Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

Yeah, I know they're equal in many ways, but there is a gaping difference somewhat, you HAVE to admit, just to dive further into the issue. In my opinion, men were more the history, the broad backbone, the thing that's supported the earth, as women in my opinion were a bit more crafty (as of today of course) and pushing forward, the thing that keeps the world turning. But you can have no future if you have no broad base, and without going forward, you'd just be stuck in the same rut, the same moment.

Maybe I'm totally dellusional, maybe not, but what's your opinion?

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If I had posted during the time of COVID, COLA woulda called me worse than the virus.

There are differences, but a mature culture would not let these factual differences (nor anything else) be used as grounds for inequality and the inequity of division.

An example of such a distinction: Men, by pure physiology, are as a whole stronger physically than women. And it is by chance, I believe, that a man developed the first tools for agriculture as opposed to a woman developing the first tools for hunting. In the old nomadic days, the men were the hunters, while the women were the gatherers, so both sexes played equal roles. As soon as we discovered the ability to sow and harvest a field repeatedly, we started settling down, and the role that women played was overtaken by technology. This was the birth of the patriarchal society that grew and still flourishes today across the globe. Only recently have we begun to repair the damages of thousands of years of an unjust social system, and so only within the past few generations have we gleaned the hindsight to gauge the distinction between noting a difference and using that difference to harbor prejudice and hoard power.

Ultimately, we are all humans. We all have something unique to offer the world, and gender has as little part to play in that as the color of one's eyes.

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The meaning of life is 'bucket.'

FOR PONY!!!

What people need to understand though is men are not automatically stronger than women. If a man and women with the exact same genetic material had the same diet and exersize schedule, yeah, the man would be stronger. But a lazy fat guy is not stronger than a female bodybuilder. I'm sure most of you know that, but I'm just pointing it out.

I think men and women are fundamentally different, but they balance out. You also can't judge an individual based on whether they're a man or a woman, because women can be very manly, and men can be very... woman-like.

See, we have something like a double standard there. I said "woman-like" rather than "womanly", because if you call a guy "womanly", it sounds like he's gay or he's a sissy -- both of which may or may not be true. But if you call a woman "manly", it could actually be a compliment, depending on the context. If you say "woman-like", then it's more neutral, although such a phrase is typically unlikely to be used as a compliment.

Anyway, one thing that I hate is that sports are typically segregated by sex, so you have "men's basketball" and "women's basketball", and what happens is that nobody watches the women's basketball. Part of the problem is that people don't think of it as "men's basketball", they think of it as just "basketball". But if you watch "women's basketball", you watch it specifically to watch women play, and why would anybody do that when you can just watch plain ol' "basketball"? And sometimes there is overt sexism there, too... "I don't want to watch women's basketball because the women will complain they broke a nail or something." I've actually heard people say that. They might argue that women's basketball is lower-caliber than men's basketball, but I imagine that many people who say this haven't even tried to watch women's basketball. And, finally, I think being part of a sports team should be about whether you're good enough to get the job done, not whether you were born with testicles.

So, as a whole, I think men and women are different, though I don't think either is superior to the other, and in any case, when dealing with individuals, you can't judge based on that.

- Kef

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I think the main reason why sports are still segregated by gender is the high risk of sexual harassment on the playing field, especially in contact sports like football. What happens if a man tackles a woman in football, and all he was trying to do was just tackle her as the rules of the games permit but she starts crying out that he was harassing her, groping her, etc.? The potential for that stuff is too big, I think--especially in a sue-happy country like the USA.

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The meaning of life is 'bucket.'

FOR PONY!!!

To put it simple, men are the world's "maintenance". They keep the world in balance. Women are the world's "support". They keep maintenance under control. Without any of them the world could not exist.

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That's way too general. Nowadays, you can't seperate men and women by their "roles", and that's a good thing. People shouldn't be obligated to pursue a "role" depending on their sex.

It maybe that's just what people are raised to believe.

Then women wouldn't get much of a chance to play... Even in high school already, the best girl at basketball probably couldn't make the guys' varsity team.

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I would bet you that the best woman in the WNBA is better than the worst man in the NBA. Women are indeed physically weaker on average, and professional sports are very demanding, but there's still room for overlap.

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Maybe, maybe not. The only woman I remember playing a guys' professional sport in the past few years (unless you count racing) was Annika Sorenstam, who was by far the best golfer on the LPGA tour, playing on a PGA tour event. She missed the cut and tied for 96th of 111, so she only beat a couple guys. So women STILL wouldn't get much of a chance to play (not much of a chance, remember, I didn't say no chance). Even if there were 2 or 3 who could make the NBA, that still isn't much.

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Tennis isn't segregated by sex... at least, not in the same way other sports are. I have no idea what the relative performance statistics are for tennis, though.

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Well, I dunno if men and women actually play each other (in grand slam tournaments, they have separate brackets), but they do have mixed doubles (one man and one woman on each side), which is actually pretty cool. I've always wondered if mixed teams (that were forced to play half males and half females or something) would work for other sports, but then you may run into those problems that PianoMan was talking about earlier.
One interesting sport is ultramarathons (super-long running events that get up to about 100 miles long and take like 24 hours), though, which are often unsegregated because for runs around 80 miles and longer, a woman's body is actually better. Too bad ultramarathon running isn't... popular.

I also see why people have a problem believing that men and women can be different mentally, too (I mean, is there a reason this forum is full of guys while girls have a slight majority on Facebook?). Men tend to be more competiitive (which might be the reason there aren't more women drivers in Indy racing, althought strength is a small factor) among many other differences. Of course we are equal and shouldn't be forced to do anything just because of our sex, but that doesn't mean we're the same.

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We're equal.

I don't even see why this thread needed to be made. :/

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Yeah, we're equal.

My question for you: is that truly representative of women's overall potential in golf? What's your control group here? How many professional female golfers are there, compared to the number of male pros? How many women overall play golf, compared to the number of male players? All of these are factors in your argument.

If relatively few women play golf, then the overall talent pool is smaller. The game is never better than the people who are willing to play it, after all. There could be women all over the world who have incredible innate talent for golf, but who'll never pick up a set of clubs because they find the game uninteresting.

Basically, the idea that current female golf pros are "worse" than current male golf pros does not indicate that men are inherently better at golf than women. It's sort of like saying that if my cat is bigger than your dog then all cats are bigger than all dogs. This flawed logic can be applied to any number of human endeavors.

Mike

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Logical fallacies ahoy! I'd also like to say: graaaaagh!

Nikola Tesla was a man.

Therefore, men are better.

-Kef

EDIT: Hey! No faking my signature, buddy. - the real Kef

Women's golf is actually a very developed sport. In the US, there's the LPGA Tour (it's been around since 1950, so it's a whole lot older and better developed than things like the WNBA) which has a few hundred golfers and 36 tournaments a year, where the PGA tour has maybe slightly more golfers and 48 tournaments a year. In Europe, there is also an LPGA European Tour, which is also a similar counterpart to the PGA European Tour. They have four majors a year just like the PGA Tour, too. There's an ALPG Tour which compares to the men's amateur tour (the Nationwide Tour). The only thing the PGA tour has that women don't have are a few country-specific tours (eg Canada), but all the PGA tours are open to women, too, so they actually could play on all of them if they were good enough. So yeah, I'd say Annika Sorenstam is a great representative of women's potential in golf right now.

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The thing is, it's difficult to judge based on one person's performance in one event. For all we know, Annika just had a really bad day. No, top pros like Tiger don't bomb that badly when they have a bad day, but nobody's arguing that Annika is on the same level as Tiger.

And, of course, there's no question that she'd kick my butt at golf. Professional players are always way beyond ordinary players in skill; that's how they become professionals.

It's also worth noting that golf isn't representative of all sports. In golf, you need a lot of arm power in order to drive the ball as far as you can. A sport like basketball doesn't necessarily require that. With practice, it doesn't really take a lot of arm power to throw a basketball, even for three points. The hard part is precision and accuracy, not power.

A basketball player with average speed, average strength, etc. -- average in terms of professional players, I mean -- can still be a good player if they have a lot of intelligence and endurance. They won't be a star, but they can still be a valuable asset to the team.

- Kef

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If I recall correctly Annika was actually pretty relieved and felt pretty good about the first round of the tournament, but even if she didn't play as badly in the second round, she probably still would've missed the cut, and even if she made the cut she still wasn't anywhere near winning. I think she is a good representative of how good women currently are at golf, because she's dominated the LPGA Tour for several years now and is pretty much thought of as the female Tiger Woods.

Women have plenty of opportunities to play with men (the tournaments don't have 'Open' in the name for nothing...), and thanks to the LPGA, they can get noticed, so I think if they were truly as good as men, we would've figured out by now.

In fact, if you think about it, you don't even need to play against each other in golf to compare - all you have to do is play the same course in similar conditions, and you can look at the scores see who's better. You're right, the biggest difference is that they can't hit the ball nearly as far, which is why golf courses have the separate 'ladies' tees.
But I doubt any woman in the WNBA is as strong as the average NBA player. Maybe as strong as the weaker NBA players, but those guys at least have other advantages like height. Strength probably goes a lot farther in basketball than it seems. To be a good player in a league as highly competitive as the NBA, you pretty much need every advantage you can get, and that includes (maybe unfortunately for some) being male. I think that's why the WNBA exists in the first place, otherwise few if any women would get the chance to play.

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Of course, differences in sports ultimately doesn't say anything about any worth one gender has over the other in the overall spectrum of the universe.

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The meaning of life is 'bucket.'

FOR PONY!!!

Yeah I don't think anyone in this thread except Zeno has argued that men and women aren't equal. Very different of course, but equal.

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Yeah, I can see your point, but you know what's even more pointless then this thread being made? The people who won't stop talking about it, if you find nothing further to argue then how about this...don't post and let it sink?

But again, I rant, it's a small matter, but just saying,
the only reason I asked is that I heard women can tolerate pain more than men?
Yeah, I just heard it, and I don't know if it's already been discussed, just wondering.

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If I had posted during the time of COVID, COLA woulda called me worse than the virus.

That probably comes from the whole childbirth thing. From what I understand, the closest a man can ever come to feeling pain on the level of childbirth is passing a kidney stone. But then, we also have Cessarian sections, birth control, abstinence, etc...all these things so that a woman, should she choose to, not have to feel that specifically massive pain.

As for the debate in general: The members of humankind will always seek for some sort of classification, some sort of difference, that they can then use to say "I am different from and therefore better than you because of X."

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The meaning of life is 'bucket.'

FOR PONY!!!

I know I'm jumping in the middle of something here but I agree with (what I think) ed is saying.

If the major professional sports were open to women (ie if, say, women could play in the NHL), there would be a lot less women than men.

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What bothers me isn't the inequality between men and women in physical strength, it's the idea that you can make assumptions about somebody based on that the fact that she's a woman. You can't really make assumptions about anybody based on anything, even when there are statistical averages. Averages apply to the population, not to individuals. Applying those averages to individuals is why young men have to pay so much for car insurance, including guys like me who wouldn't dream of going more than 5 MPH over the speed limit, let alone driving like a hooligan.

- Kef

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Nonetheless, the only conclusion we can reach here is "men who play golf do better than women who play golf." This is still not conclusive proof that men are inherently better golfers. (It is evidence of that, yes, but ultimately inconclusive.) Something on that wiki page interested me: American women seem to do very poorly at golf compared to non-American women. What do those numbers tell us?

Mike

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Logical fallacies ahoy! I'd also like to say: graaaaagh!

I'm going to go with equal. Just 'cause I'm so nice.

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No. Neither of us are greater, yet neither of us are equal.

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That makes sense. Thread's over.

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