The insistence on separating sports teams strictly by sex is backwards, argues Michela Musto, an assistant sociology professor at the University of British Columbia who has studied the effect of the gender binary on students and young athletes. “Part of the reason why we have this belief that boys are inherently stronger than girls, and even the fact that we believe that gender is a binary, is because of sport itself, not the other way around,” she told me by phone....
Anyway, I tried to find out what "social neuroendocrinology" is. It's a term that has never appeared in the NYT. The term appears twice in Wikipedia, once in a citation to article about testosterone and once in the name of a laboratory at Nipissing University (in Ontario).
If I google the term, at the top of the search I get an announcement for a meeting that occurred in 2018 that says "Social neuroendocrinology is a burgeoning area of research aimed at discovering hormone relationships to social behavior. Studies in this area lie at the intersection of social and personality psychology, neuroscience, cognition, evolutionary psychology, and traditional behavioral endocrinology."
I wonder how much it's "burgeoned" since 2018. I wonder what methods of research are used. Sorry, but I feel skeptical. I mean, I'm sure hormones are at play in human social interactions, but who are these people in the field? Is it good science or is it social activism? "[S]ocial experiences can actually change levels of sex-related hormones like testosterone in our bodies in a second-to-second and month-to-month way!"
It almost sounds like a throwback to old-fashioned ideas about how women, if we engage in traditionally masculine activities, will lose our femininity. If we engage in competitive sports, we may lose the gentle sweetness and caring that makes us so lovable. No need for testosterone injections. With the right social experiences, we can up our testosterone naturally.
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136 comments:
researchers today still don’t know how much of this to attribute to biological difference...
This is outright dishonestly. The study linked in that paragraph states that,
The sex gap in sports performance is primarily rooted in biological differences between the sexes, namely in relation to male’s superior skeletal muscle mass, oxidative capacities and lower fat mass (Joyner, 2017). However, there is a range of sociocultural, psychological and sport-specific factors that could explain some of the variance between male and female athletic performance
The author is trying to pretend that the sex differences may be a small component of the overall difference in performance, whereas the researchers very clearly see it as a large component and are merely uncertain about the edge cases.
My sex-related hormones changed month-to-month from 12 years old to about 56.
FFS. I just need an ever-present gif of Ripley wrinkling the corporate folder of papers and saying, "Did IQs drop while I was away?"
I had no idea about neuroendocrinology until I almost died last year. Turns out it was a macroadenoma (pituitary tumor) of 3cm in diameter. It was causing SIADH (excess production of the anti-duiretic hormine) which led to severe hyponaitremia.
"...researchers today still don’t know how much of this to attribute to biological difference..."
One of the logical problems with many of these questions is presuming that since we don't know the answer to the question, the answer is "It doesn't." In fact, it might very well be attributable to biological differences, and we shouldn't discount that possibility unless there's evidence to the contrary (and this goes for the other part of the assumption).
It seems that the author is promoting a merit-based approach to school sports--which I think is a good idea.
If a boy is good at the uneven bars in gymnastics, go for it. If a girl is good at wrestling, great. Rules for these competitions will likely have to change in some situations to accommodate some of the innate differences (not sure how many guys will be able to slam their pelvises into the lower bar on uneven bars, and how many girls will be able to hit a golf ball competitively far from the men's tees)--but it'd be fun to see where males excel and where females excel when directly competing--assuming we're all willing to flex on the rules of competition to make that interesting.
The ultimate question will be how much we have to flex those rules to "accommodate" one sex or the other to level the playing field of competition (and does that ruin the spirit of true competition?). (If males always score the touchdowns in football does that mean that something in the rules is favoring males too much?) Those things seem to be in tension for me, but it'd be interesting to pursue!
Remind me -- and I need reminding because the rules and assessment methods seem to have changed annually since I myself was being assessed -- doesn't the US military STILL use different measures of "physical fitness" for those whose enlistment contracts identify the service-members as "male" versus, well, all others?
Researchers.
do we trust researchers? who are these researchers?
The latest covid vaccine's documented data states 8 mice were used to find the vaccine is a sure winner.
(the left will call this Russian disinformation)
Let's just these gals the right drugs and watch them wreck their bodies trying.
I was a gym rat for years and was a competitive powerlifter on a huge women's team. The gym I trained at was fairly large. Prior gyms I have used may have been smaller, but the members there very much dedicated to hard training. I've seen many men and women training, have watched their progress, have studied national rankings in both men and women's divisions.
I can't tell you HOW MANY TIMES I saw a newbie man at the gym start training, and quickly surpass even the top female lifters that had trained for years.
I call bullshit on the very idea that women don't excel strength wise due to a lack of support. FFS I this is simply some academic trying to tell us day is night and night is day. I saw with my own eyes, experienced the support myself. We had all the encouragement we could want in our goals. But we still remained weaker than men. And a powerlifting man that transitions to female wipes the floor with their competitors.
That article was written by and about clowns. I grew up with several true tomboys who could regularly play sports competitively with us boys.....up to puberty, but none of them could continue competitively after that point in time. The physical differences are real and not capable of being overcome at even a middle level of competitition without hormone treatments.
Althouse please don’t apologize for being skeptical. Encourage it in others. It’s our only great American tradition the majority of us still share with each other.
Eliminating sex differences through sports would provide mildly entertaining and highly effective way to combat the adverse effects of humans on our fragile planet.
Canadian Lysenkoism, apparently.
"... versus the lack of support provided to women athletes to reach their highest potential."
I feel stupider from having read that.
There are going to be some bone-crushing refutations of this nonsense. I hope no one gets killed. You know the damage is generally going to go in one direction.
If masculinity is so toxic, why would women want to increase their testosterone levels?
They need "experts" on how sex-segregated sports aren't necessary so that they can eliminate women from sport.
What the hell is "feminist science?" And you women claim to not understand why nobody takes you broads seriously? Clowns.
You really did a disservice in this post, Ann by not including a photograph of the transvestite idiot Sari van Anders masquerading as a woman. She looks like that cat lady chick who got the plastic surgery to try to look like a cat (Jocelyn Wildenstein). But after the cat lady got hit in the face by a garbage truck.
My God, how is this story not written by that chick on the NYT Mental Heath beat?
They need "experts" on how sex-segregated sports aren't necessary so that they can eliminate women from sport.
What the hell is "feminist science?" And you women claim to not understand why nobody takes you broads seriously? Clowns.
You really did a disservice in this post, Ann by not including a photograph of the transvestite idiot Sari van Anders masquerading as a woman. She looks like that cat lady chick who got the plastic surgery to try to look like a cat (Jocelyn Wildenstein). But after the cat lady got hit in the face by a garbage truck.
My God, how is this story not written by that chick on the NYT Mental Heath beat?
For anyone who really believes women can compete against men in any physical sport I recommend the following video of the first world championship mixed 4x400 meter race.Poland ran a male in the 3rd lap and established about a 100 yard lead going into the final lap with a Polish woman running. The American male running the last lap eats up the Polish lead in the first turn and passes the Polish woman like she was standing still. Not her fault she is doing the best she can, but she has neither the length of stride, the leg power or the lung capacity to compete with the American male.
I am a big UCONN women's BB fan. I really enjoy watching a competitive women's BB game. I enjoy the women's commitment and their team play and I never want to see the sport having to deal with the trans issue. It is ludicrous.
If the term garners(!) enough cachet, it will eventually become self-referential even if it has no utility whatsoever.
Someone wrote an article about that phenomenon at one point but I've forgotten where. Once a phrase or some form of 'theory' gets referenced in the literature enough everyone acts like it's actually been demonstrated as useful.
I remember back in the 80's, after Title IX had been around long enough that women were getting better training and equipment and closing the performance gap with men, women's sports advocates tried to pretend the gap would disappear completely, or even that women's progress would continue indefinitely and they would ultimately outperform men.
I was really struck by the stupidity of thinking that just because the gap narrowed as the advantages disappeared, that therefore there was no real gap and men and women treated the same would perform the same. Hard to believe that 35 years later that stupidity, created to serve the women's empowerment narrative, has been resurrected to serve the trans narrative, with women's empowerment serving as roadkill.
“Part of the reason why we have this belief that boys are inherently stronger than girls, and even the fact that we believe that gender is a binary, is because of sport itself, not the other way around.”
Let's put Mike Tyson into the ring with Serena Williams and see how fast it takes him to literally KILL her. I'd pay $45 to see that pay-per-view.
She wouldn't last a single punch. He would plow her fucking face in.
These people aren't experts. They're clinically insane idiots and we need to stop humoring them.
Nurse Ratched, turns out, was correct and has gotten a bad rap. I'm more convinced of that with every New York Times/Atlantic/Lefty story that is posted here.
At least ever since Katherine Switzer finished the Boston Marathon as its first female competitor back in 1967, no sane person has argued that women cannot compete directly against men, should the women so wish. There is absolutely nothing stopping biological women from competing against biological men in sports except traditional sex segregation, which can be eliminated readily if a woman desires to test her skills against men.
Court precedent says that females can play on male football teams, usually as kickers, sure, but absolutely full members of the previously all-male teams. And no sane coach would choose a worse boy player over a better girl player, so you go, girls!
The tradition of males competing against males and females against females arose because a level playing field with rules observed by one and all defines sports, versus mere competition for victory over an adversary where anything goes. This makes the sports fair for all involved. Another example of this segregation for fair play is age grouping for young kids in sports. Rather than having 17 year olds playing football, or wrestling, or running, against 10 year olds, the kids are grouped so they're roughly the same size and of similar physical maturity with everyone else in their races or games.
Why even compete if you know you're absolutely gonna win, or gonna lose, before the game starts? Ask the biological male with body dysphoria about all the gold medals from his swimming victories as a trans woman, and then ask the biological females he's competed against. And if physique and physical differences aren't a primary factor in athletic competiveness I'll have my fat ass on the starting line for the 100 meter run at the next Olympics.
Feel like a woman, dress like a man, perform like a [super]hero and break the glass mold.
It depends on the sport. Chess and math and bridge and debate teams have probably always been coed, though on some days it may not have seemed that way.
Data point for the sociologist: along with some other middle-aged men, I played basketball with a young, highly trained, near-WNBA-quality female player once. In our below-DIII group, she could hold her own, provided no one tried to post her up.
I believe that this would be an Exhibit in the postulate that science is now driven by politics...on purpose.
The radicalization of the academy has led even premiere journals, such as the Nature Human Behavior to recently announce that, essentially, science must bow to politics. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker responded saying that the journal was “no longer a peer-reviewed scientific journal but an enforcer of a political creed.”
In a recent survey of academics in Canada, "over 30 percent of professors are prepared to limit academic freedom and “cancel” their colleagues out of a commitment to their political views on social justice."
Global warming has been the regular hump for climate scientists for close to a decade without any real science proving the proposition.
The Gramscian march through the institutions is a full-on assault.
- Krumhorn
Could all of this modern effort to say there is no difference between men and women be rooted in atheism and Godlessness? In 2022 America and Western Europe men can have a period, give birth, and women can have penises.
Seems like something Satan would encourage to convince the human race that we are not what God made us. Satan would like us to believe we are, in fact, the opposite.
This line of thought is winning. It is being taught in our public schools to young children.
It's pussy hats...all the away down.
If girls are just encouraged more when they are young then they could easily make it into the NFL.
Obviously.
I mean, only a nazi would deny that, right?
The triumph of ideology over common sense.
The East Germans did yeoman's work in this area back in the 70's IIRC.
"Part of the reason why we have this belief that boys are inherently stronger than girls, and even the fact that we believe that gender is a binary, is because of sport itself, not the other way around,”
Silly me. I thought it was thousands of years of experience of women not being able to fight and overpower men?
Thank you Mr. Wibble.
"...researchers today still don’t know how much of this to attribute to biological difference..."
I was going to quibble about outright dishonesty, since in the most technical of senses that researchers don't know the exact percentage, the statement appears correct. But in the context of the article and it's headline, it is indeed outrageously dishonest.
Senseless and insensible at The Atlantic.
Mass, capacity, and structure are a few of the physiological differences on average between the sexes that matter in physical performance.
That said, men and women are equal in rights and complementary in Nature/nature.
Another biological and social reason to recognize a separation of the sexes in some instances, is that humanity has a compelling cause to normalize a favorable juxtaposition of the sexes.
Women seek equality in sports opportunities, disgusting unsat couch potato fat bodies hardest hit.
Fresno, California is a large enough city to deserve and NFL team.
The Fresno Feminists. An all testosterone dominated women's team. They automatically get the ball the defender's ten yard line.
And the helmets could be artistically integrated with the name with like the Cincinatti Bengals helmet. No logo. Just a pink helmet with a kind of Georgia O'Keeffe flowery labia on top.
I'd watch that. Imagine the Green Bay Packers vs. the Fresno Feminists. Half the stadium would be wearing cheese heads, and the other half pink pussy hats.
The corollary is that men could bear children if only they were properly socialized. Women, with proper augmentation, simulation, could impregnate men to carry their children. In the arachnid world, women would consume males for nourishment. In the bee world, males would abort their frigid queen. And so on and so forth in political congruence.
At least we're back to sex and sex-correlated gender. Baby steps.
"...lack of support provided to women athletes to reach their highest potential." The USA Olympic medal haul in the Summer Games was 66 medals for U.S. women, 41 medals for U.S. men. Title IX has granted an enormous level of support to women's athletics. I suppose you could say these "studies" are being conducted in Canada, but Canadian women won 75% of its medals in the Tokyo Summer Games. Not a single one of those women would agree to compete against the men in their event. These are activists, not scientists.
If girls are encouraged more when they're young men the sky is the limit.
There is no functional difference between subject and parody anymore.
If these people who call themselves Neuroendocrinologists were serious, they would be studying prairie voles and autism.
"The prairie vole model has enabled us to learn about complex neural pathways in social areas of the brain," says senior author Larry Young, PhD. We believe these insights will be useful in identifying drugs that enhance social cognition and learning. Drugs with these properties, particularly when combined with behavioral therapies, may be beneficial in the treatment of autism spectrum disorders."
That's serious stuff. That article is not.
I recall Althouse posing the question .....Then what did Mary Tyler Moore throw her hat up in the air for?........
MAD Magazine once wrote "On a scale of 1 to 10 Militant Feminists rate a 4. That is until the
novelty wore off and now there a 2"
We need them back before there are no women at all.
Blogger Howard said...
Women seek equality in sports opportunities, disgusting unsat couch potato fat bodies hardest hit.
Howard has season tickets for WNBA games. Like all the other lesbians.
Even in mental sports, despite The Queen's Gambit, the top women cannot compete with teh top men. Any sport that has a governing body that keeps records shows this. The top woman in chess has a FIDE rating below that of the 100th male. Smae is true in Go, a game I've never played butis wildly popular throughout the world.
A current exception to that is Mahjong. But it is primarily known as a woman's game- few men play it.
Also apparently women can compete at the highest levels in poker. Something that involves many skills aside from brainpower.
Dominos seems to be dominated by men- but the figures aren't easy to come by.
Perfect example of why the Left always wins. Some kook with a PHD writes nonsense about "hey, people think men are stronger but there's no scientific proof" blah blah.
And then the Center-Right, thinks they're "just confused" and if we talk to them reasonably and point out reality they'll change their minds. Why, they just never thought about our examples before! Again, imputing good faith where there is none.
Look everyone knows Men are on average taller and stronger then women. The average woman is 5-4, the average man is 5-10. men don't have breasts and have a much lower body fat. I feel dumber just having to write this.
So, why are we having this crazy discussion? And why are these PHD's saying stuff that they know is untrue? That's the interesting part to discuss.
No more women police, firefighters, or even security guards. Based on the physical testing requirements, only men need apply.
Women finishing maybe in the top 100 in any local track event, road race, etc.
No women's sports at any level.
Is this really what these lunatics want?
Separating Sports by Sex Doesn’t Make Sense
I am in violent agreement. The fastest way to put an end to crazy gender-ideology experiments is to let this one proceed.
If “lack of support” made any meaningful difference then why do so many dirt poor and deprived children excel at athletics in America and around the world and become top tier exemplars in professional sports leagues?
She's a real sweetheart this one.
See her bio here https://feministvoices.com/profiles/sari-van-anders
As for where "social neuroendocrinology" comes from I found this
Having led and established the new field of “social neuroendocrinology,” van Anders is asking new groundbreaking questions
https://www.queensu.ca/research/researchers/sarivananders
Sounds like she made up the "discipline" and is about the only practioner. What a gig!
She doe not appear to have any education in biology medicine chemistry or any hard science.
Though she did start, but didn't finish, an undergraduate major in "biological anthropology and art criticism."
And we should pay attention to her because?
John stop fascism vote republican Henry
Team sports are ritualized combat and we used to have enough wisdom in this country to play like against like. That’s why in college you’ve got the JV teams, intramural sports, club leagues and so on down to civic and church leagues for diehard geezers. I don’t know if that is democrat or republican in form. I just know it worked and worked well because we self-sort into our skill level. But top tier against top tier has to split into female and male to be fair. Same reason club league champions don’t play against D1 universities or pros. It’s common sense. It’s also why the tranny gambit to ruin women’s sports will fail. It ain’t fair.
Reminds me of Ken Clean Air System, Great White Hope of British Boxing.
"The great thing about Ken is that he's almost totally stupid."
You forgot the 'insanity' tag.
This is what happens when what you desperately want to believe does not match reality, so you start questioning reality. The average physical advantage of a man over a woman is large and well documented. But that cannot be, so hence this nonsense.
That said, if you forced women to compete in sports with men, I suspect that women, on average, would perform better than they do now. Tougher competition forces athletes to improve. That said, they would still be, on average, worse than the men and not be especially competitive save for a handful of sports and/or outliers. There would also be a lot less women competing, as why go to all the effort for no chance at reward?
I do wonder if their "solution" is to chop off breasts and inject hormones into female athletes. Or perhaps just declare successful men to be women and pretend that counts.
Female pole vaulters are amazing athletes. Could any of them make the opening height in a regular men's competition? Difference in world records: about 4 feet. Long jump difference: 8.95 vs. 7.52. Etc. etc.
Of course, as noted by others, by belaboring the obvious you already play the prog game, giving credence to the latest form of subversion.
So, why are we having this crazy discussion? And why are these PHD's saying stuff that they know is untrue? That's the interesting part to discuss.
******
Because PhD's are knowledgeable about a very, very tiny slice of life/reality, to the exclusion of everything else. My sister is an academic/PhD in sociology. She has laser beam focus on marginalized populations but is utterly clueless about so many things that the average person on the street would know. The world is being studied in such tiny little segments, no one has any wholistic grasp of anything, and there doesn't seem to be enough time/energy to explore other disciplines. I also think once you get that university position based on your research/stance, you can't really change that up at all even if you wanted to.
It was a while ago, maybe the 90s, I read a study of male vs female performance in the Olympics.
They looked at multiple cycles and only at timed/measured event. Eg 100 yard dash, javelin where the woman's version was the same as the men's.
Out of hundreds, maybe thousands of events, they found not a single instance where the top woman would have beaten the last place man.
I think it might have been Serena Williams (or some other top tennis player) that pointed out that, if ranked against men, she would have been about 750
John stop fascism vote republican Henry
A man pretending to be a woman is a pseudo-woman. Athletes who do this are in it for financial gain and accolades on how athletic they are. "I'm number one!" is their cry, even thou they beat a weaker competitor. The only way for true women to win in this rigged contest is not to play. When the whistle blows, just stand still and let the pseudo-woman dive into the pool or leave the chocks all be his little lone self.
The same applies to team sports. Go out on the field, but do nothing.
The power dynamic of The Patriarchy never ends does it? Now it even controls women's hormones.
When are real women - i.e., with two X chromosomes - going to stand up and tell the ex-men pretending to be women to “get off my lawn”??
The women's world record for the 100 meter dash has been bested by hundreds of high school boys. It may come as a shock to some, but greater muscle mass and greater lung capacity have significant advantages for athletic competition.
From the article: "We do see weight-class separation in boxing, rowing, and wrestling, yet it’s far from the norm across all sports, and isn’t typically seen as a method of integrating athletes of different sexes—though it could be."
I competed in rowing in college. Let's talk about the weight classes in that sport. Men's lightweights need to be a boat average weight of 160 pounds/athlete, with no one over 165. Men's heavyweights have no limit, but most of the oarsmen are between 185-220 pounds Women's lightweights 130 avg. There are no limits in the heavyweight category, but the average weight for the women's heavies and the men's lightweights would be the closest you could find to a match.
If you were to put the women's heavyweight crews against the men's lightweights in a 2000 meter race, the lightweight men would destroy the women's crews by 30 seconds or more. That's 10 boat lengths behind.
"I was surprised that the research chair in social neuroendocrinology used an exclamation point!"
I'm surprised that the research chair in social endocrinology knows how to use an exclamation point.
The women's world record for the 100 meter dash has been bested by hundreds of high school boys. It may come as a shock to some, but greater muscle mass and greater lung capacity have significant advantages for athletic competition.
Maybe discouraging women from competing in sports is not such a bad idea. Says the 'barefoot and pregnant' in me.
At some point, simple madness and rock-solid stupidity don't account for it any more. I am fairly sure that Maggie Mertens would know better than to get in a fistfight with me, even though I am probably at least 30 years older than she is. Her lizard brain would tell her "That way lies PAIN!". She wouldn't have to think about it, and she wouldn't think about it. She would KNOW not to fight with a man. So how can she possibly imagine that all this clap-trap has even a wisp of truth anywhere in it? She can't. She lies, and she knows that she lies.
"... versus the lack of support provided to women athletes to reach their highest potential.“
Women have competed in the Olympics for decades, and they all trained to meet their highest potential. They don’t compete against men directly except perhaps in equestrian events. Women do compete in many of the same sports and competitions such as swimming, track and field, weight lifting, cycling, etc. i know of no case where a female Olympic champion outperformed the male champion of the same event.
I know of one sport where women compete directly against men, and that is aerobatic flying. Some women have won the US championship. If you ever get the chance to see Patty Wagstaff perform at an airshow, take it. She is an absolute master and puts on a great show.
Actually, women have competed against men in Alaska’s Iditarod and won several years. Also, women challenge exactly the same obstacles on American Ninja Warrior. There aren’t too many other sports where women compete directly against men.
Reality would like a word ...
Under 15 boys squad beats US Women's soccer team.
Women are actually more prone than men to suffer many of the most common sports-related injuries ...
The results of female national elite athletes [indicates] the [grip] strength level attainable by extremely high training will rarely surpass the 50th percentile of untrained or not specifically trained men.
I say, eliminate sex-segregated sports. I'm tired of watching women try to play basketball, softball, tennis, all track events, and hockey. I will miss women's golf.
Lefty academics beclown themselves arguing that up is down and down is up.
"It depends on the sport. Chess and math and bridge and debate teams..."
"Even in mental sports"
Those are not sports.
I think I've pointed this out before -- none of the major sports leagues, as far as I know, have rules limiting them to men. Women have played at PGA events and routinely drive in auto races and horse races. If they can make the team in MLB, NFL, NHL or NBA, then more power to them.
Girls are getting short changed, again.
In spite of the fact that boys are not (apparently) either smarter, or stronger.
Science in the service of politics.
Barry Bonds was a phenomenal baseball player. Then he took steroids and put up the greatest performance in the sport.
Biology and chemistry matter.
Anyone who can't see the obvious biological differences in athleticism between men and women isn't observant enough to be a scientist. And anyone who thinks those differences are primarily due to social factors has never been involved in athletics.
My husband, who doesn't do any extreme training nor take any performance-enhancing drugs, has benched more than the women's raw bench press world record. He's just some forty-five year old guy at home. To say that there might not be much of a biological difference is absurd.
I thought sexual dimorphism was a thing with most animal species, including humans. My sister, almost exactly a year younger, was taller and heavier than me for most of childhood until puberty, and then I passed her. Isn't it normal just human experience?
Stop thinking about this garbage. Stop studying it. Let girls compete against girls. Deal with the inequalities like sensible people.
"It almost sounds like a throwback to old-fashioned ideas about how women, if we engage in traditionally masculine activities, will lose our femininity."
From the (gnostic) Gospel of Thomas:
114. Simon Peter said to them, "Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life."
Jesus said, "Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven
If women are equal in sports... let them compete on a one-to-one basis...
Not teams.. individuals.
And as you can see by 'trans'athletes... it won't end well for women.
Yea... do this and see what happens.
“ I had no idea about neuroendocrinology until I almost died last year”
But have you heard of *social* neuroendocrinology?
Glad it worked out for you, but was there anything social about it?
For the record, women tend to beat men in long distance swimming and the women's records tend to beat the men's. The physical disadvantages women suffer in most sports is actually an advantage for them here, the higher fat content making them more naturally buoyant and thus giving them more endurance. Note that this would not apply to the Olympic events you would typically see on television, which are far shorter distances. The Olympic "marathon" swim is 10km and non-Olympic competitions can be much longer than that.
Chimpanzees are the closest relatives to humans. Male chimpanzees are nearly 1.5x larger than female chimpanzees. Observational studies show that the females primarily care for the young while the males mainly hunt and guard their territory. Males are also more aggressive. The sex specific physical differences between male and female chimpanzees are relevant to the different functions they fill.
It seems to me that based on this our prior should be that the physical differences between men and women are rooted in our evolutionary history and that the sex specific roles of men and women in traditional cultures are driven by the physical differences between men and women rather than the other way around as the article seems to suggest.
Of course civilization is largely about rising above our animal instincts formed by evolution so that we can thrive in much larger and complex groups, but pretending that the differences between men and women are merely cultural side effects has a very large burden of proof that hasn’t even begun to be met. I wonder whether a few generations is enough to change this. I suspect not and wonder what damage is done by attempting to convince people that sex differences are an illusion. Perhaps the deaths of despair, boys/men checking out, and the reproductive declines are the kinds of consequences one should expect from this. Maybe not entirely different from what happens with some animals in captivity, dogs that aren’t walked enough, etc…
It is already well established that men, on average, are physically more capable than women. To argue anything other than that reflects either a complete lack of seriousness or utter delusion.
You have outraged, seriously outraged our beloved lefty commenters.
Shame on you!
Lefty academics beclown themselves arguing that up is down and down is up.
Academics make a lot of money for very little work in the classroom.
Their primary work is publishing bullshit in order to achieve tenure.
I am starting to understand more why Howard has been such a vocal defender of groomers wanting to tell 5 and 6 year olds they can change their sex and hiding what they are doing from parents.
"And why are these PHD's saying stuff that they know is untrue? That's the interesting part to discuss."
Funding. Fame/adoration by the group being boosted. Perhaps even tenure.
"And yet it moves."
Another example of how stupid the Non binary crowd thinks we are. Dressing up that BS as a science takes more than a white lab coat and a degree. Lying does not work on real athletes who compete with men. The gap between men and women in a muscle competition is immense. The EDU types cannot hide it except at Government enforced gun point.
https://www.foxnews.com/sports/south-carolina-students-delay-georgia-game-title-ix-ceremony-irate-coach-yells-get-off-field.amp
If this guy is a scientist, then I can only heartily recommend that he first compares the extent of overlap of the physical performance bell curves of females vs males, and then compares the extent of overlap of another female vs male analysis, say, of intelligence. Then I suggest, based on his intelligence, that he devotes his passion for scientific investigation toward proving the existence of phlogiston.
The Woke are trying to undo something very very old.
Microbiologists believe our first sexually active ancestor was a single-celled organism that emerged at least 1.2 billion years ago, but—as you might expect—our knowledge of microscopic organisms that existed 1.2 billion years ago is a little incomplete.
Who Invented Sex?
Articles stress things women are better at than men.
"I'm tired of watching women try to play basketball, softball, tennis, all track events, and hockey."
Dude, check out some women's pole vaulting videos. As Steve Sailer has pointed out, every sport favors a specific physical type, and at the highest level, only that type is present. And pole vaulting favors tall, lean women with firm but not bulging muscles. Like models, without the anorexia.
Furthermore, although men pole vault in outfits that look pretty much the same as the outfits they play basketball in, it has been scientifically proven that for best results, women should pole vault in skimpy little bikini-bottom thingies that climb up their ass crack every time they jump. Hey, it's Science!
And actually, the athleticism of a woman bending that fiberglass pole double, then hauling her entire body up above it while it straightens out, and then turning in the air to arch over the bar, is really something to see. Come for the tits and ass, stay for a really exciting sporting event.
Tear it all down.
One team only for all schools, towns, etc.
The best players play.
Biological women (I'm tired of writing that) will never play organized sports again.
Maybe then people will come to their senses and wake up from their woke fever dreams.
These are supposedly 'smart' people who believe this crap?
Jesus...
My daughter has played in community rec league basketball ever since she was 5. We are a small town, so to have enough kids to have an actual "league", it has always been co-ed. At first, any talent, such as it was, was more or less evenly apportioned between the sexes. They all fumbled around, falling over and forgetting whose basket was whose. Then, as they reached 8-10 years old, the girls routinely dominated the games. My daughter's grace, speed and general coordination left most boys in the dust. And she was hardly the best girl on the court. Some of her friends were aggressive, driving the lane and banging under the boards without any concern for "gender." Then, the worm of testosterone began to turn. Boys started showing up with more mass, more speed and, most especially, more aggression. Remember, we're a small town, these boys had spent most of their time on the court getting pushed around by the girls. Now, they weren't at all inhibited when it came to turning the tables. Last year she played in the 13/14 league. The competition wasn't even close.To say they were outmatched is a comical understatement. Girls still played, and the best were still good players, but if the league was competitive, they would have all rode the bench. Now, those girls who are good enough and have the desire will play in high school, then college, and then maybe even the WNBA, but will they ever be able to compete again as equals with men? No. It is the kind of stupid thing that can only be entertained by a very smart person.
I've never once asked a woman to open a jar for me.
Case closed.
F=ma.
It's true that testosterone levels change throughout the day -- for example, they shoot up when you win a competition (or if you're even just watching a competition and the team you identify with wins). That's one of the reasons most men are more interested in sports than most women. This is something that's been known for decades, and certainly not a new discovery that requires a whole field of college professors to figure out.
There's Google tab called Scholar which has nothing but academic papers. https://scholar.google.com/schhp?hl=en
There, "social neuroendocrinology" may be tracked to its lair. There, Sari Anders has a paper "Social neuroendocrinology: Effects of social contexts and behaviors on sex steroids in humans." Key statement: "Generally, behavioral neuroendocrine research examines how hormones affect behavior. Instead, we focus on approaches that emphasize the effects of behavioral states on hormones (i.e., the "reverse relationship"), and their functional significance." For example*, is testosterone lowered or raised by losing a competition. Lower or higher before a competition? Does it increase or decrease the same amount in men and women? What happens to women's estradiol level before a competition? [Among these papers was a really great question - how do oral contraceptives affect levels of estradiol and testosterone in women?]
The answer to all the questions was - the science is in its infancy.
So the Atlantic reporting on this unfinished science as "science" is behaving as we have come to expect. Your brain loses 10 million neurons every time you access Twitter (I've heard) and the Atlantic writers are judged by tweets and clicks like forest parrots seeking each other.
The legitimate scientific interest is in human adaptation - runners from Kenya have an high-altitude adaptation that gives them an edge and there are other adaptations. From this fact to the assertion that a mere change of environment can change everything is a renowned lefty thought slide - Lysenko, as mentioned above, is its patron saint. If girls just kept stretching they'd get taller and be as good as men. But, your leftyness, what if the men started stretching?
["from a different paper by others]
"Larry J said...
"... versus the lack of support provided to women athletes to reach their highest potential.“
Women have competed in the Olympics for decades, and they all trained to meet their highest potential. They don’t compete against men directly except perhaps in equestrian events. Women do compete in many of the same sports and competitions such as swimming, track and field, weight lifting, cycling, etc. i know of no case where a female Olympic champion outperformed the male champion of the same event."
Olympic women can't surpass high school men.
"Actually, women have competed against men in Alaska’s Iditarod and won several years."
The dogs are the athletes, and pull less weight with women as the mushers.
"Also, women challenge exactly the same obstacles on American Ninja Warrior." Sure, but they don't compete against them. Olympic women also run the same 100m race. SMH
I look forward to watching feminists attempting to prove this hypothesis by fighting against men in the sport of UFC.
In long distance open water swimming, the average woman is faster than the average man. However, the fastest men still outperform the fastest women.
Readering: "My sister, almost exactly a year younger, was taller and heavier than me for most of childhood until puberty, and then I passed her."
According to current Leftist Lysenkoist Doctrine, which "The Science"(TM) tells us cannot be questioned nor even thought about in your spare time lest a combo hate-thought crime occur, your "sister" clearly identified as a male for those years her growth outpaced yours.
No doubt your probable whining about it finally caused him/her to revert to identifying as a girl so that you would then pass her and thus finally stop your complaining and give everyone else a rest.
Dont bother arguing the point.
It's "Science"(TM)
This article is a good example of things you have to have a PhD to believe, or bad faith.
Some "expert" says...
Part of the reason why we have this belief that boys are inherently stronger than girls..
Part of the reason why we have this belief that boys are inherently stronger than girls,
is because boys are inherently stronger than girls
fify! (finished it for ya!)
Told me by phone
Told me by e-mail
What happened to in-person interviews?
A neuroendocrinology study of pheromones in humans would be more fun and less fraught with disappointment.
Blogger Curious George said...
"Actually, women have competed against men in Alaska’s Iditarod and won several years."
The dogs are the athletes, and pull less weight with women as the mushers.
The dogs are doing the pulling, but the Iditarod is still a physically demanding event for the human mushers. The race is over 1,000 miles through an Alaskan winter.
"Also, women challenge exactly the same obstacles on American Ninja Warrior." Sure, but they don't compete against them. Olympic women also run the same 100m race. SMH
Actually, every contestant is competing as an individual against every other contestant. The men and women are competing one the same show, against the same obstacles, at the same time. The obstacles demand a great deal of agility, coordination, and upper body strength. Some women have done quite well, better than many of the male contestants, but none have come close to winning. Fact is, only 2 men have won the top prize and the show has been aired for many seasons. It’s that tough.
https://youtu.be/MKi39zxkA1Y
… researchers today still don’t know how much of this to attribute to biological difference ...
This is probably true, if you mean that they don’t know whether it’s 99% based on biological differences, or only 98.5%.
Ryan,
Hyponatremia almost killed me off a few years ago. (But in my case it was a reaction to a new medication that caused it.) It was ironic because my doctor also had me on a low sodium diet at the time because of high blood pressure.
That is when I found out about a practical use of Urea.
Sorry, but I feel skeptical.
@Althouse, never apologize for skepticism. Skepticism is a good thing.
"Sorry, but I feel skeptical.
Big Mike: "@Althouse, never apologize for skepticism. Skepticism is a good thing."
Unless, of course, the New Soviet Democraticals are successful in establishing a one party permanent state along the fascist lines they have been pushing for decades.
Apologies will be all the rage at the planned struggle sessions ahead.
Spoiler: You'll still be guilty.
ALP is right. It is just nuts we have to have these discussions. It's like arguing over how wet water is.
Sometime back, some commenter linked a YouTube video of two female Olympic gold medal gymnasts watching a bunch of men doing women's gymnastics just fooling around and were shocked and humbled at the men's gracefulness and skills. They were better than the women at the women's game.
And on the football field, don't imagine that a hefty 180 lb woman quarterback will survive a front line rush from the male team. The 200 lb women "linemen" won't be able to stop the 280 lb male tacklers, the woman QB won't be quick enough to flee the defense, and the woman QB will truly be taking her life in her hands.
If the "social endocrinologist" is being paid minimum wage or more, they're making too much.
I have athletic granddaughters, and I root for them whenever I can. If any one of them wants to compete with young men, I'd cheer them on. But common sense and experience tell me that, good as they are, it wouldn't be a "fair fight". So why encourage it? Isn't the motivation essentially political or idealogical, rather than trying to do the best for girls/young women?
doesn't the US military STILL use different measures of "physical fitness" for those whose enlistment contracts identify the service-members as "male" versus, well, all others?
The Navy still does, and your male/female designation is based off of what is in the DEERS system (where all of the identification information is kept).
(A) “There are some boys who also could get really hurt if they were competing against other boys in contact sports.” Mertens has just noticed that injuries happen as a matter of course in baseball, football, basketball.
(B) "One recent small study in Norway found no innate sex difference when it came to youth-soccer players’ technical skills." Technical skills. What about physical skills???
(C) Katie Ledecky has received a lot of support in her swimming career. In the 400M free at the '16 Olympics, for example, she blew away her competition, setting a WR and won by five seconds. If she competed alongside men, her 3:56.46 would have been have placed her 43rd in the qualifying heats.
It's all terribly complicated.
All the naive prior generations who weren't even aware of the complexity.
Sad!
Jupiter said... Blah blah blah.
OK, having checked out some Alison Stokke videos, I will also miss women's pole vaulting.
And by the way, the women's world record for the pole vault is about 3 feet less than the American boys' high school record. Feet, not inches.
"With the right social experiences, we can up our testosterone naturally. "
Be careful there, ladies. You don't want to end up with prostate cancer.
@Drago, like I don’t already know all that?
Actually women don’t compete directly with men in American Ninja Warrior. The top 3 or 5 women advance (I forget which number) regardless of how well they perform relative to the men. I have seen many episodes where not a single woman would have advanced without that provision. That provision holds in early rounds, but not in the finals where you must complete the course to advance. No woman has ever made it to the final round and IIRC, none have made it to the penultimate round either.
That’s one of the things I like about ANW. Women are given a chance to excel, but there is no pretending that women can win against the top men.
hawkeyedjb said...
OK, having checked out some Alison Stokke videos, I will also miss women's pole vaulting.
WOW! i just watched Alison's videos; and she is AWESOME! I would pay money to watch her live with a pole.. BUT; just Imagine if she used a correct pole. You know? One mounted to the stage?
We have to funnel a lot of money to radical leftwing researchers so we can determine whether biological sex accounts for 100% of the differences between men and women in sports, or only 99.5%.
Big Mike: "@Drago, like I don’t already know all that?"
I haven't a doubt that you do.
Women are given a chance to excel, but there is no pretending that women can win against the top men.
And that's not a problem, because women and men are equal in rights and complementary in Nature/nature. Reconcile.
That said, women, men, and "our Posterity" are from Earth. Feminists are from Venus. Masculinists are from Mars. Social progressives are from Uranus.
I wrestled in high school. There is no way to wrestle with a girl and not get in trouble for feeling her up. It would be assault. Boys in such situations often concede rather than wrestling her.
The claim that we should just let the boys and girls mix it up to see how they do is backwards. We separated them because we already know how they do: boys win in most sports, but not all. Women's gymnastics has events where the boys can't win, for example. In shot put, the female shot is much lighter than the men's for a reason. For all such sports, there would not be a single female winner ever. In team sports, almost all of them would end with severe female injuries in integrated teams.
To say we "don't know" how much is social is disingenuous. Is it 90% or 99% biology? There are obviously these days plenty of women who get encouragement and coaching up the wazoo but they still can't beat the men. Women's tennis for example.
"As a hormone + sexuality + gender/sex diversity researcher...HEY WAKE UP I'M TALKING TO YOU!"
Sports causes lots of injuries. women get more and more serious injuries.
Why do so many women want to be just like men? Was Freud right about penis envy?
Drag racing. Women can compete on equal terms with men at drag racing, cars and motorcycles. They have an advantage in that women are usually smaller and lighter.
Saw a video on youtube. A crossfit girl and a dweeb arm wrestled. The guy did no sports or workouts. He won easily. Sorry ladies.
But when the grandkids come over, they want my wife.
Life is unfair. Get over it.
Now do the racial gap in sports performance.
She's a Psychology PhD
https://feministvoices.com/profiles/sari-van-anders
https://www.queensu.ca/psychology/sari-van-anders
She writes that babbling bullshit because she has no scientific knowledge or understanding, at all
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