In fact, you statement is false, as women have surpassed men in certain sports. You might not know this because it is rarely publicized. Some places where this has been true has been rock climbing, tree climbing, tennis among others. It isn't celebrated. Men don't like it. The media doesn't give the time of day.
Super interesting that there are now women as world-class climbers (and not just in their category), but that doesn't invalidate my claim, and from some googling it appears the playing field is now basically even. I don't know enough about climbing to determine whether that qualifies as "surpassing", but let's assume it does. So now there's a handful of sports where women are competing at the same level or better than men. Do you
really think that it's just a matter of time until that's the case for all sports? That it's just the patriarchy holding young women back, and the current women at the top of their sport just aren't motivated enough?
And in what world have women surpassed men in tennis? Didn't we have this whole debate last year when McEnroe said Serena Williams would be ranked 700 or something? As far as tennis is concerned, it's not up for debate, at all.
And sorry Cressida but the bell curve thing is just nonsense. The whole point of doing statistical analysis is to:
1) run experiments on large sample sizes
2) isolate characteristics, to the furthest extent possible
This is why we self-segregate into categories that we think are fair. We do this in a bunch of ways:
- age
- gender
- how much effort are you willing to put into it, through leagues and divisions systems
The last one is important too! I'm a casual swimmer who swims 3-4 miles a week. When I went to swim meets, I wasn't measuring myself against professional swimmers, or my cousin Danny who swims 50 yards at the beach every other summer.
Of course you can find millions and millions of women who are better than millions and millions of men at sports at time T. We have incredible variance and follow training regimens to push ourselves.Okay, let's do a thought experiment. Let's assume we can entirely boil down athleticism to a super simple task: tug of war. It requires strength, but a skilled team can win against a disorganized or unprepared opponent. Let's assume each side has 100 humans, entirely randomly selected from the pool of humans currently alive, pulling on that rope like their life depends on it. That's a number high enough to smooth out any luck of the draw in case you happen to draw a large number of 5 year olds or people without limbs.
Experiment 1:
Side A pulls 100 random women from the 3.5B available women. Side B pulls 100 random men. Remember, 100 is a high-ish number but you could get lucky and get a huge advantage if you pull enough of the "right" people. How much money would you bet that side A wins, exactly once? Well actually there is a decent chance, not super high but decent. However, the odds become vanishingly small as the experiment is repeated enough times.
Experiment 2:
Same as experiment 1, except this time the women have an entire year to learn from the best tug of war coach in the world, and train full time for this. Their life depends on it after all. The men, on the other hand, have no idea what they will be asked to do until they are handed the rope.
What do you think the results will be? Personally, I'm betting all my life savings on the prepared women over the unsuspecting men.
Experiment 3:
Both sides are given a year and the best available coaching, and both train like mad because everyone's lives depend on it. Would you bet on the women in this scenario? If you run the experiment 1 million times with a different set of people every time, what do you think the final breakdown would look like?
Preemptive rebuttal: but tug of war is inherently biased because it rewards a quality that doesn't entirely define athleticism? What if we had chosen rock climbing or figure skating instead?
Right. Not all sports reward athleticism in the same way. I think tug-of-war is pretty damn universal and a good enough proxy for overall fitness, but it doesn't cover everything.
Frankly I'm amazed that this is even controversial. Of all the feminist topics that could elicit argument, this is the hill you've chosen for yourself?