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

[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. :)