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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024

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Part of why I don't care very much about this issue, is I'd be fine with the ending of gender separated sports. Tough shit if women can't compete, the world ain't fair. I say that with daughters who will very likely compete in high school and possibly college sports competitions. Still don't care. I understand I have a minority view on that point, and if you want to have female sports it makes sense to actually try and preserve them.

I caught my first (and only) ban from you (I'm pretty sure) for saying the same, albeit in a far less charitable way. As far as I'm concerned, women's sports are fundamentally less interesting, the competitors are worse, the action less exciting. They've been grandmothered in as "societally acceptable", but in most cases, they're about as popular in terms of viewership as the Paralympics. I cynically suspect that even the relatively popular ones, like tennis or swimming, gain most of their appeal from the voyeuristic pleasure of watching skimpily clad fit women.

In some cases, a specific carve out or female only league is outright ridiculous, why should there be a separate leaderboard or league for female chess players? The original justification, if memory serves, that it helps them find a foothold in a misogynistic and unfriendly environment, has negative relevance now. It's a test of pure skill that doesn't even need more physical effort than moving pieces on a board.

I go even further into the minority by advocating for almost all restrictions being removed from sports in general. Hell yeah, let's allow anabolic steroids and sketchy Russian PEDs, and as a Twitter wag once said, find out high humans can really jump. Olympic athletes are often mutants who are gifted, from birth, with better muscles and cardiovascular systems. I see no reason why they can get away with being blessed by the roll of the RNG while intentional attempts at self-improvement are verboten.

If I can't get that, sadly, then I demand that standards be applied fairly. Biological women should be disbarred from "Men's" sports, which are, almost always, open to anyone who cares to participate, not that it'll make any difference in practise.

Yeah it's not uncommon for me to have to ban people I agree with for saying things in an uncharitable way.

There are legal reasons why the US has so many female sports leagues. There is a law requiring colleges to have equal treatment of men and women, and one of those requirements has said you need an equal number of female sports scholarships.

I see. Well, my tiny residual dissatisfaction with the ban I received is much ameliorated when I discover that you were doing much the same thing I later found myself compelled to do for Astragant, arguably the FarRight dude.

Certainly it taught me that tone and phrase matters, when the topics of discussion are contentious, which likely made me a more careful and considerate mod, as well as what I can only hope is one that does his best to stop that bias leaking through when trying to be impartial!