does it only work against women?

Isn't it less about equal pay for equal work and more about what the market is willing to pay?

I imagine more people would be willing to pay the same amount to see, say, Serena Williams v Petra Kvitova as they would to see Djokovic v Nadal, compared to those willing to pay the same to watch Manchester City's male and female football teams.

(Is tennis an outlier? Maybe athletics has equal interest too).

Isn't it less about equal pay for equal work and more about what the market is willing to pay?

That's what I tried to say.

The point about the goal size is one about the nature of the game (and a Christina Crialdo Perez type point about a world designed for men).

There are certain defensive strategies and goal keep strategies which make sense if your keeper is 6'4" and your centre halves are 6'2" which simply can't work if your keeper is 5'8" and your centre halves about that height too. You wouldn't get, for instance, a situation where a ball whipped in from a corner would get caught by a stray gust of wind and carried into the goal by the wind (which I've seen happen in women's games) happening in the men's game because either the players on the posts (typically the full backs) would jump and head it clear, or the keeper would get to it.

Have a go at home (where if you've got a modern house, the ceiling heights are probably 7'6" or 8") and see if you can jump and reach the ceiling! Then see if a male acquaintance can do it (chances are if he's average height or above for a man, he may be able to touch the ceiling with both feet flat on the floor).

After all, both the women's shot and women's javelins are lighter than the men's for precisely this reason. Adjusting equipment to cater for different biology isn't exactly unprecedented!

Incidentally, opinion is split among professional women players on this one - a lot of goal keepers feel they've trained hard to develop techniques to reach the far corners of the goals, and that they wouldn't want it changed. It's also true that there are physiological limits on what a male keeper could do - I remember an article in New Scientist a couple of decades ago pointing out that if the keeper really was stationary on his line, and a striker could accurately hit the top corner ever time with the sort of speed of shot typical of a top-flight striker, it would be physically impossible for the keeper (given reaction time and speed of jump) to reach the top corner in time to save the ball.

@thinkingaboutLangCleg

They don't argue lightweight boxers put in less work than middleweight boxers, do they?

Exactly. Does anyone know if they are paid differently? Or does it only work against women?

This is probably a good example of the "driven by the market" issue - I think it's the heavyweight bouts that carry the biggest prize money (and certainly the biggest opportunities to earn money from advertising, sponsorship deals, etc.)

Advertising and sponsorship are interesting. There was a while when Anna Kournikova was highest paid women's tennis player in the world, despite never rising above (IIRC) about number 6 in the world rankings. She was very glamorous and blonde and earned a fortune in advertising revenue, even if she rarely (if ever) won a grand slam title.

I know that many, including myself, are trying to raise awareness of the difference in physical ability between natal men and natal women due to male puberty.

Sorry, that this is again a thing is so fucking depressing to me., Its well known. Its been known for ages. Its never ever been questioned. Til now when magical gender essence wipes away the known advantages of a male body

I think this is a very good chart

strengthlevel.com/strength-standards/bench-press/lb

It's very easy to see the big differences in people of the same weight and is good for countering that silly argument - "why can't men and women compete if they're the same weight?".

You could also point out that Diego Schwartzmann (tennis) who has reached a career high of No 11 and taken a set off Nadal at the French Open); is both smaller and lighter than Serena Williams. General opinion is that Serena would struggle to reach the top 500 in the men's game.

Yes I agree OP.

One of the things that frustrates me the most about the debate in sport is how women, and in particular some awesome female athletes, have had to go on the offensive and point out over and over how we are not as strong/fast etc... as men.

We know this is a reality but it's belittling to the achievements of female athletes to have to repeatedly point out the obvious. I think a lot men get a big kick out of this aspect.

It's such a long way from different but equal and it's given so many opportunities to people who want to denigrate women's sport.

We know this is a reality but it's belittling to the achievements of female athletes to have to repeatedly point out the obvious. I think a lot men get a big kick out of this aspect.

Yes they do, and I'm not sure it will ever change. What's shocking is how many rulemakers in sports still see women as inferior rather than different from men. We're the low-testosterone, also-rans category.

@BatShite

I know that many, including myself, are trying to raise awareness of the difference in physical ability between natal men and natal women due to male puberty.

Sorry, that this is again a thing is so fucking depressing to me., Its well known. Its been known for ages. Its never ever been questioned. Til now when magical gender essence wipes away the known advantages of a male body

Quite.