A 6th grade girls team from Kentucky was set to go for the year-end championship tournament, but was told they were banned due to fears boys teams might ‘retaliate’ if they lost to the girls team.

  • morriscox@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Sunderman should have kicked them out for lying, not out of “concern” for the potential behavior of boys. As soon as he made that claim he went into the wrong. If the boys can’t behave properly then kick them out. It’s like how a gal shouldn’t have to worry about being raped because of what she is or isn’t wearing or doing or not doing. We’re telling females what to do or not to do and not males what to do or not do.

  • merthyr1831@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    This is how most sex segregated sports came about

    1. women beats men
    2. women banned
    3. segregated division created because of “biological differences”
    • Balinares@pawb.social
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      8 months ago

      I wonder why people are downvoting your comment. It’s literally what happened. See for instance this paper on the history of gender segregation in the Olympics: https://theworld.org/stories/2016-08-17/see-120-years-struggle-gender-equality-olympics.

      Quote: “Margaret Murdock from the US won a silver in a tie in the 1976 Riffle Event, one of the events in the shooting categories. The rifle event was split into men’s and women’s events in 1984.”

      • Th3D3k0y@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Sports without contact mechanics I’ve always wondered why the split. Like men’s and women’s chess… what?

        But men’s and women’s football? That kind of makes sense, not saying women’s should be banned from the men’s leagues, but let them make that choice themselves

        • SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works
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          8 months ago

          Women’s chess leagues exist for women who want to compete without facing misogynistic behavior. They can also compete against men, however, unlike in other sports, and many do. If you ask me, what should have been done from the start would have been tackling the misoginy.

        • OrgunDonor@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          I think it is a bit more difficult than that. I have really enjoywd watching downhill bike racing in the past, and both the men’s and women’s races are incredible.

          If you don’t know, It is a single rider time trial down incredibly technical courses on a mountain bike.

          Unfortunately I don’t think it would be good to mix men and women, because the men are faster. This year’s world champs race had the men finishing 30s faster, the fastest woman would have been 66th. Results

          I would love to see more mixed competitions in the elite level of sports where it makes sense.

          • kofe@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            I often think of the Olympic skier that was interviewed by NPR a few years ago. She described how the boys around her were encouraged to do riskier jumps, whereas when she’d bring it up coaches, parents etc would all express concern about “what if you get hurt?”

            There are a lot of social factors I think we should consider before writing women off as inherently lesser in competitive sports. We don’t know how many women are held back by these narratives if they aren’t even given the chance. Even if it’s the case now, I really wonder how much is purely biological

        • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          Sports without contact mechanics I’ve always wondered why the split

          Look at world records for any sport that requires raw strength/power, speed, and endurance. The split is pretty extreme. The marathon world record is 2:00:35, set in 2023. The women’s world record is 2:17:42, 13% slower. For the 100m, the top time is 9.58s for men. Over 180 men have broken the 10 second barrier. The top woman is 10.49; no woman has ever broken the 10 second barrier. Given that power lifting is harder to do direct comparisons (…in a way that readily makes sense to people that aren’t competitive power lifters…), I’ll just note that it’s not even close.

          Any sport that has a significant speed, endurance, or strength component is going to tend to be dominated by men. When it’s purely a skill issue, the splits are much more even. When you look at archery, for instance, women sometimes beat men; the split is fairly even.

          In a lot of ways, it makes sense to have a hard gender split in sports, and not try to make a solid delineation between what sports require enough skill to overcome a physical gap versus which ones don’t.

      • theherk@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I suspect because this being what has happened in “most sex segregated sports” is a very very bold assertion. In which of those sports are women holding top positions? I mean women athletes are awesome, but the idea that separation happens because the poor men can’t keep up is just… I don’t know, maybe I’m a confused old man.

        But I thought it was so that women could compete at the top levels of their sport in sports where their times, weights, etc. are not really proximal. They should of course be combined where the physical implications are negligible, but the idea that what’s preventing that is that the men just can’t compete with the women seems strange to me.

        But is there some support for that?

      • harderian729@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        She got a silver and 8 years later it was split into men and women’s events?

        She didn’t even win…

        It’s sad the mental gymnastics and revisionist history you all perpetuate to support your biased agenda.

        Just another reason why the vast majority of people on these forums are not worth taking seriously.

        • Aleric@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          For someone with such issues with the forum, you seem to be doing a lot of whining and not much leaving.

          • harderian729@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Why would I stop participating because ya’ll are a bunch of dunces?

            That’s how you win and shut me out of the conversation, lol. Which is exactly what you’re trying to do.

            • SphereofWreckening@ttrpg.network
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              8 months ago

              That’s how you win and shut me out of the conversation, lol. Which is exactly what you’re trying to do.

              People tend to do that to ya when you’re personality is centered around being wrong and obnoxious.

  • asteriskeverything@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    One of top posts here is selective as fuxk quoting only the president’s backpedalling after their official initi statement being the fear of retaliation. I’m getting way too annoyed watching the upvotes (aka misinformation) grow just because this asshat added a quote.

    Oh by the way, thisteam.- the president - coached one of the boy teams that played against the girls team. And they are trying to say it took time to realize, to justify why they were allowed to play up until the championships. FFS this is garbage sportmanship

        • Pips@lemmy.sdf.org
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          8 months ago

          There are people who firmly believe women can never outcompete men due to biology. With some outliers, this is currently true within a defined age range and only in certain sports (there are several where women routinely outclass men). In 6th grade a good chunk of the boys haven’t hit puberty yet and you can easily find girls who are stronger, faster, and more athletic than boys in their cohort because everyone is still developing. The boys getting beat right now could hit a growth spurt next week and play in the NBA.

          The point is at this age, the kids are actually pretty evenly matched. If the boys have a violence problem, they should be banned from playing till they fix it. Otherwise this league head should shut the fuck up.

            • Pips@lemmy.sdf.org
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              8 months ago

              In sixth grade at most schools? Probably most of them. That’s right around when most boys just start hitting puberty and girls tend to generally be bigger and more athletic than boys until then.

              In general? Gymnastics, figure skating, cheerleading, skiing (best downhill skier in the world is a woman)…

              • Vlyn@lemmy.zip
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                8 months ago

                That’s not how any of this works.

                For example your skiing example: Mikaela Shiffrin is the best skier in the world based on wins (as she won a fuckton of competitions in several different event types). But those were all wins against other women. If she directly competed against men she’d probably lose if it’s a 1:1 downhill race for example. This is why there are articles like this, where people are hyped that she’s ‘close’ to male skiers in times.

                There’s also instances of highschool basketball where female teams got beat by male teams several years younger than them. Of course puberty gives a boost, but it’s not this magical thing that suddenly sets males and females apart https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34032904/

                • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  You’re pulling out scheduling studies to defend the hyper masculinity of middle school age sports.

    • Nobody@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      The president’s team got beaten by girls, and now he’s throwing a hissy fit because they’re going to beat him again in the tournament. Don’t project your own fragile masculinity on the next generation.

      • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Actually, that’s the twist in this story. The president’s team was beaten by boys who were then subbed out for girls later.

    • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Oh by the way, sunderman.- the president - coached one of the boy teams that played against the girls team. And they are trying to say it took time to realize, to justify why they were allowed to play up until the championships. FFS this is garbage sportmanship

      You should include the whole context if you want to note that. The game he coached against was the first game and the girl’s team roster was all boys. After that game they switched out the boys for girls. The whole situation is still dumb.

  • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Regardless of the prejudice angle in this story, I feel bad for the girls for being excluded from possibly winning the championship, especially when they were performing well.

      • Ashen44@lemmy.ca
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        8 months ago

        Don’t worry about it, some people just throw downvotes around everywhere. You could make the least divisive post possible that everyone universally could agree is correct and still get a downvote, so it’s best to just ignore it. This is especially true on news communities, infamously the preferred hunting grounds of many a troll.

        • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Thanks for replying. I’m honestly not worried about it, just really curious. I like to know if there’s something missing in my perception of the comment I made, basically.

          • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Fair enough, but it’s just so weird.

            Like what is that? Just some automated system response, making sure there’s always at least one downvote on anyone’s comment?

            I’m being facetious, but you get my point. It’s just so out of left field, it just makes you wonder.

  • smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de
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    8 months ago

    Boys Basketball Team Kicked Out Of Girls League Championship After Defeating Girls Teams.

    If this headline would look like that and you would react differently, regardless of how you have reacted to the original, I think there is something wrong with you view.

      • anon987@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        At their age girls have a significant height advantage over boys.

        It’s literally the same thing, unfair biological advantage.

  • BreakDecks@lemmy.ml
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    8 months ago

    “…what we have worried about is a boys team is losing to a girls team (especially in a year end tourney) they may get frustrated and retaliate against a girl,” a text allegedly sent by the tournament directors reads.

    “Throughout the season we had a few teams come to us about this and raise concerns about it. Because of this we decided to keep them out of the tournament,” another text reads.

    Oh, so the teams were threatening to commit violence against the girls. Why not just kick those teams out?

    • pachrist@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I don’t want to be an old man, but if you hit a girl when I was in 6th grade, you were an instant social pariah. Everyone would beat your ass.

      Kicking them out doesn’t solve the problem. They’d just blame the girls instead of being introspective. Let one of these loser little boys throw hands and learn really fucking fast that the meanest, hardest hitting monster on this planet is a pissed off 12 year old girl. When he’s getting his hair ripped out a fistful at a time, he’ll understand why he lost.

      • JoBo@feddit.uk
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        8 months ago

        but if you hit a girl when I was in 6th grade, you were an instant social pariah. Everyone would beat your ass.

        And this is why male violence against women is non-existent, children.

        There is a whole world out there to pay attention to and you’ve taken the performative utterances of tweenage boys desperately trying to become men as evidence to deny everything else. WTF?

        FWIW, the ones who were shouting the loudest are absolutely the most likely to be dominating, coercing, and hitting their female partners now. They’re performing masculinity because they don’t know what it is and that terrifies them.

        And because the world is dominated by these frightened little boys, we punish girls and women for the violence of men. This story is not an outlier, it is the fucking story.

      • DrPop@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Yeah a lot of boys forget that girls don’t fight “fair”. Due to societal pressures on women to surpress heir emotions, when it comes time to fight that’s it. Boys are taught by society fighting is normal and even is encouraged in how they play.

        • nednobbins@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          6th graders generally don’t fight fair. They don’t generally fight well at all.

          The typical fight between 6th grade boys is every bit as much of a slap fest as the typical fight between 6th grade girls.

          6th grade boys haven’t hit puberty yet. Given that these girls are kicking their butts at basket ball I’ll assume they slap harder than the boys do.

          • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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            8 months ago

            They’re probably taller than the boys, too which plays into them beating them at basketball since height is such a big advantage and girls tend to hit their growth spurts earlier.

        • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          You and me both buddy.

          This whole thread is a lowest common denominator extravaganza, I’m actually shocked at the lack of critical thinking. People read a headline and get riled up without asking questions, and if you do, you’re a homophobic racist antihuman piece of shit. What a fucking echo chamber. Was lemmy acquired by Tumblr without telling anyone? Reddit has higher standards than this.

          It’s funny how 12 people downvoted me, and 15 people “genuinely didn’t understand”. So, did you downvote first, then realized that you didn’t even get it? That’s how the right wing thinks and acts.

          • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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            8 months ago

            It’s funny how 12 people downvoted me, and 15 people “genuinely didn’t understand”. So, did you downvote first, then realized that you didn’t even get it?

            Downvotes are for poor quality posts that don’t contribute to the discussion. If people “genuinely didn’t understand” your post they should downvote it, because you did not explain yourself well enough to contribute to the discussion.

      • Pips@lemmy.sdf.org
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        8 months ago

        Here’s the quotes:

        SWOB President Tom Sunderman expressed concern in a statement:

        “Doing this for 28 years, what we have worried about is a boys team losing to a girls team (especially in the year end tourney), they may get frustrated and retaliate against a girl.” "Then we have liability issues.” Prez, a social media user on X (Formerly Twitter), didn’t buy it.

        “What he meant to say was they can’t have their boys being emasculated by a better girls team… it would be a blow to their developing manhood to get beat by girls.”

        What context am I missing?

    • golli@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      Once again, girls are somehow responsible for boys’ inability to behave

      That’s really not what i am getting from this article at all.

      made the call because they believed that 11 to 12-year-old girls and boys competing against each other on the court could pose a liability risk leading to violence, even though the girls team had been winning 7-1 all season without incident.

      they may get frustrated and retaliate against a girl.” "Then we have liability issues.”

      McGraw said the girls were never in any real danger during the games, aside from the occasional side-eye.

      “They got giggles, they got laughs, and people talked about them… you know, the looks.”

      [emphasis added]

      Where “once again” is the boys inability to behave? All i see is adults wanting to dodge POTENTIAL liability.


      Beyond that there is the question about their participation in the league itself. Here there are as i see it two sides:

      • They participated through deception (listing as mail AND apparently fielding a male team in the first game)

      • Or one can be on the side that the system is broken and they should have been allowed to participate in the first place.

      Again something that adults decide. Not sure if we have enough information to judge this properly.


      Not sure why i spend much time on this nonesense, especially since i find this to be a pretty poor article (as is any that just randomly quotes social media users to make its point).

    • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      Retaliating against your opponents for beating you in a game isn’t normal, but on Patriarchy it is.

      Patriarchy, not even once.

  • OpenStars@startrek.website
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    8 months ago

    That makes perfect sense - only grown-ass adults whittle gurls could ever be afraid that someone might lose a game!

      • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        All men should when the opportunity presents itself. Guys have an obligation to steer boys in the right direction. We need to be role models and guides. If a middle schooler says it’s unmanly to cry, you immediately confront them and say no it isn’t. Manliness is accepting and processing and expressing your emotions.

        Eminem is hardly anyone’s idea of a “weak” male, but he’s got an entire album where he basically talks about his feelings and what a shitty time he’s had. Beautiful opens up with him saying he’s depressed and in a rut.

      • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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        8 months ago

        Shouldn’t a big part of 6th grade sports be sportsmanship? Things like losing with grace? If they’re not capable of learning that lesson they shouldn’t be in sports yet.

      • Brokkr@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        That seems like a reasonable lesson to teach at that age. There’s a lot of social development that happens during that part of life.

        It may not be easy to teach at any age, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be taught.

        • meco03211@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Can confirm. Was 6th grade boy at one point. Was never really taught to be sensitive and was inundated with pressure to be a cold emotionless machine. I’m getting better though. Wish it hadn’t taken me the better part of 50 years to realize that was fucked up.

          • meleecrits@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            You recognizing it means you’ve already broken the cycle. A lot of people don’t make it to where you are. Don’t be upset that it took you fifty years, be proud you made a change for the better.

      • neatchee@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        You try telling 6th grade boys whose parents failed to raise them properly to be more sensitive

        There. Fixed that for you.

        Place the blame where it should be: on the parents, for raising misogynist, violent little shits. And the boys for, you know, being misogynist, violent little shits.

        I’m seriously sick of people arguing this stuff is “just boys being boys”. It’s not. It’s learned behavior. All of it.

        • metaStatic@kbin.social
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          8 months ago

          yes, everything is learned behavior, but 6th grade boys aren’t taking social queues from middle aged women giving them lectures on playing nice.

          • neatchee@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Stop excusing their shitty behavior. If the boys can’t be trusted not to get violent then the BOYS need to sit out. “Well, they’re violent, and we can’t talk to them about it, it’s just easier to make the girls sit out” is extremely fucked up.

            You have to understand that by saying “well the boys are already like this, so what are we supposed to do?” you allow the whole thing to be perpetuated. You are shifting the conversation away from where it should be.

            Like, I get what you were saying, and you’re not exactly wrong but this is the wrong time to bring it up. It’s a distraction from the actual problem. And that only serves to enable these boys and their parents, and the administrators for failing to hold the right people accountable

      • Pips@lemmy.sdf.org
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        8 months ago

        I mean, yes, we all should. Don’t be a fucking dickhead should be common knowledge to every 6th grader regardless of gender.

        • metaStatic@kbin.social
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          8 months ago

          ITT: People who have never met a child before. you can tell them anything you like and they will just look around at the society we’ve built and copy what works. the rot goes a hell of a lot deeper than a few bad parents.

          • Pips@lemmy.sdf.org
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            8 months ago

            Sounds like you’ve never met a kid. They are capable of learning and receiving consequences.

            I guess I’m saying don’t project your failures onto kids you’ve never met. Most are perfectly capable of being better people without you creating excuses for them.

          • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            While I understand you may often get called a manchild, you shouldn’t extrapolate those personal urges to children in general. Believe it or not, they are capable of concrete rationalization.

  • Seraph@kbin.social
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    8 months ago

    Of course you can play with the boys!

    No not like that - you have to let them beat you!

  • ParsnipWitch@feddit.de
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    8 months ago

    Can relate. I was beat up by another kid of my age after practice because I beat him in a really small and unimportant Judo tournament. We were both 12 and his parents, my parents and the trainers all agreed that he just overreacted because he was scared the other boys would bully him. I switched to ballet afterwards.

    • Omgpwnies@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      That’s a shit dojo 100%. Everywhere I’ve trained if someone pulled that shit, they’d at the very least get sat the fuck down for a good long chat with the sensei, if not kicked out entirely… not to mention pushups, so, so, so many pushups.

    • ripcord@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Have you talked to your parents about it since? Do they still feel that way? How do they justify it?