Insightful writing! Underscores a lot of how I talk to my kids about gender (although luckily, they inform me just as much as I inform them!). Really looking forward to yr thoughts on sports. It's my sense that the best approach there is to entirely re-structure ALL OF SPORTS from the bottom up, so that it looks nothing like it does now. Remove scholarship money from sports. Remove all money from sports. These things could help us think about competition differently and think about teams differently. Of course, I don't see that as a popular or likely scenario!
Changing how we do sports could also have a positive effect on folks who have been excluded from mainstream sports due to physical limitations, financial situations, etc.
I don’t have issues with people being who the are. Never have - never will. I do understand that the issue with sports has to do with the fairness of competition. There are excellent articles written by well educated people that discuss the issues. Sometimes things are not as simple as they seem. I always try to read what unbiased experts say on both sides of a subject.
Did you read this (very old) study? He doesn't say that performance is basically the same! He says that men ARE bigger than women and so women can lift between 60 and 70% of what men can. In other words, if the category is mixed sex, women will be pushed out.
You beat me to it, but yes, I wonder if the wrong article was linked? That article reports that the gap is smaller after adjusting for weight, but women's record lifts are still only 60-78% of men's in the same weight class.
Apr 10, 2022·edited Apr 10, 2022Liked by Gabrielle Blair
Yes. It also says that the women haven’t reached their performance potential - something that was one of the points Gabrielle made. & it also says when both are the same size the gap is smaller, which was what I was trying to saying. I’m going to guess based on your Twitter link anything I say isn’t going to convince you. Only time will do that if we just let it all shake out.
But men and women are not the same size (on average) and there is still a significant gap so I am not sure what your point is? Women should just suck it up until they manage through evolution to grow bigger?? These (and Gabrielle 's arguments) are all theoretical and could only be made by people who have no real interest in sport. By all means, campaign for different sports events and, I don't know, encourage women to grow bigger (!) but back in the real world, girls are losing out on opportunities NOW. Girls are already dropping out of sport as they reach their teenage years so why discourage them even more? To what end?
"but that’s why we don’t consider those things determinative in classifying someone as a woman or a man"
Actually, all that "gender stuff" like liking beer and the color pink is exactly how humans in our culture determine someone is a woman or a man. I determine and classify the gender of people I encounter every single day without knowing what sort of genitalia they have or what their chromosome combo is. I use gender cues our society has invented and that were taught to me from birth (and that can and do change). Hairstyle, makeup (or lack thereof), clothing, accessories (jewelry, bag, scarf, etc.), the way they walk and stand, their interests and hobbies, the book they're reading or the app they're using, the sports they play, etc..
Regarding the "testosterone makes men aggressive" idea, I linked to a Radiolab program that talked about how research shows the opposite is true. When people act aggressively, their bodies create more testosterone in response, not the other way around. The more research that is done, the more we learn that our assumptions about men's bodies and women's bodies are not actually correct. I would include "women are more nurturing" in the incorrect assumptions category too.
I definitely agree that many gender cues are cultural and not related to sex at all (hair, clothing, makeup, etc.) But is your view that gender really is only those kinds of cultural, arbitrary norms without any connection to physical sexual differences?
I may be misreading your views. Either way I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts on how (if at all) sex ties in to gender.
Interesting article...and I'm moving on to part 2 next. But before I do - I'm not sure why signaling is or should be required. Because if you go to India, Germany, Spain, Norway, and Russia (where people traditionally wear their wedding rings on their right hand), you're going to be misguided.
There is plenty of gender overlap in sports performance. It makes much more sense to create sports divisions determined by height, weight, wingspan, etc. than it does to break it into men's/women's leagues.
This is really helpful, thank you Gabby. I have been thinking so much about this lately. I'm soon to teach my oldest about sex and it dawned on me that I need to include gender identity (and the issues of that) and all the different physical attractions and even surrogates. I might even be missing something! But I want to do a thorough job. I was taught one thing, as you would probably guess.
I have two children, for now they both identify as female. When my oldest was 2 she said often "I'm a boy" and we rolled with it. Then we discovered that at nursery school there were discussions around boy passions and girl passions and my daughter's passions aligned with traditional boy passions and a boy said "you must be a boy" and my daughter was like"guess so!". This was 6 years ago. The school was in a church. We stopped attending because I just felt like why assign gender to interests? What is this really?
Next kid, new state, looking at a well known school that appeared to be more open, equal. During the tour they notice my daughter's nail polish and said it would not be allowed at school should she attend because they try to avoid gender stereotypes. I asked if a boy could wear nail polish and they said yes, of course. I don't wear nail polish and have wildly different tastes than my youngest child but nail polish is something she loves. If people make assumptions about a woman who wears nail polish, that's the person's problem, not the nail polish wearer. I know this doesn't necessarily relate but it really got me thinking about gender identity and how we try to solve the problem of oppression incorrectly so often. Not allowing a child to paint their nails is not real rebellion or protest. Just end all shame and oppression around our creative self expression and everyone hold the door open for others when you can. We absolutely need to protect the rights of trans people and trans kids. And we need to stop hating women. My god, can we please stop hating and punishing women and those that identify with traditionally assigned female characteristics.
You banned FlamingoMallet for writing that? Wow, for asking people to be open minded you sure are hypocritical. Nothing they wrote was rude. Get a life.
Kate, you are an anonymous reader, not subscribed to my newsletter, and not a part of this community. You've left lots of comments on both posts, all of which have a rude and antagonistic tone. Maybe you're not good at reading the tone of what you write? Based on at least one of your comments, it's unclear that you've even read this post. I'm not interested in hearing from you further and will definitely ban you permanently if you comment again. Have fun being mad about how I choose to moderate the comment section.
Your point about signals for who you're interested in dating makes me think of the Betans in Lois McMaster Bujold's "Vorkosigan" books - have you ever read her books? (I think you'd like them!)
Insightful writing! Underscores a lot of how I talk to my kids about gender (although luckily, they inform me just as much as I inform them!). Really looking forward to yr thoughts on sports. It's my sense that the best approach there is to entirely re-structure ALL OF SPORTS from the bottom up, so that it looks nothing like it does now. Remove scholarship money from sports. Remove all money from sports. These things could help us think about competition differently and think about teams differently. Of course, I don't see that as a popular or likely scenario!
Changing how we do sports could also have a positive effect on folks who have been excluded from mainstream sports due to physical limitations, financial situations, etc.
I don’t have issues with people being who the are. Never have - never will. I do understand that the issue with sports has to do with the fairness of competition. There are excellent articles written by well educated people that discuss the issues. Sometimes things are not as simple as they seem. I always try to read what unbiased experts say on both sides of a subject.
Harvard did a study and an equally sized ‘man’ and ‘woman’ who competed the measure in performance was basically the same.
I can’t seem to find that study. (Google) Do you have a link? I try to read and understand the issues but that one got by me.
Sorry wrong Ivy League 🤦🏻♀️ It’s Princeton. https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/brzycki/files/mb-2002-01.pdf
Did you read this (very old) study? He doesn't say that performance is basically the same! He says that men ARE bigger than women and so women can lift between 60 and 70% of what men can. In other words, if the category is mixed sex, women will be pushed out.
You beat me to it, but yes, I wonder if the wrong article was linked? That article reports that the gap is smaller after adjusting for weight, but women's record lifts are still only 60-78% of men's in the same weight class.
On Twitter, @Savewomenssports has lots of reliable peer-reviewed resources on this topic.
Yes. It also says that the women haven’t reached their performance potential - something that was one of the points Gabrielle made. & it also says when both are the same size the gap is smaller, which was what I was trying to saying. I’m going to guess based on your Twitter link anything I say isn’t going to convince you. Only time will do that if we just let it all shake out.
But men and women are not the same size (on average) and there is still a significant gap so I am not sure what your point is? Women should just suck it up until they manage through evolution to grow bigger?? These (and Gabrielle 's arguments) are all theoretical and could only be made by people who have no real interest in sport. By all means, campaign for different sports events and, I don't know, encourage women to grow bigger (!) but back in the real world, girls are losing out on opportunities NOW. Girls are already dropping out of sport as they reach their teenage years so why discourage them even more? To what end?
You are a gift!!! So very grateful to your words and voice!
"but that’s why we don’t consider those things determinative in classifying someone as a woman or a man"
Actually, all that "gender stuff" like liking beer and the color pink is exactly how humans in our culture determine someone is a woman or a man. I determine and classify the gender of people I encounter every single day without knowing what sort of genitalia they have or what their chromosome combo is. I use gender cues our society has invented and that were taught to me from birth (and that can and do change). Hairstyle, makeup (or lack thereof), clothing, accessories (jewelry, bag, scarf, etc.), the way they walk and stand, their interests and hobbies, the book they're reading or the app they're using, the sports they play, etc..
Regarding the "testosterone makes men aggressive" idea, I linked to a Radiolab program that talked about how research shows the opposite is true. When people act aggressively, their bodies create more testosterone in response, not the other way around. The more research that is done, the more we learn that our assumptions about men's bodies and women's bodies are not actually correct. I would include "women are more nurturing" in the incorrect assumptions category too.
I definitely agree that many gender cues are cultural and not related to sex at all (hair, clothing, makeup, etc.) But is your view that gender really is only those kinds of cultural, arbitrary norms without any connection to physical sexual differences?
I may be misreading your views. Either way I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts on how (if at all) sex ties in to gender.
Interesting article...and I'm moving on to part 2 next. But before I do - I'm not sure why signaling is or should be required. Because if you go to India, Germany, Spain, Norway, and Russia (where people traditionally wear their wedding rings on their right hand), you're going to be misguided.
Maybe we should just chat.
There is plenty of gender overlap in sports performance. It makes much more sense to create sports divisions determined by height, weight, wingspan, etc. than it does to break it into men's/women's leagues.
This is really helpful, thank you Gabby. I have been thinking so much about this lately. I'm soon to teach my oldest about sex and it dawned on me that I need to include gender identity (and the issues of that) and all the different physical attractions and even surrogates. I might even be missing something! But I want to do a thorough job. I was taught one thing, as you would probably guess.
I have two children, for now they both identify as female. When my oldest was 2 she said often "I'm a boy" and we rolled with it. Then we discovered that at nursery school there were discussions around boy passions and girl passions and my daughter's passions aligned with traditional boy passions and a boy said "you must be a boy" and my daughter was like"guess so!". This was 6 years ago. The school was in a church. We stopped attending because I just felt like why assign gender to interests? What is this really?
Next kid, new state, looking at a well known school that appeared to be more open, equal. During the tour they notice my daughter's nail polish and said it would not be allowed at school should she attend because they try to avoid gender stereotypes. I asked if a boy could wear nail polish and they said yes, of course. I don't wear nail polish and have wildly different tastes than my youngest child but nail polish is something she loves. If people make assumptions about a woman who wears nail polish, that's the person's problem, not the nail polish wearer. I know this doesn't necessarily relate but it really got me thinking about gender identity and how we try to solve the problem of oppression incorrectly so often. Not allowing a child to paint their nails is not real rebellion or protest. Just end all shame and oppression around our creative self expression and everyone hold the door open for others when you can. We absolutely need to protect the rights of trans people and trans kids. And we need to stop hating women. My god, can we please stop hating and punishing women and those that identify with traditionally assigned female characteristics.
You banned FlamingoMallet for writing that? Wow, for asking people to be open minded you sure are hypocritical. Nothing they wrote was rude. Get a life.
Melody: I don’t think the “Get a life,” is necessary. Design Mom clearly has an amazing life! I’ll admire her moves to France forever.
I obviously don't think I deserved to be banned either but there's no need to be rude to Gabrielle. I appreciated her explanation on the other post.
I don't understand the ban though. I appreciate the thoughtful responses given here and nobody has been rude or antagonistic.
Kate, you are an anonymous reader, not subscribed to my newsletter, and not a part of this community. You've left lots of comments on both posts, all of which have a rude and antagonistic tone. Maybe you're not good at reading the tone of what you write? Based on at least one of your comments, it's unclear that you've even read this post. I'm not interested in hearing from you further and will definitely ban you permanently if you comment again. Have fun being mad about how I choose to moderate the comment section.
Your point about signals for who you're interested in dating makes me think of the Betans in Lois McMaster Bujold's "Vorkosigan" books - have you ever read her books? (I think you'd like them!)
Someone mentioned these books on Twitter and I'm intrigued! Thanks for reminding me.