mattheus wrote: ↑25 Jul 2022, 11:17am
Cugel wrote: ↑25 Jul 2022, 11:15am
Why not cut the Gordian Knot? I've never fully understood why there are separate male & female sports events, other than as an efflorescence of the general culture of patriarchy whereby females are automatically regarded as lesser beings than males.
It is mainly female athletes supporting the divisions. Have you asked any about your ...
interesting theory?
Have you the survey that contains the details showing that its mainly female athletes supporting gender divisions in sporting events?
But perhaps no need to ask one's unavoidably small local group of female athletes about what they think. Opinions are just that, anyway. What matter is the happenings if sporting events are no longer made gender-divisive. Who will enter them and who will not? What will the results look like?
It's not hard to find mixed gender sporting events (generally the real, amateur events rather than the professional entertainment spectacles). For example, marathons and many other running events. Why not try it with cycling? If required, finishers can be post-race separated into various winners, such as "first of the 18 year olds and under; first vet 45-55; first woman 19-44; etc..
Other post-race criteria employed for prize giving might be "first trans-gender male-to-female" and so forth.
The point is that everyone gets to compete.
Cugel
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes