What about a boy playing on a girls' sports team?

The Game Room
82

You have two questions and I will address them both. But I want to be really clear on how I’m answering, so I’ll do the second one first. I you care about the answer to the second, read the bottom. But it is of lesser importance.

I completely agree it is unfair to tell women the only way they can play on a sports team is if they out compete the genetic outliers.

But it isn’t fair to the majority of people. Fortunately, as you indicated earlier, there is a really simple way we can still make competitive, high level sports available to some of those to whom this is unfair. Use gender. Awesome! More people get a chance to play and that is a very good thing.

So far, I hope there is no controversy in what I wrote.

Now the controversial part.
Not getting to play highly competitive, highly organized sports is not going to be hugely detrimental to those that don’t get those opportunities. It just isn’t. Using that as a justification for making new leagues is ignoring the fact there are still many, many others who must be being harmed and not caring.

It is a really, really good idea to make these things available to more people. Unfortunately, the force of “because it is a good idea” is not usually compelling enough to get people to do things. So now we need the force of law. Generally “because it is the right thing to do” isn’t strong enough to get a law, so we make up these rationales that women are harmed if they don’t get to play. THAT is where I get stuck.

If that truly is the justification for making new leagues we are still causing detriment to a majority of people. I’m fully behind making sports available to more people and using gender is a really, really good way to do that. Not because women are harmed if they don’t get to play, but because sports is good for people in general and without these separate leagues we would be limiting these opportunities.
About the pro question:

I was not the one who first brought up professionals. I was happy to leave this at the collegiate and high school level but others brought in the pros. I was simply answering that. The examples you and Atamasama gave would seem to indicate that you two feel those outliers must indicate there are no genetic disadvantages the majority of men couldn’t overcome and be able to compete against the best of the best. So I was asking if you feel that is true in all sports.

83

Nothing wrong with using biology and facts to open higher level/higher organized sports to more people. Nothing wrong with it at all. I’ve said that a dozen times (okay, I didn’t count, but it sure feels like that).

I just do not agree that society in general is harmed if those opportunities aren’t compelled by law to be made available. There are just way too many other people for whom this opportunity will never exist for me to think that. We opened up more opportunities, which is good, but we are still excluding many, including women. Life goes on.

84

In college and high school it’s sort of necessary to have these spaces/policies for women. Otherwise they’d be almost completely shut out. Should everyone who’d like to compete have an opportunity to? Sure. Why not expand high school and college athletics and have more recreational leagues.

Or get athletics out of school and have inclusive municipal/state leagues for everybody? But forcing girl teams to accept boys isn’t necessary in most cases in my opinion.

85

So what are you complaining about? If it’s not discrimination to exclude women from womens teams if they’re not athletic, then how are men who aren’t athletic being discriminated against?

Are you implying that having a womens league is discriminatory, period? And if not, WTF is your point?

86

I see. You claim I made the argument that men who don’t get to play sports are discriminated against (I didn’t) and then ask me to defend it (I can’t. I didn’t make the claim to begin with). You even quoted me asking for the cite where I made that claim (I never did and you won’t find it) and your brilliant retort was not to go find where I made that claim (which you can’t find because I never made it), but instead asking me why I’m inconsistent in a claim I never made.

I have no idea how to answer your question.

87

It is necessary in the sense that women would be shut out if we didn’t have these spaces. I agree. I don’t agree it is necessary for society in general to make these spaces available. I’m not even sure it is better for society for these spots to be required by force of law. It is a really superb thing and something we should be doing. No doubt about it. But once you get to necessary, I must disagree. Otherwise, there are far too many others that are still shut out and if shutting out people is bad for society we are still doing it.

88

So again, what point are you trying to make here?

89

What point do you think I’m making?
You’ve accused me of things I haven’t said which tells me you can’t be arsed to actually read and comprehend what I’ve written and instead intend to make up whatever you want. So make up what you think I’m saying go with that.
I’ve answered every post in good faith. Your post I have no intention of addressing.

90

How about you just state your point? So everyone is clear.

91

C’mon, this is as easy as dunking on short guys.

92

Thanks for posting this. That statement was never in my mind a claim of discrimination but when I started to think about how someone else might see it I realize it could easily be construed as such. So I apologize to Guinastasia for the snarky response. I should have read my statements more carefully to see how they could have been construed as such. I did post a non-snarky request for evidence of where I said such a thing, but this is the first time anyone did. So again, thanks.

Any competition is going to sort people based on abilities that align with the rules of the competition. If you setup a paper cutting contest it will select for people with scissors over people with a plastic fork. Setting up a contest where only right handed scissors are provided will obviously sort for right handed people and there are legitimate claims it is discriminatory against left handed people. The former contest is discriminatory against people with just plastic forks. Or plastic spoons. Pretty soon someone will come along with an ultra sharp razor blade and then contest could be considered discriminatory against people with scissors.

In the case of sports, the nature of the competition sorts towards those with specific genetic characteristics. People can legitimately claim it is discriminatory against women but in that same vein they must also claim it is discriminatory against men without the genetics to be among the best. I don’t see sports that way so my statement of “what about” wasn’t a claim of discrimination in my mind. It led to a snarky response to Guinastasia which I now regret and apologize for.

It was pointing out there are others beyond just women for whom the rules of the competition select against. If you feel the rules of any competition, which by their nature MUST select one group over another, are discrimination, then all competitions are discriminatory. I do not see it that way which is why I answered Guinastasia’s question about whether it is discriminatory against women who don’t make the higher level teams with a no, setting up the apparent contradictory answers.

As far as the discrimination question goes, I don’t see this as discriminatory against any group. The rules aren’t being setup to purposely make it more difficult or impossible for one specific group over another. While intentional exclusion of one group isn’t necessarily needed for discrimination (SAT questions never intentionally biased against certain groups, but do), there does come a point where that factor has to be considered otherwise any sorting scheme is a form of discrimination. For sports, the nature of them does make it impossible for many to compete at the highest levels, and, unfortunately, that includes all girls. If a girl were somehow able to be be good enough, she’d get to be on those teams, so I don’t see it as intentionally discriminatory.

I hope that helps. Maybe not. Maybe I’ll get crucified and people will point out what I’ve already said. Girls are sorted against when it comes to sports. If you want to call that discrimination, go ahead, but then you need to be consistent and say it is discriminatory against many guys. Further, as Guinastasia pointed out, you’ll also need to acknowledge it is discriminatory against many girls when women’s only leagues are formed.

Drunky Smurf -
I don’t know if that answers your question or not.
I’m afraid I’m repeating myself but I’ll try. If we did nothing to separate out the genetically gifted from the rest we would have nothing but genetically gifted playing sports. We should try to find ways to allow others to get to play. People looked around and noticed girls were excluded and decided it was imperative they get to play. While I think it is fantastic we can find ways to easily let them play, I think people who defend the forced formation of leagues for girls by saying it is critical for their well being and society in general are either intentionally or unintentionally ignoring the huge numbers of others who don’t get that same opportunity and never could have that same opportunity. Some have claimed that with the formation of men’s and women’s leagues there are no longer any people for whom that opportunity is an impossibility. They seem to feel any man, if they train hard enough, could compete against the top male athletes. Similarly, I presume, for women.

My point…society and people in general are not significantly damaged by excluding people from playing sports at the highest levels. If it were, we are in trouble because there are far, far more among us who can never get to that level, male or female, then there are those that can.

93

So wait, you’re saying it’s discriminatory to have a separate league for women, simply because if they’re at a disadvantage against men, so are other some other men?

I’m seriously fucking confused.

94

I’m saying none of this is discriminatory to anyone. It is life and the nature of competition.

95

But we’re not talking about “at the highest levels”. If there are no leagues that only allow women, those leagues will be dominated by men. The women’s 800m WORLD record holder would be hard pressed to beat a 16 year old boy from Iowa. For the 5k? You need to go all the way to 18 years old. Same for sprinters. And a majority of these athletes probably won’t even receive a full ride scholarship to a D1 school.

How do you get girls and women to even pretend to want to do something en masse if they’ll never even get the chance? And how should society treat the whinging of those who fall back on “poor genetics” as an excuse when there are literally THOUSANDS of leagues across the nation that will accept ANYONE to play a sport they enjoy?

96

In the case of the OP, the strength of the argument to justify denying that boy access to a varsity sport depends on your view. If you feel it is important to keep leagues where access to varsity sports is available to those not at the top of the distribution curve, great, deny him access. If you feel it is absolutely critical that more people in society be allowed to play sports because they would be harmed if we didn’t, then you need to let him play because otherwise he is being harmed. If you don’t care if a boy is being harmed but you care that girls are, how do you justify that?

I really cannot make this any clearer. Creating women’s only leagues is a good idea and I’m 100% in favor of it. If we didn’t, women would be locked out of sports. I simply think it is misguided to justify the creation of these leagues because it is harmful in some way if we don’t. If that were truly the case, we are still harming a lot of people and those advocating that it is imperative for women to have these opportunities needs to explain why it isn’t imperative for the other genetically disadvantaged among us.

We are talking about the “highest levels” at the respective age groups. Varsity sports for high school, inter collegiate teams for college. At those levels, the number of men that can qualify for any significant playtime is small, and it only gets smaller as you get higher up.

How do we get men who fully realize they have no hope of making these top teams to do something? The short answer, for men, is that we tell them “tough luck” and don’t try to get them to do something. We offer what we offer and for those with no chance we simply shrug and say there is only so much we can do. That seems to be okay to tell the majority of boys. Society isn’t collapsing and life goes on so the argument that there is great detriment if we don’t give genetically disadvantaged people access is specious.

You ignore them. You offer what you offer and call it good. You can’t possibly separate out the ones with borderline genetics from those that simply don’t want to work hard enough.

Forget for a minute that gender even exists. When it comes to sports women would be part of the distribution of athletic abilities people have. They are at the tail end of that distribution. Only the top end of that distribution is allowed to play in the varsity and inter-collegiate, highly organized leagues. They get the best fields, training, stadiums and experiences. For everyone else, there are those thousands of leagues across the nation that will accept anyone to play a sport they enjoy. So, except for those top tier percentage people, the rest of the distribution gets exactly what you are advocating is available to everyone. That includes A LOT of men.

In this genderless distribution people realize it would be awesome if we could find ways to let more than just the top percenters have opportunities for higher level sports. But how do you do that without it just meaning you are opening it up to just the next level down in the distribution curve? Fortunately, there is a clear, easy, obvious way we can do that because gender does exist. So we use that. Lots of good comes of that and it allows many an opportunity they wouldn’t otherwise have.

Somewhere in that distribution curve we took a select few and allowed them to play sports. But there are still a ton of people in that curve that never will and never can have those experiences and opportunities. Some are men, some are women. Society is just fine. We aren’t ringing our hands and clutching our pearls because this specific type of genetically disadvantaged people aren’t getting an opportunity to play varsity/inter-collegiate sports. We gave one type of genetically disadvantaged people an opportunity, which, again, I truly support. For the rest of us, we’ll just have to play in our rec leagues and club teams.

97

So rather than hijack this thread to hell and back, why didn’t you just say this from the outset?

Or do you like playing games?

98

[Moderating]

Then why have you spent the entire thread arguing against it? Given that you’ve apparently been arguing in bad faith all this time, I’m officially directing you to not post any more in this thread. And in case it’s not clear, this is not a conditional directive.

99

Sorry, never intended it to be a game. I view my first two paragraphs in the previous response to be really similar to the original post I made which is on track and on topic. As a matter of fact, for a hijack, I did a piss poor job because as you can see I’ve tied my entire arguments back to the topic of the OP.

I can’t argue with you if you feel I hijacked this. You are entitled to your view and it would be pointless to argue that.

And with that, I must move along. I can try to answer any further questions or thoughts at some other time, but I’m leaving for the weekend and won’t have access for a while.

100

[Moderating again]

I’m going to assume that you posted that before you saw my post, and so will not penalize you, this time.

101

[Moderating]
On further review, this directive is revoked:

cmosdes is hereby allowed to post in this thread again.