Sports currently tend to use sex classes to separate players, before further ranking into classes based on ability or weight ranges. I assume this is a global norm, and it is certainly the case in all well-known sport competitions I’ve seen and in major international events such as the Olympic Games, where events are labelled ‘mens’ or ‘womens’, with some recent addition of ‘mixed-gender’ team/relay events, which is basically equal men and women, usually competing independently rather than different sexes competing. Mixed doubles tennis is a possible rare exception.
This topic asks if this model of separating sports players into physical sex categories (or social gender categories) is appropriate, or if both sexes should be in the same leagues.
Potential starting arguments:
For:
- Having men dominate most sports where athleticism or muscle strength is a major factor would be demotivating for women. Top leagues (that get televised) may just become entirely men, with no women’s league.
- Furthermore, competitions with prize money for winning would generally be very strongly biased against one of the sexes with an inherent physical disadvantage
- Heteronormative society makes mixed-sex groups more prone to sexual harassment, compounded by the energetic nature of sport
Against:
- Sex is a just a crude approximation of strength or ability, which is its own category/grading in most competitions.
- Intersex people (that is, who have chromosomes or sex organs which do not fit standard male or female) complicate this system. This page lists some examples Olympic intersex athletes competing in or disqualified from female events.
Compromise:
- The arguments for men dominating top leagues is irrelevant for non-professional sport leagues such as local competitions, where sport is aimed at fun and social interaction, which should not needlessly encourage sex segregation.
NOTE: This debate topic is not about ‘trans in sport’ issues. While that topic is linked, because removing sex/gender classes would make that issue obsolete, that debate in itself shouldn’t be held in this post.
Posts must present a serious debate topic
For general discussion see: !politics@lemmy.ml
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Another possible compromise for ‘classed’ sports (weight, age, etc) is to adjust the cutoff criteria for women to even out the matches. The ‘top’ class may still be dominated by men, but I don’t see that as an issue (any more than the fact that heavyweight wrestling in high-school is dominated by big guys)
The “classed” Idea makes a lot of sense to me. Sabine Hossenfelder brought that up in her latest video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ9YAFYIBOU
Western thinking was dominated by Christendom, which recognized differences between the genders. I’m not sure women (or men really) were encouraged to play sports much at all like as we see there being pro sports players today. such sports probably would have been thought to be excessive idleness, perhaps.
separating genders preserves the modesty of the participants. in a contact sport, they might have indecent interactions. A lot of men or women would think it against the dignity of their respective gender to be competing against the other. The market could offer genderless competiions, men would tend to dominate them. I suspect many men and women would voluntarily choose not to participate in such competitions.
I suspect also in the east there are similar objections to women in sports. it only strikes me as an apostate secular western view that genderless sporting should be a thing.
Modesty is an interesting point, I’ve heard an anecdote from a local touch-rugby team that they has been scheduled to play an exhibition game against a high-grade womens team, and were initially hesitant and overly-cautious when attempting to tag their opposition until they realized they were very good players and that tagging is tagging; there’s no sexual intent merely because a hand contacts a breast, for example. The context made it acceptable sporting contact. Depending on cultures, that may not be an acceptable view, especially ones that value modesty.
That also reminds me of a smaller (IMO trivial but still interesting) point, of differing rules between sexes. In association football, I know some leagues allow women to cross their arms over their chest to soften the impact of using the chest to play an airborne ball down to the feet, provided they don’t abuse their arms to propel the ball further. This would usually be seen as a hand-ball offense in the men’s leagues, due to the intentional positioning of arms into a place likely to contact the ball.
I think this is an overgeneralization. Women have advantages in some respect (flexibility, perhaps balance, perhaps ultra-endurance) so men there can be sports where they are equal or better than men. Even within a sport, it should be possible to adjust the rules to minimize the advantage that men have (think of ‘ninja warrior’ obstacle course without the items that benefit from upper body strength).
You didn’t mention this aspect of it, what about the sports fan that takes joy in seeing men beat up on women like per say boxing or football or hockey. What if a guy starts a hockey fight with s chick, what if the guy gets his ass kicked somehow, what if the guy knocks half a chicks teeth out in a hockey fight. Also, what if female athletes start abusing steroids to even the playing field. What if female youth sports dies because females see no purpose in pursuing something that a man has a physical advantage over. Just initial thoughts that come to mind
Then that sports fan has mental problems, which sucks, but I think is irrelevant to the sport. That’s a personal problem, same as if a fan wants to see men beating each other up or woman beating each other up.
Then they’ve probably violated rules of the sport and will get fined. I’m against that sort of violence, and the sexes of people doing it really don’t matter to me. I believe violence isn’t any more justified against a man than a woman. Why would it be?
Then they’ve probably violated drug rules in the sport and will be disqualified. Olympians and sportspeople already famously do this so I don’t see how it’s going to be any different.
That would be unfortunate, I wouldn’t consider that the fault of the sport. No disrespect intended to this hypothetical woman, but I would consider that death melodramatic and pointless, even entitled.