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

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

I'd rather see pro sports changed to be based on ability rather than gender

That seems like a step backwards, for all those sports in which there are big differences (which really is most of them). Now instead of men's leagues and women's leagues, you have generic leagues, which are comprised entirely of men. Or major leagues (comprised of men) and wussy junky leagues (comprised of women and junky men).

[shumashi.livejournal.com]

Well, to be honest, I'd rather see the whole pro sports thing abolished completely. I kind of lose sympathy for the argument "Hey! Men get to have stupid, useless, overpaid jobs playing sports! We women want to have the stupid, useless, overpaid jobs playing sports too! Equal rights for being a parasite on society!"

Or I guess if you have to have pro sports, since I hear there are people out there that like viewing this sort of foolishness, just have the major leagues if those are the only things making money, and nuke the wussy leagues, even if that makes things unequal from a gender standpoint. I mean really, you're totally getting away with something if you're a professional athlete. It offends my work ethic to tip the scales so even more people can mooch.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

It's not being a parasite on society to get paid for doing things that people are willing to pay you to do. (You could argue that sports franchises shouldn't get any help from the government, but that's an entirely different argument.)

To wander to farther extremes:
Should we abolish the Special Olympics, because guys in wheelchairs don't run as fast as guys not in wheelchairs? Or just fold them in to the non-wheelchair people races? Should we not have Little League, because eight-year-olds don't play as well as grown men? There's more to sports than just having the top people in all of humanity play each other, and nothing else. Sure, the Special Olympics and Little League get less publicity and money than the big leagues, but they're not "getting away" with anything.

[shumashi.livejournal.com]

To wander to farther extremes:
Should we abolish the Special Olympics...

That's not a farther extreme, that's a different case entirely. The Special Olympics and Little League are amateur sports. If anything, the participants pay an entrance fee to participate, but they definately don't get paid. As I said, I was talking about pro sports. I'm not objecting to sports as hobbies, I'm objecting to try to force gender equality in an institution that is fundamentally supported by spectators. You can't force people to like to watch things.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

You can't force people to like to watch things.

Sure. Can we agree that sports in general are funded by people who like to watch them? If so, there's no point to abolishing anything with spectators who will pay for it. People watch women's tennis - even if the men could beat the women if they played against each other instead of in separate tournaments. But people don't watch the Tour de France Femenin. I hadn't even heard of it before I asked justom.

The question is, is there a way to convince people to watch things that they don't currently? (for those people who care about the issue, at least. Like you, I don't really watch sports.) You can't watch sports that aren't on TV, so it's somewhat self-reinforcing. And, to tie it back to the original issue, will Wei playing in the Masters cause people to watch more or less women's golf? :)

[shumashi.livejournal.com]

The question is, is there a way to convince people to watch things that they don't currently?

That sort of sounds like there's a problem with the current way people choose what to watch and thus what is popular, which some posters clearly think is the case, but I'm less convinced. Does it really make you a bad person if you enjoy watching men's sports rather than women's sports? There could be a lot of reasons why someone does, some of which are more socially acceptable than others. They could be chauvinist, and dislike watching women in traditionally unfeminine roles. They could be male and enjoy having a same sex hero/role-model to emulate. They could find male athletes more attractive. They could want to watch the best athletes, regardless of gender. They could want to have something to talk about at the water cooler, so watch whatever's popular. Changing the behavior depends on what's causing it, which I don't think we really know. Once we know why people are behaving in such a way, then we can decide whether that behavior is bad and if so, try to affect it.

Though the bit about people only being able to watch what's televised is a good point. Clear case of the values of a few people (TV execs) deciding what the wider population should be viewing.

I find it particularly funny that firstfrost and I are the ones debating this particular thread, since neither of us would be watching these sports regardless of how they're structured. :)
I reserve the right to hate all forms of golf, regardless of the gender of the player!
(Though I concede that Tiger Woods is hot. :)

[kirisutogomen.livejournal.com]

Are we going to eliminate the stupid, useless profession of acting, too? Was it a giant step backward to allow women to play the female parts instead of having men be all the parasites?

Or should we just leave the major leagues (Hollywood) alone, and nuke the community theaters?