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Please stop telling us that women's sport is as good as men's - it isn't! Discuss

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Original post by Drewski
The BBC has an obligation as a public broadcaster to show these things. If you don't like it, don't watch it.


But if your argument is that these sports are crap because they're not of the same standard as the professional men's, why aren't you having a go at disabled sport as well? The World Para-athletics was the week before last. Why isn't that on your list?


You raise an interesting point actually. I am ambivalent about the extent of the BBC coverage of Para Olympic sport, and I say this as someone who has spent several years of my life working with adults with learning disabilities.

My problem with it is that it always seems a tad tokenistic, runing a grave risk of being patronising. We would organise sports events for members of the charity I worked for every once in a while (it was a small pat of the work) and I always thought it was beneficial and worthwhile. The paticipants really enjoyed the attention it afforded, and for the winners it built self esteem.

There was a crowd as such, just a few family members and professional support staff. And no-one who attended did so to watch a sporting event in any true sense of the meaning. It wasn't about that.

Para-Athletics is different, it is much more about physical disability, and the standard is immeasurably higher. I get that. And it raises the profile of disabled people, who as a whole are an unjustly forgotten group. But all the same it still feels like an unnatural, artificial event somehow. How can a one armed swimmer truly complete in the same stroke with one without feet? How can world record times have meaning when the athletes competing have such discrete disabilities?

So although well meaning, and a force for good in driving public opinion in one sense, it still troubles me somehow. The BBC gives tallies of gold medal totals, the postbox in my town is painted gold because a Para Olympian comes from there.

But I don't consider it to be really comparable with the real Olympics, or worthy of the same coverage. Watching sport is meant to be engaging, tense, entertaining. I watch a Para Olympic race, if I do so, more as a duty than for pleasure.

Maybe that is just me. I respect those who might disagree, but that it how it seems to me.
(edited 6 years ago)
Original post by Tubbz
I'm curious as to which rugby club has an 800k annual playing budget for their first team and is sitting in national 3 or below.

I'm calling BS here.



That'd be Newbury Blues, Newbury, Berks. The budget should've grown but one d*ckhead chairman called Ben Ryan (Fiji 7's coach) screwed the budget and so it didn't grow at all..... in order to meet the budget for the 1sts, the junior team fees went up from 75 quid a season in 2010 to 165 in 2015.... and equipment wasn't paid for at all.... but hey, that's a rant i've had many times before
Reply 62
I would normally agree with you. Though women tend to be better marksmen than men. Some sports women are better but very few.
Original post by Nirvana1989-1994
No, it makes it exactly that. Trash tabloid journalism masquerading as an actual factual newspaper.


Except in this case it was an opinion piece marquarading as an opinion peace. If this peace is obviously *******s as you seem to imply it is then explain why
Reply 64
Original post by PolPot
I would normally agree with you. Though women tend to be better marksmen than men. Some sports women are better but very few.


An area where broad hips helps.
Original post by brimstone131
Despite DM, Dominic Lawson always writes exceptionally well, interesting article. I know it's sports orientated, but I think it covers more than just sport

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-4745054/Stop-telling-women-s-sport-good-men-s.html


There's an immensely easy answer to this question. Get rid of sex segregation in sports. If men and women are equally talented we'll see equal numbers of men and women at the top ...
Original post by brimstone131
Despite DM, Dominic Lawson always writes exceptionally well, interesting article. I know it's sports orientated, but I think it covers more than just sport

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-4745054/Stop-telling-women-s-sport-good-men-s.html


There is always going to be a deviance between mens and womens sports- It's called biology, men are physcially stronger then women and womens sports should be treated as such. For example a womens football team would lose heavily to a mans team
I only watch F1 and the idea of a women's division for that got shot down because constructivists think there is no reason that a woman can't compete with men.

The stupid thing is a women's category may have shown that by removing the first hurdle that women aren't drawn to even trying in the first place. A women's category could well have resulted in women who would be competitive with the fastest men at which point there would be no reason not to promote them to the main series.
Original post by limetang
Except in this case it was an opinion piece marquarading as an opinion peace. If this peace is obviously *******s as you seem to imply it is then explain why


*piece xoxo
Why cant we have a womens formula one..
Original post by inthedark1
Why cant we have a womens formula one..


The idea got suggested and quickly shot down (including by female driver Susie Wolff) because it doesn't take more strength or endurance than women have to drive the current cars and biologically their reaction times can be demonstrated to be just as quick.
Original post by BigYoSpeck
The idea got suggested and quickly shot down (including by female driver Susie Wolff) because it doesn't take more strength or endurance than women have to drive the current cars and biologically their reaction times can be demonstrated to be just as quick.


Ah ok, it would be really intetesting to have men compete against women would be great for studies on gender and psychological/physical ability too.
I wish the equivalences to the men's game could stop. England women win and without fail they're 'showing the men how it's done', every time.

The diving thing is fast becoming the new 'could he do it in Stoke on a cold Tuesday night', btw. If you understand the sport you understand why diving happens.
Original post by Tubbz
You've never attempted either of these things at a decent standard, have you?

Motor racing involves a lot of strength to hold the car and deal with the forces.

Cue power generation in snooker is one of the hardest things about the game.

Even darts, a sport where you really wouldn't suggest there was any physicality needed, women end up using equipment to the men.

The only point where you've come close to the issue, is the infrastructure. Men have had privilege in sport thrust upon them (take football where women were stripped of their right to play) and in fact, live viewing figures have significantly dropped since making the sport male only.


Motor racing does require strength, but past a certain threshold (which women are capable of reaching) it doesn't matter. Similarly in snooker you can do well without impressive cue power, there are plenty of other aspects of the game you can practice on. Darts I can't speak for, as I don't find it at all interesting.

But what was your point? That even in motor racing, snooker and darts, the women's version will always be inferior because they are physically weaker? Infrastructure is a factor which needs to catch up (and this needs to be driven from a young age), but even with the same training and exposure, the athleticism involved in football (your example) will mean the men are significantly better than the women.
Original post by generallee
You raise an interesting point actually. I am ambivalent about the extent of the BBC coverage of Para Olympic sport, and I say this as someone who has spent several years of my life working with adults with learning disabilities.

My problem with it is that it always seems a tad tokenistic, runing a grave risk of being patronising. We would organise sports events for members of the charity I worked for every once in a while (it was a small pat of the work) and I always thought it was beneficial and worthwhile. The paticipants really enjoyed the attention it afforded, and for the winners it built self esteem.

There was a crowd as such, just a few family members and professional support staff. And no-one who attended did so to watch a sporting event in any true sense of the meaning. It wasn't about that.

Para-Athletics is different, it is much more about physical disability, and the standard is immeasurably higher. I get that. And it raises the profile of disabled people, who as a whole are an unjustly forgotten group. But all the same it still feels like an unnatural, artificial event somehow. How can a one armed swimmer truly complete in the same stroke with one without feet? How can world record times have meaning when the athletes competing have such discrete disabilities?

So although well meaning, and a force for good in driving public opinion in one sense, it still troubles me somehow. The BBC gives tallies of gold medal totals, the postbox in my town is painted gold because a Para Olympian comes from there.

But I don't consider it to be really comparable with the real Olympics, or worthy of the same coverage. Watching sport is meant to be engaging, tense, entertaining. I watch a Para Olympic race, if I do so, more as a duty than for pleasure.

Maybe that is just me. I respect those who might disagree, but that it how it seems to me.


I think you're right regarding the tokenism. It is good to promote sport (well, health) in groups of people who can't compete at the top level (generally able bodied men), but I remember Channel 4 asking someone from Royal Mail why they didn't treat British Paralympian champions the same as Olympian champions. An impossible question for a PR person to answer correctly, but really we all know (I hope) the distinction. Able bodied men are the largest group interested in sport, and happen to be the best at it, so there is the greatest competition on two counts. Paralympians aren't nearly as numerous, and then you dilute the competition further with the different classifications (people will value heavyweight boxing more than the rest). I respect their drive to compete, but that's where I have the most respect for them - I hope that if I were to lose an arm/leg/other then I would be able to do what they do, but I certainly don't wish to lose an arm/leg/whatever. With an able bodied person I can look up to the best in a more pure sense.
Original post by Graduate_Medic
In terms of talent and skill, women can be equal to their male counterparts. In terms of power and strength, biology has determined that men will win that - but that's precisely why we don't make women and men compete against each other. If you want to watch SKILL, GRIT and TALENT watching women is just as good as watching men.

Obvious drawback - there are less resources, money and coaching talent driving development in women's sport so skill and talent can be lesser than men's sports AT THE MOMENT. But as this is changing, so will the quality of women's sports increase.

For example, (male) rugby veterans have told me they love watching women's elite rugby even though it's only just turned professional because the women are more tactical and skillful than the men because they don't have brawn/smashing power to rely on so much. My (male) MMA teacher also loves watching female UFC fights because he says women have a higher tolerance for physical pain which is interesting to see play out in the final rounds.



This is because - unsurprisingly - less money and coaching talent is poured into women's sports than men's because traditionally all the focus has been on men's sports. It also means the talent pool to recruit from for women's elite teams is smaller and less diverse than men's teams. It's a cyclic relationship: as coverage grows, resources will grow, interest from talented women will grow, and the overall quality will improve.


Don't ever compare mens MMA to WMMA again, aside from the pure skill differential which is mountainous, wmma is a ****ing joke in comparison, you will NEVER get a fight like Shogun vs Henderson 1, Bigfoot Silva vs Mark Hunt 1, Lawler vs Macdonald 2, Penn vs Sanchez, Frye vs Shamrock, Gaethje vs Johnson etc in womens mma, they lack the firepower, toughness and pure grit than men go through to get there. The talent level is MILES apart, getting punched by a 115 lb girl is not even in the same universe as getting the hammer fists from a hyped up Robbie Lawler, it's actually insulting that you think bums like paige vanzant can be held in the same regard as legends like Dan Henderson and think "women are tougher bla bla my sjw coach said so", ****ing lol, it's not even the same universe. WMMA is pure trash outside of a few isolated cases,Joanna Jedrzejczyk and Cris Cyborg are decent, everyone else is a soccer mom just taking up space on the card that should go to legit fighters. If women want to fight that's fine, I enjoy it too, Cris Cyborg is a killer and one of my favorite fighters to watch, but don't try and ******** us and act like they're better or more natural fighters than males, that's straight up ********.
(edited 6 years ago)
Reply 76
Original post by brimstone131
That'd be Newbury Blues, Newbury, Berks. The budget should've grown but one d*ckhead chairman called Ben Ryan (Fiji 7's coach) screwed the budget and so it didn't grow at all..... in order to meet the budget for the 1sts, the junior team fees went up from 75 quid a season in 2010 to 165 in 2015.... and equipment wasn't paid for at all.... but hey, that's a rant i've had many times before


Your budget isn't £800k, you're just lying. There's a cap of £50k annually below the championship, and tbh, given most championship players are picking up £6000 a year, I can't see where you're spending £800k, unless you're paying 50 players way too much, but again, that wouldn't happen.
Original post by Nirvana1989-1994
*piece xoxo


.... okay?
Original post by Amefish
Wow, a Daily Mail article without a photo of a scantily clad woman!... although still misogynistic.

In reference to the subject of the article, though, my personal opinion is that women's sport is just as bad as men's sport :smile: while sport can be fun to play, it is really overrated in terms of the media coverage it gets, how much people are paid, etc. I really don't think it deserves its own special segment on the national news every day.


spot on in all respects ...

that said there are some sports in which the women's game has avoided some of the issues that plague the men's game ,

never mind those sports where women compete on an even footing with men ...
(edited 5 years ago)
Original post by Greg Jackson
Don't ever compare mens MMA to WMMA again, aside from the pure skill differential which is mountainous, wmma is a ****ing joke in comparison, you will NEVER get a fight like Shogun vs Henderson 1, Bigfoot Silva vs Mark Hunt 1, Lawler vs Macdonald 2, Penn vs Sanchez, Frye vs Shamrock, Gaethje vs Johnson etc in womens mma, they lack the firepower, toughness and pure grit than men go through to get there. The talent level is MILES apart, getting punched by a 115 lb girl is not even in the same universe as getting the hammer fists from a hyped up Robbie Lawler, it's actually insulting that you think bums like paige vanzant can be held in the same regard as legends like Dan Henderson and think "women are tougher bla bla my sjw coach said so", ****ing lol, it's not even the same universe. WMMA is pure trash outside of a few isolated cases,Joanna Jedrzejczyk and Cris Cyborg are decent, everyone else is a soccer mom just taking up space on the card that should go to legit fighters. If women want to fight that's fine, I enjoy it too, Cris Cyborg is a killer and one of my favorite fighters to watch, but don't try and ******** us and act like they're better or more natural fighters than males, that's straight up ********.


did the poor little broflake have his masculinity threatened ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2YHNlMSxwE

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