Rant. You've been warned.

[astra_nomer]

I found myself offended by this story I heard on Morning Edition today.

Basically, Frank Deford argues that Michelle Wie's playing against male golfers is bad for women's sports as a whole. By playing against and beating men, she draws attention to herself perhaps, but also draws attention away from women's sports, which already suffer from lack of audiences. And he trotted out the usual arguments about smaller muscle mass and physical differences leading to women being unable to compete fairly with men.

Of course, being a woman who competes with men on a daily basis (careerwise anyway), I felt like he might as well have said that since women's brains are smaller, they can't fairly compete again men intellectually, so why not set up a parallel women's career ladder in the sciences. Then you can systematically marginalize women scientists the way women athletes have been.

Okay, so maybe it's not a fair comparison. But the attitude about the inferiority of women's bodies is all too similar to attitudes about the inferiority of women's brains.

Grrr.

Comments

[narya.livejournal.com]

Oh! I heard that and it also pissed me off to no end! I was even thinking about writing some comments on it! You're my hero :).

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

I'm considering writing to NPR about it. We'll see if I get that far.

[lokiect.livejournal.com]

do it! do it!
sounds like a bunch of people should... I hate to think that people in general think this kind of attitude is ok (yeah, I know, i know, ideals, reality, I know, but still!)

[rms10.livejournal.com]

Frank Deford is the guy who does the sports commentary on Wednesday mornings, right? Oh god, I hate him. Gah.

Anyway, one day soon either Michelle Wie or Annika Sorensten is going to make the cut in a big PGA tournament, and it's going to be awesome. I can't wait.

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've found him annoying in the past, but this time he really got on my nerves.

[rifmeister.livejournal.com]

I don't mean to be antagonistic, and I didn't hear the speech, but surely you agree that sports and science are substantially different fields? I can't imagine you arguing, for instance, that we should abolish all women-only sports leagues and require all women to compete head-to-head with men at all sports? It's wrong to segregate intellectual fields precisely because there is no (to my knowledge compelling) evidence of difference in ability between genders. That the most athletic men are larger, faster, and stronger than the most athletic women is fairly well-accepted. Am I missing something?

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

Well, there are those who would argue that women have less intellectual capacity than men. Like presidents of prominent universities. So be careful there.

And I'm not saying that all women should be required to compete head-to-head with men in all sports. But what if you're a woman who does have that ability? And what if the prizes for the men's competition happen to be far greater than those of the women's? I see no reason to bar her from competing at the highest level just because the highest level happens to be all-male.

And I just don't buy the argument that a woman competing in the Masters would spell doom for women's sports in general. On the contrary, I think it would encourage more women's participation, whether as athletes or spectators.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

I am just as happy as anyone to see Annika Sorenstam kick ass :), but there's an asymmetry here that I wonder about. So we say -- let's let the women who are really good compete against the men, sure. I think this is equivalent to saying -- the men's level is the good level, and the women's level is inferior. Because...do we let men compete at the women's level? Well, no, we don't seem to. Who would? The men who miss the cut in the PGA? But then we're back to the same thing -- the good level (coincidentally almost all male) and the inferior level (coincidentally all female).

I do think there's an argument to be made here that by having Sorenstam et alia compete against men we are, at the very least, exposing that assumption, and that exposing that assumption might be bad for women's sports (who wants to watch an inferior product?). I do not contest the axiom that Mr. Deford is a jerk (I'm not familiar with him but am happy to defer), and I'm not going to make the leap of logic that women shouldn't compete against men on that basis.

I think there's an important way in which the sports and science realms are parallel, and an important way in which they are not. The "are not" is that, in fact, men have a large statistical advantage over women in terms of strength and height and mass, and those are crucially important in some sports. (Of course, there's dexterity and quickness, and there are sports which don't care so much about height. I'm sure the picture is very different for tennis than it is for football.) The same doesn't hold for intellectual capacity. (I know that this is not settled in all circles, though I also think that Summers's remarks were more nuanced than people generally gave him credit for.) The "are" is that gender segregation runs the risk in both cases of a separate-and-unequal scenario, and that gender competition exposes underlying (possibly bogus) assumptions about sex-linked abilities (preferences, values, etc.).

I think I ought to have a point here, but I don't, because I'm still in the "struggling to articulate" stage.

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

yes, men and women differ physically. Men are going to win in terms of strength and size, but not all sports are about purely strength and size.

And men and women *think* differently, too. I think that's been pretty well documented. But just because your approach to problem-solving is different, doesn't mean you're wrong. So the parallels are still there -- men and women have different strengths, both mentally and physically. Perhaps it's just that the physical differences are more obvious.

[shumashi.livejournal.com]

in fact, men have a large statistical advantage over women in terms of strength and height and mass, and those are crucially important in some sports

This is very close to an important leap of logic that many people make, which is that while it's all amusing to talk about statistics, you can't make judgments about individuals with them. We're talking about professional sports, so we're already talking about individual outliers. Yes, statistically speaking, we will get more male outliers than female outliers, but statistics also tells us that some of those outliers will be female, so I'd rather see pro sports changed to be based on ability rather than gender, so when the Michelle Wie's come along, we don't go through all this foolishness.

The same doesn't hold for intellectual capacity.

Actually, there is statistical support for the "boys are on average better at math" thing, though whether that's based on inherent gender differences or cultural expectations and pressures is a harder question to answer. Assume we have rock solid proof that statistically, men are better at math than women. If we used the athlete's model, we would segregate math classes based on gender, where all women were automatically put into remedial math. I find that notion appalling. I would rather have advanced, regular, and remedial math, and place people by ability. Then if most of the people in advanced math turn out to be male, so be it.

[rifmeister.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... other comments were made while I posted my comment. It seems like this commentator really is a jerk. But I still don't quite understand what he said that enraged.

[narya.livejournal.com]

I think what you're missing is that he said that Wie had, in effect, a moral obligation to not compete with other men because by doing so she might be attracting attention away from the equivalent womens sports. He said this even though he acknowledged that in her case she was competitive with the men.

I support the idea of women's sports, with the rationale that men do have a physiological advantage in most sports. However, his logic had nothing to do with her ability to compete and came across just as a very patronizing "even if you're good at the sport, you have to stay over there".

[rifmeister.livejournal.com]

Ah. Yeah, I certainly don't agree that Wie has any obligation not to compete against men.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

If I were to try and make the argument that women shouldn't compete in the men's league (I think it's a choice between two non-ideal answers, so I don't know which one I like better), the argument it sounds like he's making would be sort of a second-order subsidiary.

In an ideal world, there would be a women's league and a men's league, and they would have the same amount of prestige, and the same amount of money associated with winning, and the same TV coverage, and so on. But we don't have that ideal world, what we have is something between that and having the Good League and the Less Good League. The Less Good League has less money and less public interest. So, of course the really good players in the Less Good League want to go play in the Good League. But the less good players in the Good League can't go play in the Less Good League, so that seems unfair - it's not actually dividing based on how good you are (sort of like the major leagues and minor leagues in baseball).

So, for any individual really good woman, it's better for her right now to play in the men's leagues. But it's less good for the women's leagues if what they end up with is not just the women (who are on average less powerful), but the *less good* women (since you lose all the really good women to the men's leagues). In the ideal future world, maybe someday the winner of the women's golf tournament would have a better score than the winner of the men's golf tournament, and then golf aficionados would actually watch the women's tournaments! That would be exciting.

So it's really an argument that women should sacrifice their own potential accomplishments towards the goal of moving women's sports more towards equality. Which would be a nice thing for people to *do*, sure, but it's not something you can *tell* people to to do, or find them morally unrighteous because they're not doing.

[nuclearpolymer.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'm not sure that an ideal world would end up with the men and women's leagues having equal publicity and rewards. I mean, if you want to watch the fastest people run, and that happens to be the men's league, why would you be equally excited to see the women's race? As far as school or municipal programs whose main purpose is to facilitate participation, they should give equal money to men and women's teams and facilities to provide equal opportunities. But commercially, it seems like just a question of what people would want to pay money to watch.

[nuclearpolymer.livejournal.com]

I guess it's a question of why there are different competition categories. For example, a sport might have a category for people over a certain age. There is usually the expectation that the senior group is set up so that older people can compete against their peers and get recognition, and that the senior group will be less good than the standard group. But if an older person could be competitive in the standard group, it seems like they should be allowed to go for the greater rewards there.

[dcltdw]

I know ballroom has Adult A and B categories; B is 35+. I don't remember offhand if 35+ can even compete in A...

Without reflecting on it much, I think it'd be great if Wie trashed the living heck out of the men's tourney. :)

[gigglefest.livejournal.com]

Almost entirely off-topic, but... Frank Deford lost a little girl to cystic fibrosis when she was 8 or 9. His book about Alex goes into some discussion of kids, gender and athleticism: how once kids with CF survive past early childhood, boys typically live a few years longer (he was writing in the early 80s, I don't know if this is still the case). Doctors don't know why this is but he suspects it's because little boys with CF are still encouraged to play outside, and so they still develop lung capacity, etc, and this doesn't happen so much with girls. Alex was a very feminine little girl, but he wished she were more interested in sports - in the end it wouldn't have mattered, but maybe it would have kept her alive a little bit longer...

[narya.livejournal.com]

Well, it's nice to know that because it makes me more willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that the comments had good intentions and weren't intended purely as abstract social opinions. And if what he wants is more girls to be involved in sports and to have that be a normal part of girls' lives, I could get behind that as a goal. Unfortunately, he didn't really seem to articulate that and what he did say just came across as really patronizing.

[kirisutogomen.livejournal.com]

The first sentence of the piece: "Michelle Wie, I do wish you would stick to playing against your own kind."

That's inflammatory language, and if I'm pissed off, it makes it difficult to listen to his argument dispassionately.

Once I get past that, though, his argument doesn't offend me. I may not agree with it, for a variety of reasons, but it's not offensive to me.

You can't reasonably argue that female athletes could compete fairly with males in golf, tennis, soccer, basketball, etc. They will never be able to, and the "usual arguments" are completely true.

You've tagged your entry with "women in science", and that's where I think you're making a grave error. Women are definitely physically inferior to men in many ways. Mentally, almost certainly not. If you start to compare the absolutely correct beliefs about athletic ability with horribly sexist beliefs about cognitive ability, you're setting yourself up for a disaster. Drawing parallels between realistic people and sexist bucketheads is not just an unfair comparison, it's actively destructive to what you want to achieve.

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

So where do you draw the line?

Fact: Women have smaller brains than men.

Fact: Women statistically score lower on standardized math and science tests than men.

Fact: There are fewer women than men at the top levels in science.

You can easily take exactly the same arguments to that Deford made and apply them to women in science. Substitute brain size for muscle mass, test scores for strength, and science professors for professional athletes. When is it an objective point of view, and when is it sexism?

The analog of a separate women's league in academia might be affirmative action. I'm not sure I like affirmative action or not, to be honest. It's already bad enough that many men believe that women get hired simply because they are women, when the truth is more likely the opposite.

I'll admit, I've been sensitized to issues of sexism because of my own career path, so perhaps I've over-reacted. And sports has this whole angle of spectatorship and corporate interests that complicate the issue more. But boy, some of those comments struck a little to close to home.

[kirisutogomen.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous. I don't know where to draw the line, but between athletics and science there are several orders of magnitude difference between the male-female gaps. Men are three times stronger than women, but not three times better on the SATs. There's a 300 to 1 ratio of men to women in the PGA, and there's no field of science with that kind of lopsidedness.

Muscle mass equals strength and speed. Brain size has no relation to test scores. Strength and speed are excellent predictors of success in athletics. Test scores are only weak predictors of success as a professional scientist.

If I give a speech where I suggest that biological differences might play a part in explaining some of the achievement gap in science, I get ripped a new orifice. If I gave a speech in which I suggest that maybe women aren't strong enough or fast enough to be NFL linebackers, no one would show up to listen to such a boring and obvious statement.

There might be some borderline cases in something like NASCAR where mostly you just sit in a comfy chair, but for athletics in general vs. science, it's blindingly obvious that one is a settled question and the other is not.

I think your concern born from your career experience is a very important thing, and worth all the attention it can get. If you let it bleed over into totally unrelated questions, you go from being an admirable crusader for justice to sounding like someone whose ideology has divorced you from reality.

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

I still maintain that you can make the analogy, at least in the particular case of pro golf. If you have separate women's and men's leagues, have unequal payoffs between the leagues, and insist that all women have to play in the women's league even if they do have the ability to successfully compete in the men's league, that there is a glass ceiling.

There's a 300 to 1 ratio of men to women in the PGA, and there's no field of science with that kind of lopsidedness.
That's not a fair comparison either. A better one would be to include the LPGA. And I'm too lazy to actually look up those numbers, but I'd guess that that ratio would be closer to parity than, say, physics.

Size isn't everything

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

To divert into minutae:

Men have smaller brains than elephants, too. Something that I've seen quoted elsewhere is that humans have the highest brain/body size ratio. Since women tend to be substantially smaller, do women have a higher brain/body ratio than men?

Re: Size isn't everything

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

I could be wrong, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that the brain/body ratio is actually lower for women. We just use our brains more efficiently. :)