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

[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.

[kirisutogomen.livejournal.com]

I think the discussion is about drawing an analogy between arguments about physical differences and arguments about mental differences, and the consequences for relative performance.

No one is agitating for a rule saying that women can't play in the PGA. There's no glass ceiling. In fact, people are excited about the possibility that a woman could be competitive with the best men. If there were another woman who could do the same thing, she'd be in a PGA event in a heartbeat.

If we're trying to draw an analogy, well, there is no separate physics league for women, so there's no analogy.

The 300:1 comparison is completely fair. The PGA is a fairly accurate representation of the tippy top of golf regardless of sex. It's perfectly fair to compare it to, say, all full professors of physics. Including the LPGA would be the equivalent of making a set out of all male full professors and all women with the word "professor" in their title.

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

No one is agitating for a rule saying that women can't play in the PGA.

Actually, lots of people object to women playing in the PGA. And yeah, most of them are pig-headed sexist bastards. And it's those attitudes that I'm fighting.

The PGA is a fairly accurate representation of the tippy top of golf regardless of sex.

I simply don't buy that. Surely you'll agree that there is some overlap between the tippity-top of the LPGA and the middle-of-the-pack PGA. Heck, Michelle Wie missed the cut-off for the PGA Tour by *one* stroke. And she's currently tied for 23rd in the LPGA tour. I think the reason why women are excluded from the PGA is simply because there is a separate LPGA, and so they're all directed to go play over there.

[kirisutogomen.livejournal.com]

Actually, lots of people object to women playing in the PGA. And yeah, most of them are pig-headed sexist bastards. And it's those attitudes that I'm fighting.

None of those wackos are here, and Frank DeFord isn't one of them, as is clear from his piece. "[I]t would be nice if Michelle Wie qualified for the Masters and made the cut on a PGA Tour."

I think that your energy would be infinitely better spent fighting sexism in a field a) that matters and b) where there's no obvious reason to expect women to be worse. E.G., science.

Can we at least agree that women are at a disadvantage in strength, size, speed? That there may be differences in the way men and women think, with advantages and disadvantages for each, but that women have no inherent biological advantage in any sport?

If we can agree on that, then I would say that the implication is that statements about the physical inferiority of women are qualitatively different from statements about mental inferiority. They are not exemplary of the same underlying attitude.

....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.

I am going to make the assumption that you don't want a parallel career ladder. If you really believe that "he might as well have said", etc., then it would seem that you're arguing for the abolition of sex-based segregation of any kind, including in sports. I don't think you actually believe this, but it would be the logical conclusion. Otherwise "the attitude about the inferiority of women's bodies" is not at all "similar to attitudes about the inferiority of women's brains".

Fascinating discussion, and I hate to sound like I'm dissing it, but my sister-in-law just called to let me know that she's having contractions (nine days early), so I'm probably pretty busy for a while.