craner

Beast of Burden
I know you weren't, bud

I was talking about the legions of troglodyte keyboard warriors on Twitter etc

Aren't you a huge track and field guy iirc? And specifically a big Yelena Isinbayeva fan? Or am I misremembering

Yep. I was only mourning Tori Bowie the other day
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
It was Fallon Fox beating the absolute shit out of Tammy Brent that made the Republicans & Rogan realise they could make a big song and dance about all this in the first place, rightly so in that regard tbh the fight is disgusting

Kinda strange that Republicans suddenly started caring about fairness though. I always thought that one of their main principles was that some people are just better than others - that, for example, rich people got that way cos they were the smartest (often so smart that they managed to wangle it so that they were born to rich parents) and any attempt using legislation to make people start off in more equal positions would be tantamount to communism.

Also kinda strange that the right suddenly discovered around the same time that it's not ok for men to hit women.

Those two realisations hitting them at the same time gave them a strong basis from which to complain about trans athletes.
 

luka

Well-known member
its complicated. but since you are a maths prodigy that went to oxford for advanced maths at 15 i cant pretend you wont understand. i'll email you the workings.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Does anyone here watch women's football?
I can't "I watch it" as in regularly, but when the World Cup or Euros or something is on I definitely watch it and enjoy it.

I think in most sports when you watch a contest between two people or teams, it's not just the overall level of the teams involved that makes for entertainment, it's more to do with the level of competitiveness between the teams involved. At least when the sides are above a certain level. I would rather watch a premiership relegation thriller that finishes 5 - 4 than see Italy grind out a 1 - 0 victory over Spain in extra time in which the mean Italian defence ultimately triumphed over the constantly probing (but never actually shooting) possession game of Spain who had eighty-four percent of possession and at one point strung together a record 873 consecutive passes.

From what I can tell women's football reached a level such that an international game is entertaining long ago. I would say that when I first saw women's footie twenty or thirty years ago they basically hadn't figured out goalkeeping which... was a problem, but it aint like that any more. Sure you can go on youtube and find an hilarious clip with four women miskicking the ball in a row, or that one (that is actually pretty funny) where the goalie has mistaken the nearby post as the other one and, as a result, totally mispositioned herself so that instead of standing to cover the near post she's actually standing beside the goal - and it is funny cos the attacker is running unopposed the length of the half with defenders trying to catch her, and the goalie is all the time psyching herself up for the coming challenge, and then the attacker just rolls it in the totally unguarded net.

But... and it's quite a big but, all the - I'm sure totally serious - comments underneath saying "And they think they should earn the same as men" etc are clearly based on the idea that the entirety of women's football should be judged on these freak occurrences. I find those comments far more concerning than the events they critique.
 

luka

Well-known member
i think its fair to say womens football is dreadful. thats ok. i wouldnt watch australias a-league either. or the english 2nd division.
 

chava

Well-known member
The elite women's race was the highlight of the London marathon this year.
Actually women are better long (as in ultra-long) distance runners than men. Also long-distance swimming, cycling possibly also (which bothers me a bit).
 

chava

Well-known member
Having said that, women's sports are just like men's in the sense that they vary from compelling to unwatchable.

In a couple of the sports I follow, cycling and weightlifting, I'd contend the women are at least as entertaining as the men. Women's cycling is usually more chaotic and full of attacking, whereas men's tends to be controlled more by the big powerful teams (tho this has decreased somewhat in recent years with the rise of transcendent individual riders like Pogacar, Van Aert, Van Der Poel, etc). And in weightlifting the women are about equally compelling/entertaining, especially at the lower weight classes whichever favor athleticism more than peak strength.
I agree that women's cycling is often less controlled and it that way more superficially entertaining, but that's nothing compared to watching the junior men's races which is pure chaos. But to me that's not the point; cycling is not about racing/excitement *only*, but about a whole range of other things, most visibly overcoming extreme pain, and I just don't won't watch women in pain voluntarily. Cycling is not a "fun" sport, it has totally different connotations like work, sacrifice, even eccentricism/reclusivity.

I really can't imagine watching weightlifting voluntarity as well, and women's weightlifting is completely bizarre to me.
 

chava

Well-known member
But directly to your point, it doesn't add anything. Most of the people using woman's sports to attack trans people don't care about women's sports. In fact, many of them are exactly the kind of men's rights/trad/etc types who think women should, yunno, stop playing sports and get back in the kitchen. They are using women's sports as an avenue of attack purely bc they found that women's sports and creating moral hysteria about children (again, echoes of the 70s and the gross claim that gay schoolteachers would recruit and/or molest children) were the most effective talking points.

I don't "care" about women's sports just as I don't care about men's sports other than cycling, really. I'd like my daughter to engage in sports for many reasons, but whether pro women's sports should be especially promoted of I really have no opinion of. Lot's of women's sports is just as exciting as men's, although women's soccer would obviously benefit from a smaller pitch.

Sport involving excessive pain and danger is another thing, however. Maybe extreme endurance sports as well, although that is more complicated
 

chava

Well-known member
Remember (spectator) sports is not about winning or losing or ethics for that matter, it is primarily a matter of aesthetics
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Actually women are better long (as in ultra-long) distance runners than men. Also long-distance swimming, cycling possibly also (which bothers me a bit).
What do you mean by better here? As far as I know, the better runner is the one who covers the distance faster, who would win a race... are you saying that women can now beat men at long distance (what distance, this is pretty vague?) running, swimming and possibly cycling?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Remember (spectator) sports is not about winning or losing or ethics for that matter, it is primarily a matter of aesthetics
Maybe they should be, in an ideal world..... but yer average football fan would rather fluke a dour 1-0 win via an own goal in the 97th minute that was the only shot on target in the entire grim game which consisted entirely of unskilled midfield hacking, diving and sliding around in the mud, occasionally interrupted by booting the ball into Row Y - than lose by the odd goal a legendary nine goal thriller in which both sides played the most sublime game of their lives.

Though I suppose that an argument could be made that sports such as football (and no doubt others) in which people take such vicarious pleasure (and pain) from the results of their teams not true spectator sports, cos the spectators on some level believe that they are part of the team. Maybe spectator sports should be ones in which no interest is taken in who wins, but which are watched hoping for pure athletic achievement. Though in a way that sounds more like dance or something...

I feel it's actually very hard to talk properly about sports and categorise them and so on - at least it is for me, as evidenced by the increasing knots I'm tying myself in trying to respond to a fairly throw away comment.

It might be simpler to say just that, for a large number of people, the aesthetics are a very secondary part of the appeal, and while that might be a pity it's definitely true.

I
 

chava

Well-known member
Maybe they should be, in an ideal world..... but yer average football fan would rather fluke a dour 1-0 win via an own goal in the 97th minute that was the only shot on target in the entire grim game which consisted entirely of unskilled midfield hacking, diving and sliding around in the mud, occasionally interrupted by booting the ball into Row Y - than lose by the odd goal a legendary nine goal thriller in which both sides played the most sublime game of their lives.

Though I suppose that an argument could be made that sports such as football (and no doubt others) in which people take such vicarious pleasure (and pain) from the results of their teams not true spectator sports, cos the spectators on some level believe that they are part of the team. Maybe spectator sports should be ones in which no interest is taken in who wins, but which are watched hoping for pure athletic achievement. Though in a way that sounds more like dance or something...

I feel it's actually very hard to talk properly about sports and categorise them and so on - at least it is for me, as evidenced by the increasing knots I'm tying myself in trying to respond to a fairly throw away comment.

It might be simpler to say just that, for a large number of people, the aesthetics are a very secondary part of the appeal, and while that might be a pity it's definitely true.

I
Even a dreadful "ugly" game is judged in an aesthetical way. As long as it is spectator sports it always is. Your second point about identifying with the team is the counterpoint, really, and the one I have a hard time understanding and identifying with myself.

It is quite hard to puzzle this out as you say, but there has been done research on this thing which perhaps is worth digging into.


I dont know how this discussing relates to the trans thing, but in some ways it probably does
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I either don't fully understand or don't agree with that post... but I think you're right about straying from the topic so perhaps that's not important.
 

jenks

thread death
I agree that women's cycling is often less controlled and it that way more superficially entertaining, but that's nothing compared to watching the junior men's races which is pure chaos. But to me that's not the point; cycling is not about racing/excitement *only*, but about a whole range of other things, most visibly overcoming extreme pain, and I just don't won't watch women in pain voluntarily. Cycling is not a "fun" sport, it has totally different connotations like work, sacrifice, even eccentricism/reclusivity.

I really can't imagine watching weightlifting voluntarity as well, and women's weightlifting is completely bizarre to me.
I don’t understand this - cycling can be about pain, it can be about grace, it can be about luck or brilliance and I don’t see why women can’t exhibit all of these.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I find it a bizarre attitude too. I wouldn't particularly watch cycling but I don't understand the distinction between women and men.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I don’t understand this - cycling can be about pain, it can be about grace, it can be about luck or brilliance and I don’t see why women can’t exhibit all of these.
all I can say is scratch a transphobe and you're likely to find a misogynist as well, the cultural worldviews go hand-in-hand

it's an obviously nonsensical position that denies women the agency to choose to experience the full range of human emotion and experience

it's basically the same misogyny that has permeated men's views of women's sports since forever, that some aspect of sports is unfeminine or doesn't fit into a very narrow definition of womanhood. a classic example is the crazy myth that women couldn't run marathons because it would case uterine prolapse, a lesser version of which persists to this day in professional cycling where women's equivalent races are shorter than men's for no good reason beyond the UCI says so.
 
Top