Intergender Sports

[Gazz]

Is it?

42 players have ever achieved an ELO rating of over 2700, only one of them was a woman. I'd say Chess is still seen as a male biased discipline.

Judit Polgar is evidence of my theory though, since her father believed the same thing 'Geniuses are made, not born'. He started teaching his daughters chess from a very young age, made them practice almost constantly and at one point, two of his daughters were first and second in the female world rankings. Judit even made it to eighth in the overall world rankings at one point and has beaten every top male player of the last twenty years at least once. When the physiological differences are removed from sport, women can compete with and beat men.

[TEOL]

This is true. And yeah, I'd say chess definitely backs up your theory. Women lag behind men in chess because talented young male players are far more likely to receive the specialist coaching needed to make it to an elite level than female players, largely due to existing biases.

The point is the solution isn't to just go 'right, make everything intergender' because that would just exacerbate the problem: women wouldn't succeed, which would reinforce the idea that they can't, which would prevent them from ever doing so.

[MDK]

Is it?

42 players have ever achieved an ELO rating of over 2700, only one of them was a woman. I'd say Chess is still seen as a male biased discipline.

Judit Polgar is evidence of my theory though, since her father believed the same thing 'Geniuses are made, not born'. He started teaching his daughters chess from a very young age, made them practice almost constantly and at one point, two of his daughters were first and second in the female world rankings. Judit even made it to eighth in the overall world rankings at one point and has beaten every top male player of the last twenty years at least once. When the physiological differences are removed from sport, women can compete with and beat men.

[TEOL]

Rookie mistake Gazz. Elo shouldn't be written in capitals as it's not an abbreviation but rather the name of Hungarian mathematician Arpad Elo, who developed it. As everyone surely knows.

[Rich]

I hate you so much TEOL

[TEOL]

Don't be jel Rich

[Rich]

I hate you so much TEOL

[RPS]

Simple question - should sports become more intergendered? Are we at a time in society where sport shouldn't be about who's the best of a certain gender, and instead should be about who is the best, period?

I'm of the opinion that we should really just support women in sports more. More funding, more people watching, more parents encouraging their daughters to play sports, etc.

I think the decision should ultimately be up to the women playing the sports. If a woman wants to play in the NBA and can make the team, let her play. If she wants to play in a league like the WNBA, let her play.

[Kaney]

Rookie mistake Gazz. Elo shouldn't be written in capitals as it's not an abbreviation but rather the name of Hungarian mathematician Arpad Elo, who developed it. As everyone surely knows.

[TEOL]

You can use your mod powers to delete the post where the video didn't work if you want, Kaney. I still know!

[Matt]

No. To an extent. If a woman is good enough, then fair enough let them compete. A few women have tried to compete on the PGA tour and haven't been particularly successful, Rich also pointed out the snooker example.

[Gazz]

Rookie mistake TEOL, I was talking about the ELO ranking, which is for players of evil Japanese Chess.

[Kaney]

You can use your mod powers to delete the post where the video didn't work if you want, Kaney. I still know!

Fuckin tried like twenty times and it wouldn't work! Still funny though.

[TCO]

Haven't read through the thread but it's a terrible idea.

Men are physically superior to women and are better at sports, much better. There's been countless cases to prove this. Not that women's sports isn't of a high standard, but you'd be putting them up against guys who may not have a technical edge but the physical edge would tell.

Maybe in something like darts or snooker where physicality isn't a major issue but even in those sports the gulf is drastic. The reason they don't get paid as much is because they don't draw the revenue. If 50,000 were going to watch it every week and millions watched on TV, women footballers would be earning more money.

There's no way to make the point without sounding sexist but I also think it's stupid that the Women's Grand Slam Tennis winners get the same as the men now. They only play 3 set matches, they play less tennis so should get less money, I'd be happy for the parity of they actually played best of 5.

[RPS]

Men are physically superior to women and are better at sports, much better. There's been countless cases to prove this.

1) Not all men are physically superior to women. More over, your assumption supposes that physical superiority = being better at sports.

2) I don't think the "countless cases" prove that men are inherently better at sports than women. As it has been linked to above, women receive far less funding and coaching, there is far less encouragement for women to play sports and there is quite frankly just less infrastructure and opportunities. It doesn't prove the point that you are arguing, it just proves that somebody with more opportunities will beat somebody with less opportunities.

[Lineker]

No.

Equalise the prize money and TV coverage but they should not be on direct competition.

[Rich]

Also, for any of you who have voted for all sports to be intergender (and I don't mean to name and shame)... How about MMA and boxing? Do you feel that's ok? Or what about Rugby where more and more of the guys and huge, powerful beasts, we talked about Courtney Lawes tackle in the final 6 nations game being amazing at one point, imagine it on a woman, is that ok?

[RPS]

I didn't pick that choice, because I don't think there should be defacto integration, but I personally have no problem if a girl is able to qualify for a team based on her skills and knows the risks involved. I do not believe there are many females who would both qualify for a team and make the choice to compete on a men's team in the circumstances you provided, but I see no problem with why that option shouldn't exist.

[TCO]

Men are physically superior to women and are better at sports, much better. There's been countless cases to prove this.

1) Not all men are physically superior to women. More over, your assumption supposes that physical superiority = being better at sports.

2) I don't think the "countless cases" prove that men are inherently better at sports than women. As it has been linked to above, women receive far less funding and coaching, there is far less encouragement for women to play sports and there is quite frankly just less infrastructure and opportunities. It doesn't prove the point that you are arguing, it just proves that somebody with more opportunities will beat somebody with less opportunities.

Men and women who are at the top of their athletic fields, the men are superior. Is there any athletics world record that's held by a woman? I haven't looked it up but I assume there's not.

Yes men get more opportunities and that gap should certainly be bridged, but even at that rate, women shouldn't be competing with men. Given all the opportunities and training in the world, a female football player wouldn't come close to the physical dominance of Cristiano Ronaldo and a female golfer couldn't match McIlroy's long game.

Women's sport is excellent and something that should be encouraged and invested in but it should be its own competition.

It's the same reason you don't have under 12s playing with 18 year olds. The 12 year old could be drastically better than the 18 year old technically but the physical gulf would be too much.

Edited April 29, 2015 by TCO

[RPS]

If you took gender out of this equation, nobody would even compare to the two situations. If you were to compare a man who received lesser coaching, lesser opportunities in sports, less scholarships, less encouragement from the people around them growing up, etc. versus a man who received the best coaching, the best opportunities, the greater scholarships, the greater chances to play in leagues, etc. You would say it was a clearly unfair comparison to say that one of the athletes was better than the other.