No more men’s and women’s league, no more “gender eligibility” requirements, a common dresscode, same standards and rules for all.
Edit: since it looks like people missing the word let: the suggestion isn’t to force desegregation. It’s to allow it or even make it the default. Someone else made a good suggestion: segregate by attributes specific to the sport. In boxing it’s weight class, in basketball it could be height, in biking it could even be doped and non doped. Sex and gender need not be the very first thing to segregate by.
Most professional sports in the United States don’t have any policies against women being in the sport. NBA, Football, Baseball, Hockey, etc.
None of them exclude women from playing in the professional leagues. Baseball did briefly in the middle of the 1900s, but that policy was reversed
It’s just that, for these sports, the best women in the game have not yet been better than the worst men in the game. A woman and a man of equal height and weight are still not generally physically equal. Muscle composition and growth, bone structure, etc. mean that on average, women are less strong and less explosive than men, and most popular sports emphasize those attributes.
WNBA teams would often scrimmage against male pick-up basketball players for practice, and they would also often lose. These were just random guys in the area, many of whom didn’t even play often.
The US Women’s National Team played against FC Dallas’s under-15 boys squad and lost 5-2. That USWNT went on to win the Olympics and the women’s World Cup. The Australian women’s team lost to U15 boys 3-0 and again to another U15 boys team 7-0; Arsenal’s woman’s team lost 5-0 to a U15 boys club; the professional squad Athletic Feminino in Spain lost to a U16 boys squad 6-0; and there are many, many more examples.
There is some research on evolutionary theory specifically about the vast differences in upper-body strength: “But even with roughly uniform levels of fitness, the males’ average power during a punching motion was 162% greater than females’, with the least-powerful man still stronger than the most powerful woman. Such a distinction between genders, Carrier says, develops with time and with purpose.”
There are very few sports where this would be feasible, and most if not all those sports are not well-watched and make very little money: shooting, archery, ultra-marathons come first to mind.
Muscle and bone density is a big differentiator. When I was younger I dated some women who looked very strong. Like, their legs were three times thicker than mine. Yet when it came to actual strength, their legs were a tenth as strong as mine. It was actually kind of shocking how much stronger my legs were than theirs, considering the visual differences. It wasn’t until later in life that I learned about the muscle density differences between men and women, and then it made sense. My legs felt like slabs of iron when you touched them. Their legs, despite looking outstanding, still felt fairly soft. That’s because of the differences in muscle density between biological males and females.
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To be fair, about that women’s world cup team, if i recall correctly it was a PR move to play an exhibition match with those kids and they were not trying very hard to win. I don’t think they would truly lose to U-15 if it was, for example, a tournament.
Your overall point has merit but i think that specific example gets overused a bit.
It was hardly a “PR move,” they didn’t publicize it, and it didn’t really get traction until Carli Lloyd “admitted” it on Twitter. I’m sure they were taking it a little easy though. That being said, the Australian women’s team lost to U15 boys 3-0 and again to another U15 boys team 7-0; Arsenal’s woman’s team lost 5-0 to a U15 boys club; the professional squad Athletic Feminino in Spain lost to a U16 boys squad 6-0; and there are many, many more examples.
I actually watch more women’s soccer than men’s, so I’m not denigrating the game or quality of play, but I think you’d agree the above represents a pretty clear trend.
Same dress code, standards and rules absolutely - regardless if competition is split or not.
Same competition definitely for some sports - chess and shooting come to mind.More physical sports - I’m undecided there. I’d support everyone competing together if for example weight categories are introduced. You don’t want people of widely different physical build competing together, it’s not fun either to watch or play.
That’s already how it works. 80kg boxers don’t compete against 100kg boxers, division 1 teams don’t compete against division 5 teams.
It just means that some teams will be mixed. We might even be surprised at how many teams will be mixed.
I don’t want to see a 80kg male boxing against a 80kg female. I already know how that is going to end.
No, you don’t. You haven’t seen it yet. Nor do you know how 100 or 1000 such matches would end.
It’s also fine if you don’t want to see it. No one is going to force you too.
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The latter, obviously. Actually, they should all play naked, for science.
It was good enough for the ancient Greeks
Probably boost viewership a good bit
More environmentally friendly, no micro plastics from the synthetic fabrics
Avoids the inevitable arguments about which teams uniforms are too revealing or look stupid or whatever
One less expense for the smaller/less well-funded teams to worry about, and harder to argue that one team has an advantage because they have better equipment
Probably would scare away some of the prudish religious assholes, good riddance.
Sucks to be you if you play a winter sport though.
No, because the women would be at an unfair physical disadvantage in most sports.
I watched the speed rock climbing (sorry, don’t know the official name) during the Olympics. The fastest woman was amazing, she flew up the wall in about 6.75 seconds, and beat her nearest competitor by over a second to win the gold. The fastest man was nearly 2 seconds faster again with his competitors not far behind. If the women competed with the men, the female gold medal winner wouldn’t even be on the podium.
You should probably look up the effects of testosterone. Namely upper body strength and bone density. Women are weaker than men.
Not all men. You think you can compete against any woman out there and win? Also, do you think every sport is about strength?
Even in “sports” like chess, darts and pool virtually every single world class player is a male. It’s not just about strenght.
I’d really love sources on that since I don’t follow those sports. Are they mixed?
But in chess, there are a definitely female grand masters (whatever that means). Pool had the famous “black widow” player. Who even plays darts? I only know of one fat Brit who has dominated against other men. No idea if women even play.
You can look up the leaderboards of any of the mentioned sports. It’s not that there’s not any women in there but it’s still virtually all male.
Then there are plenty of examples of top level female athletes losing to males nobody has never even heard of.
Venus and Serena Williams lost to 203rd ranked male tennis player
FC Dallas under-15 boys squad beat the U.S. Women’s National Team in a scrimmage
Problem is that some sports are really unfair towards one of the sexes (and it’s not always men who have the advantage). I definitely think it should be mixed for sports where there’s no advantage.
Relevant recent YT short about archery: https://youtube.com/shorts/oCi_IawIFQA
I don’t see that as a problem. For example boxing or weightlifting would probably have the top 10-100 being all men, but have more variety (trans, men, and women) below that. They could all compete together though.
You could still be the top man/woman/trans, but there would be a clear total ranking. For example one would see that the top female tennis player would rank 100th in the total ranking. It wouldn’t take away from her achievements and allow her to play against men at the same level.
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That would just be men’s sports, which in fairness is all most people seem to care about anyway…
Not every sport. Dressage is already a sport where there is just one category. Synchronous swimming is also one, but only women competed this year.
Okay so two obscure sports that require a ton of money to participate in?
Yes, let’s have a bunch of blokes beating the shit out of women in boxing. What could possibly go wrong?
I remember the Brit Awards scrapping gendered awards and putting everyone in the same category. The problem was, the only ones nominated turned out to all be men.
Combat sports already have weight classes, it’s not like you’d be putting a man up against a woman he has 30 cm and 50 kg over. If you’ve got people of similar size and ability, it doesn’t seem to me like their sex or gender matters. They all went in there expecting to both hit and get hit.
So if a woman was in the same weight class as Mike Tyson, you think they should be allowed to fight each other? And you think this would be a good look?
These hamfisted attempts at equality are actually the complete opposite.
First of all, heavy weight men =/= heavy weight women at the moment. The kg’s aren’t the same (men start at 90kg and women 80kg or something?). Second, Mike Tyson beat the shit out of fellow men. Are you going to set the bar for being a man at Mike Tyson? Every guy he beat was actually a woman?
I can’t find how much Mike Tyson weighed for every of his fights. This says 99kgs. The heaviest woman I could find (why doesn’t a DB exist to sort by kgs?) is Danielle Perkins at 88kg. That’s 10kg of difference. No way they’re even in the same class unless you leave it open ended. The weight classes would probably have to be redistributed and a new one added. Once a woman gets as heavy as Mike, she could compete against him.
Is it a worse look than what Tyson did to any of his real opponents because of the history of male violence against women, or is there something else you’re getting at? And is whether or not it looks good what should be the driving force being decision making in sports?
, it doesn’t seem to me like their sex or gender matters
Oh, but it does. There are major physical differences between men and women, even if they’re the same weight. Men have greater muscle & bone density. A man of similar physical fitness of the same weight as a woman will be considerably stronger. There wouldn’t even be a competition. It would just be a man beating the shit out of a woman. Nobody wants to see that, despite our desires for equality.
In Finland we have lower physical requirements for women to get into the police academy. I think it’s safe to say that with equal requirements we wouldn’t have a single female police officer in the entire country.
I’d expect a similar thing to happen in sports. When it comes to physical strenght men have a massive advantage over women. It would be the women who this screws over.
Does Finland not have divisions, leagues, and classes in male sports? You don’t think that an all male team in the last division can compete against an all female team in the top division? You don’t think there are some sports where women are on equal footing where strength is not an advantage (archery, shooting, diving, etc.)? You don’t think there is overlap in some sports?
Most if not all of the highest divisions would be men only. The highest ranking females would be competing against some minor league men on games that nobody would be interested in even watching.
Obviously there would be some number of genetic outliars but that wouldn’t change the overall trend.
That is your assumption. You cannot know that across all sports. It would most certainly be true for sports limited or focused on physical strength, but beyond that, there’s no way to know for certain.
If you’ve played any sport, you’ll know that brute strength isn’t the sole determining factor for success. Technique is very important too. Tactics cannot be ignored either. In football for example, just play “try to get the ball” in a square where one chases the ball. You might be the fastest player on the team but never catch the ball even against players who don’t move.
Also, competing against stronger opponents is how people learn and “level up”. You learn how to deal with different, faster, slower, more technical, stronger, even more intelligent opponents. Again, if you’ve ever played sports (or just games), you’ll know what it feels like to think you’re the best, then get decimated by an opponent, but in doing so realize what you were doing wrong - especially when competing against that opponent multiple times. Women and men might have a higher ceiling than they think, but unless they compete against each other continuously, they won’t know.
Sure. I can’t know the outcome for sure but I’d be stunned if the trend ended up being male players being humiliated by women. I just cannot imagine this being the case. I have nothing against it per se but I have a strong feeling it would come at the expense of women.
My only personal experience on this is sparring against a purple belt female in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu while I was still a complete novice myself. She put up a good fight but she didn’t stand a chance. Granted I was also bigger and stronger than her. On the other hand, sparring against a smaller but more experienced male I stood no chance myself. He’d beat me every single time without an exception.
Which sports are popular and have the support to be more economically viable?
Of them, how far away from the top seeds do you get before it can no longer be done professionally?
If unisex (I know, it’s a bizzare word) sports leagues were how it was done, do you think more or less women (including trans-women) would be able to be professional athletes?
The only sport that is a predominantly physical exercise (so excluding things like snooker, darts, archery etc) where women could compete competitively against men at an equivilent level in their sport (league 1 men vs league 1 women) would be ultra marathons. Most other sports is so mis-matched you’d end up with some random amateur bloke against an elite woman.
Basically if you’ve gone through male puberty you are vastly different physically from someone who hasn’t.
No.
Care to expand?
It would make most sports incredibly boring to watch, as well as frustrating for many athletes. Boring sport means less money, which would also mean less teams overall.
Why would it be boring?
I have, in other comments and the description of the thread too. Anything specific you would like to know?
Yes
No. Why should we?
Yes. Why shouldn’t we?
Because I don’t see a reason to change. And changing would cost a lot of money and effort and impact. You’re the one proposing a change - why?
Ah, the typical “it’s always worked this way”. Well, there’s no need to elaborate then. Why ever change? Everything is perfect as it is.
You’ve expressed no reason to change, so yes, stay the same until there’s a reason to spend millions of dollars and upend established systems.
I’m all for removing gender as the first dividing line, but there needs to be some divisions in place.
As an example, in martial sports they are often separated by weight class to balance the fact that a larger, heavier person would have an advantage over a smaller, lighter person.
Without that, basketball would be dominated by the tallest people only, but that means there is no reason for anyone who isn’t tall to even play the game. Break it into height classes and suddenly you meet have a league of skilled, average height players that could be very compelling to watch.
Height classes for basketball actually sounds really cool. It’d be interesting to see the different strategies that come into play when people physically can’t reach the ring for example. Or at least I assume it would, I know nothing about basketball but it sounds like it’d be pretty interesting.
As the shortest person in most Basketball games during my childhood, I would have loved this so much! I enjoyed the game very much, but I always had to work twice as hard as my taller friends.
Height classes in basket ball. Hadn’t thought of that. I would suggest that it be optional though, so that people who don’t want to be excluded because of their height get to compete in the “common” league.
Why? It’s not like men and women are equal biologically.
Read my edit. Also, not every sport is about strength. Additionally, the are other ways to split than just by sex and gender.
A lot of the reason for separate sports and other competitions is because of exclusion due to sexism, not physical differences. Chess for example was riddled with men who refused to play women, or share knowledge, or anything that would help the playing field be anywhere close to equal.
While it would be technically possible to force everyone together, a lot of the separation is so that training and knowledge transfer can occur, women can feel welcome to participate in the first place, etc.
There wouldn’t be anything stopping women having women only teams and competing against mens or mixed teams. And I’d like to believe that we have evolved a little bit since the 70s.
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face”
–Mike Tyson
Can you imagine Mike Tyson fighting Ronda Rousey? No, I think it’s a pretty solid idea to keep most sports segregated.
They wouldn’t be in the same weight class -_-
It doesn’t matter. A man in her weight class would be considerably stronger and faster. That’s just the reality of biology.
