Should we stop splitting sports by gender and just let everybody compete together?
Should we stop splitting sports by gender and just let everybody compete together?
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.
You're viewing a single thread.
No, men and women are not physically equal.
Men and men aren't physically equal. Maybe basketball should have a rule that everyone in the team has to be the same height. Can't have anyone with a physical advantage over anyone else.
What do you think would happen if the best NBA team played the best WNBA team? I think the men would win.
What do you think would happen if professional basketball was mixed? I'd imagine the teams would be 90% men.
Also, if track and field records are any indication, men are strong and faster. Separate divisions are more fair.
Why does that matter? Men also have divisions and leagues. Team in the top leagues will destroy the leagues at the bottom.
why does it matter?
Should we stop splitting sports by gender?
It's inherently boring to watch sports competitions between unequally capable people, and there is a natural difference in that that can be clearly attributed to gender.
I admire your thought of equality but we need to talk about the differences in physique in genders as well if we wanna discuss this.
Don't dismiss this claim, scientifically debunk it or share why not and how you come to this conclusion.
No, it's not attributed to gender. It is attributed to sex. Sorry to be pedantic but we live in a world where that distinction is very important for education purposes.
Of course people are differently capable, that why we have divisions, leagues, weight classes, and so on, even in the same sex. Why would that change when they all compete together?
"Hey! Do you want to watch division 7 soccer? They have a woman on the team!"
Hardly inspirational to girls everywhere. Whereas whenever I've caught the Canadian women's soccer team, it's usually at a pretty full arena with lots of girls teams there stoked to watch. I would never take that away from them.
Why do you assume they'll be in the 7th division? And do you assume it will be the case for all sports?
Which sports do you watch both men and women play?
Soccer is the one I do most frequently. My local men's MLS team would walk through the Canadian women's team. The men can just kick it much farther and harder, run faster, take dangerous shots from farther out and that's not to mention the physicality. And the Canadian women's team is one of the top 10 or so in the world. (And MLS is several steps down from any of the serious leagues from which most national men's teams are drawn.)
Not even going to look at a more physical sport like hockey.
I already posted comparing men and women's times at the Olympics, but to reiterate, the gold winning woman came in slower than the bare minimum men's time to qualify to run at the Olympics, in the 10k race, literally every one of the racers beat the women's world record... (stats you saw but conveniently did not respond to.)
Does that answer your question?
Does that answer your question?
No, it doesn't answer if it'll be the same for all sports. As others have pointed out archery, shooting, curling, and other sports have men an women competing either separate or together and women can compete at the same level.
As for football, yes, there's a good chance there'll be stark differences, but as I pointed out in another comment, not every sport is about raw strength. And, competing against stronger opponents can also raise your ceiling. How far is of course yet to be seen because we don't have mixed leagues.
And again, the suggestion isn't "NO MORE SEGREGATION EVER" it's "should we let them compete against each other". That means there'll be a mixed and segregated league. Maybe even, as somebody else suggested, the segregations wouldn't always be immediately by sex or gender, but by attributes that make sense in that sport e.g weight, muscle mass, height, skill, and so on.
Your question blurb literally says "no more men and women's leagues, no more gender requirements."
That is not compatible with segregated leagues.
It really seems like you didn't know that some sports men and women already play against each other and some they don't and are now trying to argue for a bizzarely complex system rather than admit that hey, you hadn't thought something through or you didn't know something.
Because putting them together in most physical sports would push women out of the highest echelons of that sport. Just look up what female MMA fighters and female tennis players have to say. They literally can't keep up with men. Serena Williams and her sister boasted that they'd beat any man outside the top 200, Braasch (then #203) took the challenge and on the day of the challenge played a round of golf drank 2 low ABV beers before easily beating both sisters
Probably the most detrimental thing you can do for women in sports is to get rid of the women's league. Most "men's" categories are already open for women, so you should ask women why they don't want to partake. The answer is what female athletes already say, they'd get absolutely dumpstered before they even get close to the top. Of course the less physically demanding the closer men and women will be, but for most sports the physical differences make women's leagues necessary.