C’mon. This is ridiculous.
The teams had barely landed in Texas when complaints of inequity between the women’s and men’s tournaments roared over social media posts noting the women’s weight training facilities in San Antonio were severely lacking compared to what the men have in Indianapolis. The women’s field has 64 teams and the men’s tournament 68.
In a Twitter post, Stanford sports performance coach for women’s basketball Ali Kershner posted a photo of a single stack of weights next to a training table with sanitized yoga mats, comparing it to pictures of massive facilities for the men with stacks of free weights, dumbbells and squat racks.
“These women want and deserve to be given the same opportunities,” Kershner tweeted. “In a year defined by a fight for equality, this is a chance to have a conversation and get better.”
Several of the top women’s basketball players see it as a bigger issue than just a subpar weight room.
“We are all grateful to be here and it took a lot of effort for them to put this all together,” UConn freshman All-American Paige Bueckers said on an AP Twitter chat Thursday night. “It’s more of a principle thing. It’s not just a weight room that’s a problem. It’s the inequality of the weight rooms that’s the problem. There’s another tweet going around with the swag bag. It’s not just the weight room. It’s the inequalities and the better stuff the men get.”
South Carolina star Aliyah Boston agreed with Bueckers about the inequities.
“The men have everything in that weight room and we have yoga mats,” she said. “What are we supposed to do with that. The bags, I’m glad we got a body wash, but they got a whole store.”
It’s the Year of Our Lord 2021. Did no one at the NCAA notice this disparity? Or was it just that no one with the authority to do something about it cared enough? The original post about this was on TikTok, which is how my 14-year-old daughter, who is not nearly as interested in sports as her old man, came to know about it, and buttonhole me about it on Friday night. Just embarrassing. USA Today, Slate, and Daily Kos have more.
Exercise equality, don’t support any professional sports.
SOME THOUGHTS ON APARTHEID AS TO SEX IN SPORTS
Can we please be intellectually honest!? – The current state of affairs, where we have men and women compete separately with other members of their own sex, respectively — rather than having competition among athletes irrespective of their sex — is a recognition of sexual *inequality* as an empirically matter.
If it were otherwise, we would expose females to competition by males (and vice versa) and the outcome would no-doubt offend some if one sex were to beat the other one a regular basis. Which sex will regularly prevail may, of course, vary depending on the genre of the sport, whether existing or yet to be recognized as a sport or invented, and the particular physical abilities and skill set the sport in question puts at a premium.
“GENDER” BALANCED TEAMS ?
That said, in team sports, equality could be achieved by requiring all teams that compete with each other to have a same sex ratio (50-50 parity, presumably, but it could be set differently, in analogy to quotas or proportional representation in other contexts, such as corporate boards or multimember public bodies) within each team. That would even things out, i.e. allocate the dis/advantages attributable to sex in like fashion (i.e., equally in the aggregate) between and among the competing teams.
Where am I going with this? – It’s quite simple: Male-female equality (nowadays misnomered “gender” equality) is an abstract idea. It’s not a description of the state of nature, nor of the actual (factual) distribution of attributes critical to peak performance in competitive sports by sex. And the corollary of this is that there is room for debate as to how that abstract idea is properly applied in the world we live in.
For example, should one sex be subsidized financially in addition to being shielded against competition by members of the other group, which already amounts to a special accommodation for the second sex? — The weaker sex.
EXAMPLE
Suppose the Guinness record for tossing tree trunks is 484 kg for men and 382 kg for women.
Must women’s log tossing facilities therefore sport logs in the 450+kg category to avoid (the appearance) of discrimination on account of sex? What would RBG say? Not to mention do? And how about Jesus?
OPEN FIELD AND SEASON
Think about it: The simplest solution to the pole-tossing conundrum would be to end the apartheid and let all humans compete on the same tree-trunk tossing field.
Why should the equal playing field just be proverbial?
But then again there is much support for separate but equal facilities to pay homage to the idea of equality in appearance, if not in results. In our example: two green fields, properly gender-signified as azure and pink, respectively, both stocked with a full array of logs up to 500 kg.
Let the games begin.
Maybe the women’s teams should think about doing something to push up their viewership. The men’s teams pull a lot more audience, and thus, advertising revenue, and thus, more revenue for their schools than the women’s teams.
So it isn’t really fair that low producing folks get the same weight rooms or “swag bags,” as the guys who actually produce the deliverables.
Kuff, you only need to explain to your daughter that the women’s teams don’t produce the revenue the men’s teams do, and that’s the explanation for the difference.
Produce like a man, get a man’s weight room. This isn’t hard.
RAMPANT LACK OF SELF-AWARENESS
Bill: For you, it all boils down to money. I, accordingly, hereby condemn you!
Can you, for once, recognize that there is also a contest of competing principles/ideas, and that the associated verbal sparring and jousting (or shall we say, textual, in online context) is not just idle chatter? Can you acknowledge that fellow denizens of the realm care about something larger than self-interest in pecuniary terms, including abstract ideas, and yes, ideals?
That obsession of yours with money (and property) is what defines Marxists. You have more with them in common with them than your willing to admit.
I see a sore lack of introspectivity.
Wolf,
Your ‘accuse the enemy of what you yourself are doing’ strategy is failing, at least when we look objectively AT the accusation.
You and your ilk are about 30 minutes from storming the factories and seizing the means of production. THAT is Marxism. Balkanizing the US, fomenting racial division? Marxist strategies. Demoralization of the public by promoting and promulgating sheer nonsense, like the current worship of trannys and gays? Marxist strategy.
Obsession with money? Really? Pointing out that the male athletes bring more money to their respective schools than the women is factual. It just is. The Sun is hot. Men are stronger than women. These are just objective facts. That’s not obsessive.
I get that you want the CEO to be paid the same as the janitor in your utopia, but when you leave fantasy land, out in the real world, people who produce more get paid more. Since we have artificially constrained universities from paying athletes (other than full ride scholarships), the only way you can do more for those who produce more is…..give them better weight rooms and better swag bags.
The least the women’s teams could do is not bitch about that. They’re already getting better than they deserve with their full ride scholarships. Those are money LOSERS for the schools. The men’s teams SUBSIDIZE the women’s teams.
Facts matter.
Wolf, the ‘obsession’ with private property is what defines free people.
“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail — its roof may shake — the wind may blow through it — the storm may enter — the rain may enter — but the King of England cannot enter — all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement! ”
~William Pitt
You admittedly support the supremacy of the state over individual property rights. Property rights are the the primary building blocks of freedom…that’s totally anathema to Marxism. But you knew that already.
Bill, the NCAA makes billions, they can afford to give the women equal facilities. The NCAA is a not for profit organization, so it can’t be all about money.
Bill: Broadside acknowledged, all hands on deck still fully digital and ready to give you the middle one.
Let me just pick out one glaring misfire:
BALKANIZATION VS. MY BODY IS MY PROPERTY (“MEANS OF PRODUCTION”)
That’s an interesting charge target on the Left: Balkanizing Behavior.
Like the Catholic Church and other religions, Marxism/Socialism — which arguably has certain religion-like features — was universalistic, not particularistic and tribal.
Remember the call to arms, or at least industrial action: “Workers of the *World* unite.” You didn’t have to belong to a particular tribe to claim membership status in the proletariat — defined in relation to the means of production. All the workers had control of was their own hands, back, and rest of the body (labor as a factor of production). Hence the need to join forces (arms, literally) and proceed collectively to improve their status vis-a-vis the robber barons (bourgeoisie).
The *peasant* varietal of Socialism became – much later — associated with Mao, and remember who his enemies were: The Nationalists, who retreated to the island of Formosa (now Taiwan). To this day, the PRC seeks to force cultural and linguistic assimilation upon its recalcitrant ethnic minorities. So much for sowing division. They go to the other extreme, in a bad way.
But back to the Balkans.
This is an area of Europe with multiple ethnic/national groups with long-standing historical animosities. Several of them actually managed to coexist peacefully in Yugoslavia, nor did Tito make war with his neighbors (though he had a falling out with Stalin, and never joint the Warsaw Pact).
FALL OF COMMUNISM —> DISINTEGRATION AND ETHNIC WARFARE
It was after Tito’s death that all hell broke loose, with the result that the erstwhile Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia went extinct (there goes the Yuro, for a mental crutch) and splintered into several separate states, including Slovenia (whence came Melania).
That’s not to defend Titoism (or any other variety of communism-cum-personality- cult), it’s just stating a historical fact.
Excessive ethno-nationalism or tribalism (which is what Balkanization refers to) was *not* a feature of socialism or communism qua ism in the sense of political theory and was — much rather — antithetical to it. And the same can be said about the states formally based on some version of Marxism-Leninism as a basis for the political and economic order. They *suppressed* ethnic divisions rather than fomenting them. Again, to be sure, that’s not defending their decrepit system of rule. It’s just giving deference to the historical record.
BALKANIZATION FOR DUMBOS
Excessive ethno-nationalism was (and Manny might argue, remains) much rather, associated with FASCISM, not SOCIALISM.
It resulted in the disintegration of existing states (or empires, such as the Austro-Hungarian empire which included a good part of the Balkans), and is characterized by a push for ethnic purity/homogeneity in successor states, often accomplished by forced expulsions, war, and genocide.
If you will recall, WWI was even triggered by a nationalist: By a 19-year-old Bosnian Serb by the name Gavrilo Princip who assassinated the presumptive successor to the Austro-Hungarian throne and his wife in Sarajevo in 1914.
As to the US, any analogy with the Balkans situation makes little sense. Going back to the Civil War, the slave holders in the south were Anglos too (Texas Germans not so much). The stance on the institution of slavery divided North and South. And as for today, descendants of slaves share the same language and culture. Return to Africa is a quaint an idea as secession and formation of a alternative black American state on territory claimed as the homeland.
Bottom line, Bill: It’s preposterous if not scurrilous to equate contemporary Leftism with Balkanization. Not to mention lumping conflicts over gender and sexual orientation into that generalized construct.
That’s not to deny that the term is widely misused. By people who have no clue of geography or world history, or just don’t care because the term may be useful as a “word bomb”.
—–
Wiki has this to say (and it’s debatable)
Balkanization is a sometimes deprecated geopolitical term for a disorderly or unpredictable fragmentation, or sub-fragmentation, of a larger region or state into smaller regions or states, which may be hostile or uncooperative with one another.
OOPS … there goes the Yugo.
(not Yuro, not to mention the mighty but not all-mighty Euro)
Wolf,
I agree that in a historical example like Tito’s Yugoslavia, keeping the boot heel of communist oppression on various ‘tribes’ of people was a strategy to keep order that worked….for a while. That doesn’t mean that inciting racial strife, disunity and flooding the country with illegals, is not a strategy to achieve communism here. It’s practically the hallmark of the Cloward Piven strategy….overwhelm the system with poor who cannot take care of themselves.
https://oathkeepers.org/2018/11/cloward-piven-strategy-explained/
Have you seen the border lately? Heard the unceasing chants of “diversity is our strength (read: we need fewer whites)?” Have you seen disaffected blacks burning down cities? Have you seen Uncle Joe working hard with his EO pen to put Americans out of work and onto the unemployment rolls? Ask a KeystoneXL worker, or Ford plant worker about that.
” Bottom line, Bill: It’s preposterous if not scurrilous to equate contemporary Leftism with Balkanization.”
It absolutely IS correct to equate contemporary leftism with balkanization. The current iteration of leftists started as 60’s radicals. Remember the 1965 immigration and nationality act? You started there, with that one piece of legislation, to try and get America to look like the United Nations, and you won’t be satisfied until the whole country looks like Sugarland. This isn’t some kind of improvement, Wolf. Whites are a minority, world wide, but we seem to be the only minority you folks agree with persecuting, colonizing, and otherwise destroying. It’s weird how other, non European countries, don’t see the benefits of diversity at all. African nations are clamoring for Central Americans to come colonize. Asian nations aren’t clamoring for Africans to come colonize, so they can experience the strength that comes with diversity. But somehow, diversity is OUR strength? Alrighty then.
I’ll again point out how this goes, in the end….it looks like Rhodesia and South Africa. And when you run out of whites, it looks like Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda hacking each other to bits.
You’re an educated guy, I don’t understand how you can gleefully support your own demise, and the demise of a society your very own ancestors built.
Bill, your ignorance of history and racism never ceases to amaze me. How many years did they fight in Europe over religion? How many years did the crusades last? Two world wars started by White European nations. People are bad, all colors, but you white small-minded hateful fools are the worse.
Whites seven times as likely to be mass murders than Latinos. Three times more likely than blacks.
Whites are almost nine times more likely to be serial killers than Latinos. Twice as often as blacks.
White males are seven times more likely to be rapists than Latinos and about three times more often than blacks.
Want a safer America get rid of the white fascists in America.
NCAA not for profit? At least on paper.
Don’t loose your breath on WW II until you mention Pearl Harbor. A lot of differences between people that started those wars are the same differences that started wars in other parts of the world. Japan’s continued conflict with China is a good example. Industrialization and technology put those conflicts on a grander scale for both World Wars, it just happened to be in Europe.
Looking at history through a Eurocentric lens is something I thought people who scream about racism at the top of their keyboard smashing ability would try to avoid. It ain’t all about Europe.
David, stick to what you know, history does not seem to be one of those attributes. WWII was not started by Japan.
I won’t waste any more time on you, just go praise Mayor Turner for promising you a raise.
Your words scream white racism, David.
Let me repeat your racist game of I am rubber you are glue does not work with me.
More incredible insights from Manny, exactly what I expected.
Thank you, Manny, point taken.
IN DEFENSE OF EURO-CENTRISM AS UNAVOIDABLE
& SURVIVAL OF THE SPECIES
Re: “It ain’t all about Europe.”
That’s a valid point on many alternative grounds, but we should at least be aware of what we speak, and what words we use. So, for example, if democracy is all Greek to you, you should not be faulted, for the concept indeed traces back to the Greeks, as does a great deal of other intellectual “baggage”, much of it via the Romans. So, for those complaining about Eurocentrism, one problem is that they are captives of their language. — Esperanto anyone?
And even the latter wouldn’t cure the problem. That’s because an artificial lingua franca must still be designed with considerations of ease-of-acquisition in mind, so if a hypothetical “Esperanto II” were some synthesis of Asian languages to eschew the European derivation (not to mention script), it would leave much of the rest of humanity in a pickle, or perhaps with tied tongues, to substitute a more bodypart-appropriate metaphor for the veggie-barrel allusion.
Also note how many parts of the world practice multilingualism, while we do not. The obvious reason is that we have less of a need for it, thanks to Anglo-centrism, so a powerful incentive for polyglottism is simply absent.
I recently mentioned mostly-black Namibia (erstwhile Deutsch-Südwestafrika), which — after shaking off de facto Afrikaaner control and apartheid — made a political choice in favor of English as the official language even though only a minute percentage of the natives speaks it as their mother tongue. There are numerous tribal languages spoke there, and several colonial ones, including Dutch, German, Portuguese (Angola), in addition to British English. And then, of course, there is India, where the linguistic diversity is much more extreme, given the size and geographic dispersion of its huge population.
IS EURO-CENTRISM AVOIDABLE?
Eurocentric or otherwise, English as a *the* world language makes the most sense because so much of the it carries — for better or worse — the imprint of the British Empire upon which the sun never set. And with English comes Euro-centrism. Its manifestations can and should be questioned, and subjected to serious cultural critique, but that basic social fact remains that it this type of centrism is inescapable.
LIKE IT OR NOT, WE ARE ALL ENGLISH
Just from a practical and efficiency perspective, English trumps Babel. With that comes a Eurocentric mindset because the language both structures, and is a reflection of, our collective cognitive being. It has already determined how we perceive our social context and natural environment before we even start formulating a thought to be articulated and shared with someone else. We don’t learn our first language from the grammar book and vocabulary list. While we may not all be born as “pure breed” Europeans (whatever that may mean in light of modern DNA analysis of lineages), we grow up European. It’s the nurture-over-nature thing.
Even pre-birth, according to some rather fascinating research on truly-early language acquisition. To the joy of all pregnant people and their progeny-minded and future-oriented partners, there appears to be merit in the idea of putting that sound machine on the bulge for purposes other than what is usually associated with ultra. Think late-term pregnancy white noise machine. But with the music of words, not just random noise.
What? – White noise?
Oy vey! – Come to think of it — all self-reflectively — did I just say something racist?
Which, if affirmative in the judgment of contemporary arbiters of proper diction, just goes to illustrates the point: We grow up without thinking. We think in black and white before we realize that black and white are not even colors, and before we have a chance to discover that black is white (and vice versa) in analogue photography. And now that we have gone digital for imagery too, we don’t even have that eye-opening opportunity any more. So enlightened we now are that we
no longer get to behold how light travels through lenses and a thin layer to take shape in a chemical bath as a more recognizable representation of those around us. How a negative turns into a picture. The camera obscura and dark room of the last century has gone the way of the dark ages. As have the myriad nuances of gray. And the irony of it all: Our world is now brilliantly polychromatic thanks to progress in technology, but many of us are still are stuck in a Manichaeism of black and white mentally. (With hat tip to Hochman for throwing that big word into the OTK discourse last weekend).
SNOW WHITES AND BROTHER GRIM REAPER
Bill: Anthropological rumor has it that your presumptive ancestors walked out of Africa and shed some pigment thanks to changing environmental conditions along their long trek and natural (not to mention humanoid-administered) selection. Give Charly Darwin what Darwin is due, however galápagossy and finchy.
Dark pigment wasn’t much use any more as far as survival advantages go, once the humanoids had bid farewell to Mamma “Old Bone” Lucy and headed North. And it wasn’t all green pastures and mother milk and honey all year round. Even the wolves turned white in homage to frost and snow in the Northerly habits. Not the mention the ermines. No hemispheric warming for them. They had to adjust to their conditions of life or else go the way of the dinos.
MAMMALIAN MELANIN
Fun fact of the day: In the case of the ermines, decreasing amounts of daylight in late fall trigger hormone reactions that cause changes in the production of natural pigments in their bodies.
As for the evolving humans, no need to go brown and white intermittently in sync with the seasons. Our fearsome forbears took to appropriating pelts and furs from fellow mammals for cameo and body heat conservation. Figuring that out conferred a survival advantage of a different sort. As did the perfection of the fine skill of passing on the survivalist know-how to the succeeding generation: not only through demonstration and imitation, but through show AND tell: language.
TL/DR.