When a cis woman beats cis men at a sport, and cis women across the board are not beating cis men across the board, she is treated like an outlier--and she is, but not for the reasons misogyny suggests.
From a young age, young girls* are discouraged from roughousing and sport and playing outside, while boys** are encouraged to do so. From a young age, sport is treated as a viable career for boys down the road and simply a hobby for young girls. Girls are under a pressure to not let sports make them look dirty or ugly--boys have no such pressure. When girls are injured in sport, they are subjected to medical misogyny. Either interpersonal or the result of the misogyny in the medical field and research itself.
When competition becomes more rigid in high school, girls' teams are underfunded, are playing on smaller worse arenas, are given less priority in field/rink/court time, are promoted less than their male counterparts, and are subjected to a wide range of competitive disadvantages outside of the other social pressures they are subjected to for being women--expected to take care of kids after school, are pushed away from sport under the expectation to find a husband, etc.
At the college level, the disparity intensifies. Coaches for women's teams are paid less. Funding is starkly different between mens and womens teams. All the same facility and arena priority is amplified. The issues with visibility and promotion exist to a worse degree. Men are given better and higher scholarships. At the highest level, male athletes are given grace on their grades (if not also tutors or ghostwriters) that is not afforded to the women. There is still the pressure to focus on studies and a non-sports career (if they are not pushed towards a mother role) that is not there for the men.
At the pro level, the women are still subject to poor arenas, barred from playing in arenas for the men, get less coverage, less funding, are given poor accommodations, and are paid a fraction of what the men do regardless of how well they do. One year for the world cup, the US Women's Soccer team was paid 20% what the men's team were paid, when the men lost in the first elimination round, and the women won the cup. Many pro women athletes are expected to or are forced to take up other jobs outside of their sport to afford to live. The men do not have any of these factors to contend with, and at every avenue where the things ARE difficult for the men's team, it is made exponentially worse for the women's teams. When a female athlete DOES have a child, the recovery from the experience is not treated like the injury recovery it is. Not only is she expected to come back fit, she must come back hot.
At every level, there may not even be a women's equivalent of the sport. Women may have to travel much farther away for a chance to play their sport, due to not having a team nearby, and she will be paid less to make that move.
In every opportunity for disparity, there exists one between men's and women's sports, and the interest on that disparity compounds until the women are at 20+ years of obstacles and STILL manage to beat cis men!
That woman is not proof that women can compete with men, she is proof that with weights on her ankles and one arm tied behind her back she can STILL beat a cis man guided every step of his career.
Patriarchy has an extreme vested interest in demolishing women's sports, so that women can remain an inspiring story of overcoming adversity rather than someone who simply excels at a sport.
If women's sports were not subjected to appalling levels of disenfranchisement, cis women would be crushing men at their sports at a rate that would make the establishment shit their pants, and unfortunately until we recognize the subset of women who find the suffering a noble right of passage as a hindrance to gender equality, we are never going to see the advancements we need to give female athletes the opportunities they deserve, and we will not realize how fake the skill gap is between men and women--a collective realization we MUST have to be able to fight patriarchy properly.
And at every avenue where gender disparity exists, there also exists gaps among the women with regards to race, or class, or able-body status, etc.
We are judging a whole class based off of a woman who just stumbled out of a final girl situation against a man waking up from a nap, and then ignore why it's even THAT woman who stumbled forward and not her peers.
The bigotry is so deep, yall!
*"girls/women" as both cis girls/women and the forced association of those assigned female at birth. Broad language that does not begin to encompass the whole experience, but is the framework society works off of.
**"boys/men" as both cis boys/men and the forced association of those assigned male at birth. Broad language that does not begin to encompass the whole experience, but is the framework society works off of.
tangentwithtanner
prguitarman
izzy806
dededos
origamiaround
snowghoul
