|
|
|
Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
 Posted - 11/26/2005 : 18:04:27 [Permalink]
|
quote:
If you pump a woman who has some natural athletic ability full of enough methyl testosterone, human growth hormone, etc. etc. you're artificially inducing a "masculine" physiological state (or, "above-masculine") is just a matter of a few more cc in a syringe.) This kind of thing actually begins to "blur the line" between male and female sports to an extent.
Not really. Take a guy and give him the same drugs, and he'll be faster and stronger than your juiced up woman.
|
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
|
 |
|
|
ronnywhite
SFN Regular
501 Posts |
Posted - 11/26/2005 : 18:34:50 [Permalink]
|
quote:
Originally posted by Dude
[br
Not really. Take a guy and give him the same drugs, and he'll be faster and stronger than your juiced up woman.
True, point is, if anyone has a doubt as to whether women can compete on men's level aside from societal factors having hindered opportunity, incentive etc. etc. all they need do to alleviate any doubt is to talk to a few "gym-rats" as to how much difference the hormones make. It seems clear enough to me that all of those olympic and pro athletes aren't taking big chances on losing medals and careers without very good cause. |
Ron White |
|
|
|
Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 11/26/2005 : 18:56:56 [Permalink]
|
quote:
Originally posted by Kil
Nope. What I am suggesting is that those girls will never even know that they have the ability. Or, that the ability may not be recognized and nurtured. They have been told that they don't have it (by inference) because they are girls and that notion is reinforced because they only get to play with the girls. They are only allowed one frame of reference, that one being that they are “the weaker sex.” That is why they are separated, right?
Sigh. No.quote:
Since I said that the same arguments about female gender differences were used to keep there from ever being female firefighters as you guys are making for not integrating PE, you have made the point for me. There are female firefighters able to “drag your fat ass out of a burning building.” The "utter crap" here is that you seemed to have purposely missed my point…
No, I didn't. The argument used to keep women from being firefighters is that they cannot meet a specific physical standard. That is untrue, and both you and I know it, which is why I never made such an argument. The firefighter argument is one of absolute standards, and I'm speaking only of relative differences.quote:
quote:
Dave:
Prior to locker rooms (that'd be through sixth grade in my county), all gym classes and school sports are integrated. If a kid isn't well-socialized with respect to competition by the time he/she is 12, more time in the ever-increasing competitiveness of junior high and high school won't help much.
Why is it that competition seems to top your list as the goal of physical education? I thought that physical education is the goal. You know, health and fitness.
Was I the only person here who went to a high school in which the boys competed during gym class, and that competition got more and more fierce as the boys got older? The boys were doing this, it wasn't that the teachers were encouraging it.quote:
Adolescence is a crucial time of development, which includes the development of social skills and attitudes with regard to how kids come to view both themselves and the other sex.
Indeed, it's also the time at which male subculture stratifies into "jocks" and "wimps," with a lot of dick-measuring going on as the males compete for the "alpha" spot.quote:
Separating them at that time, it seems to me, sends the wrong message.
For an hour a day? Come on.quote:
Physical education is what I am discussing but yes, that often includes sports. That you can't see how the way PE is generally taught in America can have any bearing on how we may view ourselves and the opposite sex I find incomprehensible.
Holy fuck, Kil! I nev |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
|
|
|
Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 11/26/2005 : 23:38:45 [Permalink]
|
quote:
Me:
Since I said that the same arguments about female gender differences were used to keep there from ever being female firefighters as you guys are making for not integrating PE, you have made the point for me. There are female firefighters able to “drag your fat ass out of a burning building.” The "utter crap" here is that you seemed to have purposely missed my point…
quote:
Dave:
No, I didn't. The argument used to keep women from being firefighters is that they cannot meet a specific physical standard. That is untrue, and both you and I know it, which is why I never made such an argument. The firefighter argument is one of absolute standards, and I'm speaking only of relative differences.
Okay, here is the deal. When woman first applied to become firefighters they were not allowed to take the exam. The reason? It was felt by the powers that be (at the time) that they would not pass the physical requirements of the exam. They were barred from taking the exam because woman are not as strong as men. It was also felt that woman might cause some of the men some discomfort or might be a distraction, ect. You are right about the specific physical requirement but they were barred from the exam for more general reasons. The perception existed that a woman could not pass the exam because she was, well, a woman. The argument has been made that girls should not compete with boys in a co-ed PE environment because…
quote:
Dude:
…boys are different from girls. Male bodies are stronger and faster. This holds true for all levels of competition past the 6th or 7th grade. Once puberty kicks in, biology is no longer "fair" in this regard.
I can tell you, that in my highschool, if the sports teams weren't set up differently for boys/girls, then there would have been maybe one girl on the varsity basketball squad, none at all on the track & field varsity squad (for any event), none for football and none for wrestling.
That would teach them all one hell of a lesson: Girls suck at sports and shouldn't even bother.
quote:
Dave:
Dude is correct on this. And what goes on in high school carries over to the amateur and professional sports later on. But who in their right mind would compete in a sport where the biological desk is stacked completely against them?
So what your saying, Dave, is that because there is a specific test for firefighters physical fitness, that woman were not allowed to take because they were woman, and a more general girls are not as strong as boys kinda thing, I should make some distinction between those two arguments. If at least part of your argument is that PE shouldn't be co-ed because girls are not as strong as boys please help me out here and clarify because that would mean that I don't understand what you are saying.
quote:
Dave:
Was I the only person here who went to a high school in which the boys competed during gym class, and that competition got more and more fierce as the boys got older? The boys were doing this, it wasn't that the teachers were encouraging it.
|
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
|
|
|
Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 11/27/2005 : 00:56:51 [Permalink]
|
quote:
Originally posted by Kil
So what your saying, Dave, is that because there is a specific test for firefighters physical fitness, that woman were not allowed to take because they were woman, and a more general girls are not as strong as boys kinda thing, I should make some distinction between those two arguments.
How can you not make a distinction between the two? The incorrect one says (for example) that no woman can lift 300 pounds, while the correct one says that the average man will be able to outlift the average woman by 50 pounds (for example). Obviously, if the peak-performing men could lift 500 pounds, then lots of high-performing women will be able to surpass the 300-pound requirement.
Claiming that no women will ever meet the physical requirements to be a firefighter is a sexist claim, plain and simple. Claiming that fewer women than men, on a percentage basis, will be able to meet those requirements is simply acknowledging biology.quote:
If at least part of your argument is that PE shouldn't be co-ed because girls are not as strong as boys please help me out here and clarify because that would mean that I don't understand what you are saying.
Some background may be appropriate here: in seventh grade, once every two weeks for 18 weeks, I had a weight-training PE period. From 7th through 10th grades, that was my only PE experience which was not a competitive sport. Soccer, volleyball, fencing, touch football, softball, handball, tennis, running, etc. are all competitive sports, and while we were taught to take losses with grace, we sure weren't taught to strive to lose.
Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that our PE teachers were all school-team coaches, and treated the regular PE classes as miniature "try outs" for the extracirricular sports teams (not that I got any call-ups for being inarguably the best in that 4-week fencing class - then again, our high school didn't have a fencing team...).
At any rate, however one of these activities was scored, it was a near-certainty that the "elite" boys would outperform the "elite" girls. Since it's unlikely that we'll ever be able to overcome the adolescent desire to compare oneself to others, mixing the two in competitive sports is likely to create a bunch of crushed egos.
I've got no problem with coed aerobics or dance classes and the like. They don't bring out the competitive nature of kids like sports do.quote:
I bet the teachers were not exactly stopping them either. A coach is just as subject to the dictates of culture as anyone. Plus, a winner is rewarded. I'm not suggesting that winners shouldn't be rewarded but I am suggesting that the whole set up could be changed in a way that including girls would not necessarily thwart competition. But I am not a fool. I understand that the change that I am suggesting would be painful for a while.
What you don't seem to get, Kil, is that the best girls are generally not going to be able to compete with the best boys, and expecting them to be able to do so is going to thwart attempts at maintaining girls' self-esteem. And what few people seem to want to consider is that forcing boys to participate in activities where girls usually excel (traditional girls-only gymnastics, for example, wherein a lower center-of-gravity helps a lot), |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
|
|
|
Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 11/27/2005 : 16:47:08 [Permalink]
|
Kil, I wasn't referring to PE class. I was referring to competetive sports in schools.
For which there is no "absolute" standard. If you are the coach, and you want a winning team, you take the best athletes you have and put them in the starting positions.
In a world where competetive sports weren't segregated by sex you have very few women on any highschool team, and none on any college or pro teams. You would, essentially, eliminate women from competetive sports.
That isn't sexism, it is just biology.
The analogy to military and firefighting jobs doesn't hold up here because you are talking about jobs that can set minimum standards. Standards that some women will certainly be able to meet. Allthough I can tell you, from my own time in the military, that the Army uses a double standard for male and female physical requirements. The men are held to a much more rigorous standard of physical fitness.
|
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
|
|
|
|
Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 11/27/2005 : 17:45:11 [Permalink]
|
| Okay, I just took an informal survey. It's a tiny sampling of people in chat. As it turns out, Canada, Sweden, and Brazil all have coed physical education. So this idea is not that strange. (That was everyone who is not American in chat.) I would like to see more numbers however, and figure out what it means. For example, does it mean less sexism. But it does support my contention that the way PE is set up here is a social construct. |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
|
|
|
woolytoad
Skeptic Friend
313 Posts |
Posted - 11/27/2005 : 18:23:54 [Permalink]
|
quote:
kil
Okay, here is the deal. When woman first applied to become firefighters they were not allowed to take the exam. The reason? It was felt by the powers that be (at the time) that they would not pass the physical requirements of the exam. They were barred from taking the exam because woman are not as strong as men. It was also felt that woman might cause some of the men some discomfort or might be a distraction, ect. You are right about the specific physical requirement but they were barred from the exam for more general reasons. The perception existed that a woman could not pass the exam because she was, well, a woman. The argument has been made that girls should not compete with boys in a co-ed PE environment because…
I have not read the last 3 pages of the thread due to playing Dungeon Keeper 2 (yes, it's old) all weekend.
But we need to make a distinction here. If a woman can pass the necessary tests to do a particular job. By all means they should do it.
With most sports the whole point is to be the best you can be. At this moment in time, the best women are often severely disadvantaged due to biological differences. One day we may breed women who are on a biological equal footing as men (*shudder* recalls some female swimmers from China), but integration as a general rule is a very bad idea and does more to discourage sport among women than it does to encourage it (and my experience coaching archery as a club level coach seems to support this).
Maybe one day, but not now. I also realise that at social and amateur levels, biological advantages aren't as important. But I believe to get the best sports people, we need to structure amateur/junior sport training and practise the same way the top sports people do. |
|
|
|
Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
|
|
H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 11/27/2005 : 18:52:14 [Permalink]
|
quote:
Originally posted by Kil
Okay, I just took an informal survey. It's a tiny sampling of people in chat. As it turns out, Canada, Sweden, and Brazil all have coed physical education. So this idea is not that strange. (That was everyone who is not American in chat.) I would like to see more numbers however, and figure out what it means. For example, does it mean less sexism. But it does support my contention that the way PE is set up here is a social construct.
I think most PE classes in America are co-ed now, Kil. About 90% of the activities in my gym class were co-ed, from kickball, to volleyball, to indoor-hockey-played-sitting-on-scooters.
What was separated were anything that measured us against one another, like the President's physical fitness exam, and maybe a few contact sports like basketball. Only then would we pair off into groups.
And like Dude, I think most of us think competitive sports should be separated by gender. But PE classes? Maybe boys and girls never mixed in gym classes in your day, but I'm fairly certain they do now all the time. I'm willing to bet it's a non-issue.
|
"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
| Edited by - H. Humbert on 11/27/2005 18:53:03 |
|
|
|
Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 11/27/2005 : 19:48:55 [Permalink]
|
quote:
H. Humbert:
Maybe boys and girls never mixed in gym classes in your day, but I'm fairly certain they do now all the time. I'm willing to bet it's a non-issue.
Actually, to some extent, it's the law. It's called Title IX. And it's been the law since 1972. While some schools follow the law, more or less, too few schools follow the spirit of the law as evidenced by some of the posts in this thread and this report:
Bottom of the Ninth: Girls, Physical Education, and Literature
|
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
|
|
|
ronnywhite
SFN Regular
501 Posts |
Posted - 11/27/2005 : 19:56:15 [Permalink]
|
quote:
Originally posted by woolytoad
One day we may breed women who are on a biological equal footing as men
Nah, I think I'll "No" that one when the initiative hits the ballots. It's probably my sexism coming through, and although it's not that it would induce feelings of "inadequacy" in particular, I'm old enough to recall the Soviet Block female swimmers of Olympics past, and there's something about women with thick football player necks, bulging biceps, and (probably) hairy-knuckles that's "less-than-aesthetic" in my purely subjective opinion... I think I'd rather live with a little potential for societal inequity, but for females that rather wouldn't, well, "Hey, pass the juice." |
Ron White |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Topic Locked
