this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
236 points (83.3% liked)

Showerthoughts

29244 readers
830 users here now

A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

Rules

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Obviously this won’t work for all sports, but things like football, track, soccer, it would allow for de-gendered team, even allowing athletes with the skills but not the genetically-endowed physical attributes to have a place to play.

Note: I know very little about sports and being on a sports team, so please point out anything that doesn’t make sense.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

ok cool what about the op's thoughts?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (2 children)

He addresses them with that statement. There are plenty of women that are in similar weight classes as men but you don't see any in male sports.

Even though male sports does not have a gender requirement. This is essentially an indirect way of saying that there are biological differences between male and female that go beyond weight.

There are various differences you could point out. Males have lower body fat %, which means more muscle. Their bones are shaped differently and are more dense. Men tend to be more aggressive and competitive. Men tend to have stronger bones, joints, tendons, and ligaments.

Men have more red blood cells, their hearts are bigger so they can pump more blood, and greater lung volume relative to body mass. So even a male and women same weight and height the man will be able to circulate oxygen more quickly.

There are many more examples if you go do some reading.

One of the differences may not be huge by themselves. But when you take the differences above and combine them, it creates a situation where in almost all sports, men play virtually unopposed by women.

Look up the Serena Williams interview. She's undoubtedly the best female player in the world. She doesn't stand a chance against a the 203rd best tennis male player.

This difference even applies to areas like chess. The highest ranking a woman ever got was 6th in the world, Judith Pulgar. Amazing player, but out of the 2500 or so grandmasters in the world, 42 are women.

Some of these differences can be explained by women around the world not being encouraged to play chess, but that does not explain all.

There are large biological differences when you look at the population in a statistical sense. And when you look at the most extreme samples from the edge of the normal distribution.. that's where the best athletes / chess players are going to come from.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The chess one isnt quite right. There's been experiments where if a woman player didn't know her opponent was a man she would perform better. It's called stereotype threat phenomenon.

It also happens when a male player knowingly goes up against someone higher in the league than himself and he performs below his own standard average.

Basically people in general psyche themselves out of their best performance when going against someone they perceive to be better than them whether that's factual or not. Confidence and undermining confidence can change a whole lot about how a person does in any given game or task.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You think that accounts for the differences? 42 of 2500 grandmasters are women because all the women are scared and intimidated of the men?

Maybe this plays some small effect but I doubt it's statistically significant enough in this context

Like you said, it happens to men playing higher rated men. In order to go up in ranking, you need to play and beat progressively higher rated opponents.

By the very nature of being a high level player, that player would have had to go through that.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

It's a phenomenon that's been observed across multiple sports, not just between men and women chess players. It's particularly poignant in men vs women's chess... because of people repeatedly telling women they are inherently worse than men. Like you are doing right now.

There's been multiple studies on this. So yes, I side with the data that stereotype threat phenomenon has a significant impact on women's performance in chess against men.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Show me. Link me a couple.

I don't think this effect can account for more than a small fraction of the difference. Let's look at the research. I couldn't find anything from a quick search but maybe I'm using wrong terms.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The bigger difference imo is the brain development due to hormones in the womb. Old TLC program had a whole section on this suggesting it's why STEM fields are generally male dominated. Turns out hormones that determine biological gender also very much effect the development of the brain, and the male chemicals tend to develop the spatial reasoning part of the brain faster/more thoroughly than those who get don't get the male chemicals and stay female. This average higher spatial reasoning capacity creates an advantage in tasks or objectives where complex visualizations are necessary, like visualizing chess moves in your head.

It's not some massive, overwhelming difference, but it's enough to tilt the table. Play out that average enough and you have 42 women out of 2500 chess grandmasters

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

TLC is name I have not heard on a long time. Did they really use the term "biological gender"?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Bro they had a lot of wild shit back in the day. I remember that term specifically because they couldn't use the word "sex" on the program and had to bend over backwards using every other possible phrase.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Chess? What percent of woman players are GMs and what percent of male players are GMs? Because it sounds like sampling bias.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

Women make up roughly 15% of US Chess Federation members. They make up roughly 1.5% of grandmasters.

That's an order of magnitude difference.