Men and Boys Routinely Are Under Recognized for Sporting Ability

Spoonwood · 2021-02-07 10:11:50

The Olympics routinely hands out three medals to people partly on the basis of their sex. The fourth place finisher in the men's 100 meter dash, 200 meter dash, and many other competitions gets no medal at all. But, that finisher often has a better time than all of the competitor's in the women's 100 meter dash, 200 meter dash, and other similar competitions. The Olympic committee thus under recognizes the abilities of many men who have competed in those events, since it doesn't give them similar awards to their performance in those events and performance in those events has an absolute measure.

Similar things happen in many school based competitions. The 1st place finisher in many cross-country girls races will get an award of some sort, or get some sort of recognition. That recognition happens in part on the basis of the sex of the participant. Meanwhile there often exist boys who finished the same course at about the same time with a better time. Thus, the boy ends up with recognition which isn't proportionate to their performance level.

The way to improve such a situation lies in abolishing or minimizing sex based leagues of sports, at least those that have physical awards or large public notoriety. Some people might object that it would be unfair for girls to compete with boys, and women to compete with men in sporting activity, because that makes it more likely that females can't win. But how is an activity unfair if one struggles to win at it? Also, what is fairness in sporting activity? Fairness in sporting activity consists in everyone playing by the same rules and the rules getting enforced on all players equally. Nothing more and nothing less. Girls competing with boys thus wouldn't result in sports becoming less fair, because no rules would get changed, and at least in principle, the rules would get enforced equally for boys and for girls.

Cogito · 2021-02-07 10:32:39

This is silly, Spoonwood, at least in the way you have framed it.

It's like saying we shouldn't give the under-12 year old rugby team a medal for winning their grand final, because there are teams of adults that are better than them. Or the 4th grade team shouldn't win a medal because the runner up of the 1st grade competition is better than them.

In competition and games people split themselves into groups so that everyone can play and enjoy themselves, or compete. It's got nothing to do with fairness; if the olympics abolished all 'sex based' competitions forcing everyone to compete together, you would simply see a new competition created called the women's olympics (or something like that). Nobody cares that the 4th fastest man is faster than the fastest woman, in the same way that no one cares that the worst javelin thrower can throw farther than the best shotputter. They are different competitions.

JackTreehorn · 2021-02-07 11:59:53

So your solution to unrecognized boys and men i.e. 4th place winners is to dismantle the female league and not recognise female winners and that would somehow give the 4th place winners a medal. How about the 4th place winners just try harder or just say "Hey, I got 4th place. I guess you could say I'm pretty great."
Perhaps give out certificates saying what place they obtained during the competition.

The unfairness comes from role that the sex hormones have on body development.
Testosterone has a large role in muscle bulk and strength, increases bone density and causes bone marrow to release more red blood cells.

Last edited by JackTreehorn (2021-02-07 12:01:07)

Spoonwood · 2021-02-07 12:24:20

Cogito wrote:

It's like saying we shouldn't give the under-12 year old rugby team a medal for winning their grand final, because there are teams of adults that are better than them. Or the 4th grade team shouldn't win a medal because the runner up of the 1st grade competition is better than them.

It figures Cogito. I specifically say things like this:

Spoonwood wrote:

The fourth place finisher in the men's 100 meter dash, 200 meter dash, and many other competitions gets no medal at all. But, that finisher often has a better time than all of the competitor's in the women's 100 meter dash, 200 meter dash, and other similar competitions. The Olympic committee thus under recognizes the abilities of many men who have competed in those events, since it doesn't give them similar awards to their performance in those events and performance in those events has an absolute measure.

And instead of thinking about those boys or those who don't get recognition on the basis of performance you come up with some nonsense about how this is comparable to denying medals, showing that you don't care to think about all of the men in these competitions in the first place. You also, somehow, turn what got written and intended as a positive affirmation for some people into being about a denial for others. This again shows that you didn't care to think about the original subject (men and boys in these competitions) in the first place.

No.

Sporting committees deliberately create different leagues on the basis of the sex of the participants. They give out awards on the basis of performance in that league. As a result we don't have a system based purely on the basis of the performance of the participants. Thus, often, men or boys who performed better get *less* recognition than women or girls who didn't perform as well.

This state of affairs isn't fair.

Cogito wrote:

Nobody cares that the 4th fastest man is faster than the fastest woman, in the same way that no one cares that the worst javelin thrower can throw farther than the best shotputter.

No, those ways are not comparable, because the 100 meter dash involves the same distance run no matter who runs it man or woman, boy or girl. The women's 100 meter dash has, or at least can have, the same rules as the men's 100 meter dash. There's no reason at all for those competitions to have different rules.

And the more I think about it, it's an abomination of society that sports works this way. Lack of positive male identity is a serious problem for many men and a very wide societal problem. What male identity is, isn't exactly easy. But, at the very least physical ability has been and still is a part of male identity. When a society basically says that it won't recognize men for what they can and sometimes do, and put those achievements and ability in a proper perspective, it seems clear that such a society dis-values male identity. And the thing is, it seems that society has dis-valued male identity for a very, very long time.

Spoonwood · 2021-02-07 12:33:28

JackTreeHorn wrote:

So your solution to unrecognized boys and men i.e. 4th place winners is to dismantle the female league and not recognise female winners and that would somehow give the 4th place winners a medal.

Dismantling can be just a removal of something. I don't favor just removing women's league. I favor integrating those leagues into male leagues.

It wouldn't necessarily mean that the 4th place winners got a medal. But, their place in the bigger scheme of things would come as more easily recognized since they were all in one league.

JackTreeHorn wrote:

How about the 4th place winners just try harder or just say "Hey, I got 4th place. I guess you could say I'm pretty great."
Perhaps give out certificates saying what place they obtained during the competition.

It sounds like you would say this to the men or boys who finished in 4th place. But would you say this to the women or girls who finished in 4th place?

JackTreeHorn wrote:

The unfairness comes from role that the sex hormones have on body development.

Sex hormones don't create any imbalance in rules or the enforcement of rules. They don't make it so that women (or men) can't do something on the basis of different opportunities. Naturally occurring hormonal difference also don't create artifical health problems like steroids.

Thanks for your comment.

JackTreehorn · 2021-02-07 12:56:10

Okay so your solution is to remove and integrate the women's league into the men's so the 4th place winner can feel better about themselves for beating more opponents.
Whilst women may struggle to place in some of those athletic competitions.

I would say the same thing to the women's league. Yes they could try harder to place first in the women's league, Yes you got 4th place, be proud. Maybe they should give out certificates with what place they obtained.

Sex hormones don't create an imbalance in rules of the competition, they create an imbalance in performance based on something the participants cannot change. Men have an advantage in some athletic competitions and women have an advantage in others, to level the competition and make things fair for all competitors they should be competing against people with the same advantages or disadvantages as they have.

You could just see it as 4th place winners have the opportunity to do better next time and perhaps get a medal. The best women in that competition got recognized for being the best women to preform that day. In actuality having a women's league actually improves viewership of a competition and gets more people interested in the sport.

Last edited by JackTreehorn (2021-02-07 13:34:42)

DestinyCall · 2021-02-07 15:22:06

The inevitable has happened. Spoonwood's complaints have left the realm of OHOL and entered the real world.

The end is nigh.

Cogito · 2021-02-08 11:36:22

Your thought experiment is not well thought out Spoonwood.

Sports and competitions are not participated in simply to achieve recognition. For most people, playing a game of tennis, competing in a track meet, swimming in a race, playing rugby, they do these things because they enjoy doing them. If you went in and said "Right! No more split between women's and men's tennis, it lessens the achievements of men" the women would not miraculously start playing with the men. They would just start their own competition.

There is a huge audience of people (a lot of them women) who enjoy watching women play AFL against each other, or cricket. Who are you to tell them they shouldn't?

If your concern is purely that there are men who deserve recognition and don't get it, your solution is not a solution at all. In the first place, to the people who actually care, it's obvious that even competing in an olympics is an enormous achievement and recognition of your skills. To even come last means that you have achieved more than (statistically speaking) everyone else who has ever lived in the world.

More importantly, you forget that these are competitions between people who have, as a group, decided to compete with each other. There are plenty of disagreements between people about who should compete against each other, and when there is a consensus these competitions do change. For example, my local rugby competition decided a few years ago that no one can be paid to play in the competition, it was strictly amateur. Is this unfair towards people that make a living playing rugby? Perhaps, but those people are free to go play in a competition where everyone gets paid, or people are happy to play with professionals.

By and large, organised competitions optimise for competition: weight lifters aren't competing against forklifts, children aren't trying to tackle 150kg men, and women sprinters compete in their own race. It would not be fun to watch the forklift win every time, watch child after child taken to hospital, nor exclude women from all elite sprint competitions, and it wouldn't be fun for the competitors either.

Last edited by Cogito (2021-02-08 11:36:56)

DestinyCall · 2021-02-08 17:10:41

Not to mention that it is silly to argue that "men and boys are under recognized" because they can only win three out of four medals instead of all of them in some Olympic competitions.

That's just stupid.

Spoonwood · 2021-02-09 13:54:25

Cogito wrote:

Sports and competitions are not participated in simply to achieve recognition. For most people, playing a game of tennis, competing in a track meet, swimming in a race, playing rugby, they do these things because they enjoy doing them. If you went in and said "Right! No more split between women's and men's tennis, it lessens the achievements of men" the women would not miraculously start playing with the men. They would just start their own competition.

It seems to me that you believe that instead of wanting to play in a league on the basis of playing the sport for it's own sake (and other motivations), women want to play in a league on some other basis.

Cogito wrote:

There is a huge audience of people (a lot of them women) who enjoy watching women play AFL against each other, or cricket. Who are you to tell them they shouldn't?

I would be the same person as I am *were* I telling them such a thing.

Cogito wrote:

If your concern is purely that there are men who deserve recognition and don't get it, your solution is not a solution at all. In the first place, to the people who actually care, it's obvious that even competing in an olympics is an enormous achievement and recognition of your skills. To even come last means that you have achieved more than (statistically speaking) everyone else who has ever lived in the world.

"statistically speaking" "everyone else" makes for a contradiction in terms. The Olympics is also a competition, and everyone in the Olympics is a person in the real world.

Cogito wrote:

More importantly, you forget that these are competitions between people who have, as a group, decided to compete with each other.

I talked about school competitions also. Do you think that everyone who participates in school competitions does so voluntarily?

Cogito wrote:

By and large, organised competitions optimise for competition: weight lifters aren't competing against forklifts, children aren't trying to tackle 150kg men, and women sprinters compete in their own race.

Your claim amounts to saying that by having less competition, there exists more competition. We don't have women and men compete together as a matter of course, but somehow we have the most competition possible. This makes no sense at all.

Cogito wrote:

It would not be fun to watch the forklift win every time, watch child after child taken to hospital, nor exclude women from all elite sprint competitions, and it wouldn't be fun for the competitors either.

I was explicitly calling for sports leagues to get integrated. That's all. That wouldn't exclude women whatsoever form all elite sprint competitions. They would just have to earn their position on the same basis that men already do. And it would encourage them to do so.

I don't know what sporting activity you've done Cogito. But, when I ran cross country in middle school with one coach. The boys team and the girls team did the same exact workouts as I recall. The workouts weren't any more or less enjoyable because of that. Also, I've watched ulra-running competitions, which as I recall are often mixed sex. From what I've seen, what you claim is simply not true.

Spoonwood · 2021-02-09 14:21:27

DestinyCall wrote:

Not to mention that it is silly to argue that "men and boys are under recognized" because they can only win three out of four medals instead of all of them in some Olympic competitions.
That's just stupid.

What's stupid is the sense of reality that ends up lost by failing to recognize humans sporting ability on the basis of their performance. A 4th place boy at the age of 16 in a high school race with a time of 4:40 in a mile race won't get as much recognition as a girl with a slower time at the same age with the same schools competing.

In Rio Ayanleh Souleiman ran 3:50.29 in a 1500 meter race and was the men's 4th place finisher getting no medal at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics … 500_metres

Faith Chepngetich ran 4:08.92 in a 1500 meter race also: https://www.olympic.org/rio-2016/athletics/1500m-women

Yet, Faith gets a medal while Rio does not. She has the material object, while he does not.

This shows that Ayanleh Souleiman's ability is not recognized proportionately to his overall achievement and the Olympic Committee does not value everyones achievements on the basis of their own merits.

sigmen4020 · 2021-02-09 15:05:16

Yeah, let's just completely ignore the very obvious biological differences between men and women that make men achieve better results in sports than women, such as less body fat, more muscle mass, and larger heart and lungs. Guess women should just overcome their very real biological disadvantages in order to be recognized for their sporting ability at all. All your proposal would do is discourage all women from competing in most sports, with maybe a few exceptions like horse riding which is already uni-sex sport.

https://us.humankinetics.com/blogs/exce … outh-sport

I'm guessing the next thing you'll advocate for is the removal of the paralympics, since it's so unfair to male athletes that some para athlete gets to have a medal for a worse performance, right? Para athletes should compete in the regular olympics same as everyone else, right?

Also what does this have to do with the game again?

Last edited by sigmen4020 (2021-02-09 15:31:17)

Dodge · 2021-02-09 15:18:25

DestinyCall · 2021-02-09 16:20:56

sigmen4020 wrote:

Also what does this have to do with the game again?

I think this is what happens when Jason takes too long to update the game. Spoonwood ends up with too much free time on his hands, so he starts applying his phenomenal "logic" to other things.

The results are, as expected, delightfully nonsensical.

Cogito · 2021-02-09 16:25:19

Nitpicking time!!!

Spoonwood wrote:

Cogito wrote:
Sports and competitions are not participated in simply to achieve recognition. For most people, playing a game of tennis, competing in a track meet, swimming in a race, playing rugby, they do these things because they enjoy doing them. If you went in and said "Right! No more split between women's and men's tennis, it lessens the achievements of men" the women would not miraculously start playing with the men. They would just start their own competition.
It seems to me that you believe that instead of wanting to play in a league on the basis of playing the sport for it's own sake (and other motivations), women want to play in a league on some other basis.

For the exact same reason I don't want to play (serious) rugby against professional athletes, women (by-and-large) don't want to play against men (add as many caveats as needed here, such as depending on sport, not all women, etc) - it wouldn't be fun.

It's the exact same reason golfers play with a handicap. Sure, there are competitions where all that matters is who is the absolute best at the sport, but when most people play it's because they enjoy playing, and a handicap allows two players of different skill levels to have an enjoyable and competitive game with each other.

Spoonwood wrote:

Cogito wrote:
There is a huge audience of people (a lot of them women) who enjoy watching women play AFL against each other, or cricket. Who are you to tell them they shouldn't?
I would be the same person as I am *were* I telling them such a thing.

You got me! Good old Spoonwood (intentionally?) misinterpreting a common turn of phrase to avoid answering the question. To spell it out: under what authority or argument do you seek to stop people spectating all-women sports, through the removal of all-women sports?

Spoonwood wrote:

Cogito wrote:
If your concern is purely that there are men who deserve recognition and don't get it, your solution is not a solution at all. In the first place, to the people who actually care, it's obvious that even competing in an olympics is an enormous achievement and recognition of your skills. To even come last means that you have achieved more than (statistically speaking) everyone else who has ever lived in the world.
"statistically speaking" "everyone else" makes for a contradiction in terms. The Olympics is also a competition, and everyone in the Olympics is a person in the real world.

This was a Spoonwood trap! If you have an extremely small sample from an extremely large population, that sample is statistically insignificant. When I say that the person has achieved more than everyone else who has ever lived it is of course not a literal statement, but an exaggeration. Your persistence in quibbling over these patently incorrect interpretations of language and grammar continues to paint you as someone unable to develop their comprehension skills. If you don't want to appear that way, then as many here have suggested you should ask yourself "what is the main point this person is trying to make" and then argue against that.

Spoonwood wrote:

Cogito wrote:
More importantly, you forget that these are competitions between people who have, as a group, decided to compete with each other.
I talked about school competitions also. Do you think that everyone who participates in school competitions does so voluntarily?

Did you not read what I wrote? "People who have, as a group, decided to compete with each other." No one individual is deciding what other people can or can't do when they play a sport (no matter how much you would like to) but instead when enough of them want a change they make it happen. School students have less political capital than most sport participants, due to the power dynamics of the institution, but even there they have the power to not compete, as attested to by the number of students who walk the cross-country every year. Still, if school students are going to trip you up then carve them out as an exception to what I said above. How do you respond for all other sports?

Spoonwood wrote:

Cogito wrote:
By and large, organised competitions optimise for competition: weight lifters aren't competing against forklifts, children aren't trying to tackle 150kg men, and women sprinters compete in their own race.
Your claim amounts to saying that by having less competition, there exists more competition. We don't have women and men compete together as a matter of course, but somehow we have the most competition possible. This makes no sense at all.

Consider a population of 1000 people: let's go half men and half women for this example. In the real world these people would all have different preferences for what they do with their spare time, but for this thought experiment let's say they all just *love* to do the 100 dash.

In Scenario A we take the Spoonwood forced mixing of competitors approach. All 1000 competitors race in rounds of races, until we have the 10 fastest qualifiers compete in the final. Due to the inherent difference in running speed between men and women, these 10 competitors are all men, and as expected the top 10 fastest people are given millions of dollars of cash each, and fame that lasts thousands of years, ensuring that the best runners are appropriately compensated for their efforts.

In Scenario B we have the exact same set up, except that men and women compete separately, and have separate finals.

For both of these scenarios we now ask: How many people participate in the competition *next year*?

In Scenario B it is every single person again, but in Secnario A none of the women compete because there is no chance they can ever win.

Hence, Scenario B has more competition (1000 people competing) than Scenario A (500 people competing)

Spoonwood wrote:

Cogito wrote:
It would not be fun to watch the forklift win every time, watch child after child taken to hospital, nor exclude women from all elite sprint competitions, and it wouldn't be fun for the competitors either.
I was explicitly calling for sports leagues to get integrated. That's all. That wouldn't exclude women whatsoever form all elite sprint competitions. They would just have to earn their position on the same basis that men already do. And it would encourage them to do so.
I don't know what sporting activity you've done Cogito. But, when I ran cross country in middle school with one coach. The boys team and the girls team did the same exact workouts as I recall. The workouts weren't any more or less enjoyable because of that. Also, I've watched ulra-running competitions, which as I recall are often mixed sex. From what I've seen, what you claim is simply not true.

You're cherry picking your evidence, at best. For individual sports a lot can be achieved by competing against yourself, especially in a group of amateurs that will have vastly varying levels of skill (like a high school cross country team). The fact that you enjoyed mixed workouts has no bearing on if competitions should be mixed. For some sports it can make sense, but the physical differences between men and women (just like between children and adults, and man and machine) necessitates that competition is segregated. The world would not be a better place if you forced these competitions together.

Forcing different levels of skill and ability to compete together will reduce the number of people who participate in your sport, and those people will just go play by themselves without your silly rules.

Last edited by Cogito (2021-02-09 16:27:50)

JonySky · 2021-02-09 17:51:22

I understand where spoonwood wants to go,
I've been archery and competing for 25 years.
The official regional and national competitions are held under exactly the same conditions, with the same distances and difficulty, for men and women ... but ... the categories, classifications and prizes are separated between men, women ...

Although I understand that it is not a problem of being a man or a woman, I believe that it is a system of creating different groups to be able to classify the competition more easily

Obtaining more groups to be able to classify their participants allows more chances of being winners, this allows more competitiveness

Last edited by JonySky (2021-02-09 17:51:55)

Spoonwood · 2021-02-09 19:36:23

sigmen4020 wrote:

Yeah, let's just completely ignore the very obvious biological differences between men and women that make men achieve better results in sports than women, such as less body fat, more muscle mass, and larger heart and lungs.

We ignore the obvious biological differences between competitors within sexes all the time in sports. The game of basketball doesn't suddenly have different rules when tall people play with short people.

sigmen4020 wrote:

Guess women should just overcome their very real biological disadvantages in order to be recognized for their sporting ability at all.

Any man that wants to play in a professional basketball league and is of below average height has to overcome such a biological disadvantage. Given that women have as much biological disadvantage as you think, sure, why not? Competitive sports are about winning while playing a fair competition. Integrating sports leagues means more fair competition.

sigmen4020 wrote:

All your proposal would do is discourage all women from competing in most sports, with maybe a few exceptions like horse riding which is already uni-sex sport.

No, it would mean more than that. If the same number of awards got handed out, it would mean a different distribution of awards to people. It could also mean more targeted coaching on the basis of people's physical characteristics other than their sex... sometimes girls teams have a training regime weaker than boys at the same school in sports like running. If a smaller number of awards got handed out, it could mean a cost savings for sporting organizations.

sigmen4020 wrote:

I'm guessing the next thing you'll advocate for is the removal of the paralympics, since it's so unfair to male athletes that some para athlete gets to have a medal for a worse performance, right? Para athletes should compete in the regular olympics same as everyone else, right?

I saw someone say that once. I'm not finding anything linking the Paralympics with The Olympics under one governing organization. So, I don't see as many problems with having separate leagues here. I don't see how the paralympics discriminates against it's own participants by The Olympics existing.

The Olympic committee on the other hands out material objects to their participants on grounds other than merit in terms of their performances. It is very clear that they do not treat all of their participants equally and haven't done so since the beginning of sex differentiated division. They do not hold all of their participants to the same standards, since they don't have to all compete against each other. That infantilizes many female participants apparently, since they get rewarded even though having weaker performance. And it doesn't value some male participants appropriately, since their performance isn't valued as much by competing in the division where they have traditionally allowed men to compete.

As for what this has to do with One Hour One Life, well, One Hour One Life viewed as a competitive game is only one where players can lose. One dies at the individual level. All families die. All towns get washed away. There exist plenty of female players of this game who play it with an awareness of such facts also from what I can tell. So, it seems there exists little reason to worry about particular females losing or ending up lower in terms of accolades in real world sporting leagues, because women and girls can handle situations which they will all lose, it would make some sense that they can handle a real world situation where almost all females will lose, or perform more poorly than they thought they would.

Spoonwood · 2021-02-09 19:39:26

DestinyCall wrote:

sigmen4020 wrote:
Also what does this have to do with the game again?
I think this is what happens when Jason takes too long to update the game. Spoonwood ends up with too much free time on his hands, so he starts applying his phenomenal "logic" to other things.
The results are, as expected, delightfully nonsensical.

I am explicitly calling for integrated sports leagues. That means more objectivity, because all participants would get judged by the same standards. More objectivity also requires more sense to things.

It is also far easier to maintain or obtain objectivity and have a good sense of things when there exists one standard for competition than when there exist two standards for competition.

Spoonwood · 2021-02-09 19:44:32

JonySky wrote:

Obtaining more groups to be able to classify their participants allows more chances of being winners, this allows more competitiveness

If this held as a general rule, then by having the smallest group possible, there would exist maximum competitiveness. But a track race doesn't have more competitiveness by having fewer runners. A track race with 8 runners instead of 2 has more competitiveness than one with 2 runners. I think the same holds for other sports. There's more competition in a 5 on 5 basketball game than a 3 on 3 basketball game.

sigmen4020 · 2021-02-09 20:25:27

Spoonwood wrote:

sigmen4020 wrote:
Yeah, let's just completely ignore the very obvious biological differences between men and women that make men achieve better results in sports than women, such as less body fat, more muscle mass, and larger heart and lungs.
We ignore the obvious biological differences between competitors within sexes all the time in sports. The game of basketball doesn't suddenly have different rules when tall people play with short people.
sigmen4020 wrote:
Guess women should just overcome their very real biological disadvantages in order to be recognized for their sporting ability at all.
Any man that wants to play in a professional basketball league and is of below average height has to overcome such a biological disadvantage. Given that women have as much biological disadvantage as you think, sure, why not? Competitive sports are about winning while playing a fair competition. Integrating sports leagues means more fair competition.

You seriously think that a minor height difference in basketball is even remotely comparable to the multitudes of disadvantages(that I just conveniently listed) women would face against men in physical sports?

Okay...

Also some physical sports aren't just segregated by sex, such as weight classes in boxing. Isn't it totally unfair to the man who got fourth place as a heavyweight, when he could have easily beaten the champion in the flyweight class?

Last edited by sigmen4020 (2021-02-09 20:29:27)

Spoonwood · 2021-02-09 20:50:40

Cogito wrote:

To spell it out: under what authority or argument do you seek to stop people spectating all-women sports, through the removal of all-women sports?

I don't expect any such thing. I haven't called for any such thing.

Cogito wrote:

This was a Spoonwood trap! If you have an extremely small sample from an extremely large population, that sample is statistically insignificant. When I say that the person has achieved more than everyone else who has ever lived it is of course not a literal statement, but an exaggeration.

Statistics involves literal statements. It doesn't involve exaggerations.

You want to exaggerate? Then I don't think you want to have an honest discussion here.

Cogito wrote:

Your persistence in quibbling over these patently incorrect interpretations of language and grammar continues to paint you as someone unable to develop their comprehension skills.

You said you were exaggerating. Exaggeration is taking things out of proportion when engaging in serious speech, since serious speech is exact as it can be, and thus literal. Thus you were using language incorrectly by any rational standard.

You are free to think of me however you like as are others with respect to my development of my comprehension skills. But, I am not under any burden to you or others that I can develop those skills. And I am simply not interested in playing some game to prove to you that I can "understand" you, since that understanding seems vastly contingent on me agreeing with you it seems to me.

Cogito wrote:

If you don't want to appear that way, then as many here have suggested you should ask yourself "what is the main point this person is trying to make" and then argue against that.

If you want to try to make a point, the burden of communication is on you as the speaker to get your message across.

Cogito wrote:

Did you not read what I wrote? "People who have, as a group, decided to compete with each other."

Not that closely. It makes less sense the more closely I read what you said. People don't make decisions *as a group* to compete with each other in at least some instances. They make decisions as individuals to enter into competitions for say community running events. Those individuals agree to the rules of the competitions. They don't all get together and then decide to compete against each other.

Cogito wrote:

School students have less political capital than most sport participants ...

I find this very strange to believe. School students have an enormous amount of political capital in terms of how things can shake out. There exist more school students than sports participants. If a large enough group of school students were to protest a school having a sport or they demanded a particular sport, the school administration would soon have all sorts of interactions with parents. The political capital in terms of school students is potentially very large. It's just often not activated, or there exists a fair amount of disagreement, and oftentimes students haven't developed the ability to think for their own selves or take political action.

The administration in school is simply not more powerful than the students and the parents combined from what I've seen of school districts. A largely unified student body with parents behind them isn't something an administration can ignore now, is it?

Cogito wrote:

How do you respond for all other sports?

For other sports, students decided to try out for sports teams at the individual level and then made the team (same thing happens for cross-country). The competitors I would say thus make decisions to compete as individuals. The coaches and athletic directors who decide on leagues and when games will play against I would say do make decisions as a group.

Cogito wrote:

In Scenario A we take the Spoonwood forced mixing of competitors approach.

The nature of sport is such that it doesn't care about any sort of sex differences, only the quality of play of the competitors. Thus, sports leagues are forced to get segregated by sex and other categories. It would thus be natural to have all participants in the same category, because the nature of sport is such that everyone is equal with respect to their performance objectively.

Cogito wrote:

Due to the inherent difference in running speed between men and women ...

Um what? Running speed isn't an inherent different between men and women. Running speed depends on how fast the body moved, not the sex of the participants. You clearly lost your sense of physics here Cogito. It seems predictable since the division of leagues in sports by the same organization on the basis of sex encourages losing a sense of physics.

Cogito wrote:

these 10 competitors are all men, and as expected the top 10 fastest people are given millions of dollars of cash each, and fame that lasts thousands of years, ensuring that the best runners are appropriately compensated for their efforts.

If you or I were setting up sports leagues a priori that were integrated, if we were rational, we wouldn't presuppose who will win or lose.

Thousands of years of fame and millions of dollars?

I really don't think you're taking that thought experiment seriously.

Cogito wrote:

In Scenario B it is every single person again, but in Secnario A none of the women compete because there is no chance they can ever win. Hence, Scenario B has more competition (1000 people competing) than Scenario A (500 people competing)

So basically women will only compete if their necessarily will exist some female winner or top performer? Women in sports are that sexist that they will do so only if some member of their sex is assured a chance of a success?

Cogito wrote:

For some sports it can make sense, but the physical differences between men and women (just like between children and adults, and man and machine) necessitates that competition is segregated.

The physical differences between men and women is not a causative factor of the sex segregation of sports. So, no, it does not necessitate that competition is segregated.

Cogito wrote:

You're cherry picking your evidence, at best.

I'd have to know of examples which contradict my position to cherry pick.

Cogito wrote:

Forcing different levels of skill and ability to compete together will reduce the number of people who participate in your sport, and those people will just go play by themselves without your silly rules.

It is very strange to me to think that everyone playing by literally the same rules as in any way silly. An organization which sets up an event where everyone plays by the same rules involves treating people equally and also having people's performances evaluated solely on the basis of merit. Both of those encourage objectivity for anyone thinking about the rules and the competition. There would be no silly "I ran well... for a girl" or "you ran well... for a woman." for anyone.

Spoonwood · 2021-02-09 21:18:33

sigmen4020 wrote:

Spoonwood wrote:
sigmen4020 wrote:
Yeah, let's just completely ignore the very obvious biological differences between men and women that make men achieve better results in sports than women, such as less body fat, more muscle mass, and larger heart and lungs.
We ignore the obvious biological differences between competitors within sexes all the time in sports. The game of basketball doesn't suddenly have different rules when tall people play with short people.
sigmen4020 wrote:
Guess women should just overcome their very real biological disadvantages in order to be recognized for their sporting ability at all.
Any man that wants to play in a professional basketball league and is of below average height has to overcome such a biological disadvantage. Given that women have as much biological disadvantage as you think, sure, why not? Competitive sports are about winning while playing a fair competition. Integrating sports leagues means more fair competition.
You seriously think that a minor height difference in basketball is even remotely comparable to the multitudes of disadvantages(that I just conveniently listed) women would face against men in physical sports?

Remotely comparable sounds like a low degree of similaity, so yes, *remotely* comparable seems plausible.

sigmen4020 wrote:

Also some physical sports aren't just segregated by sex, such as weight classes in boxing. Isn't it totally unfair to the man who got fourth place as a heavyweight, when he could have easily beaten the champion in the flyweight class?

Boxing is unfair, in the sense of injustice, to all participants as human beings. It either encourages deliberately inflicting serious physical damage on another or taking such brain damaging abuse. Unlike other sports where people can have better health as a result of playing the sport, boxing inevitably involves one participant having worse health, and another participant likely has worse health or takes advantage of the worse health of another person. No knockout makes anyone stronger.

Considering amateur wrestling seems better here. I don't know how we can compare people's wrestling abilities without them having wrestled. Perhaps the heavyweight wrestler who finishes in 4th is a better wrestler than the 1st place wrestler in the division below him. But, what objective standard do we have for determining that? I don't know of one, unlike running times in track races and times in many other sporting events. My claim that the male participants are often undervalued relies on objective standards like time in races.

I do think that wrestling having weight classes has value, but perhaps different weight classes in wrestling minimizes the risk of injury, or severity of injury, of participants. In sports like running and swimming, and perhaps even sports like soccer and handball, the risk of injury for female participants doesn't increase by having integrated leagues. So, I'm not so sure integrating sex discriminatory leagues is comparable to removing weight classes for wrestling.

Coconut Fruit · 2021-02-10 00:32:27

Spoonwood wrote:

Cogito wrote:
To spell it out: under what authority or argument do you seek to stop people spectating all-women sports, through the removal of all-women sports?
I don't expect any such thing. I haven't called for any such thing.
Cogito wrote:
This was a Spoonwood trap! If you have an extremely small sample from an extremely large population, that sample is statistically insignificant. When I say that the person has achieved more than everyone else who has ever lived it is of course not a literal statement, but an exaggeration.
Statistics involves literal statements. It doesn't involve exaggerations.
You want to exaggerate? Then I don't think you want to have an honest discussion here.
Cogito wrote:
Your persistence in quibbling over these patently incorrect interpretations of language and grammar continues to paint you as someone unable to develop their comprehension skills.
You said you were exaggerating. Exaggeration is taking things out of proportion when engaging in serious speech, since serious speech is exact as it can be, and thus literal. Thus you were using language incorrectly by any rational standard.
You are free to think of me however you like as are others with respect to my development of my comprehension skills. But, I am not under any burden to you or others that I can develop those skills. And I am simply not interested in playing some game to prove to you that I can "understand" you, since that understanding seems vastly contingent on me agreeing with you it seems to me.
Cogito wrote:
If you don't want to appear that way, then as many here have suggested you should ask yourself "what is the main point this person is trying to make" and then argue against that.
If you want to try to make a point, the burden of communication is on you as the speaker to get your message across.
Cogito wrote:
Did you not read what I wrote? "People who have, as a group, decided to compete with each other."
Not that closely. It makes less sense the more closely I read what you said. People don't make decisions *as a group* to compete with each other in at least some instances. They make decisions as individuals to enter into competitions for say community running events. Those individuals agree to the rules of the competitions. They don't all get together and then decide to compete against each other.
Cogito wrote:
School students have less political capital than most sport participants ...
I find this very strange to believe. School students have an enormous amount of political capital in terms of how things can shake out. There exist more school students than sports participants. If a large enough group of school students were to protest a school having a sport or they demanded a particular sport, the school administration would soon have all sorts of interactions with parents. The political capital in terms of school students is potentially very large. It's just often not activated, or there exists a fair amount of disagreement, and oftentimes students haven't developed the ability to think for their own selves or take political action.
The administration in school is simply not more powerful than the students and the parents combined from what I've seen of school districts. A largely unified student body with parents behind them isn't something an administration can ignore now, is it?
Cogito wrote:
How do you respond for all other sports?
For other sports, students decided to try out for sports teams at the individual level and then made the team (same thing happens for cross-country). The competitors I would say thus make decisions to compete as individuals. The coaches and athletic directors who decide on leagues and when games will play against I would say do make decisions as a group.
Cogito wrote:
In Scenario A we take the Spoonwood forced mixing of competitors approach.
The nature of sport is such that it doesn't care about any sort of sex differences, only the quality of play of the competitors. Thus, sports leagues are forced to get segregated by sex and other categories. It would thus be natural to have all participants in the same category, because the nature of sport is such that everyone is equal with respect to their performance objectively.
Cogito wrote:
Due to the inherent difference in running speed between men and women ...
Um what? Running speed isn't an inherent different between men and women. Running speed depends on how fast the body moved, not the sex of the participants. You clearly lost your sense of physics here Cogito. It seems predictable since the division of leagues in sports by the same organization on the basis of sex encourages losing a sense of physics.
Cogito wrote:
these 10 competitors are all men, and as expected the top 10 fastest people are given millions of dollars of cash each, and fame that lasts thousands of years, ensuring that the best runners are appropriately compensated for their efforts.
If you or I were setting up sports leagues a priori that were integrated, if we were rational, we wouldn't presuppose who will win or lose.
Thousands of years of fame and millions of dollars?
I really don't think you're taking that thought experiment seriously.
Cogito wrote:
In Scenario B it is every single person again, but in Secnario A none of the women compete because there is no chance they can ever win. Hence, Scenario B has more competition (1000 people competing) than Scenario A (500 people competing)
So basically women will only compete if their necessarily will exist some female winner or top performer? Women in sports are that sexist that they will do so only if some member of their sex is assured a chance of a success?
Cogito wrote:
For some sports it can make sense, but the physical differences between men and women (just like between children and adults, and man and machine) necessitates that competition is segregated.
The physical differences between men and women is not a causative factor of the sex segregation of sports. So, no, it does not necessitate that competition is segregated.
Cogito wrote:
You're cherry picking your evidence, at best.
I'd have to know of examples which contradict my position to cherry pick.
Cogito wrote:
Forcing different levels of skill and ability to compete together will reduce the number of people who participate in your sport, and those people will just go play by themselves without your silly rules.
It is very strange to me to think that everyone playing by literally the same rules as in any way silly. An organization which sets up an event where everyone plays by the same rules involves treating people equally and also having people's performances evaluated solely on the basis of merit. Both of those encourage objectivity for anyone thinking about the rules and the competition. There would be no silly "I ran well... for a girl" or "you ran well... for a woman." for anyone.

I quoted it because it looks fun. Didn't read it tho.

Coconut Fruit · 2021-02-10 00:33:30

Spoonwood wrote:

Cogito wrote:
To spell it out: under what authority or argument do you seek to stop people spectating all-women sports, through the removal of all-women sports?
I don't expect any such thing. I haven't called for any such thing.
Cogito wrote:
This was a Spoonwood trap! If you have an extremely small sample from an extremely large population, that sample is statistically insignificant. When I say that the person has achieved more than everyone else who has ever lived it is of course not a literal statement, but an exaggeration.
Statistics involves literal statements. It doesn't involve exaggerations.
You want to exaggerate? Then I don't think you want to have an honest discussion here.
Cogito wrote:
Your persistence in quibbling over these patently incorrect interpretations of language and grammar continues to paint you as someone unable to develop their comprehension skills.
You said you were exaggerating. Exaggeration is taking things out of proportion when engaging in serious speech, since serious speech is exact as it can be, and thus literal. Thus you were using language incorrectly by any rational standard.
You are free to think of me however you like as are others with respect to my development of my comprehension skills. But, I am not under any burden to you or others that I can develop those skills. And I am simply not interested in playing some game to prove to you that I can "understand" you, since that understanding seems vastly contingent on me agreeing with you it seems to me.
Cogito wrote:
If you don't want to appear that way, then as many here have suggested you should ask yourself "what is the main point this person is trying to make" and then argue against that.
If you want to try to make a point, the burden of communication is on you as the speaker to get your message across.
Cogito wrote:
Did you not read what I wrote? "People who have, as a group, decided to compete with each other."
Not that closely. It makes less sense the more closely I read what you said. People don't make decisions *as a group* to compete with each other in at least some instances. They make decisions as individuals to enter into competitions for say community running events. Those individuals agree to the rules of the competitions. They don't all get together and then decide to compete against each other.
Cogito wrote:
School students have less political capital than most sport participants ...
I find this very strange to believe. School students have an enormous amount of political capital in terms of how things can shake out. There exist more school students than sports participants. If a large enough group of school students were to protest a school having a sport or they demanded a particular sport, the school administration would soon have all sorts of interactions with parents. The political capital in terms of school students is potentially very large. It's just often not activated, or there exists a fair amount of disagreement, and oftentimes students haven't developed the ability to think for their own selves or take political action.
The administration in school is simply not more powerful than the students and the parents combined from what I've seen of school districts. A largely unified student body with parents behind them isn't something an administration can ignore now, is it?
Cogito wrote:
How do you respond for all other sports?
For other sports, students decided to try out for sports teams at the individual level and then made the team (same thing happens for cross-country). The competitors I would say thus make decisions to compete as individuals. The coaches and athletic directors who decide on leagues and when games will play against I would say do make decisions as a group.
Cogito wrote:
In Scenario A we take the Spoonwood forced mixing of competitors approach.
The nature of sport is such that it doesn't care about any sort of sex differences, only the quality of play of the competitors. Thus, sports leagues are forced to get segregated by sex and other categories. It would thus be natural to have all participants in the same category, because the nature of sport is such that everyone is equal with respect to their performance objectively.
Cogito wrote:
Due to the inherent difference in running speed between men and women ...
Um what? Running speed isn't an inherent different between men and women. Running speed depends on how fast the body moved, not the sex of the participants. You clearly lost your sense of physics here Cogito. It seems predictable since the division of leagues in sports by the same organization on the basis of sex encourages losing a sense of physics.
Cogito wrote:
these 10 competitors are all men, and as expected the top 10 fastest people are given millions of dollars of cash each, and fame that lasts thousands of years, ensuring that the best runners are appropriately compensated for their efforts.
If you or I were setting up sports leagues a priori that were integrated, if we were rational, we wouldn't presuppose who will win or lose.
Thousands of years of fame and millions of dollars?
I really don't think you're taking that thought experiment seriously.
Cogito wrote:
In Scenario B it is every single person again, but in Secnario A none of the women compete because there is no chance they can ever win. Hence, Scenario B has more competition (1000 people competing) than Scenario A (500 people competing)
So basically women will only compete if their necessarily will exist some female winner or top performer? Women in sports are that sexist that they will do so only if some member of their sex is assured a chance of a success?
Cogito wrote:
For some sports it can make sense, but the physical differences between men and women (just like between children and adults, and man and machine) necessitates that competition is segregated.
The physical differences between men and women is not a causative factor of the sex segregation of sports. So, no, it does not necessitate that competition is segregated.
Cogito wrote:
You're cherry picking your evidence, at best.
I'd have to know of examples which contradict my position to cherry pick.
Cogito wrote:
Forcing different levels of skill and ability to compete together will reduce the number of people who participate in your sport, and those people will just go play by themselves without your silly rules.
It is very strange to me to think that everyone playing by literally the same rules as in any way silly. An organization which sets up an event where everyone plays by the same rules involves treating people equally and also having people's performances evaluated solely on the basis of merit. Both of those encourage objectivity for anyone thinking about the rules and the competition. There would be no silly "I ran well... for a girl" or "you ran well... for a woman." for anyone.

Ops, double post, sorry.

DestinyCall · 2021-02-10 00:41:44

Spoonwood wrote:

DestinyCall wrote:
Not to mention that it is silly to argue that "men and boys are under recognized" because they can only win three out of four medals instead of all of them in some Olympic competitions.
That's just stupid.
What's stupid is the sense of reality that ends up lost by failing to recognize humans sporting ability on the basis of their performance. A 4th place boy at the age of 16 in a high school race with a time of 4:40 in a mile race won't get as much recognition as a girl with a slower time at the same age with the same schools competing.
In Rio Ayanleh Souleiman ran 3:50.29 in a 1500 meter race and was the men's 4th place finisher getting no medal at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics … 500_metres
Faith Chepngetich ran 4:08.92 in a 1500 meter race also: https://www.olympic.org/rio-2016/athletics/1500m-women
Yet, Faith gets a medal while Rio does not. She has the material object, while he does not.
This shows that Ayanleh Souleiman's ability is not recognized proportionately to his overall achievement and the Olympic Committee does not value everyones achievements on the basis of their own merits.

Umm Spoonwood ... Faith didn't take away Ayanleh's medal. She didn't take that medal away from ANY man. The 1500 meter dash is divided into two separate competitions - one for men and the other for women. Faith got a gold medal in the women's 1500 metre. Ayanleh came if fourth place in the men's 1500 metre, behind three other men. They were not even competing in the same event. Eliminating the women's 1500 metre or combining the two events in to a unisex competition would NOT change Ayanleh's placement. He would still be fourth place. You are advocating for a change that would take away medals from female athletes, not restore medals to deserving competitors.

Don't pretend like this is about equity and justice. The female athletes who compete in these Olympic events are not stealing recognition from men and boys. And I think you know that.

Please stop being such a shameless forum troll.

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