We cannot know much else for certain, but the Toilet Seat Stays Up, for sure!
Or you’d best prepare yourself for a beat down.
But the point is that people are crazy for college sports, which objectively have inferior athletes to professional sports. So they aren’t just gravitating towards the best, they are gravitating towards men.
They’re gravitating toward what they perceive as the best athletes within whatever stratum interests them, as I explained. Clearly just IMO, but you’re restating the point I specifically addressed.
Why are you stratifying at all? Why is there any interest in lower strata, but not in women’s versions?
Again, just my opinion…I think there’s strong, broad interest in professional and college sports. Those Venn circles have significant overlap. Both are perceived as elite athleticism, even with the acknowledgment that professional athletes have the edge.
The strata were created organically, not because of some preference for sports played in universities versus municipal stadiums. And people, women included, gravitate to what they perceive as the superior athletes—men—in the respective leagues.
Just to be clear that I have no axe to grind, I think women’s sports are every bit as entertaining as men’s. Their skill sets are equal in all things except those requiring strength. I think in many ways, women’s sports are superior. Women tend to be more disciplined and strategic, more committed to fundamentals, less reliant on brute force. Women’s basketball can be way more interesting to watch, for example, than watching behemoths crash into each other, which is what some men’s games devolve into.
I watch college softball, the WNBA, the LPGA, women’s tennis, all women’s events in the Olympics, not out of any wokeness, but because they are awesome athletes. I think most people are missing a lot of great games, out of a stupid belief that women’s sports are lesser. But that’s the prevailing sentiment.
I agree that they were created organically, but i think the interest, of both men and women, in men’s sports is because sports is a way of showcasing masculine virtues. I don’t think it’s because they are superior athletes. If that were the criteria, there’d be much less interest in college sports. I think it’s BECAUSE people, both male and female, enjoy seeing men excel at masculinity.
I agree. While they’ve evolved past it somewhat, sports by all appearances originated as a means for men to show off and compete with one another. It’s in part at least a labeling issue; the things men were interested in got labeled “sports”, the things women were interested in didn’t. Therefore things like running got labeled a sport, while dancing didn’t despite both being physically strenuous activities.
In the OP’s hypothetical I expect it would be the opposite and what we in RL consider sports would be regarded as a “feminine” pursuit.
I agree that testosterone is a big factor. In a world where women are the larger and stronger sex, sans testosterone-fueled aggression, there would be less alpha dominance between the sexes. But, it would certainly level the playing field. Ask the wife, “what’s for dinner?” one to many time and hubby may quickly find himself in a painful headlock. Push me around and you pay the price, dude!
In this matri-futuristic society, men might just be the drone bees of the human hive, buzzing around with one purpose (to mate)…then die young, while the women, akin to worker bees, run the show. So fellas, better get in line, because in this world, ‘Queen Bee’ isn’t just a nickname, it’s a job description!
That’s a reasonable opinion, just not one I share.
I do think there’s a cultural association of maleness with physical prowess and physical triumph over adversaries. Women athletes, such as basketball players, are intensely competitive and skilled, and it’s not that it’s boring to people because they aren’t taller faster or stronger, it’s because there’s no prebuilt audience of people inclined to cheer on women showing off physical prowess and physical triumph over adversaries.
Count me as agreeing with puzzlegal
I still think that sports teams are sublimated tribalism, which is a bigger thing for men then for women. The way high schools and colleges promote an “us against them” mindset with regards to sports. Noteworthy is the following men’s varsity sports has with female students, cheering for “their” team, and the social status that being a successful athlete confers upon male students. This tribal rivalry is continued in professional sports- which if you think about it wouldn’t necessarily have to be structured geographically but in practice is.
I was just agreeing with @Kimstu 
I think it’s more a matter of history. Men’s football, baseball, basketball, etc., have all had decades to build their legions of fans. Those sports have had a long time to learn what works, both strategically and in terms of audience popularity. Think of it as cultural evolution. Popular sports thrive and unpopular ones die off. The men’s versions of those sports are more popular than women’s because they had a head start.
There are two interesting counter-examples. In the U.S. at least, women’s gymnastics and figure skating have always seemed more popular than the men’s versions. They get more viewers, so they get more coverage, so more people are exposed to them, so more people become fans, so they get more viewers. I think women’s tennis has also been more popular than men’s in the U.S. for a while. The Williams sisters were very successful for years, but I can’t think of any great male players in that same time frame. That sort of success can drive popularity. International soccer may be going the same way.
In terms of the hypothetical, if women had started playing football, baseball, and basketball at the same time as men in our world, then their versions would be more popular now. Or maybe the sports landscape would be completely different and the biggest event of the year would be women’s field hockey instead of the Super Bowl.
That’s rather a cavalier way to phrase it. If such a thing did happen I hope it would be as resoundingly condemned as it is in this world. “I wouldn’t have to hit him/her if they’d just stop making me angry” is bullshit no matter which gender it’s coming from.
In the hypothetical world testosterone probably wouldn’t work quite like it does in our world.
Also, although there is some connection between testosterone and aggression it’s not 100% - one does not have to have above-average testosterone to be above average in aggression, and likewise not everyone with lower testosterone is meek and mild.
A head start is a definite advantage, and the inertia of an established fan base has to play a part. That said…
Are you a basketball fan? There is no play that’s a greater crowd pleaser, by far, than the brute force, hang-from-the-rim slam dunk. The soaring, acrobatic, above-the-rim game is the biggest gasp-inducing, roar-eliciting aspect of the game, like no other. Women can’t do that, and it has nothing to do with a head start. Unless that part of the game becomes devalued, they can’t overcome this.
(A reminder! I am a big fan of women’s basketball and consider it superior in many ways.)
I’ve read, and hopefully I’m not misremembering, that women’s gymnastics and figure skating are much more beloved by women. I think that may account for their position as an apparent outlier.
And there have been several dominant, great male players contemporary with the Williams sisters. I’ll only add that tennis is another sport where the women’s version is superior in many ways. It’s more strategic in shot placement, they’re much more likely to have ten-volley rallies, than the guys making 150 MPH serves. Like basketball, it’s a sport where lesser brute strength makes it more interesting.
Again, how do you all know there would be sports at all in this reality? How do you know there would be technology? How would societies handle reproduction and child rearing? You don’t know.
But I guess this thread has turned into a generic men’s sports v. women’s argument.
Sure, but that’s an example of the sort of evolution I was talking about. I found an interesting article on the history of the slam dunk. It happened in the early days of basketball, but it as frowned upon. It was even banned in high school and college for a while. But it became popular, the bans were lifted, more players started doing it, and basketball started drawing more fans. Other sports could have lost fans.
The OP only posits a world where women ar physically stronger than men. It doesn’t say whether women started playing organized league sports decades before men. I think that’s a bigger factor in what sports (men’s or women’s) would be popular now, rather than just strength.
Sure, but I was thinking specifically of American players. If you were an American tennis fan in the last few decades, and you wanted to watch and cheer for American players, you were watching women’s games a lot more than men’s.
There are women that can dunk like that. You just haven’t seen them.
Not cavalier, just hyperbole to highlight a point. The point being it should be understood by the husband that a bigger, stronger wife would not have to submit to aggressive, or unreasonable demands made by the husband—because she’d have the physical power to dominate, if she had to.
And, I don’t believe a female with elevated testosterone levels would necessarily acquire the same level of aggression as a testosterone-fueled male. Hormones, acting as chemical messengers in the body, do not directly cause behavioral changes but rather influence the likelihood of certain behaviors occurring in response to specific stimuli. The sex hormones, testosterone (may increase aggression) and estrogen (may inhibit aggression) are complicated chemicals whose interplay is important to consider. This dynamic interplay ensures that behavior is not predetermined but is adaptable to the environment. The interplay of hormones, genetics, and social context shapes behavior.