Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
I think you are asking what women's sports are for? It's a reasonable question. I think of it like age grouping, it puts competitors together into groups where they are competitive.
For school sports, sure. Mixed teams and less focus on winning, more on playing.
But if you are trying to determine who is best in a particular category? So like Ironman triathlon, everyone runs together, they start pro men then pro women then age groups, technically if my time was fastest I win, but if my time is fastest among women my age, that is also a win. A pro woman would win if she beat all the female participants, and in the off chance all the top men ran off a cliff or got sick halfway through, the top man would also win in his class even if he didn't beat top woman.
Personally I love the way gymnastics handles it. Men compete in events no woman could beat them in (rings! Oh my God!) and women compete different feats of athleticism and precision geared to their bodies, the strength to weight ratio not pure power.
Could you explain more about the gymnastics thing? Because I've often wondered why women can't compete in things like the parallel bars or the rings.
Like isn't there anyone who wants to do it even if they wouldn't be competitive with a man?
Women do sometimes train rings just for strength, and the single bar for fun, but no, this really is one of those events where simply having a male body gives a ridiculous advantage, it's designed to show off what a top level male-bodied body can do with training.
Floor exercise, and vault, are the overlap events and the competitors do a lot of the same skills, but the men do lead the way here on tricks - it's funny though. The first double backflip, in my lifetime it went from being considered impossible to being something coaches train 8-9 year old girls to do! So I don't know how much of the limitation is physical but I do know that the center of balance in a super fit woman is different from the center of balance in a super fit man, and that rings and Pommel horse are designed to exploit this difference.
I know that women can stand up from a wall squat without pushing off the wall first, are there other athletic pursuits that are more geared towards women's abilities?
Also thanks for your in depth explanation, that makes a lot of sense why mostly men would practice for those disciplines.