This past week in SM4250 we had discussions about the participation and exclusion of women in men's sports, men in women's sports, and intersex athletes. I would like to explain my personal opinions on these topics, and would love to get feedback on my thoughts.
As we discussed in class, highly skilled female athletes have sought and been given the right to participate in all male leagues in different sports. Recent examples of this include Michelle Wie and Billy Jean King. Michelle Wie was unsuccessful in her efforts competing against men, while King is one of the more famous female athletes for her win in the "Battle of the Sexes" against Bobby Riggs (www.biography.com, p. 4).
To start, I am 100% for the competitive inclusion of women in men's sports and vice versa. "Competetive," in my mind, is the key element of this discussion. If a female athlete can be competitive and be a winner in men's sport, then they should be allowed entrance into at least some form of competition with men. I do, however, believe that men have a physical advantage over women when it comes to athletic abilities. That is not to say that women do not posses the ability to be better at a sport than men, but they are often not as strong or as fast as their male counterparts. I do not have any pre-existing thoughts on intersex athletes participating in sports, but the debate over Caster Semenya's Olympic participation because of her masculine features is one topic that I see being important for this topic. We discussed Semenya in class; her deep voice and sculpted muscle structure were a target for doubters when Sememya won a track and field gold medal.
I am looking forward to hearing and responding to everyone's comments!
Joey Durant
Joey
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post and I agree 100%. There are a great number of extremely talented female athletes in sports today as well as in the past. They deserve all the recognition they have gotten. However, I feel that it is unfair for them to compete against the men, not because they are able to win or lose the event, but rather the social beat down the men receive after the outcome. Unfortunately, society has a pre determined notion that women are automatically a step below men when it comes to sport and with that being the case it is a lose-lose situation for the male athletes. If the male wins the match it goes unnoticed because that was the expected result however, if the female wins, the media puts it on the front pages everywhere and all over the news as well when realistically they each had a equal chance of winning.
That is just my personal outlook on the situation.
Mike Frank