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New York, 12:58 AM
Thu Nov 12
67 posts in the last 24 hours
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08/26/09
08/26/09
It's hard to say if there's a clear answer for those sports that require a certain physique, but I say if a woman comes along that meets the physical requirements or even just has a desire to try out, then they shouldn't keep her from playing with the men just for the fact that she is in possession of a uterus. But, again, I think sports where many different types of athletes can compete and compete well, such as baseball, should allow women asap. Enough with segregating them to softball from around high school on through the rest of their careers.
08/26/09
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08/26/09
Women didn't let a side-saddle hold them back, and once those had been packed away into the attic, there was no holding them.
08/26/09
@bowleserised: The URL image thing didn't work.
08/25/09
08/26/09
08/26/09
I think that women's gymnastics and skating are more popular than men's, which makes you think the women are better, when that's probably not really true. I guess it depends on what you call "better" though.
08/26/09
08/25/09
Also, as one of the first girls ever in our little league (we didn't go co-ed until '95) I can say this: nobody warmed the bench more than I. I played the league minimum in every game, and when I DID get up at bat the pitcher would let me walk. I know that they did because I overheard their coach telling the boy pitching to do that for me and the other girl on the team. I guess he thought "we'd get hurt" or something if the kid really pitched... but it was really lame. The other girl on our team was actually REALLY talented and went to college on a softball scholership... but still, in LL she was riding the bench with me. It was really tough. I got to the point where I wanted to quit. Thankfully my mom made me tough it out and I think I really learned something from it... mainly that playing baseball with boys was no fun. When I started on the middle school's girl softball team in the 7th grade I couldn't believe the difference. It was still competitive but I TOTALLY didn't feel the exclusion anymore and the game was so much better.
I recently passed by the school I went to and saw the little league playing a game- it's nice to now that nearly 15 years later the girls/boys are a LOT more even and they looked like they were playing pretty equally.
08/25/09
Besides the ball and the pitching style, I don't really know of any differences between baseball and softball, but I think the fact that my baseball team was not co-ed is why I still love the sport.
08/26/09
Due to the ball size it leads to less "out of the park home runs" like you get in baseball. I think this lends itself to being more "team oriented" like I said above: show boating in sports drives me mad. If I wanted to see that I'd watch a solitary sport. I get more enjoyment from sports where a team has to work together.
08/25/09
Unfortunately I haven't played sports then. I didn't do much of anything physical throughout high school and was way out of shape when I got to college. I work out and do yoga now, but I miss the camaraderie of my lil girls soccer team.
08/25/09
this is not to say that woman aren't already on the ass end of the deal in terms of money given towards athletic scholarships. i haven't done any real research but a quick and dirty google search reveals that more dollars and more scholarships are given to men than women. but it would be devastating to women looking to be awarded scholarships for sports based on strength and speed.
08/25/09
does anyone know what sports women have (primarily) invented?
08/25/09
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08/25/09
And I've spent 10 minutes trying to think of sport where that would be common. Ping-pong? Or on the serious side, tennis? Certainly not running or basketball.
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08/25/09
OMG
Lawson’s proposal is breathtakingly stupid, and Berman’s piece is filled with hedge words. Men do not "seem" to be superior athletes -- they ARE superior athletes, by a vast margin. If women competed against men, "exceptional women" would not "rise to the occasion" or give men "a run for their money." Female medalists would not become "rare" -- they would disappear entirely. There is nothing misogynist about this, and it is not a social construction. It is biological fact, and it is why men and women compete separately.
Some commenters have noted that the gap between the men’s and women’s world records in the marathon has shrunk over the last few decades. This is true, but it is a result of the ever-improving depth of competition in women’s athletics, and it is not an indicator that women’s performance will ever converge with men’s (as the quality of women’s athletic competition improves, their performances will improve more slowly). As of now the men’s marathon WR stands at 2:03:59, the women’s at 2:15:25. That is a difference of MORE THAN ELEVEN MINUTES -- more than two miles! Barring a drastic change in human physiology, women will never eliminate this gap. Not to mention that there is not a single woman to be found among the top 1,000 athletes in any of the major team sports such as basketball, football, baseball, hockey, soccer, etc.
(Disclaimer: women have occasionally succeeded against men in some sports. Women have won the prestigious, ultra-grueling Badwater 150-mile footrace, as well as the Iditarod dogsled race. And possibly they could compete equally in sports that don’t require strength, speed, or size, such as target shooting or billiards.)
Of course we should keep the women’s divisions. Just because there are a few fuzzy cases doesn’t mean we should implement a cure that’s worse than the disease.
-- Lawrence Pelo
[letters.salon.com]
08/25/09
I also think it's sooo interesting how women have won Badwater. I've heard some theories like women's thresholds for pain are on average higher than men's, or that women's higher body fat percentages makes them better-suited for ultra-endurance events. Very interesting!
08/25/09
08/25/09
Of course it's difficult to compete against one another, they're playing the games completely differently. It doesn't mean the game isn't as demanding or awe-inspiring... it's just different. And naturally if men and women were to integrate the "norm" would become the men's version of the game and OF COURSE women won't be able to compete like that.
08/26/09
Exactly.
08/25/09
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08/25/09
I am appalled that anyone would suggest that men and women compete together. Not a single woman would have made a co-ed 800 final at this years IAAF World Championships. Not Caster Semenya or any of the women she beat. It is incredibly insulting to suggest that maybe if those women trained a bit harder they could catch up to the men. I guarantee they are training as hard as they can, and physiologically, they simply cannot compete with men.
08/25/09
08/25/09
To put it into perspective. Mia Hamm is 5'5, weighed about 13something when she was playing. Not much smaller than Lahm or Messi or Rosicky, but most of the top players are actually pretty big dudes. Cristiano Ronaldo is 6'1; Cesc Fabregas is 5'11. And it's not just height - it's power and upper body strength. Even the tallest female player wouldn't be able to outjump those NBA-sized players like Mertesacker or Koller. A lot of the bigger dudes will just use their size to gain possession by throwing a shoulder into an opponent and shoving him off the ball. (Michael Ballack does this all. the. time.) There is a ton of physical contact in both men's and women's soccer, but because the male players are bigger and stronger, the effects of it are much more pronounced. That's why you see Cristian Chivu or Christoph Metzelder getting their noses broken repeatedly, and shrugging it off as part and parcel of playing their position.
Even at her peak, a player like Hamm could not hope to go up against the middling male players, let along the top male players. A "co-ed" professional soccer league would never work: either the players play the way they usually do and it becomes all-male by default, or the male players feel squeamish about "hitting a girl" and so they hold back on tackles, avoid contact, etc. and you lose a lot of the flow of the game. It's not utopia, but it's reality.
08/25/09
It didn't matter that they were better if I could chase down every loose ball or strip every pass simply by using my vastly superior physicality. Even when they used their much better footwork and ball control to get around me, I could instantly get back in their way because I was just so much faster.
08/25/09
so, yeah, coed professional soccer = bad idea.
08/26/09
08/25/09
On some level sport is like art - it can transcend race, class and gender. In it's purest form it is about the physical thrill of exertion and the emotional thrill of competition. You group elite athletes within a certain common range of ability in which there is more or less fair competition (that is, anyone could win on a given day). It just so happens that people tend to fall on average within different ranges of ability according to the sex hormones they have at birth.
If Caster Semenya was running Usain Bolt times it wouldn't matter really if she was a man or a woman, some exception might need to be made so that she's running with people in her peer group or it's not really competition. That doesn't benefit the athletes or the fans. Neither does opening most men's sports to women; men and women's physical differences make it an unfair and uninteresting contest. At the very least the sport is generally modified in some way to accomodate, test and highlight those differences, e.g., in men's/women's gymnastics. And yes, this is in a perfect post Title IX world where we celebrate the achievements of the human body in all its iterations.
08/25/09
Here the call...
The time has come
for one and all...
to play ball.
We're the members of...
the All-American League.
We come from cities near and far.
We got Canadians! Irish ones and Swedes.
We're all for one! We're one for all!
We're all American...
(Sorry, couldn't help it)