Women’s gymnastics is legal child abuse
thecorrespondent.com
thecorrespondent.com
What if a female gymnast wants to do the horizontal bar or other "male" events? And even when they do have the same event in name, like the floor, they're still different for unnecessary reasons. For example, women have music, men don't. Why?
Obviously there are biological reasons why women aren't as strong, maybe it's unreasonable to expect women to do a heavy event like the rings, but most events could be equally accessible to everybody. But the sport itself forces athletes into very gender-specific roles. I can't help but wonder if unifying the sport may help to reduce this kind of abuse as well.
Let's talk about Beachvolleyball too.
"beach volleyball players are now also allowed to wear shorts and a top. While the top can be sleeved or sleeveless, the shorts are limited to a maximum length of three centimeters (1.18 inches) above the knee"
As far as I can see in that article, the dress code is now very similar between the gender in what they are allowed to wear (through it is possible that male players can go topless?).
Women on the other hand like it, "biologicaly" as you say.
Why is it wrong to have different events for men and women?
Yeah, that is why male dancers and male dancing is non-existend worldwide.
Or otherwise said, can you prove it is "biological" rather then cultural?
You are picking a small population of males and generlizing to all of them. Most males have no interest in dancing.
Nothing wrong if you do, but most don't.
I grew up in an environment where boys dancing was made fun of and I didn't realise liking to dance is an option. Some exposure to the world corrected that.
Also, I had to explain to my kids multiple times that laughing at or mocking boys dancing or ballet is neither fun nor ok. Obviously boys and men don't want to do things that make them be cast as effeminate or mocked.
Ironically enough, that is what you are doing.
There's a whole wide world (both historically and right now) of men/masculine culture beyond the weird bland repression certain parts of the West currently have going on. Even in the Western world, I don't know how one would go about telling e.g. Black American men that they have no interest in dancing.
This is more cultural/social than sex/biological based.
Quite a lot.
> Most males have no interest in dancing.
AFAICT, this "men aren't expected to want to dance" thing is an extremely recent, and fading, Western social norm, not some kind of biological fact that is culturally invariant.
No, that's what you're doing. Just because some men don't like dancing, no men should get the opportunity to do so? And because some women like to dance, it has to be a staple of the female version of the sport?
If it's actually about dancing, then make it a dancing event that men and women can compete in. Tons of men dance competitively. But not in gymnastics. Which actually makes sense, since it's gymnastics, not dancing. But then why are the women's events about dancing?
What you are describing is machismo Americana, not men.
Something is sexist when you create sex criteria. So the whole sport is sexist since you have distinguish between men and women categories in most of the disciplines.
The rule differences between ice hockey for men and women are such that I've heard it said that they might as well be different sports.
The same thing that happens if I want to be a movie star or heiress.
There certainly is sexist baggage involving women being considered more "ornamental" though.
My point is, where one falls short, play to your strengths. Doubly so in a competitive environment. Nothing stopping female athletes from doing rings. Absolutely nothing. Just like there was nothing stopping women from joining the mens junior or senior VB teams.
That's above the median adult female height in many countries. And gymnasts (even at full adult height), of both genders, tend to skew short.
Anyways, just because some participants may cheat doesn’t inherently mean a rule isn’t worth making.
Athlete's do doping checks all the time. Might as well do a single-time age check as well.
They do age exams, looking at various physical features, but it's fairly error prone and not that precise.
Delaying puberty will still be a thing because people that end up competing at the top levels start training intensely long before they are eligible to compete.
Its not like someone wakes up one day and says "I think I'd like to be an Olympic gymnast", trains for a few months, and competes at the Olympics.
HN discussion on that one:
Pro sports have age minimums but kids start prepping at age 8.
This problem with women's gymnastics is the rules of the sport favor children's and childlike bodies.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/well/live/pelvic-massage-...
Sometimes the kids hide the abuse from their parents.
> “He grabs me by the throat with both hands and lifts me into the air by my neck ... I hear him clearing his throat, followed by the sound of spitting, and feel a thick glob splat into my face.”
You should read the article.
There is also strong cultural assumption that if coach is tough it is good. When kids are complaining, typically unable to explain exactly what the issue is, they are talked about as spoiled by helicopter parents or oversensitive moms.
So, even parents who eventually take their own kids away dont treat the whole thing as systematic abuse issue - they talked about it as personal preference of the kid.
There is some of that, but more a factor is that the measure of "good" is competitive success, and by that measure lots of tough -- even outright abusive -- coaches are good. You have to face that head-on to deal with the problem, that its not just a mistaken assumption of quality but often a flawed (because it does not view clear and visible verbal/emotional/physical abuse short of [but which can easily be a surface behind which hides] sexual abuse as a problem so long as success is achieved) but objective standard of quality.
The actual competitive level will hurt either way, but the abuse itself is not actually raising performance.
If you look at Larry Nassar scandal, he did not had superior measurable results. He just created aura of superiority around him. Altrought he was not framing himself as tough, he pretended to be gentle doctor.
"He's yelling at me because he cares" is the same internal logic that keeps many women in abusive romantic relationships.
Are you a professional coach or just think it would work this way?
The athletes we are discussing are already selected as fit for the specific sport. All of them are very tolerant to stress from the training and competition. Unless stress of not doing exercise (correctly) is higher than stress from doing it (correctly) there won't be progress.
What for an outsider looks like abuse, for athletes is within tolerable limits.
That doesn't sound like being selected for stress tolerance. That sounds a lot more like stress tolerance is being mentally beaten into them.
Sometimes kids overwork their heart and coach is supposed to stop the kid to protect their health. Coach can't tell the kid in front of the group "You worked too hard, come stand here and rest", this would make the whole group to feign being overworked. Instead the coach is saying "You're not working hard enough, come here and stand in front of the group as a punishment for being lazy".
The proper solution is just tell the kid to take a breather without stating a reason (maybe tell them privately how to notice on their own when they are overworking themselves). The other kids won't notice or care.
(And if some kid is looking for an excuse not to do the exercises... why are they even there? And who cares? It's an extracurricular, the point is to get out of it what you put in. It's not boot camp.)
First, you are literally punishing kid for being overworked, while claiming they are slackers are teaching them to overwork themselves even more next time.
The harder the kids try, the more the kid will be punished and claimed to be lazy.
Second, you are lying to the kids, they have no way to actually figure out rules.
(I have a kid of each gender in local gymnastics programs and I have to carefully keep this stuff in mind. It's great that the kids are strong, and gymnastics makes people absurdly strong, but I don't think I would ever let my daughter anywhere near a high-level competitive program.)
Secondly while the strength to weight ratio of women might peak at 15-18, in men it keeps increasing into their mid-late 20s. In general, the strength difference between a 15 and 25 year old man is much much greater than that between a 15 and 25 year old woman. Basically a 20-25 year old man can pull off feats of strength that a 15-16 year old simply can't. The same isn't really true for women (again in general).
My children always liked sport but I told them that this is for their fun and not a medal for the organization (they were never interested in the competition part).
They switched sports either when it was getting boring or they felt that the competition part was over the fun one.
This does not mean that they abondonned early, but for instance both stopped karate after their black belt, to do rock climbing or ping pong. Because the fun was gone.
Our gymnastics club has a kind of parkour club which seems more about having fun and being active which I think me might move my son to when he's old enough.
Let's not confuse the issues and terms, please.