Should sports be separated by gender?

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Should sports be segregated by gender?

Yes, due to known biological differences between men and women.
6
29%
Yes, because men are generally better than women at sports.
2
10%
Yes for some other reason.
0
No votes
No, competitions should be separated by ability instead.
8
38%
No, men are just afraid women might defeat them.
0
No votes
No for some other reason.
0
No votes
Don't care.
4
19%
My vote isn't represented in the choices.
1
5%
 
Total votes: 21

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Lucifer
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Should sports be separated by gender?

Post by Lucifer »

A discussion I've gotten into on a fencing board, only I don't expect significant intelligent debate there, for some reason, so I thought I'd pose the question here. What do you think? Should sports be segregated by gender?
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Sabarai
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Post by Sabarai »

I say yes. Women have less developed muscles in some parts of the body, which they can't develop as fine as men can due to evolutionary challenges. Also women have wider hips, which means they can't take turns as quick as men can (in speedskating or athletics for example).

But I think it should be limited to certain sports disciplines. Sports such as chess (yes it is a sport somehow) should be mixed, because we all know men and women have the same size of brain.

Can't think up more differences/sport disciplines related to eachother.
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DrJoeTr0n
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Post by DrJoeTr0n »

Posting before more chauvinistic "MEN ARE MIGHTIER THAN WOMEN" responses turn up . <8)>

I think it should be based on ability, pure and simple.

EDIT: A WOMANS PLACE SHOULD BE IN THE KITCHEN!
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Post by Z-Man »

I'm all for unisex locker rooms and showers.

You were seriously expecting an intelligent discussion here? :)

So I'm asking different questions: should tall and short people be separated in highjump? Should there be weight classes in boxing? Should there be age classes? Should different races compete separately? I think the answers found by the individual sporting communities are fine. Separation separates, but non-separation does not necessarily unite.
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Post by Lucifer »

I just think the reasons sabarai have given are short-sighted. There are all sorts of men who are less fit physically than any woman, assuming a biological basis for this particular segregation is basically declaring women the weaker sex.

I'll probably post more when I'm less sleepy. :) (And I ws expecting a more intelligent discussion here than there, relatively speaking)
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Post by Sticky »

I'm surprised that they are segregating computer games based on gender (http://www.gotfrag.com/cs/story/37298/). Mind you those dames don't quite have the finger dexterity to whip around and go for that head shot while performing a rocket jump.
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Post by Lucifer »

Ok, I'm more awake now. :)

First, in every sport, you spend a great deal of time training on how to out-think your opponent. The physical activity is what defines it as a sport, but the mental activity is required to win. Second, you spend a lot of time working out how to nullify your opponent's advantages while strengthening your own, and mitigating your disadvantages. This is independent of gender.

What's most important is that there are very few sports where raw physical strength is a determining factor in the winner, and even the ones where that is so still require a lot of thinking to win, such as boxing or football (american football also emphasizing teamwork over physical strength). So the only issue is a safety issue, and there are plenty of women who can match up in that regard, and plenty of men who can't. While the men who can't frequently find themselves locked out of the sport for that reason, women are locked out on the surface for the same reason, but are categorized together for being women, thus ignoring the few women who *can* compete in the sport.

Most sports, as mentioned, don't have strength as a determining factor anyway. Golf, tennis, skeet-shooting, fencing, etc. Soccer (aka European Football :) ). Basketball. Boy, the list just goes on of sports where quick-thinking is the main determining factor, good training and skills being second, and physical strength, if it shows at all, is a dim third factor.

The issue is actually two issues. In sports where there is only a men's competition (mostly due to lack of interest by women, so there isn't room for a women's competition), those few women who are interested are locked out. In sports where there are both men's and women's competition, the man's competition is usually defined as the upper class and the women's as the lower class.

It's very weird that video games are finding separate men's and women's division. I think the women that play here have done a good job putting to rest the idea that women are inferior to men when driving light cycles.
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Post by MaZuffeR »

Lucifer wrote:First, in every sport, you spend a great deal of time training on how to out-think your opponent.
Every sport? Good luck out-thinking your opponent in javelin throwing, ski jumping... :)


I doubt there are many sports where women are forbidden to play with the men. They just don't have the physical attributes needed, it's not just about raw strength.


And about video games, there's many women playing as pros. Take a look at http://www.fragdolls.com/us/ (all female clan) for example.
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Post by Lucifer »

MaZuffeR wrote: I doubt there are many sports where women are forbidden to play with the men. They just don't have the physical attributes needed, it's not just about raw strength.
Exactly. They don't have a penis.
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Post by Fonkay »

I do too. I'm just shitty at sports.
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Post by custang »

i voted No, competitions should be separated by ability instead. Also i think that they should have a girls team and a boys team. :wink:
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Post by Sabarai »

Of course, strength matters. In soccer, you need to run. Women are in disadvantage when it comes to running (as in slower) (FACT).
Furthermore, men can train stronger muscles than women (FACT).

Of course, it comes to outthinking your opponent, but the player is not the most important one. It's the coach.

The difference can be measured best in sports that count time as result.

But of course there are exceptions to those rules. But the best in men's competition beat the best in women's competition. At least that's the case where the results are raw numbers measured as time or weight, distance of throwing stuff or height (or distance) of jumping (without atributes).
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Post by Hoax »

sabarai wrote:because we all know men and women have the same size of brain.
Women have the bigger brains in relation to the size of their body :wink:,.... :|

Physical sports they should be separated. Why do male tennis players get payed loads more? People simply find it better to watch that womens tennis.

As mentioned before for stuff like chess i guess it should be on ability :P
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Post by Lucifer »

You miss the point, sabarai. I'm not saying men and women are physicaly similar, I"m saying any differences are irrelevant. So throw as many facts as you want, it's completely irrelevant.

Do you know any soccer players you can point at that are slow as shit but are excellent soccer players? How about short basketball players? Why do we let men who are on the average inferior physically to women compete in the highest levels of a sport, but we lock out women?

Also, comparing women's winners to men's winners is not adequate. They both came up through completely different competitions. It's apples and oranges.
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Post by Z-Man »

I think we have to diversify. There are sports that are only defined in a competition between two contestants or teams (hockey, all football flavors, boxing, fencing, chess, quake, starcraft). There, Lucifer's statements are entirely correct; when you separate by gender there, the usual effect is that the men's department is considered the real thing and the women's wing is just second class. In your normal daily proceedings, there would be no harm in mixing genders; there is no more injury risk when a man and a woman enter the boxing ring than it is with two men, provided the usual mechanisms that match up roughly equal people together work. If it is true that women can't compete there, well, then they won't reach the highest ranks in the leagues, but still there would be the fame of being the highest ranked woman. Only on championships that only know a winner (mostly knockout tournaments like the soccer world cup come to mind) where you can't determine the best team with condition X, there would be a reason to have an extra women only championship. For the rest, for the leagues and for amateur play, a gender separation is not required, and it probably hurts the women more (by giving them less opponents to train against) than it protects them (from injury and getting defeated).

On the other side, there are those number sports. You do something and get assigned a number for it. Moving fast, throwing stuff, those things. You can do those sports alone. You don't need a community, a league, all that overhead you get in a competitive sport. It is common practice already that women and men train together in these sports, grouped by performance, a separation does not exist. No woman or midget is prevented from entering those sports. In those sports, separate competitions for men and women make sense; it is unlikely that the performance differences you see there for men and women are and artefact of the gender separation in competitions; where would that come from if training happens together?
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