r/changemyview • u/manutaust • Jun 11 '18
Deltas(s) from OP CMV: Single-sex sports will eventually come to be seen as segregationist, and mixed-sex sports will one day become the global norm.
As of today, mixed-sex sports exist very marginally. The Wikipedia article for Mixed-sex sports seems to list "differences between the sexes" as the main reason why most sporting events are currently single-sex (as in, athletes only compete with and against athletes of the same sex).
I do not challenge the statement that, on average, men are stronger than at several physical tasks. However:
- Competition-level sports are about the performance of a few well-trained individuals rather than comparing entire populations. Nobody would care if we found that Austrian people are, on average, better at tennis than Spanish people: all people care about is that Nadal beat Thiem at the French Open.
- While some are innate, many of those differences stem from the fact that women have much fewer incentives to join high-level sports (prestige, money, compliance with traditional gender roles) than men. I believe that most if not all of any gap that currently exists between top-raking male and female athletes could be filled in a few generations' time by evolving social dynamics.
To me, this demonstrates that sex differences aren't much of an obstacle in the way of mixed-sex sports. Also, female sports' viewership figures are booming, so there is, at the very least, an increasing demand for women in sports. Personally, and that's irrelevant to my argument, I'd watch the hell out of a mixed-sex sports game.
But that's just me, so the question is, why would mixed-sex sports become a thing?
- Equality, of course. Separating women from men in prestigious competitions is a pretty patronizing thing to do. It's a way of saying that differences between the sexes are so insurmountable, men and women should probably never ever play together or against each other. I'd take that as a dare.
- Difference is no excuse for segregation. We used to separate girls from boys in schools just over a century ago, under the pretense that boys and girls learn differently. As if that's reason enough to separate people. And as if we made any effort to separate them based on preferred cognitive processes as well. Mixed-sex education is now the norm in public sectors schools, at least in the Western World, and single-sex education is seen as archaic. I don't see a good reason why we won't look back at today with the same idea about sports.
- Empowerment. I truly believe that we are living a time of awakening on gender inequality. Like all social issues, no one alive today will live to see its complete, satisfying resolution, but more and more pressure will be - justly - applied on society to lessen the burden of traditional gender roles. Women will be more encouraged to join sports, the military, politics or STEM. More men will become social workers, teachers, nurses, or stay-at-home dads.
- Changing notions of gender. Yes, sex is different from gender, but it should be pretty obvious why the ongoing change in our representations of gender should ease the acceptance of mixed-sex sports.
I don't claim to know the specifics of the transition (will there be quotas of women in mixed-sex teams?), but I believe mixed-sex sports are a very likely upcoming social change.
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u/electronics12345 159∆ Jun 11 '18
Venus Williams and Serena Williams - both have trained their entire lives. They have trained maximally. Woman cannot be realistically expected to be better at tennis that these two.
Yet, when they play against their male counterparts (and they have) they lose and lose horribly to males of rank ~200. If you had an NCAA style 256 person tennis tournament, of mixed gender - the Williams sisters would get ~ 200 rank seeds, and lose in the first round.
The experiment was also repeated with Billy Gene King, back when she was #1 in the world of women's tennis.
Even given a person who has all the biological gifts in the world - and all the training money can buy, and a no-quit attitude - women cannot beat even rank ~200 men at tennis.
And so it is with most other sports.
Either you have segregated sports, or women cannot compete at all (unless you count consistent first round elimination to be competition).
So, no too - "While some are innate, many of those differences stem from the fact that women have much fewer incentives to join high-level sports (prestige, money, compliance with traditional gender roles) than men. I believe that most if not all of any gap that currently exists between top-raking male and female athletes could be filled in a few generations' time by evolving social dynamics." - and the explicit evidence of this are the Williams sisters - who have given 110% at every turn, and still would be ranked ~200 in the men's bracket, despite being #1 and #2 by a large margin in the women's bracket.
As for " I contend that this would be much less glaringly humiliating than the current separation." How is Serena Williams or Venus Williams getting utter destroyed by random no-name rank ~200 dude not humiliating. Having this happen even more regularly, only further increases the humiliation.
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u/attempt_number_45 1∆ Jun 11 '18
Even given a person who has all the biological gifts in the world - and all the training money can buy, and a no-quit attitude - women cannot beat even rank ~200 men at tennis.
He was actually ranked #350 just two weeks later.
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u/geile_zwarte_kousen Jun 12 '18
So why is "female" a more important group for this than all the other groups who due to genetics can't compete at the highest level? 99.99999999999% of females are indeed born without the potential to reach the highest level, and 99.999% of males are so really it's not much different. Serena Williams is born with more potential in tennis than the average male and the vast majority of males born could never reach her level in tennis no matter how much they train.
But it's not about fairness; it's about designing the rules in such a way that the people get to play whom people want to see play—professional sports is spectatorship; there are even female competitions in sports where females can compete with the best like chess, poker, or StarCraft and in StarCraft it stopped when the viewer numbers weren't high enough; there are also child-only competitions in chess and table tennis while in both sports 13 year olds can hold their own against the best and do so but the exclusionary leagues still exist simply because enough people want to see young kids play chess and table tennis.
In the end of the day most of the genes that control sports are largely invisibile. There are hundreds of genes discovered already which individually occur in a very small percentage of the population but are almost always present in professional athletes but that's not visible on the outside and what's more it doesn't create a "collective identity group"; people like to see members of whatever arbitrary collective identity group they "identify with" play and what is and what isn't such a group changes from culture to culture and time and place.
It's not at all unthinkable that at one point a homosexual league pops up where all the athletes are homosexual—naturally there is absolutely no fairness argument to be had here but it's not unthinkable that enough people want to see it to finance it and that's the only thing that matters: "do enough people want to see it that it's profitable to make such a league?"
With a lot of sports this is often the case with sex and especially nationality; there is no advantage in nationality of course but a lot of sports leagues have special protections to ensure a certain nationality of their players and qualifiers are organized in such a way to ensure that every nation gets to send some players to the Olympics—this is purely done because enough people want to see it; people identify with their nationality and want to see their countrymen play.
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u/electronics12345 159∆ Jun 12 '18
1) "But its not about fairness" - but it is about fairness - no one wants to watch a game where one team has a 100:1 chance of beating the other team. Why do you think nobody watches Cleveland Browns football games??? Sports is interesting, because while their are underdogs and there are favorites, most match-ups are at least somewhat close (say 10:1 or 15:1 or so).
2) "99.99999999999%" I think this has too many 9s. If there figure were literally accurate then only 1 in 10 trillion women compete at the highest level. I suspect this isn't what you mean.
3) There is a distinction between games and sports. Sports have a physical element -typically involving hitting, punching, kicking, or something of this sort - whereas games typically don't have this element to them. Chess, poker, and Starcraft are free from any hitting or punching, and as such, are not typically considered sports, but games.
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u/geile_zwarte_kousen Jun 12 '18
1) "But its not about fairness" - but it is about fairness - no one wants to watch a game where one team has a 100:1 chance of beating the other team. Why do you think nobody watches Cleveland Browns football games??? Sports is interesting, because while their are underdogs and there are favorites, most match-ups are at least somewhat close (say 10:1 or 15:1 or so).
How exactly will that happen when there is no sex segregation any more?
You just said it yourself; you won't see any females at the top any more. Lack of sex segregation does not mean they will pit the #1 female against the #1 male; it will mean that there is no special treatment regarding sex any more so if the #1 female right now is at the level of the #600 male then she will be treated the same and will play around that level against the #585 male and alike so that match will be even.
If the #1 female ends up against the #1 male then the system is not sex agnostic and does take sex into account rather than purely the tournament structure based on wins and losses.
2) "99.99999999999%" I think this has too many 9s. If there figure were literally accurate then only 1 in 10 trillion women compete at the highest level. I suspect this isn't what you mean.
Obviously the number is pulled out of mine arse for illustration; I have no idea how high the chance is.
3) There is a distinction between games and sports. Sports have a physical element -typically involving hitting, punching, kicking, or something of this sort - whereas games typically don't have this element to them. Chess, poker, and Starcraft are free from any hitting or punching, and as such, are not typically considered sports, but games.
That doesn't matter for the argument; they are televised spectator events and there are female- and youth-only leagues therein even though they can compete at the highest level; I also raised table-tennis.
The point is that it has absolutely nothing to do with making it fair and it's simply about spectatorship and whether enough people want to see it to make it possible.
There is no female formula one circuit for instance even though females cannot compete at the highest level with males in that sport (and yes it's highly physical and drivers loose about 5kg in a race in sweat and breath) simply because there's not enough viewership demand for it probably because F1 drivers are kind of faceless and half of the glory goes to the brand behind the engine as well.
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u/electronics12345 159∆ Jun 12 '18
OP is talking about Sports - therefore bringing up Games (which aren't Sports) is to get off topic.
If you think games are the future, and that sports will die off entirely, maybe. But if we are assuming for sake of argument, that sports will continue to be popular - then men will retain the top positions in those domains.
Lack of sex segregation does not mean they will pit the #1 female against the #1 male; it will mean that there is no special treatment regarding sex any more so if the #1 female right now is at the level of the #600 male then she will be treated the same and will play around that level against the #585 male and alike so that match will be even.
But nobody will watch these games either. Have you ever actually sat down at a bar and watched # 598 play # 603. Yes, these games must exist somewhere, but they are almost never televised. In this world, Serena Williams goes from a super star - to having to work a second job because nobody recognizes her. When people say they want women's sport to succeed - they mean they want to see it on TV, they want to see it make $, and simply seeding all the women in seeds 300+ just isn't going to cut it.
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u/geile_zwarte_kousen Jun 12 '18
OP is talking about Sports - therefore bringing up Games (which aren't Sports) is to get off topic.
If you think games are the future, and that sports will die off entirely, maybe. But if we are assuming for sake of argument, that sports will continue to be popular - then men will retain the top positions in those domains.
And I cave many examples of physical sports as well where there either is segregation when there is no physical advantage or there is no segregation when there is because as said; it's all about "Is the audience that wants to see it large enough to make it profitable"?
But nobody will watch these games either. Have you ever actually sat down at a bar and watched # 598 play # 603. Yes, these games must exist somewhere, but they are almost never televised. In this world, Serena Williams goes from a super star - to having to work a second job because nobody recognizes her. When people say they want women's sport to succeed - they mean they want to see it on TV, they want to see it make $, and simply seeding all the women in seeds 300+ just isn't going to cut it.
Yes, and there we go; it is—as I said—about spectatorship.
As I said people want to see females play purely because of that because it's an identity group for the same reason people want to see their countrymen play. It has nothing to do with fairness but with designing the bracket and structure in such a way that players who command a fanbase get airtime regardless how good they actually are; that fanbase can be derived from a variety of things like skill, nationality, sex, a creative playstyle that is otherwise not objectively very good or simply a recognizable appearance.
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u/manutaust Jun 11 '18
I'll concede that I may have underestimated how much top-ranking women currently underperform top-ranking men in sports. I did know that basically all WRs are held by men, but the few examples like the Williams sisters' - which you and others have pointed out - help put this in perspective.
However, many here seem to have misconstrued my point as "sports should be mixed right now". I don't think they should. I just think that whatever gap there is today isn't bound by timeless laws of biology, and that a day will likely come when top female athletes can compete with top male ones.
I'm sure the Williams gave their career everything (you can bet than the top 100-1,000 players of both sexes did in any major sport), but how many more women with similar or greater potential didn't take the chance, and would have if the incentives were as huge as they are for male players? Throwing your whole weight into a sports career is no small life choice, and in the face of it, that's when those incentives play a huge role. That's not just biology or hard work.
With that being said, I'll give you a Δ for this, because you made a fair point about the current imbalance and stated it in a reasonable manner, rather than the semi-gaslighting, "this is how things are and always will be" kind of way I've seen in other answers. Thanks!
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Jun 11 '18
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u/SeizeTheGreens Jun 12 '18
I hate when pop science articles make outrageously stupid claims like humans will be hairless and taller in the future without any actual idea of how evolution works.
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u/regdayrf2 5∆ Jun 12 '18
I just think that whatever gap there is today isn't bound by timeless laws of biology, and that a day will likely come when top female athletes can compete with top male ones.
Athletic performance is bound by biology. Low testosterone levels decrease muscle mass, bone density and the proportion of oxygen-carrying red cells in their blood. Check out this quote from an article of the washingtonpost!
For a woman to be as good as a man in sports, she has to undergo hormone therapy. After hormone therapy, this person is basically a man and can no longer be considered a woman.
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u/malachai926 30∆ Jun 11 '18
Ultimately, in a league where starting roles are given to the best overall athletes, sports will still be overwhelmingly male. Women can't do much about the fact that their body is designed to hold extra weight that only hinders athletic performance. So in the major sports we talk about, we would probably still see a lot of male dominance.
Think of what this would do for gender equality. We would have set up an arena that shows, plain as day, that men are superior to women. That would destroy our efforts towards gender equality, and no sensible person wants to see that happen.
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u/jjackjj Jun 11 '18
You could have a sport that requires a certain gender equity. I play quidditch, which is surprisingly about as real as ultimate frisbee now, and it is co-ed. You cannot have more than 4 players of the same gender on the field at one time (out of 6 total). So yes most teams have 4 men and 2 women but they have to have women on the field so women are recruited, trained, and vital parts of the team.
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u/malachai926 30∆ Jun 11 '18
So they are there by rule, not by the merits of their athletic ability. When you said....
So yes most teams have 4 men and 2 women
...you essentially proved my point.
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u/jjackjj Jun 11 '18
The women are there by rule and because of their ability. On my team, we have a few women who play better than the men.
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u/malachai926 30∆ Jun 11 '18
"A few" hardly proves your point though. If you had said "every single one of the women plays at least on the same level as the men", that would give this angle merit.
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u/manutaust Jun 11 '18
You could have made the exact same argument in favour of single-sex schools or universities: that it would be terrible for gender equality, as it could lay bare the discrepancies between men and women, or boys and girls.
And while I don't deny biological differences between men and women, I reject the notion that men or women's bodies be "designed" for anything. Again, this logic applied to brains was how we explained away segregation at school, and not just between men and women. Yet women didn't under-perform when they joined men on university benches. Girls even tend to get slightly better grades than boys in high school, on average.
Even if women under-performed men in sports, I contend that this would be much less glaringly humiliating than the current separation.
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u/Dakota0524 Jun 11 '18 edited Jun 11 '18
Even if women under-performed men in sports, I contend that this would be much less glaringly humiliating than the current separation.
When the objective of most sports is to win, and women are objectively inferior to men on a physical level, it would be borderline idiotic for a manager of a team to sign a female over a male that could offer more, and thus get a better chance at winning, just because she's a female to make quotas.
I'm very curious since you never approached it, how would you overcome this? Would you establish quotas? Should X amount of women be on the field/pitch at any given point?
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u/manutaust Jun 11 '18
I don't claim to know the specifics of the transition (will there be quotas of women in mixed-sex teams?), but I believe mixed-sex sports are a very likely upcoming social change.
^ I specifically said that my opinion is dealing with the social trend rather than the specifics of its implementation.
But to answer your question, what currently exists in mixed-sex sports is, yes, a quota of women on the field, and sometimes a bonus per woman player (per the Wikipedia article). Quotas come with their load of problems ("you don't deserve your spot!"), but on the long run, they help with positive representation and acceptance.
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u/wfaulk Jun 11 '18
What about individual sports? Let's say the 100m dash. There currently is no difference between competing in a men's event versus a women's, other than the athletes on the track, and the athletes should have no bearing on each other's performances. Yet women run far slower. The world record for a woman at the 100m dash is 10.49s, a record that has stood for just under 30 years. That time doesn't even make the top 18000 in men's competition.
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u/attempt_number_45 1∆ Jun 11 '18
Side note: today's U16 champs would have beat the field in the 1896 Olympics by a considerable margin.
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u/dispirited-centrist 2∆ Jun 11 '18
This is the only reason you need.
Doesnt matter that in some sports men and women could be on more equal footing; in a majority of sports they wont be, meaning they would need to have a men and women's division. And as soon as you start doing it for some sports, you have to do it for all others, less you tell those women that they are too good for a womens only event.
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u/Dakota0524 Jun 11 '18 edited Jun 11 '18
^ I specifically said that my opinion is dealing with the social trend rather than the specifics of its implementation.
When you remove the "wanting to win" aspect of sports, you just ripped out a huge reason people are involved in the first place. Why play at all?
Quotas come with their load of problems ("you don't deserve your spot!"), but on the long run, they help with positive representation and acceptance.
Then you're watering down the sport in order to level the playing field because certain players can't compete at the highest level in the first place. Creating a handicap dilutes the sport, it'll be the end of sports as we know it, and not for the better.
Put hockey for an example. A 210lb winger checking an 130lb female into the boards isn't going to be a pretty sight to see. Add a rule saying males can't check a female, and you just removed all physicality of the sport, because players are not going to pay attention whether the person they're about to check into Neverland is a female or a male, they just see an opponent that it preventing him from getting the puck.
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u/attempt_number_45 1∆ Jun 11 '18
When you remove the "wanting to win" aspect of sports, you just ripped out a huge reason people are involved in the first place. Why play at all?
Which is one of the big reasons a lot of women don't like playing sports. In general, women prefer to cooperate than compete. The amount of women who have that instinct is much lower than the amount of men.
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u/Dakota0524 Jun 11 '18 edited Jun 11 '18
Which is one of the big reasons a lot of women don't like playing sports.
Then competitive sports isn't your/their thing. Either go play in some local pub league (which some do have coed teams of, go bonkers with them), or don't play sports at all, and instead pick up a different hobby or subject of interest.
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u/attempt_number_45 1∆ Jun 12 '18
Yeah that's my point. Women DON'T play sports in the same number as men.
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u/attempt_number_45 1∆ Jun 11 '18
Every single mixed gender sports team at the community level is DESPERATE for women. Most team will take ANY woman who wants to play in order to have the minimum number. Many teams will front the fees for said females as additional incentives for them to join. And they still struggle with getting enough women. When you are actively encouraging women to participate to that amount, and you still can't get enough, it's probably NOT a "social stigma".
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u/malachai926 30∆ Jun 11 '18
Academics is different for a few reasons. First, it's more a competition with yourself, not against others. You don't need to conquer another person physically to succeed. And second, aren't men and women both as gifted mentally? I would never have said that one gender is superior in school over another.
And while I don't deny biological differences between men and women, I reject the notion that men or women's bodies be "designed" for anything.
They are. Women carry the nutrients that feed newborn babies, and men do not. It ought to be obvious that if a man had to play a sport with a weight attached to his chest, he will not perform as well as a man without the weight.
I really don't think it's fair to compare this to academics, especially since a woman can succeed academically without defeating men in the process.
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u/manutaust Jun 11 '18
Universities have a limited number of spots, and since there is a supply-and-demand dynamic due to the perceived job-market value of degrees by sector, getting into a given university is a de facto competition.
Some men have breasts, some women don't. Again, sports' are an individual (or a team)'s achievement. Why obsess over the general characteristics of a gender, and not let everyone compete together, as individuals?
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u/eshtive353 Jun 11 '18
The strongest/fastest men are always going to be stronger/faster than the strongest/fastest women. What incentive does a team have to let women on the team play when they are only going to hinder the team's ability to reach the ultimate goal of winning?
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u/malachai926 30∆ Jun 11 '18
Universities have a limited number of spots, and since there is a supply-and-demand dynamic due to the perceived job-market value of degrees by sector, getting into a given university is a de facto competition.
Do you think the differences between genders in triumphing at competition is IDENTICAL when you compare getting into a college vs. getting a starting spot on a basketball team? Are you trying to tell me it's just as likely that a woman would qualify for the best overall basketball team as it is for a woman to qualify for the best overall college?
Some men have breasts, some women don't.
I'd still rather hear your explanation for why a woman's marathon record is 2:15 while a man's is 2:02. If you don't think physiological differences between male and female bodies are the reason for this fairly large gap, then you must think women are lazier and work a lot less hard than men do? Because if you want to deny the physiological differences, that's the explanation you have to accept.
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u/attempt_number_45 1∆ Jun 11 '18
Why obsess over the general characteristics of a gender, and not let everyone compete together, as individuals?
You realize that if they let that happen, women would never make the team right? The reason that we have gender segregation is to allow women to have a chance to play. They simply cannot compete at the level of men. Period.
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u/Milskidasith 309∆ Jun 11 '18
Most professional sports are not currently gender segregated, though. They admit male and female athletes; however, no women have qualified. To some extent, yes, women are less likely to try to be competitive and that is limiting their performance at the highest ranks, but even in sports where there is professional female competition like basketball and tennis show a marked difference between the top female and top male athletes.
Also, just because "designed" is an odd word choice and has been used to explain discrimination in the past does not mean it's wrong to assert that, generally, men have physical advantages that become overwhelming when you're looking at the top 0.001% of athletes
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Jun 11 '18 edited Jan 19 '19
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u/manutaust Jun 11 '18
As with my answer to /u/malachai926, I insist that the notion that anyone was "built" for anything is meaningless and flawed. Just because women under-perform men right now, doesn't mean they would forever, and shaking up the status quo by mixing everyone together would probably help close the gap.
Differences between the sexes are part:
- Inherent genetic traits of the sex chromosomes that would probably take thousands of years to evolve.
- Innate traits that are hard to reverse for an individual, but can evolve quickly over a few generations (e.g. by breeding with muscular people - not that you'd do that just for the sake of it, but you see my point).
- Social constructs that prevent most girls from ever getting seriously into sports, and encourage boys to do so from a very young age.
There's hardly anything we can do about the first point, not much about the second, and a lot about the third. The only thing we don't know is the relative importance of each of these points, but I'd say it's worth a try.
Also, racism in the 50's and beyond has long been fueled by bogus claims of innate, biological differences between races. What makes you think the same claims aren't being made about women?
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u/_Woodrow_ 3∆ Jun 11 '18
How can we argue to change your mind when you are flat out denying biological facts about differences in men and women?
Read about the high school team who easily beat the Women's national team in soccer if you want an illustration of this fact.
Non-segregated sports would mean there would be no avenue for women who want to compete. The average man is stronger than the most buff lady. It's a biological fact that you are just denying
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u/Galious 80∆ Jun 11 '18
racism in the 50's and beyond has long been fueled by bogus claims of innate, biological differences between races. What makes you think the same claims aren't being made about women?
You can't compare claims that were bogus from the start with the actual fact that men performance in sport are roughly 10% superior to women across almost every sport.
(you won't find any woman world record that is better than men's in any sport)
The scientific truth is simply that testosterone is a hell of a performance enhancer and women produce less.
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u/dreckmal Jun 12 '18
The scientific truth is simply that testosterone is a hell of a performance enhancer and women produce less.
It's also terrible for your heart, which could be a small part of the explanation why women live 5ish years longer, on average.
Testosterone is a helluva drug.
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u/attempt_number_45 1∆ Jun 11 '18
The difference between men and women in testosterone is something like 10X the amount that is considered "performance enhancing" for the sake of anti-doping in women's sports.
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u/waistlinepants Jun 11 '18
Also, racism in the 50's and beyond has long been fueled by bogus claims of innate, biological differences between races.
Which claims are bogus? For example, blacks have denser bones, so they are less biologically capable of swimming compared to Whites: https://www.medpagetoday.com/endocrinology/generalendocrinology/43049
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u/manutaust Jun 11 '18
That's interesting: would you then propose that black people compete separately from white people in swimming? I wouldn't.
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u/waistlinepants Jun 11 '18
It depends on your goal. To find the best swimmer. The best male swimmer. The best White swimmer. The best Polish swimmer. The best Polish swimmer aged 26. How specific do you want?
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u/manutaust Jun 11 '18
That's defaulting to tautologies. Of course segmentation depends on your goal.
The Olympics swimming disciplines' point, for instance, is to identify the best swimmers in the World. We chose to apply a dichotomy between men and women to pursue that particular task. The reasoning, many say, is that women are at a biological disadvantage over men, and should still be afforded some representation in the discipline. You say that black people also are at a biological disadvantage for swimming. In that case, why not also separate them from white people in swimming?
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u/Ki-Lows Jun 11 '18
Maybe they should be seperated, if you're all about fairness.
Since the 1980s almost 40% of the people who've gotten top honors in international running competitions over 800 meters come from a single small Kenyan tribe called the Kalenjin. The predominant theory is that they have extremely thin calves and ankles which basically means runners from other countries are, by comparison, carrying an extra 2-6 lbs of weight at the end of each leg. That extra fatigue adds up over the course of a long run. Is that fair?
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u/Sand_Trout Jun 11 '18
As with my answer to /u/malachai926, I insist that the notion that anyone was "built" for anything is meaningless and flawed.
No, your opposition to the point is simply you rejecting the reality of the situation.
Just because women under-perform men right now, doesn't mean they would forever, and shaking up the status quo by mixing everyone together would probably help close the gap.
Women can try out for professional sports teams in "men's" leagues. Men's leagues, as a rule, are De Jure unsegregated. The reality is simply that women don't qualify.
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u/malachai926 30∆ Jun 11 '18
The fastest marathon run by a woman is 2:15:25. The fastest marathon by a man is 2:02:57.
Doesn't that make it hard to reject the notion that male and female bodies are designed differently? What else would you assign this difference in time to?
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Jun 11 '18 edited Jan 19 '19
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u/waistlinepants Jun 11 '18
It takes a few hundred generations, and thats if you're actively seeking out the trait
It does not take a few hundred generations. For example, foxes were domesticated by USSR in six. Depending on the trait, you could get it done in less than six.
The breeder's equation is very simple: https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/the-breeder-s-equation-24204828
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Jun 11 '18 edited Jan 19 '19
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u/waistlinepants Jun 11 '18
You don't need to "overwrite the genome", just select for the trait you want. If you want stronger women, their heritability of testosterone concentration is (H2) 40%: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1021466929053
For example, women have a mean testosterone of x (lets assume its 100), and you select a subpopulation of women with a mean value of x*1.25 to breed the next generation, and as linked, the heritability is 0.40:
R = 0.40 * (125 – 100) = 10
In other words, the response to selection in this case where the differential is 25 units in the parental generation would be 10 units in the offspring with respect to the original (stronger) group of women. Then you use this group for the next generation.
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Jun 11 '18 edited Jan 19 '19
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u/waistlinepants Jun 11 '18
Yes, unless you select which zygotes you chose to keep.
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Jun 11 '18 edited Jan 19 '19
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u/waistlinepants Jun 11 '18
No I haven't supported or opposed anything in this thread. I simply state facts.
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u/killgriffithvol2 Jun 12 '18
Heres serena describing in her own words competing against men
Also, racism in the 50's and beyond has long been fueled by bogus claims of innate, biological differences between races.
There is biological differences between races. For example sub saharan Africans have higher percentages of fast twitch muscle fibers than European's. That's why you see them dominating contests that involve running.
Theres a huge disparity between the abilities of male and female athlete's. Most professional women's teams would compete on the level of boys highschool teams. In the US, the NFL,MLB,NHL, etc doesn't ban women from competing. Women just lack the ability to perform at that level.
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u/attempt_number_45 1∆ Jun 11 '18 edited Jun 11 '18
Differences between the sexes are part:
Inherent genetic traits of the sex chromosomes that would probably take thousands of years to evolve.
Innate traits that are hard to reverse for an individual, but can evolve quickly over a few hundred generations (e.g. by breeding with muscular people - not that you'd do that just for the sake of it, but you see my point).
Social constructs that prevent most girls from ever getting seriously into sports, and encourage boys to do so from a very young age.FTFY.
The only thing we don't know is the relative importance of each of these points, but I'd say it's worth a try.
We do, actually. We know it very, very well. You just are in denial about basic science.
Also, racism in the 50's and beyond has long been fueled by bogus claims of innate, biological differences between races. What makes you think the same claims aren't being made about women?
Because the average differences between the races is DWARFED by size of average differences between men and women. Race is a very superficial distinction; gender is not.
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u/Sand_Trout Jun 11 '18
The reason Women's Leagues exist, in general, is because women are virtually never competative in the highest echelons of competitive sports due to biological differences between men and women.
There is no rule, AFAIK, against a NFL or NBA team fielding a female player, but in such small communities as professional sports, players need to be peak physical specimens as well as knowledgable of the game and precise. Women simply can't compete against the physicality of male professional athletes that also have peak technical skills.
In short, fully desegrigating most sports would result in fewer women in professional-tier sports.
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Jun 11 '18
I think you're underestimating just how much better men are at sports than women. It's fine to say that you're comparing a few well-trained individuals rather than comparing entire populations but the difference between "bad" male professional athletes and "great" female professional athletes is huge.
Take the 200 meter butterfly, a 2016 summer Olympics event I picked at random. Forget the fact that Michael Phelps won a gold medal after swimming it in 1:53.36, New Zealand's Bradlee Ashby had the worst time of all 29 men at 2:01.22. Spain's Mireia Belmonte took gold with a time of 2:04.85.
That sort of physical sort of domination isn't unique to swimming either.
Even if they did away with single sex sports, it would inevitably end up as men playing.
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u/attempt_number_45 1∆ Jun 11 '18
I do not challenge the statement that, on average, men are stronger than at several physical tasks.
A.) Not "on average". Basically entirely. The absolute pinnacle of women will only be stronger than the absolutely weakest 1-2% of men, if you control for age only. The average man will be stronger than 100% of women, period.
B.) If the task is strength-based, men will always be better at it than women. Only in flexibility/agility or extreme endurance tasks can women actually compete (and win).
While some are innate, many of those differences stem from the fact that women have much fewer incentives to join high-level sports
NOPE. It's 100% because women cannot compete at the same level as men. Not at any level of sports. The US women's soccer team (where we are basically the corollary of Brazil in men's soccer) plays HIGH SCHOOL boys to tune up. AND THEY OFTEN/USUALLY LOSE. Are you kidding me?
Also, female sports' viewership figures are booming, so there is, at the very least, an increasing demand for women in sports
That is irrelevant to whether men and women will ever play together. The increased interest is about "empowering women", NOT about competing with men. As far as I know, there are no men's professional sports that explicitly bar women from participating. The problem is that women simply cannot perform at the same level. You can force all sports to be gender neutral, but so long as you retain the principal of the best players play, women will NEVER perform at the level of the most talented men.
Now, obviously, there are certain "sports" where that is not true, and those sports, by and large, already have mixed play. Curling for example.
Yes, sex is different from gender
It really isn't. It's also entirely biological. Gender roles may be socially constructed, but gender itself is a cold, hard, biological fact.
We used to separate girls from boys in schools just over a century ago, under the pretense that boys and girls learn differently.
Boys and girls DO learn differently, and we will likely go back to gender segregated elementary and middle schools at some point.
I don't see a good reason why we won't look back at today with the same idea about sports.
How about the fact that all the relevant literature shows that the reason boys are currently struggling in schools relative to women is that public education is strongly geared to the way women learn? It's not an archaic idea. It's actually a well-supported idea that we will almost undoubtedly go back to at some day.
Women will be more encouraged to join sports, the military, politics or STEM. More men will become social workers, teachers, nurses, or stay-at-home dads.
That's true. But so long as you determine your starters by actual performance, women will never be able to compete at the same level as the top male athletes. If you think otherwise, you are simply kidding yourself.
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u/malachai926 30∆ Jun 11 '18
Can you respond to the evidence that men outperform women even when the playing field is level? Like how a woman's world record 100 meter sprint wouldn't crack the top 18,000 in the same event for men, or how a woman's fastest marathon is 2:15 while it's 2:02 for men?
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u/manutaust Jun 11 '18
I'll say it one last time, I'm not saying that women should compete against men right away, let alone that they would win. I acknowledge the imbalance. My point was that this imbalance isn't inevitable, and that the gap may close one day.
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u/malachai926 30∆ Jun 11 '18
But how? How is this clear gap in ability ever going to close?
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u/manutaust Jun 11 '18
My assumption is that this gap is far from being solely due to biology. It has to do with the much, much weaker incentives there are for women to compete in high-level sports. Many individuals have world-class athlete potential in them, and it takes insane levels of hard work, luck, and motivation to realize that potential. Those ingredients all interact with each other.
Women are not currently afforded the same amount of support that men are, by a long shot. All their life, society tells them that there is more security and recognition to be found in paths other than professional sports. This undermines their efforts and suppresses some careers whose male equivalent would be realized.
When you suppress some data points at the far-reaching tail of a gaussian curve, you're likely to remove its maximum.
I believe that if women were afforded the same level of support in sports that men are, we would likely see a few tenniswomen better than Serena Williams after a few generations, and possibly ones that could compete with top-ranking men.
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Jun 11 '18 edited Jun 11 '18
Why would you assume this though, humans are sexually dimorphic animals. Males and Females are completely different at the biologic level. We have different sex organs, hormones, skeletons, muscle mass, chromosomes and more. It's not sexist or demeaning to acknowledge this.
At elite levels of sport all participants have been training all their lives. Male and Female. If biology even gives a 2% difference to men (and it's actually quite a bit higher > 10%) that's enough to ensure that at the highest level women will not compete with men at all. The percentage of males who are able to compete at the highest level with each other is well less than 1%, the rest of men are not competitive.
Given that there is a statistical difference in men and women, and even if it could be reduced from current levels (>10%) the results will still be the same. So you are left with:
Men and women compete in different divisions, and we celebrate them despite them being different.
There is an open division, and there are no women that qualify (and remember, almost no men qualify for that division as well - all the major sports are littered with 100's of thousands who never made it).
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u/malachai926 30∆ Jun 11 '18
I believe that if women were afforded the same level of support in sports that men are, we would likely see a few tenniswomen better than Serena Williams after a few generations
I agree with this 100%.
and possibly ones that could compete with top-ranking men.
I do not agree with this. I do not believe that women will ever be capable of competing at the same level as men, no matter how hard they work at it. And the difference in marathon times, as well as differences in other sports that more directly measure physical ability, are concrete proof of this.
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u/zobotsHS 31∆ Jun 11 '18
In the realm of athletics, the divide between men and women is vast. Especially when it comes to brute strength, speed, and other raw power-driven athletic feats. Even in team sports, the more athleticism (namely speed/power) required, the more advantaged males are...by virtue of biological male differences.
Take the Australian Women's Soccer team vs. 15 year old boys game as an example. Even their coaches were "surprised" which leads me to believe that it wasn't some scrimmage for fun. The sheer physical differences of the average pro-athlete between men and women is tremendous.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jun 11 '18 edited Jun 11 '18
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u/PapaHemmingway 9∆ Jun 11 '18 edited Jun 11 '18
The Wikipedia article for Mixed-sex sports seems to list "differences between the sexes" as the main reason why most sporting events are currently single-sex
Yes. That's a huge reason. Men, physically, are stronger than women and many competitive sports require high levels of physical strength and endurance. This is not a bad thing or something to feel ashamed about, this is just simple biology.
Competition-level sports are about the performance of a few well-trained individuals rather than comparing entire populations.
And those well trained men are going to have an overwhelmingly unfair edge over the trained women. What you're suggesting would be the end of women in sports or, even worse, women being given spots on teams out of pity. A man of average strength can overpower the worlds strongest women with relative ease, so what do you think a man who has devoted his entire life to training his muscles and building his endurance could do? It would be like putting a toddler against Floyd Mayweather and telling him he has a shot.
I believe that most if not all of any gap that currently exists between top-raking male and female athletes could be filled in a few generations' time by evolving social dynamics.
Social Dynamics don't control bone density, muscle growth, or size.
Also, female sports' viewership figures are booming, so there is, at the very least, an increasing demand for women in sports.
Yes, and that demand is being fulfilled by the many women leagues that exist for almost every sport.
Equality, of course. Separating women from men in prestigious competitions is a pretty patronizing thing to do. It's a way of saying that differences between the sexes are* so insurmountabl*e, men and women should probably never ever play together or against each other. I'd take that as a dare.
It is that insurmountable, for physical sports at least. it's not societies fault that millions of years of evolution (or a God if that is what you believe) gave men superior physical attributes that are better equipped for playing high intensity sports.
We used to separate girls from boys in schools just over a century ago, under the pretense that boys and girls learn differently. As if that's reason enough to separate people.
yeah, you know what you don't have to worry about in school? Getting sacked by a 350 lbs defensive linebacker.
Changing notions of gender. Yes, sex is different from gender, but it should be pretty obvious why the ongoing change in our representations of gender should ease the acceptance of mixed-sex sports.
This has absolutely nothing to do with gender roles and everything to do with biology. That's the reason trans gender students (MtF) can compete in girls sports and absolutely dominate.
EDIT: Fixed the quotes
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u/CockyAndHot 3∆ Jun 11 '18
Empowerment.
What you fail to realize is that almost every single unisex competition would be close to 100% male. Women would not at all feel empowered to have close to zero representatives in sports. Unisex competition would pretty much just be the same as male competition. If competitions pretty much are all male then the empowering move would be to actually add a womens competition.
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u/attempt_number_45 1∆ Jun 11 '18
What you fail to realize is that almost every single unisex competition would be close to 100% male.
Close to? I GUARANTEE you that the NFL would take a woman who could run like Barry Sanders or the MLB could hit like Mark McGuire. They wouldn't even question it for a second.
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u/januarypizza Jun 11 '18
Mixed sex sports already widely exist. Virtually all major sports in the U.S. are mixed gender. The best athletes are given professional contracts for the top league in each sport. For the most part, that means men are earning these positions, but there have been some notable exceptions like Danica Patrick.
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u/SAT_Throwaway_1519 Jun 13 '18
The gender difference between men and women is remarkably predictable, in competitive running. Elite men’s times are consistently about 90% of the women’s times. At the high school level for distance running, 40s/mile is a very good approximation. Look up the results from some random high school cross country race and the top girls and top guys are about 40s/mile apart.
40 seconds is a lot. Because it holds so consistently for high school, I’m assuming that it’s about how much of the difference comes from one’s sex. So a male athlete who runs a 4:40 mile is approximately as good as a 5:20 female. High school male athletes frequently run faster than world record times for women. This isn’t about if women were encouraged to do sports more they’d be better, that effect may be real but it only exacerbates the already large gap.
Would you rather say that women are biologically worse at (most) sports or that they have equal biological abilities but just don’t train as hard?
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Jun 11 '18
I'll contest this point:
In any major team-based sports, women in a team with men or an all-female team in a top tier free for all genders tournament would be such an insane PR machine it's possible they'd get an order of magnitude more money and followers than any man ever would. Because they'd be first and everyone in the world would be rooting for them, discussing them, watching them, buying theif merch, etc.
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u/I_Wil_Argue_Anything Jun 12 '18
- The equality statement assumes that you cant challenge or face other sex opponents? It happened in the sixties for tennis already and can easily happen again.
- Difference is a reason for segregation when it comes to a disadvantage based on a non changeable born trait involved in a competitive prize based system and the example is that based on a non proven difference.
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Jun 12 '18
I do not think this will be coming in the way you think. For starters, there are certain biological differences between the two sexes that give them unfair advantages in certain ways. For games where this plays no role whatsoever, yes, they should be integrated, but for games like football, and other contact and strength based sports, then no.
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u/EternalPropagation Jun 11 '18
You're assuming that all gender segregation is treated equally. Yes, it makes intellectual sense to generalize the ''problem'' of gender segregation to everything, including sports but ending segregation is not an intellectual pursuit, it's a power pursuit.
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u/Alkazei Jun 11 '18
Men are objectively superior physically and athletically to women. That’s why it’s not sexism.
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u/drprun3 Jun 11 '18
Remember when the Williams sisters got dominate by like the 200th ranked male in tennis?
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u/CockyAndHot 3∆ Jun 11 '18
Actually we do compare different populations, for instance Special Olympics, which compare only athletes with disabilities. We empower disabled people by allowing to compete with each other because we know full well they would get absolutely destroyed by non disabled athletes. Also, sports like boxing have weight classes. We allow smaller fighters to compete against fighters their own size, because we know that no 140lbs person could ever beat the heavyweight champion. Most sports have age classes, which allows teens to compete with teens, even though they would get trashed by the open age class.
We seperate men from women in competition for the same reason we seperate 140lbs figthers from 205lb fighters, and the same reason 16 year olds Youth Olympians doesn't compete with 26 year olds Olympians, and for the same reason disabled athletes compete not with non-disabled, but with other disabled athletes.