Sure, streamline it to “Don’t be a jerk” and maybe people will stop trying to rules lawyer everything and get right up to the line of breaking rules. I think we would see many more bannings, though.
This is not necessarily the same in all sports, however. And women can be just as aggressive in the sports they participate in. It may not be basketball, but I don’t think saying women just play sports a different way is necessarily helpful. There are plenty of “ball hog” women’s soccer players for example where you have quite a bit of men’s soccer teams where lots of quick passes to strategically get the ball to the goal is common.
Now if one wants to say that male athletes tend to be faster and stronger and that generally makes a more compelling viewership experience, I don’t really have a problem with that.
I think you’ve got a point in that different people are interested in different play styles. I don’t know to what extent that difference in interest lines up with the gender of the watcher. And if there aren’t quite a lot of men interested in group strategy, I don’t see how we’d have gotten men’s team sports in the first place.
I’d have to go hunt them up again; but no, I don’t think so. I did find some that seemed entirely concerned with power and speed, and others that included quite a lot of other characteristics as an essential part of athleticism.
I am of the personal opinion that “sexism” implies at the very least discrimination (in treatment of the sexes), not mere differentiation or factual claims.
~Max
I’m not interested in rules-lawyering specific statements. That kind of pigeonholing is well-worn camouflage, and in any case I can’t say it any better than Justice Stewart did.
I’m more than happy with the mods aggressively policing jerks, and I’m more than comfortable with “I know it when I see it” being the only bright line they need.
If the boards seem more dull now than in the past, I submit that it’s not because of the folks who’ve been banned. It’s because of all the other interesting, thoughtful, intelligent posters who drifted away rather than engaging with jerks.
Bricker and Bone, for example?
True, that.
No, I think Eve and Una Persson are way better examples…
The problem here, as in many other topics, is that there is legit disagreement (based off of difference in opinion) and illegit disagreement (when someone is factually wrong).
And there will always be people tempted to lump both together under the same category so that they can ban both of what they dislike.
Welcome to humanity!
There’s no such thing as “not running into trouble in practice.” It’s gonna be messy and leave people unhappy no matter what. The current situation is messy and is leaving people unhappy. We just gotta do the best we can.
Kant’s quote is kinda the last word on that: “Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.”
I think most of our current mods are smart enough to distinguish. The subject of bigotry is one that they do need a little more education on–like most people–but that sort of training is generally for people who are being paid for their services.
Best we can do is to try to educate both the mods and the other posters when the issue comes up.
Maybe more to the point, I would ask: What exactly do people want to see banned from the Game Room (or anywhere else) that isn’t banned already?
If someone comes into the Game Room commenting about how women athletes are sluts and whores, for instance, or compares Venus Williams to an ape or gorilla, they will get warned, and rightfully so, maybe even suspended or banned. Just like calling someone the N-word. I see no disagreement there.
But nobody so far has given a concrete example of something they want banned, that currently isn’t banned.
Ask Max. Dale’s comment drew censure, and rightfully so, without any new rule. Max seems to think that enough sportsfans are sexist that, I dunno, maybe it shouldn’t’ve been censured? That is, as I said earlier, bananas.
Of course there is difference of opinion. But we can’t moderate based on the opinions of the people involved. I mean, most sexists don’t believe they are being sexist.* We will have to come up with line that is more objective.
You have just argued that a group of men is better than the corresponding group of women. You didn’t argue that they are better at a particular trait. You didn’t say they are better at something. Just, altogether, they are better. That seems obviously something to avoid saying.
I’ll agree the “better athletes” line is a bit more borderline. I think @thorny_locust has the better argument, as your definition of “athlete” seems (unintentionally) biased. But it’s not obviously sexist, and thus probably isn’t something that should be moderated as such—at least for now.
That said, I don’t see how not allowing either of these statements would create a problem with your main argument. You could very much discuss why people like to watch those who are not the pinnacle of their sport or why some women’s sports have taken off while others haven’t. You could even bring up that, in most sports, it seems that the best men in a particular division would dominate the women if they were to compete.
But notice how that’s not “Male athletes are better than women.” That’s not even “NBA players are more atheletic than WNBA players.” You don’t have to make those categorical statements without qualifiers.
One thing I’ve learned lately is that throwing in stuff like “It seems, I think,” and other indicators that I’m not stating objective truth helps a lot. As does being specific, and not overly general.
*Do not read this as me calling any particular person sexist. It’s just a general statement. Most racists also think that they aren’t being racist. Most bigots don’t think they’re being bigoted. The white guy who says the n-word says it isn’t sexist because black people say it, for example.
Then I would argue someone making that statement about the NBA and WNBA is very likely not being a sexist. They are very likely making an observation of fact.
Those two people will not be playing in the WNBA and NBA, respectively. No one is comparing them. Are you seriously going to hold on to the position that someone saying NBA players are way better than WNBA players is making a sexist statement that should earn a warning?
See, here we go.
I absolutely did not make any statement even close to that. Your claim here is false and preposterous. There is not one single sentence in this thread or in any other thread, ever, that I have ever written, saying a group of men is inherently “better” than a group of women. I even wrote the words “It (women not being as strong and as fast as men) doesn’t make women people of lesser intrinsic value.” I have very clearly, carefully, stated that NBA players are better than WNBA players at playing the game of basketball. Literally every word I’ve written here has been specifically about the relatively ability to excel in a given sport, not about comparing the general worth of men and women. Not one single English-speaking person who ever learned to read would read my words in this thread and come to any other conclusion.
But we are discussing, specifically, the comparison of NBA players and WNBA players. So in the case of that statement, actually, is IT confined to a specific sport.
“Better” how?
The US Women’s National Soccer Team would lose, badly, if they played against the US Men’s National Soccer Team.
And yet, I definitely wouldn’t say that the USMNST is “better” than the USWNST.
In fact, the Men’s team is pretty trash, while the Women’s team is one of the best in the world (somewhat lackluster performance at the Olympics notwithstanding).
So who is “better” at Soccer?
The team that would win.
At playing basketball. Duh.
Well, there ya go.
Yes, of course relative to their competition the USNWT is better, because they don’t play against men. That’s why Serena Williams is a greater tennis player than (picking a guy at random here) Andy Murray. Vastly more dominant. But we all do understand that head to head, Andy Murray would beat her pretty easily; in that sense he is BETTER, and in another she is better. If someone said “Andy Murray is more athletic than Serena Williams” I don’t see how a mod can warn for that. It’s simply true for many commonly accepted definitions of athletic; unless the context is pretty clearly bad, and the poster is putting a lot around that statement that makes it part of a sexist screed, how is that one statement moddable?
Context matters. If we are discussing why the NBA is very popular and the WNBA is not, observing that NBA players are just way, way better at basketball is a valid observation, is it not? It’s why people prefer watching it, surely. The players are faster, they’re stronger, they’re quicker.
But suppose we were making a very different debate. Suppose, rather, we were discussing “who are the 10 greatest tennis players of all time” and you listed ten men, and didn’t list Serena, or Martina Navratilova, and when I asked why you said “men would beat them.” That is true, but they don’t play against men. That would miss the point; to my mind, “greatness” in tennis is about one’s level of domination over the competition, and Serena’s competition wasn’t Andy Murray, it was Jana Novotna. I would say she’s top ten easy in GREATNESS, even though by a head to head measure she can’t beat Andy Murray.
(This argument can be equally used in compating players of the past to players of today; modern players in any sport are superior to the players of the past, but I think it’s dumb to stake out the position that all the greatest athletes of all time played in the last 30 years. Jesse Owens was not an inferior athlete to every single guy who can run the hundred in under 10.2.)
Whether one is being a sexist or not is dependent on the nature of the discussion at hand. Of course, I’m trying to make a nuanced argument here, which isn’t a popular thing anymore.
No, dalej42’s pattern of behavior drew censure. His post, although admittedly sexist (or even misogynist by some definitions) on its own, was not censurable in its own right under current rules, according to current mods.
What_Exit wrote:
It was less about the modnote and more about a push from more than 1 mod, including Chronos to review Dale’s body of work.
Taking in isolation, I honestly don’t think most of the mods would have modded Dale’s post. But we quickly brought up that this was just the latest in a series of clearly misogynistic posts.
ETA: Also Chronos’s modnote, which is still presumably a valid application of the existing rules to the isolated post.
Chronos wrote:
@dalej42 gave his opinion, and by all indications it is a sincerely held opinion, therefore it is a valid part of this discussion.
~Max
Would it be sexist to claim that the USMNT is better than the USWNT because they would win a game between the two? Or, to go back to the terms that @RickJay said, that the USMNT players are better than the USWNT players because they are stronger and faster?
(FWIW, and granted FIFA rankings are pretty problematic, the USMNT is anticipated to be ranked the 9th best men’s team in the world when the rankings are updated - not exactly trash)