"let's gender desegregate sports and make it all into one league so it's skill based instead of gender based!!!"
hey. so i know the vast majority of people on tumblr haven't kicked a ball since 7th grade PE class but i can guarantee you if we got rid of women's leagues and put everyone together there would be very, very few women in sports. There would be no women in basketball, football, and track. and this isn't "misogynistic" of me to say. let's just look at the stats.
in texas, the 2025 400m record for high school boys is 47.30 seconds. meanwhile, the women's world record in the 400m was set in 1985 by Marita Koch, at a time of 47.60 seconds.
there have been a total of just 38 dunks in the entire history of the WNBA. since the 1996-97 NBA season, there have been over 210,000 dunks recorded, with the record going to dwight howard at 2950. Both leagues have the same hoop heights.
i've seen people say that katie ledecky is faster than michael phelps and this is evidence that women can compete with men on a professional level. it is true that ledecky is faster than phelps in the 400, 800, and 1500m freestyle. however, the last time michael phelps competed in these three events was when he was 15 years old. in fact, if you were to place katie ledecky in the men's league for the 800m (in which she has set a world record!) she would be 21 seconds slower than the man in 25th place!
it's not misogynistic to believe that sexual dimorphism exists.
Acknowledging the existence of sexual dimorphism also doesn't mean that women are just "weaker men". There are other disciplines where female bodies have an advantage, for example ultra-distance swimming, ultra-endurance running, gymnastics and figure skating. Women tend to have higher pain tolerance, better joint strength, more agility, flexibility, balance and endurance.
And even if there were absolutely no physical differences, we have to keep in mind that men are misogynistic. They hate women. They have a habit of keeping women out of spaces that they deem “theirs”.
Take video gaming for example. There’s no physical advantage for either sex, yet it’s male-dominated. Largely because when a woman tries to join a game on a microphone, the men gang up on her to chase her out. They call her slurs, they degrade her, they assume she’s going to make the team lose.
So let’s say that we make sports completely sex neutral. Am I supposed to believe that men will suddenly welcome women with open arms? That they won’t get pleasure out of blocking women from joining their team? That they won’t be casually sexist which would lead to women avoiding sports?
And that’s not even touching on the issue of sexual harassment and assault.
If you want women in sports, you need women’s only teams. Because otherwise, even the best female athletes will be driven out by misogynistic men who think that sports is a boys club.
