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submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by Pandantic@midwest.social to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world

Obviously this won’t work for all sports, but things like football, track, soccer, it would allow for de-gendered team, even allowing athletes with the skills but not the genetically-endowed physical attributes to have a place to play.

Note: I know very little about sports and being on a sports team, so please point out anything that doesn’t make sense.

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[-] kilgore_trout@feddit.it 41 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

soccer

"Male" soccer is not restricted to men. Both genders are allowed. There are only men because they outperform women.

edit: Although FIFA forbids women from access to the main World Cup. Also the statement above is true generally, but not everywhere.

[-] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 15 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

The NFL isn't male only either. Not supporting anything but agreeing that some sports are segregated by performance

[-] jimbolauski@lemm.ee 4 points 7 months ago

Even at lower levels of football women are typically only kickers.

[-] cmbabul@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

Which is awesome and I hope we see one in the NFL one day! That said the reason for that is that kicker is the only position on the field that doesn’t require you be a genetic marvel. Most men and women that are born are not the size needed to play O-Line, most people that are that big are also not athletic enough(or didn’t have access to the tools to improve to that level).

I’d love to see a woman on the line or at qb or wide receiver. It’s just unlikely to happen before the sport is outlawed or I die

[-] vierbl00m@feddit.de 6 points 7 months ago

ok cool what about the op's thoughts?

[-] kava@lemmy.world 10 points 7 months ago

He addresses them with that statement. There are plenty of women that are in similar weight classes as men but you don't see any in male sports.

Even though male sports does not have a gender requirement. This is essentially an indirect way of saying that there are biological differences between male and female that go beyond weight.

There are various differences you could point out. Males have lower body fat %, which means more muscle. Their bones are shaped differently and are more dense. Men tend to be more aggressive and competitive. Men tend to have stronger bones, joints, tendons, and ligaments.

Men have more red blood cells, their hearts are bigger so they can pump more blood, and greater lung volume relative to body mass. So even a male and women same weight and height the man will be able to circulate oxygen more quickly.

There are many more examples if you go do some reading.

One of the differences may not be huge by themselves. But when you take the differences above and combine them, it creates a situation where in almost all sports, men play virtually unopposed by women.

Look up the Serena Williams interview. She's undoubtedly the best female player in the world. She doesn't stand a chance against a the 203rd best tennis male player.

This difference even applies to areas like chess. The highest ranking a woman ever got was 6th in the world, Judith Pulgar. Amazing player, but out of the 2500 or so grandmasters in the world, 42 are women.

Some of these differences can be explained by women around the world not being encouraged to play chess, but that does not explain all.

There are large biological differences when you look at the population in a statistical sense. And when you look at the most extreme samples from the edge of the normal distribution.. that's where the best athletes / chess players are going to come from.

[-] uis@lemm.ee 0 points 7 months ago

Chess? What percent of woman players are GMs and what percent of male players are GMs? Because it sounds like sampling bias.

[-] kava@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago

Women make up roughly 15% of US Chess Federation members. They make up roughly 1.5% of grandmasters.

That's an order of magnitude difference.

[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago

Here's a podcast about a study

https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/mens-chess-superiority-explained-08-12-29/

Normally I'd just link studies...

But I feel like if you're this opinionated about things we figured out long ago, maybe listening would help more than reading.

Because it wouldn't have taken much for you to Google this at some point and realize we've been studying this for decades, and maybe, just maybe, science is better than your assumptions.

There are a lot of factors in play, and you seem to think it's because of...

What exactly?

Like it seems like you're just arguing women are bad at chess?

[-] kava@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I've read multiple papers on this topic. I'm a 2000 rated player and have tutored girls in chess. This is an interest of mine.

There is a very large gap in performance. The research overall implies a complex variety of factors. This includes what you mentioned, along with other inequities. It also includes the fact that women players are roughly 11 years younger on average and therefore haven't peaked yet, which will account for some.

But there is evidence that there is also an innate biological difference. Men score better on visuospatial intelligence tests when compared to women. Chess, especially at a high level, involves a lot of this type of thinking.

I'm not arguing that women are bad at chess. Humans are individuals and there are varying levels of players in both genders.

Just that if you look at the extremes (which the top chess players will be) you're going to see a higher level of males even if we fixed all of the inequities currently influencing the gender gap in chess.

We don't know if the 10x difference is 5% due to biology or 50% due to biology. But we know it's a non zero number

Essentially I used it as an example in the wider context of why we have women's leagues and men's league in sports.

[-] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 7 months ago

also it's called football dammit :(

[-] Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 7 months ago

Not true. Some countries allow it on a national level, but many do not. I believe The Netherlands allows it, but only at lower competition levels.

I think FIFA forbids it entirely, but I'm not entirely sure.

[-] kilgore_trout@feddit.it 1 points 7 months ago

You are right, it's not allowed in the FIFA World Cup. I didn't know.

this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
236 points (83.3% liked)

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