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this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2024
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They may technically allow them, but do you think most women, even very skilled ones, would want to face the abuse they would get from players, coaches and fans if they decided to do it?
Just because it is allowed doesn't mean it wouldn't be a major hardship. And I think the vast majority of women in sports are smart enough to understand that is what they would face.
Replace women with black people and your argument sounds exactly like the enlightened individuals arguing that baseball shouldn't be integrated even if there were black men out there good enough to play ball with white men.
Jackie Robinson absolutely understood that he would face unyielding discrimination. So did the flood of black ballplayers that followed him in the years to come. Hardship didn't deter any of them.
I didn't say anything about 'shouldn't.' I'm explaining why it generally doesn't happen. If a woman things she can handle all of that discrimination and feels she's athletically capable, I'm not going to be the one to tell her not to.
Plenty of women in shooting sports. Turns out shooting is one of those sports where men don't seem to have a significant biological advantage. None of them complain about abuse.
So you're saying all male athletes except in shooting sports have a biological advantage over all female athletes? The worst NBA player is still better than the best WNBA player?
I don't follow NBA but I do casually watch some hockey (including women's hockey) and I'd be surprised if even the very best women's hockey players could beat a team made up of lower ranked NHL players. The men will have better puck handling, higher speed, more weight, and they shoot more often opening up more plays.
My anecdotal sports experience, for what that's worth: when I was 14-15 playing soccer, women's university teams would play against us for training. The women were taller than us on average, ran a bit faster, used more vocal communication, and were much more physically aggressive. The men had better endurance, ball-handling, and positioning. We never lost, and no one seemed surprised by this.
It's not just the obvious height and weight advantages at play, and I'm not sure how much socialization matters but I'd wager less than our biology in sports and other extreme athletic endeavours.
So basically you have no idea. And I really don't think it makes sense that every single women's college soccer player in the country would not be able to beat your team. That's not how athletics works. Just because women are on average less strong than men doesn't make it a universal truth. It's an average.
Watching junior/college sports is enlightening because you can forget actual pro players, there is a small army of NHL hopefuls who could outplay the best pro women's team.
How many times have you actually seen this happen? Have you seen it happen with every single female hockey player?
Because otherwise there might be a woman who plays hockey who is better than the worst NHL player.
I'm guessing you haven't seen it happen with every single female hockey player.
Britney Griner is probably on par with a second-stringer in the NBA. She's one of the few that there were mutterings she might be the first woman in the NBA, but instead she set a single game record and tied a career record in her first game in the WNBA.
The Williams sisters in tennis used to claim they could beat any man outside the top 200 when they were near the top of women's tennis, so they were challenged by the 203rd ranked male player and just destroyed. He claimed at one point that he was playing closer to someone ranked 500th to keep the game fun. They later amended their claim to being able to beat any man outside the top 350.
I never said those were your words. I'm telling you how it comes across, and I'm letting you you're wrong about the reason "why it generally doesn't happen".
At least in baseball, a sport where intelligence, reaction time, skill, and experience matter a lot more than raw strength, the barriers for little girls who dream of playing in the Majors are a lot more than just the discrimination they might face if they make it that far. It's the deeply rooted cultural barriers that prevent women from even getting a shot, and in a sport where even 1st round draft picks spend years in the minors getting their reps in, lack of experience is a death sentence no matter how much raw talent you have.
At every level of play, girls are heavily encouraged to switch to softball or outright denied the opportunity to play. They're excluded from youth travel ball teams because "the boys will be bigger in a few years and need the reps". A lot of high school teams won't let them try out because Title IX considers a softball team equivalent. It took a lawsuit for Litttle League to allow girls to play baseball. Young women playing baseball at smaller colleges are often lured away with softball scholarships at big universities (not that there's anything wrong with pursuing better educational opportunities).
Every woman playing college or minor league baseball says the same thing; they faced far more discrimination as kids just trying to play than they ever have in the locker room once they got the chance.
Okay, so what is your explanation for why there aren't women playing major league baseball or in the NBA or the NFL?
I think I've already pretty thoroughly answered the question of why women haven't played baseball at the major league level since Toni Stone, Mamie Johnson, and Connie Morgan played in the Negro Leagues in the early 50s; women have been systematically shut out of baseball for decades, and while those barriers are slowly being torn down, their effects will continue to be felt for a long time. We're only just now beginning to see women play at the collegiate and minor league level, so I would imagine we're still a few decades away from women playing at the Major League level.
The NBA and NFL are entirely different stories. Those are sports where brute strength is absolutely required and being huge helps a lot. It's definitely not some fear of discrimination that's keeping women out of those sports though.
Edit: Because I've seen your other responses, and I can tell you've been waiting for me to say something about how men are stronger than women so you can have your gotcha moment, I'll also say that trans women are women, not men. That male testosterone advantage doesn't exist for someone who has to suppress theirs for at least a year before competing to a level below what many cis women naturally have. Trans women have competed alongside cis women for decades and it's never been a problem. Republicans just needed a new boogie man.
That's what I said.
So, again, there is not a single woman who is more skilled than the least skilled player in either the NFL or the NBA? Not a single WNBA player better than the worst NBA player?
Isn't that literally what you said about the NBA and the NFL?
No, you didn't once say that women were systematically shut out of baseball, you said they'd face hardship and discrimination if they tried and that's why they don't bother. Not being allowed is not the same as not wanting to try.
Strength and skill are not the same things. Lia Thomas was a top ranked swimmer as a male with times that would dominate women's swimming. That's not what happened when she started competing with women though. She transitioned, lost a ton of muscle mass in the process, and her times became slower as a result. Exact same skill level (maybe even higher since she was more experienced at that point), but she's not remotely capable of competing with men anymore.
It's why I used baseball as my example of a sport where women could compete if given the opportunity. It's a far more skill based than the other major sports. Will the first woman to make it to MLB hit 500ft bombs or throw 100mph? Probably not, but that won't matter if she can strike people out or generate runs.
Yep, but it's not the gotcha moment that you think it is. Again, trans women are not men. Transitioning gets rid of any strength advantage they had as men.
I'm not talking about trans women. I'm talking about all women.
Cool. This whole thread is about trans women in sports. When it was brought up that women are allowed to compete with men, you argued that women wouldn't want to because of the discrimination they'd have to endure, and you seem so excited to point out that men are stronger than women when people tell you why that's bullshit. Can you see why, in a thread about trans women in sports, that comes off as you trying to have a gotcha moment about how trans women are stronger than cis women and shouldn't be able to compete with them?
Excited? Can you please tell me how you determined I was excited?
Which was it, my tone of voice or my facial expressions?
I was going by how often you responded that way. It's cool though. I'm wrong. You win. Men are better than women or whatever.
I'm pretty sure I said the exact opposite of 'men are better than women' since I was arguing that women could compete in men's sports if there wasn't such a big misogynistic psychological barrier to overcome.
Did you not read a single one of my posts?
Did you? Your nuggets of wisdom in this thread are that no one cares about women's sports, that the reason women don't try to compete with men is because they're afraid of the discrimination and abuse they'd face, and when people point out that there's a very real physical disadvantage that keeps women out of most men's sports, you drop some condescending accusatory question like "so the best woman sportball is worse than the worst man in sportball?", which, again, in a thread about trans women in sports, comes off as a gotcha question and an argument against the inclusion of trans women in women's sports.
I can see reading through your comment history now that you're clearly not the person I thought I was arguing with, but if you don't see how your comments in this thread could be taken the wrong way, I don't know how to help you.
Nuggets of wisdom? Gotcha questions?
I never claimed to be wise or trying to trap you.
Also, it's not about fear, it's about facing bigotry. There's a huge difference. Jackie Robinson was one of the bravest people in history in my opinion. I wouldn't expect anyone to have his level of bravery.
Maybe stop making silly assumptions about me. You already made the silly assumption that I wasn't even who I am.
Wouldn't it be amazing if, instead of regularly pointing an accusatory finger at me, you actually asked me questions?
Nah. You wouldn't learn anything about me by asking me.
Cool.
Like I thought, you didn't want to ask any questions or learn anything about me. You just wanted someone to talk at.
👍
Right, but no women? Not one since the introduction of the rule? I've know many female athletes and all of them would and could handle the abuse if they wanted to compete with male athletes.
At the same time, can you make an evidentiary argument that there is not one WNBA player that is more skilled than the worst NBA player?