Should sports stay sexist?

[smeariestbat]

You are asking the wrong question, you should be asking why are sports separated by gender. Gender equality will not be found by running sports in parallel, we should not have men's football or women's football, just football. If those women who want to be professional footballers are good enough why should they not have the opportunity to play at he highest levels?

In one stroke you resolve all of the concerns about the viability of creating a mainstream for women's sport. It's time to put up or shut up.

I note the US are just about to announce that women will be able to operate in combat roles...........so there you have it. If women can do that on an equal basis then women should be competing in sport equally?

you sir, have made an interesting and insightful proposal. Are you sure you're on the right forum?

 

[Diego Napier]

Sexy? Whats wrong with sexy?

Short netball skirts? Men?

 

[drew]

Why is it misleading though? Are you saying that its tokenism and the US Govt and military are just having a politically correct frolic?

What better example is there for equality.....................finally we have the opportunity for women to be able to fight in the front line, and once they are there isn’t it game over for arguing for any gender segregation in employment? They will have equality in all aspects of pay so they should have equality in the roles.

For sport why is it different? You wouldn’t argue for a female army and male army, its just one fully integrated and equal. Sport already supports gender equality in horse racing and no one bats an eyelid. Abolish all the male and female categories in sport and we can have one inclusive carnival of human endeavour. Who would care if the best player in the world was a woman, the managers wouldn’t neither would the chairmen, and doubtless neither would the fans.

There would be one group of course................the bigots.

You avoid dealing with the question of physicallity which was the point I was making with reference to the US. The female British army officer quite clearly accepted that the female soldiers are not as physically strong as their male counterparts and are therefore unable to serve on an equal footing when it comes to the infantry. That is, if they are required to carry
80lbs of kit across rough terrain, as the marines did in the Falklands, they would not be able to keep up. That is not a slur on the female, just a physical fact. Having said that, I presume you comments are made tongue in cheek regarding no separate female sports. In one stroke of the pen you deny Jessica Ennis her gold as her PBs at the disciplines of the heptathlon do not match those of the men in the Decathlon. Which females can compete with the 7 losers in the mens 100m final let alone get close to Bolt. In 2012, the winner of the womens 100m finished in 10.75s. That time would have beaten only 3 of the 10 qualifiers from the mens 100m preliminary round, ie the round for the no hopers! In the 1st round proper, she would have finished ahead of 3 of the 54 athletes and would have been .5 second behind the worst qualifying times for that round. Compared to Bolt, she would be over 10m behind. You name an easy example in horse racing (and indeed virtually all other equestrianism) but then it's the horse that does the vast majority of the physical effort.

I don't doubt there are other sports that could be equal where the main factor is skill and not strength/stamina, eg Darts, snooker, etc.

May be after a few more millennia of evolution the physical differences may have vanished but they haven't yet.