Cugel wrote:You keep wanting to believe that there is some natural order that makes all men superior at some things compared to all women.
All men? No of course not.
But the bell curves for physique and size are shifted towards men, nobody in their right mind claims any different. Or perhaps you think that social put downs make women smaller?
Size equals power, that's the way things work in the animal kingdom.
If it were true that women were socially held back then you'd see a shift in performance in favour of males of that I have no doubt and I'd also agree that to a large degree this does in fact happen.
But it would only be a shift and of course some women would buck the trend and be on the far side of the curve and yet where absolute power is key it isn't just a shift it's an avalanche.
Like I mentioned above the worlds best 100m female sprinter is only rated around 10,000th in world ranking. That's 10,000 males in front of her.
Lots of women run, some from a very early age and some are pushed quite hard to do well. If it were just social conditioning you'd see a lot more nipping at the ankles of those 10,000 guys and you just don't. Hundred meter sprints are all about power, most of that distance is covered whilst accelerating and that favours large powerful animals and in bloke terms Bolt is most definitely on the far side of the curve.
It's very simple, the bell curves don't match, they overlap and we can dispute by how much but in simple terms an average bloke is physically larger and more powerful than an average women and no amount of wishing it where otherwise or complaining about fairness will change that.
That said I'm not a big sports person and a lot of the differences in men and women's sports do seem daft.
Nor am I adverse to men and women competing together with the proviso it doesn't simply remove women from sports completely and so far the evidence for some sports is that you'd never see a woman on the start line - certainly not in the 100m sprint.