7 ms·

There are physical differences in body structures between men and women, so that would be unfair. on a tangent, gymnastics with music is much more watchable

deltasixeight 5y ago
Are you implying men are superior to women in terms of physical strength? I agree with you but admitting this fact is also sexist so my mind is in a perpetual confused state: unable to resolve the conflict between social justice and reality as we know it. Possibly the best way to solve this issue is to just side step it. Let's not make judgement of female routines more like the mens' routines. Instead make the mens' routines have music and judge the men on artistry, femininity and grace. This would be totally fair to both sexes.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
orwin 5y ago
Agree. I usually don't care about gymnastic, but if i have to choose, i'd watch women gymnasts over men, and all my friends (men or women) would too, because the music make it look like a dance, an artistic performance, whereas men gymnast feels like a competition of strength and skill, with no "art" component. I know it isn't true, but reason loose to feelings all the time (sadly for all of us). I think this is actually disavantageous for men gymnasts in the long run tbh.
- tolbish 5y ago
  I don't see how it's irrational to find women's gymnastics more interesting and artistic. You can do that without making a judgment on the difficulty or superiority of one over the other.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Glavnokoman 5y ago
How about chess? And with music!
- pvaldes 5y ago
  Music that one of the chess players would deeply loathe? Deliciously evil. I love it. Would be the kind of supervillain move than everybody expects from a chess master. Petting cats should be also encouraged as a part of chess competitions. Lets give viewers what they want.
rafale 5y ago
Gender is just one way to segment the population in groups. I agree it makes things more fair. Just like weight groups do. But with the challenges around classifying transsexuals and females born with naturally high testosterone, it's not always perfect. At some point, if we want to continue classifying by gender, we should have 2 groups: "women" and "others". With a very opinionated and scoped definition of female. Because grouping by gender is, ultimately, designed to protect women.
- aksss 5y ago
  Yeah, I don’t think we should design policy around edge cases. Is it worse to make the exceedingly rare instance of a transgender gymnast select a division or to call the vast, vast majority of gymnasts an “other”? Female divisions exist to allow competition within the limits of their biological capabilities, and that’s a good thing. I think the classic example of how Serena Williams is outranked by most college male tennis players is an example of why those limits need to be supported. The whole thing about transgender women competing is thorny, but it can’t be as simple as someone’s identity determining whether they get to disrupt that protected competitive class. Physical traits must be adequately considered. Even that seems very hard to do fairly. Is it fair to only let transgender women compete against biological females if they rate poorer than some female top tier? If they rate higher than the top tier, is it appropriate to let them compete? IDK, but I’m in favor of sober approaches to these question rather than brow-beating from the self righteous.
  - lazyeye 5y ago
    Why is the issue thorny? I think for most people commonsense would prevail.
- himinlomax 5y ago
  Gender is one of the most predictive classification in social sciences, even taking into account extreme outliers like the 0.1% (at most) of transgender individuals.
bluesnowmonkey 5y ago
There are physical differences in body structure between any two individuals. Michael Phelps has long arms. Is it not unfair that someone born with short arms has to compete against him?
- syoc 5y ago
  In highly competitive physical sports there would no woman at all in the olympics for example. The 100m dash woman world record has disputed legality and sits at 10.49s. That is 6339 fastest recorded time for men. Not having gender separated competition would probably decimate female sport participation in quite a lot of domains. The short armed argument that you actually raise is more interesting. There are weight classes in boxing, and there could probably be arm length classes in swimming as well, but other physical differentiator that would take the place of arm length. I'm not really able to conclude on anything, but have feeling that the physical and cultural gender difference is large and important enough that it is prioritized, while arm length for instance is not.
  - 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
    > In highly competitive physical sports there be would no woman at all in the olympics for example. In (edit: some) highly competitive physical sports there would be no person below median height at all in the olympics for example. We can slice and dice all sorts of extremely visible inborn characteristics that will over time hopefully have just as much cultural relevance as sex or gender, as the cultural relevance of sex and gender decreases [0]. As that happens, we’re going to have to reevaluate what we culturally look for in sports. At the amateur level, hopefully this isn’t too hard, but I have no idea whether it will make professional sports more or less accessible. [0] While height is mostly out of your control, it’s still unclear which of the kids in tryout team will end up tall enough to compete. That’s where sex and gender are more of a clear split, because you know most of the kids on the girls team won’t end up on a men’s team, so the split remains stable as they grow up.
    - adrian_b 5y ago
adamredwoods 5y ago
Does men's ice skating have music? I can't recall.
- erichocean 5y ago
  Yes. TIL that the music in men's ice skating is "tailored to fit the preconceived gender roles" of men according to experts.

deltasixeight 5y ago

Are you implying men are superior to women in terms of physical strength? I agree with you but admitting this fact is also sexist so my mind is in a perpetual confused state: unable to resolve the conflict between social justice and reality as we know it. Possibly the best way to solve this issue is to just side step it. Let's not make judgement of female routines more like the mens' routines. Instead make the mens' routines have music and judge the men on artistry, femininity and grace. This would be totally fair to both sexes.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

orwin 5y ago

Agree. I usually don't care about gymnastic, but if i have to choose, i'd watch women gymnasts over men, and all my friends (men or women) would too, because the music make it look like a dance, an artistic performance, whereas men gymnast feels like a competition of strength and skill, with no "art" component. I know it isn't true, but reason loose to feelings all the time (sadly for all of us). I think this is actually disavantageous for men gymnasts in the long run tbh.

tolbish 5y ago
I don't see how it's irrational to find women's gymnastics more interesting and artistic. You can do that without making a judgment on the difficulty or superiority of one over the other.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Glavnokoman 5y ago

How about chess? And with music!

pvaldes 5y ago
Music that one of the chess players would deeply loathe? Deliciously evil. I love it. Would be the kind of supervillain move than everybody expects from a chess master. Petting cats should be also encouraged as a part of chess competitions. Lets give viewers what they want.

rafale 5y ago

Gender is just one way to segment the population in groups. I agree it makes things more fair. Just like weight groups do. But with the challenges around classifying transsexuals and females born with naturally high testosterone, it's not always perfect. At some point, if we want to continue classifying by gender, we should have 2 groups: "women" and "others". With a very opinionated and scoped definition of female. Because grouping by gender is, ultimately, designed to protect women.

aksss 5y ago
Yeah, I don’t think we should design policy around edge cases. Is it worse to make the exceedingly rare instance of a transgender gymnast select a division or to call the vast, vast majority of gymnasts an “other”? Female divisions exist to allow competition within the limits of their biological capabilities, and that’s a good thing. I think the classic example of how Serena Williams is outranked by most college male tennis players is an example of why those limits need to be supported. The whole thing about transgender women competing is thorny, but it can’t be as simple as someone’s identity determining whether they get to disrupt that protected competitive class. Physical traits must be adequately considered. Even that seems very hard to do fairly. Is it fair to only let transgender women compete against biological females if they rate poorer than some female top tier? If they rate higher than the top tier, is it appropriate to let them compete? IDK, but I’m in favor of sober approaches to these question rather than brow-beating from the self righteous.
- lazyeye 5y ago
  Why is the issue thorny? I think for most people commonsense would prevail.
himinlomax 5y ago
Gender is one of the most predictive classification in social sciences, even taking into account extreme outliers like the 0.1% (at most) of transgender individuals.

bluesnowmonkey 5y ago

There are physical differences in body structure between any two individuals. Michael Phelps has long arms. Is it not unfair that someone born with short arms has to compete against him?

syoc 5y ago
In highly competitive physical sports there would no woman at all in the olympics for example. The 100m dash woman world record has disputed legality and sits at 10.49s. That is 6339 fastest recorded time for men. Not having gender separated competition would probably decimate female sport participation in quite a lot of domains. The short armed argument that you actually raise is more interesting. There are weight classes in boxing, and there could probably be arm length classes in swimming as well, but other physical differentiator that would take the place of arm length. I'm not really able to conclude on anything, but have feeling that the physical and cultural gender difference is large and important enough that it is prioritized, while arm length for instance is not.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
  > In highly competitive physical sports there be would no woman at all in the olympics for example. In (edit: some) highly competitive physical sports there would be no person below median height at all in the olympics for example. We can slice and dice all sorts of extremely visible inborn characteristics that will over time hopefully have just as much cultural relevance as sex or gender, as the cultural relevance of sex and gender decreases [0]. As that happens, we’re going to have to reevaluate what we culturally look for in sports. At the amateur level, hopefully this isn’t too hard, but I have no idea whether it will make professional sports more or less accessible. [0] While height is mostly out of your control, it’s still unclear which of the kids in tryout team will end up tall enough to compete. That’s where sex and gender are more of a clear split, because you know most of the kids on the girls team won’t end up on a men’s team, so the split remains stable as they grow up.
  - adrian_b 5y ago

adamredwoods 5y ago

Does men's ice skating have music? I can't recall.

erichocean 5y ago
Yes. TIL that the music in men's ice skating is "tailored to fit the preconceived gender roles" of men according to experts.