In which gender essentialism can DIAF
Nine-Year-Old Girl Plays Football, Kicks Ass and Maybe Changes the World
Few 9-year-old girls are described as a “young-very young-Walter Payton.” But that’s what people are calling Sam Gordon of South Jordan, Utah. Gordon has become an Internet sensation after the spread of viral videos showing her shredding Pee Wee football defenses with a series ( Read more... )
Few 9-year-old girls are described as a “young-very young-Walter Payton.” But that’s what people are calling Sam Gordon of South Jordan, Utah. Gordon has become an Internet sensation after the spread of viral videos showing her shredding Pee Wee football defenses with a series ( Read more... )
i would whole heartedly agree with the first half of the article, that the sex segregation can lead to a greater difference than might otherwise be there. but this has limits, i feel. it depends on the sport in question, i think some blanket approach of removing segregation would be ridiculous. I'm sure that's not the point being made here though, but just "in before someone points out putting a male and female heavyweight boxers in the ring together to fight over the same title" stuff.
on a personal experience: i only came out recently, for most of my life i've seen myself as female and lived as any other woman. i had to up my game when I went to college and played on the men's football team in an all men's league (there wasn't a comparable league for women, and that was the league i was interested in). being in and later captaining an all men's team was tough physically and mentally. At school we'd been separated by sex and as girls we hardly did any real sport compared to what the boys did. I think that i could hold my own on the football pitch later shows that it's not exactly because no girl can play football like a guy can. female physiology isn't inherently that weak. Although saying there are no differences would be laughable i feel. but the differences that are there are definitely enhanced through schools (at least where i grew up) not challenging girls.
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What I got from this article was not that CAFAB people and CAMAB people would be equal at every sport if sex segregation at younger ages were removed, but that a large part of the current difference in performance is due to early sex segregation and that it's not so much that one sex (loosely defined here, please let me know if my terminology can be improved) is better across the board than the other, but that they tend to be better in different areas (I think on a related previous ontd post someone pointed out CAFAB people tend to have an advantage in sports requiring a low centre of gravity).
Agree with you on not being challenged thing- I only started doing sport intensely once I got to university (rowing), which was before I started transitioning, and there our female bodied team beat the shit out of the male bodied team.
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that's kind of what i was trying to get at with the girls not being challenged, i could have made my point more clearly though, i realise that though XD . and them not being challenged kind of comes from the fact that they do "ability" segregation by sex, rather than segregation based on ability regardless of sex.
it's not so much that one sex (loosely defined here, please let me know if my terminology can be improved) is better across the board than the other, but that they tend to be better in different areas
i feel that goes into the territory of 'girls are not weak, they are just different!' (i.e. let's just change the word here, but not the thinking) as well as still keeping up the mental thinking barriers that girls are just good at X, and boys at Z.
the issue is really that it should be on an individual level, based on an individual's performance.
I was lucky that the league i played in didn't have an issue with a girl joining, for example. my individual performance was fine, but too often women and girls are excluded from teams they could play in based on their gender, rather than because they can't do the sport. whether women are generally not that good at that sport shouldn't be the issue.
edit: also think about it for trans girls and women. they often get excluded ignorantly from girls and womens teams due to people thinking they must have an unfair advantage. teams based on ability would help against that.
and also with intersex people having their gender questioned based on their physiology.
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I know you aren't saying there are no physical differences, and it's a big problem when that argument is used to keep people out of certain sports - but it's also not really something that can be ignored in sports or solved by just saying girls can join whatever teams they want. From a training perspective, not recognizing the different strengths and weaknesses of female bodies and using a 'one size fits all' approach - which like most things that are supposed to apply to everyone was designed by generations of intensly studying the physical devolopment of men and boys - is part of what keeps girls from being as strong as they could, as well as putting them at a much greater risk for certain injuries.
Female athletes are as capable of adding muscle and strength as men, but because of hormone differences that usually will only happen if that's given more training/practice time. And sometimes girls aren't as good at certain sports at boys because they're being told to do things in a way that doesn't actually take advantage of their biomechanics. (For example, since someone else in the thread mentioned rowing and I'm a rower - male and female rowers have very close performance measurements at the same height and weight. But they train and practice in a way that more of the power from a female rower's stroke comes from her lower body. They wouldn't have equal performance if you threw them in men's programs and said 'do what the guys are doing.')
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And yes- look at clips of Romanian female vs Canadian male VIIIs (most iconic boats for each sex I could think of off the top of my head). The power distribution throughout the stroke is completely different.
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i see what what meant now by 'girls are better at some thing'. yes, definitely training would need to be targeted.
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I was not aware that there were any conditions associated with being intersex, other than the obvious. If it's not too intrusive, would you mind elaborating?
maybe associated with is not the correct phrasing. i'm not good at medical stuff or biology. ironic and scary as i once taught biology at secondary school D: .
without going into too much detail, as far as is understood my intersex condition is most likely the result of ionising radiation one of my parents was exposed to. not Chernobyl, before you ask. the heart condition is linked in that sense that it's also thought to be the same cause... i don't know how it works really.
Agree with you on not being challenged thing- I only started doing sport intensely once I got to university (rowing), which was before I started transitioning, and there our female bodied team beat the shit out of the male bodied team.
i used to row too, at school though. we had those lovely old gig boats. spent more time repairing them and keeping them from sinking than anything else, lol. and fuck yeah, we often managed to beat the men's boat(s) during practice. well, the ones in other old boats. couldn't win against a carbon fibre boat or what ever they are made out of nowadays. although never had an official race against any men's teams.
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I admit, I've known a lot of boat owners and that seems to be a universal experience. :P
(I don't have much of anything to add the subject at hand -- never been fit for competitive sports in my life, and it has nothing to do with gender -- but I've been interested in reading it, and the boat comment jumped out at me).
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XD One of our novice crews managed to completely snap off half a metre of bow the day before a race. Our boatwoman was NOT pleased. She got it all fixed up in time though.
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