• quartz242 [she/her]
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    4 years ago

    Yeah some good ideas and weird takes here.

    Sports at its core is about personal achievement, team success, and entertainment. The fact that it has been politicized and commodified has resulted in this being an effective dog whistle.

    American ninja warrior has everyone compete on the same course regardless of gender. I'm sure if other sports actually tried they could find a way to be totally inclusive and still be entertaining but honestly if you get thrills from watching a blood sport maybe some self crit is in order.

    • ssjmarx [he/him]
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      4 years ago

      I think in the future there might be room for some sports to have leagues, similar to how boxing has weight classes but more holistic, which take into account everything including your natural hormone levels, VO2 capacity, bone density, height, weight, muscle to fat ratio etc to make the only remaining factors how hard you work and how good you are at the sport in question. But that's a sci-fi dream so for now making there be more stuff like couples' tennis would be cool.

    • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
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      4 years ago

      American ninja warrior has everyone compete on the same course regardless of gender.

      The only sport I watch.

    • DonCheadleInTheWH [any]
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      4 years ago

      Yes, we should also dumb down chess and change the rules of every competitive endeavor!

      Your heart's in the right place, but the people you think you're advocating for would wring you by the neck at the suggestion the sport be nerfed so they could participate.

      • shitstorm [he/him]
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        4 years ago

        People would wring my neck for advocating for the abolition of private property, but I'm still gonna say it.

      • quartz242 [she/her]
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        4 years ago

        Maybe I didnt Express myself clearly so my fault on that, I'm not advocating for any sport nerfing rather for those that it is applicable to let everyone run the same course, have a standardized challenge where the goal is to constantly try and beat your own record. Lots of track and field, Olympic sports, and the like this could work for.

        I would advocate for the abolishment of any professional sports that severely impacts the participants long term health and well being and for the remaining sports to adopt a metric not based on gender for classifying participants as others have suggested.

        • AStonedApe [they/them]
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          4 years ago

          So out of curiosity, what would you do with a sport like baseball? It doesn't severely impact long term health, men dominate the sport, and I can't think of a good way to change the sport such that women would be included in any significant way. I'm really interested in this concept, and I hope someone smarter than me can propose a reasonable solution, but I certainly can't think of anything.

          • quartz242 [she/her]
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            4 years ago

            I'm not super familiar with baseball but local play would self organize by whoever wants to participate, in regards to professional it could be a league based on an individual game play metric. Good question

            • AStonedApe [they/them]
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              4 years ago

              I'm all about localizing and democratizing baseball. But I'm not quite sure what you mean by this:

              it could be a league based on an individual game play metric.

              • quartz242 [she/her]
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                4 years ago

                So from.what little I understand about baseball there are lots of statistics involved so utilizing said play statistics could be used a la a conputer to essentially create a matchmaking system designed to create fair games utilizing gameplay data rather than gender.

                • AStonedApe [they/them]
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                  4 years ago

                  Honestly, I think some of y'all are a bit confused about the nature of some of these sports.

                  rather than gender

                  Baseball already doesn't directly discriminate based on gender. There are no rules saying women aren't allowed to play. There's certainly a societal component to why there have been literally 0 female MLB players, but I think the biological differences are much more significant.

                  utilizing said play statistics could be used a la a conputer to essentially create a matchmaking system designed to create fair games utilizing gameplay data

                  How is this not going to produce leagues/divisions with different levels of male competition similar to boxing? Why would utilizing statistics help women compete fairly against men in a sport they already aren't prohibited from playing in? Remember, boxing only achieves (some) gender equality by specifically banning men from the women's competition.

                  I REALLY want to get behind these ideas, but I'm afraid there may be only 2 options: leave team sports to discriminate based on gender or abolish the sports entirely.