"Women shouldn't even bother with sports." This post falls under the category of "stupid shit said by dumb people and men." I overheard this conversation at work, of course, while typing something up on a computer. (Along with working mothers are the cause for childhood diabetes, a blog for another day.) You know, actually doing my job rather than having a severe case of mouth diarrhea, which surprisingly a lot of people have there, but that is another story altogether. It was just a passing comment by someone I really don't work with, but he works in the same building as I do. I work as contractor for the EPA. The building is full of other contractors as well as federal research scientists. In any case, he's pretty lucky I didn't punch him in the face, but I'm not a barbarian, and I have manners, so I just stewed angrily at my computer for awhile, and decided to seek revenge by writing a blog about the whole thing.
First off, this person is fairly young, probably younger than me; I don't know his exact age. Maybe I'm just too much of an optimist, but I was kind of hoping people (men mostly, but definitely including a lot of women) of my generation would be a little more able to see women as equals, as capable people. I was clearly wrong. Apparently we are just so weak and sub-par to men that we should just stay at home and have babies and cook meals for our clearly physically and mentally superior counterparts. He, quite frankly, is a moron.
This isn't the first time I have heard something like this though. I have plenty of male relatives who chuckle at the mere thought of a woman playing hockey. Women are simply too weak, and they lack talent for that particular sport. Blah, blah, blah. This brings me to the question though, of why men's sports seem so much more exciting than women's sports to many people. This is evident by simply turning on the TV. There is far more coverage for men's sports than there is for women's. We didn't even hear a thing about the Minnesota Lynx until they were in the WNBA finals! But we sure as fuck heard all about the Vikings needing a new stadium even though they only won what three games this entire season?! Oh yeah they really deserve our taxpayer dollars for new stadium. There are two reasons for this lack of interest for women's sports in my opinion. The first one has to do with the fact that women's physiology is different than men's (duh). The second, we simply have not been allowed to participate in sports for as long as men.
1. Now, just to be clear on the situation, I have no illusions that at elite levels women can compete with men.There is a reason there are women's and men's divisions in high level athletic competitions, such as the Olympics, for example. This starts with the fact that men have more testosterone, which promotes muscle growth. The more muscle you have, the more you can do physically. Women, while producing small amounts of testosterone, do not have as much as men do, and therefore have a higher body fat percentage than men. The reason for women to have more fat in their bodies is that women have children, and the fat helps protect unborn babies, as well as prevent a mother from dying while raising children, but that my friends is a story for another day because going into evolution and sexual selection will be quite a long blog by itself, and I may just do it sometime to bore you all to death. An example of this would be Grandma's Marathon. Last year the first man to cross the finish line did so in 2hrs and 12 min. The first woman to cross the finish line did so in 2hrs and 30 min. The man was in first place overall (obviously), and the woman was in 40th place overall. Quite a difference 18 minutes makes huh? Now she beat a shitload of men, but there were still 39 men to cross the finish before her.
Things change though when distances become longer than a marathon. When you start getting into ultra marathons, women actually finish at higher rates than men do, and women can actually win these races overall. Why? One reason is women are smaller and therefore there is less wear and tear on the body. Another is because of that extra fat we have due to lack of testosterone. We have larger fat reserves than men, and therefore have more energy to draw on in long endurance races. So BOOYA grampa!
2. We have not been allowed to compete in sports as long as men, so how can we be at the same level? I remember (and I'm not that old) when girls were allowed to start playing hockey in high school! I watched the first time women's hockey officially became a sport in the Olympics, 1998! How ridiculous it took that long! The first woman was officially entered in the Boston Marathon was in 1967, and she didn't specify sex on the entry form, so officials tried to get her off the course when they realized she was a woman. Lucky for her she had some friends running with her and they simply surrounded her, not allowing officials to get near. Women were considered too fragile and delicate to be able to run long endurance races! How many women run marathons now?!? I've even read some things that say doctors, DOCTORS, were afraid a woman's uterus would fall out if she tried to run that far! Ummmm...excuse me? Are you people for real? Give women some time for crying out loud!
So you see why this little cockroach of a man at work angered me. We enjoy challenging ourselves physically just as much as men. We enjoy participating in sports just as much as men. We enjoy competition just as much as men. On a non-elite athlete level, we can certainly kick men's asses in many sports. Where do you get it in your small peewee head that women shouldn't bother with sports? I think more people need to give women's sports a chance. You may actually be surprised at what great athletes we can be! Take the time to at least try it. Don't be a cockroach.
