Gender again. Sorry!

[winjim]

If I couldn't fire her I'd fire whoever wrote the social media policy.


(Yes I'm aware it's a small film festival probably run by about half a dozen people out of someone's kitchen)

 

[AuroraSaab]

Let this be a lesson, remember to switch out of your work account before tweeting transphobic hate speech.

Totally wrong to use a company account to tweet your own opinion, but what part of it is 'transphobic hate speech'? You've made a serious allegation so I think you should spell it out for us.

Clearly a justifiably sackable offence to tweet personal stuff from a works account though, even if you thought you were on your own account, or even if it you were just having a one off moment of madness.

 

[newfhouse]

discrimination card

Bzzzzt. Game over.

 

[bobzmyunkle]

This appears to be a strange one. It's not as if men have an advantage lifting the heavy chess pieces. Maybe the governing body saw other sports heading in that direction and thought chess is a sport, we should follow suit?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-66538328

 

[Mr Celine]

This appears to be a strange one. It's not as if men have an advantage lifting the heavy chess pieces. Maybe the governing body saw other sports heading in that direction and thought chess is a sport, we should follow suit?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-66538328

Does chess even need separate men's and women's competitions?

 

[theclaud]

Does chess even need separate men's and women's competitions?

Fair question, but the rationale about women's sports is not always about inherent mismatch of ability but often to do with the fact that's it's a culture heavily dominated by men. In other words, you have to make space, politically, for women.

 

[Deleted member 121]

They ought to take the darts approach and start mixing genders in physically inactive sports as it is a success. One of the barriers to the historically poorer quality of women's darts was the exceptionally poor prize pool available to them in competitions and thus limited the time a women's darts player could reasonably devote to practice, juggling work responsibilities and such. Since the PDC have mixed the genders, the quality of women's darts players has never been higher as more and more go professional, gain sponsorships and can practice full time like the men have been able to for over 30 odd years.

 

[AuroraSaab]

It's to grow the women's game and encourage female participation in a pastime that is overwhelmingly male dominated (90% male, I think). Same reason we have bursaries and scholarships in STEM subjects that are only open to women.

Worth noting that it's a protected Women's category and an Open category. Women can apparently play in the Open category if they wish.

It's also to prevent Chess having a Lia Thomas moment. Or indeed an Ann Andres moment - where this week a 40 year old male born athlete broke the Canadian women's power lifting record by lifting 200kg more than their rivals, who were in their 20's.

(Edit: link wouldn't work, but ex grand master Mike Salter explains on Twitter why it is necessary, if anybody wants to read about the context).

Also, it's OK for women to have stuff just to themselves.

 

[winjim]

They ought to take the darts approach and start mixing genders in physically inactive sports as it is a success. One of the barriers to the historically poorer quality of women's darts was the exceptionally poor prize pool available to them in competitions and thus limited the time a women's darts player could reasonably devote to practice, juggling work responsibilities and such. Since the PDC have mixed the genders, the quality of women's darts players has never been higher as more and more go professional, gain sponsorships and can practice full time like the men have been able to for over 30 odd years.

This is what I think about other, more physical sports as well. Not necessarily mixing the teams although I have mused on the possibility of having say a minimum number of each sex / gender on each team. More like treating the sport as a single entity. We talk for example about 'women's football' and people say that lower wages and investment is justified as it brings in less revenue than the men's game. Quite apart from the fact that it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy I think we should stop having seperate men's and women's games as such. Sure have separate matches and leagues but in terms of advertising, revenue, the things which make the modern commercial game, pool it all. One single pot of money and invest accordingly.

 

[Pale Rider]

but in terms of advertising, revenue, the things which make the modern commercial game, pool it all.

Spending other people's money is never going to work because the 'other people' will refuse to part with it.

The men's game produces nearly all the money, so there's no way they are going to give it away to the women.

Same as the Premier League which has been dragged kicking and screaming into sharing a little of its money with the lower leagues.

The women have made good progress, but they still have a big hump to get over.

Football is a physical game, and generally men produce a more attractive match than women.

Attraction = money, so I can't see the women ever achieving overall parity.

Unless it's artificially imposed, which is a total nonsense.

 

[winjim]

Spending other people's money is never going to work because the 'other people' will refuse to part with it.

The men's game produces nearly all the money, so there's no way they are going to give it away to the women.

Same as the Premier League which has been dragged kicking and screaming into sharing a little of its money with the lower leagues.

The women have made good progress, but they still have a big hump to get over.

Football is a physical game, and generally men produce a more attractive match than women.

Attraction = money, so I can't see the women ever achieving overall parity.

Unless it's artificially imposed, which is a total nonsense.

We need to stop thinking of it as other people's money, and stop thinking of it as 'the men's game', that's literally my point. Artificially impose it and if people don't like it, tough. If they want to go and watch men play rather than women, fine but don't disadvantage the women players because of it.

The top tier of the 'men's game' appears to this outsider to be swimming in cash and corruption so it's not like they can't afford it.

 

[Deleted member 159]

Spending other people's money is never going to work because the 'other people' will refuse to part with it.

The men's game produces nearly all the money, so there's no way they are going to give it away to the women.

Same as the Premier League which has been dragged kicking and screaming into sharing a little of its money with the lower leagues.

The women have made good progress, but they still have a big hump to get over.

Football is a physical game, and generally men produce a more attractive match than women.

Attraction = money, so I can't see the women ever achieving overall parity.

Unless it's artificially imposed, which is a total nonsense.

I prefer women's football, it seems more genuine.

Maybe because it's not corrupted by the hundreds of millions players get.

If the England team win, the men are never going to love it down - for a while at least

 

[Pale Rider]

The top tier of the 'men's game' appears to this outsider to be swimming in cash and corruption so it's not like they can't afford it.

That may be true, but it's unrealistic to expect the clubs/Premier League to spend money on anything they don't want to.

It seems to me the women's game needs a plan that has at least a small chance of success.

Making their game as attractive as the men's would do it, but that looks very difficult to me.

At my team - Tottenham - the women were complaining during the poor weather they weren't getting to play on top quality pitches.

That's true, their 'home' ground is presently Leyton Orient's Brisbane Road, where they routinely get a thousand or so supporters.

Their complaints will continue to fall on deaf ears until such time as they can get 60,000 to pay to watch, week in, week out.

As our weasly but extremely astute chairman Daniel Levy said, every team in the top women's league is losing money.

 

[AuroraSaab]

There are good reasons physical sports are separated by sex; safety and fairness being the primary ones. Playing with stronger, better male players in training might bring on female players but in competitive games it just wouldn't work.

The USA Women's team were beaten by under 15's boys because, skill aside, male size, speed, and strength advantage is difficult to overcome, especially in contact sports.

Adult USA world champion winning female, 14 year old boy from Dallas under 15's winning team:

 

[Pale Rider]

I'm confused - what's the position with chess?

On the face of it I can't see any reason why literally anyone with a pulse shouldn't play against anyone else.