quote:

Originally posted by Flash-LB:
Women don't admit they're wrong...in most cases.

I have two daughters who are/were quite competitive. I'm glad there weren't boys (dudes dressed as chicks) in their sports competitions, especially high school and college. That's absurd.

Now, my youngest is sought after for the co-ed softball and volleyball leagues.

quote:

Originally posted by Flashlightboy:
You want to eliminate women's beach volleyball?

Women’s European track and field, tennis, and women’s soccer? Blasphemy!

Time to eliminate? No. Time to actually protect a bracket created to equalize competition among a large group of people with similar physical features? Yes.

Heavyweights don't compete against lightweights in sports where that would give them an advantage for a reason. Women don't compete against men in many sports for a reason. If you want to compete in a class, you need to meet the requirements of the class or compete in a different class. As a protected class, women's sports have been caught sleeping and hit hard by the recent insanity that is a man believing he can decide he's a woman overnight and signing himself up to compete in that bracket. Governing bodies have been slow to react (probably because who the hell thought this would be an issue we would actually have to deal with), but I think they are starting to come around and deal with it.

On a separate note, now that they are going to have a men's, women's, and "open" division I would laugh my ass off if half the men signed up for the open division for competitive purposes. The wailing an gnashing of teeth would be be incredible.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Perception,

If we were to eliminate girls' teams we'd effectively be eliminating any opportunity for them to compete and enjoy that aspect of the whole reason for playing.

We play fair and strive to win but win or lose we always do our best.

I enjoy playing tennis. I love a tough match against an opponent who is my equal or better. However if I were only allowed to play opponents who would routinely beat me with ease I imagine I'd soon give up the game. Getting beaten with no hope to win would be frustrating to say the least.

No. There a many, many benefits to participating in sports and girls and women should be able to enjoy them. Women's divisions should be limited to people who are actual girls/women (e.g. people born that way) because the purpose of having those divisions is to allow women to compete against each other and not against men.

We should change the men's divisions to "open" and let whomever wants to compete in them do so. That's how it works in professional sports now anyway (the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, etc. are certainly open to women) so it wouldn't be much of a change.

I don't particularly care if someone decides they want to live as another gender or if people decide to recognize that choice (or not). But that has limits, and one of them is when it dramatically impacts others' lives.

If you're born with OEM girl parts then you should compete as a girl, unless you've transitioned into something else at which point you would compete in an Open division.

The issue with our society is its fixation on inclusiveness without at all considering the merits of exclusivity.

Sometimes inclusiveness can ruin a good thing. How is that? Well besides the assault on women’s sports let me give you an interesting example.

There is a prostate cancer fundraiser/extremely fun rally specifically dedicated to vintage motorcycles. They have very clear categories for what kind of bikes are allowed and which types are banned. Some idiots (in NY if memory serves me correctly) got all bent out of shape because they couldn’t ride there modern sport bike motorcycles in this event. It got nasty. Had they just showed up and offered to help direct traffic ahead of the convoy I don’t think anyone would have cared. That’s what happened at our event. Here’s the thing, what makes this event special is the parade of motorcycles that you almost never see anymore on the road. If it was an open rally and inclusive then it loses its allure. That exclusivity is what makes it unique and fun.

Being the borderline contrarian I am I contacted the event organizers because my older bike didn’t exactly fit their criteria but it was damn close. They kindly told me unless I had specific mods I should not attend. I went anyway because my bike was damn old and right on the edge of what was admitted into that class. Had it been a more recent bike yeah I wouldn’t have gone but I’m glad I went with my instinct and attended anyway. I wasn’t the only one there with a more modern bike though I was in a very small minority. I found a group of riders riding 1970’s versions of my bike and we had a blast riding in the CB400 section of the convoy. I should say I did have a vintage bike I was planning on taking but being a vintage bike it broke 2 days before the rally.

Having fair rules for events that might seem dare I exclusive seems to be way more controversial that it should be. If people exercised good judgment and didn’t just try to break rules for the sake of it then maybe they could begin to realize that inclusiveness isn’t always a great thing.

These people demanding accommodations don’t seem to care about the impact it has as a whole on the sport they claim to love. Is it driven by ego? Ideology? Whatever it is I wish it would just end.