So we’re heading out for NYC for a week, so while I will try to do some blogging, it might be somewhat patchy and unpredictable. NYC Pandagonians: I’ll be doing readings at KGB Bar on Tuesday at 7PM and at Bluestockings on Thursday at 7PM. Hope to see y’all there.
I feel I should comment on the Indy win for Danica Patrick, because it’s a clear example of how Choads Who Love “Science” are very selective about when biological essentialism is extremely valid to them, and when they forget that was a line of argument altogether. Sexists love to trot out the fact that men are, on average, stronger than women, on average, though of course that rule doesn’t say much about individuals. Diana Taurasi could probably lay out some of your skinny geek dudes out there. But it is true that men are bigger and stronger than women to a degree that you’d have to seek extremes like that, and in athletics, there’s probably never going to be a time when women can compete on an equal playing ground with men in sports that require brute strength.
But there are many other physical skills, and the thing is that women are, on average, better than men at a lot of them. Again, individuals vary, but on average women are smaller, have better reflexes, more flexibility and more endurance in some regards. Which means that, all other things being equal, women probably should be the majority of fighter pilots and race car drivers. And yet they are not, which can’t but mean that there’s actual (gasp!) ingrained sexism pushing women away from these professions. In fact, there’s an irony to the fact that the same guys who probably take potshots about Patrick’s “unfair” advantage of being small by virtue of her gender would faint at the suggestion that men in football or basketball be handicapped so that women can play with them.
Of course, I don’t know much about sports, so I fully expect to be harumphed at in short order.
77 Responses to “NYC and Indy”
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
A really interesting series (at least for the first two installments) was something called “The Rise of the Video Game” on one of those Discovery Channels. Pong creator and Atari founder Nolan Bushnell talks here about how the original arcade game was favored by women who, on average, had better small muscle coordination and would hustle men in the early-to-mid 70s.
I actually am surprised that women haven’t made greater inroads into auto racing, and horse racing for that matter, since in both sports the size and weight of the driver/jockey can influence the outcome. Precisely because women tend to be smaller than men on average, they should either dominate or at least be well-represented in these sports.
Blatant discrimination seems to have kept women jockeys marginalized to this point, and I imagine if more women attempt to enter auto racing discrimination will also come into play, for the simple reason that watching cars drive around a track really isn’t that interesting and as a result fan support has been built up on the basis of a cult of masculinity constructed around the drivers. That cult produces a lot of the dollar value in the sport, so it will probably be protected at all costs.
Go Danica!
I always love saying that, bc my niece is sort of named after her.
We teased my sister about it a little when she was born, but it’s very much grown on me that my niece has such a sexism-busting namesake.
I’ve been told that elite women long-distance swimmers are better than elite men. Something about difference in body fat being an advantage.
In fact, there’s an irony to the fact that the same guys who probably take potshots about Patrick’s “unfair” advantage of being small by virtue of her gender would faint at the suggestion that men in football or basketball be handicapped so that women can play with them.
As a fan of many forms of auto racing (NASCAR excluded), Danica does have an advantage. Though I wouldn’t necessarily call it “unfair”.
Because she does weigh less than much, if not all of her male competitors in the IRL her engineers have the luxury of adding balast to the car (to bring the combination of the car and driver to the minimum weight) where ever the engineer thinks it will do the most benefit.
Again, I don’t really consider this an unfair advantage, but it is an advantage.
If you want to see something funny, read today’s column by Bob Margolis on the IRL page at Yahoo Sports.
Last year this guy and some other jackass whose name I forget where going on about how Patrick would never win anything. She might finish quasi-respectably in the middle of the pack, they said, but she would never be a winner. They had a video of them up on Yahoo, and you could just feel the woman-loathing coming through your screen.
Today the guy is tying himself in knots explaining how the race in Japan wasn’t a “real” race because it relied on strategy. He spends much more column space, by a factor of, like, ten to one, talking about her looks, calendars, and marketing strategy than about how she won the race. Clearly, to him this is worse than waterboarding.
God, I hope she wins Indy. I hope, I hope, I hope.
Actually, several men on various bulletin boards last year were whining that Danica had an unfair weight advantage because she was smaller than most other (male) drivers.
In a nutshell, Indy cars were weighed without the driver and had to meet a minimum weight. The Indy Racing League (IRL) changed that rule this past off-season so that the minimum had to include the driver. Anyways, the weight differences were slight and most knowledgeable observers knew these differences weren’t enough to be a factor.
And just to be clear, Danica won the racing event at Japan’s Twin Ring Motegi speedway, not Indy (Indianapolis). She does, however, drive an Indy car.
But you are right, in that racing (for automobiles) is a finese thing which is essentially gender-neutral. Reflexes, quick-thinking, lack of fear, and other traits make for a good race car driver (and Danica is most assuredly just that!).
This victory should be the first of many more to come. And if she wins the Indy 500, you will definitely see the bulletin boards explode as the naysayers will try to find any excuse imaginable (and probably then some) to explain how the victory was given to her!
The media is making it seem like she was the first woman to win an event. Take a look at the NHRA. men and women have been competing against each other for a long time. Go to NHRA.com and see what its about.
Actually, I pretty much agree w/you, Amanda. The neccessary skills to be successful at sports varies so much that I’ve always felt it was stupid to say “women can’t do it” or “shouldn’t compete at the men’s level” or whatever asinine statement was being made. When I was in college, our women’s basketball team was the best team on campus. The men’s team couldn’t seem to win and in Kentucky in the 80’s, football barely existed. Those young ladies ruled the school and it was great to watch them get all the favored treatment for a change.
Another sport in which male and female competitors go head to head with no handicapping is the world of equestian sports (show jumping, three-day eventing, some game riding, general show ring competition). Women and mares compete openly and successfully against men and stallions and geldings. At lower amateur levels, the sport is overwhelmingly numerically dominated by young women. I often wondered about this, since strength should play a part, but when it comes down to it a 200 lb man is no match for a 1200 lb horse. Finesse, patience, and an ability to understand the animal are just as important (and more effective) in optimising performance.
Actually, your writing makes complete sense. It’s not even radical.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/business/media/21adcol.html?8dpc
On the sports question, I’ve commented on here how some people who should know much better (i.e. successful boys’ coaches) have spread the myth that “girls slow down, or should slow down at distance running as they get into later high school” and cite things like hip growth, academics, boys (and why wouldn’t academics and girls apply equally to boys?!) Why aren’t female Olympian distance runners all 14 years old, then?!
The only grain of truth is that a 14, 15-year old girl is much more likely to be a contender for a state championship than a boy of the same age because of physical maturity, and that they usually won’t improve much because it’s hard to get that much better when you’re that good, regardless of your chromosomes. The other grain is that you cannot train men and women of a given age in the exact same way in terms of mileage, speedwork, etc.
Danica is a fearless competitor in a wildly dangerous sport. Open wheel racing is insane!
I am all for equality among the sexes. But fighter pilot? How about brain surgeon, oncology researcher, diplomat or president. It is only because of us men and our testosterone that we have a need for fighter pilots. I want women to lead us away from that crap.
With Danica, it will be an interesting year in Indy racing, leading up to the Indy 500 on Memorial Day (a day commemorating a testosterone driven culture of death). I will be cheering her on.
During my blessedly brief teaching career, the gym teacher at the private school where I taught my second and last year loved women’s basketball. I’m sure it helped that he had a daughter who played basketball, but what he liked was that the women typically played better as a team and tended to pay more attention to fundamentals.
I haven’t been this hyped since Ellen MacArthur demolished the record for a star in a reasonably priced car on Top Gear. Ms. MacArthur also held, until recently, the world record for solo circumnavigation of the globe in yachting, another sport where men and women compete on equal terms.
The only thing that has me down about Danica’s victory at Motegi (Indy is a different race and the series is IRL… that’s all the harumphing you’ll get from me) is that the news reports are all qualifying the win (”on a closed course circuit”) rather than crediting Michelle Mouton for her World Rally and Pike’s Peak victories in the 80s.
Ooh, favorite topic. Wrestling is really interesting because wrestlers compete by weight, and there are plenty of girl/women wrestlers kicking guys’ butts.
Also, the best three-point shooters in bball the last two years have been women…last year Katie Gearlds from Purdue, and this year, I’m blanking on her name. And don’t forget Candace Parker winning the national dunk contest….
Women in sport is a really exciting topic….
Auto racing (of all flavors) is another one of those (almost exclusively) white male sports.
Other examples include golf, tennis, hockey, skiing, cycling. Of course, there are often notable exceptions (Tiger Woods comes to mind, and thank god for him), but they are indeed exceptions. Tennis is the only one of those that even has excellent competition in the separate women’s division.
The worst thing about auto racing is that the actual racing is only a small part of the job. Given that auto racing is probably the most expensive sport (at least per participant), an incredible amount of time is spent getting sponsors and keeping them happy.
Because women and minorities are few and far between, the “playing field” in racing has never really been even. When your pool of candidates consists primarily of white europeanoid males, odds are that’s what you’ll end up with. So when you watch those events, often you aren’t necessarily seeing the best talent on earth, it’s people who had superior talent but got the best breaks.
Formula 1 seems to have been better than average in this regard, NASCAR worse, but overall, racing has not been very diverse.
I’m glad Danica won, but it would really be nice if it was so common it was unremarkable…
I’m glad that Danica finally made it over the finish line first. That was some self satisfied look on her face while she stood next that gigantic trophy.
I suggested to my son that before the next race, Danica present the other top drivers with a fruit jar containing some of her leftover fuel from this race. Hand books on dieting and fuel conservation might be a good dig as well.
The “KGB Bar”? Commie!
I fully believe that women in general have a much higher pain tolerance than men.
And isn’t the explanation for women being better fighter pilots due to some aspect of their physiology that makes them less prone to blackout/redout in high-G situations? I remember reading that somewhere, but I can’t remember where.
That could also explain why women might make better racing drivers. They might better be able to handle the physical forces on the body during hard corners.
Oh, I don’t know. From what I understand, the gap is narrowing significantly over the past few generations. And why not, since the evolutionary conditions that created it in the first place have disappeared.
When I think of sports where it’s better to be smaller and lighter, horse racing comes to mind. You would think there would be far more women jockeys than men, but nope, it’s a male-dominated sport too.
All astronauts should be women too. It costs so much money and energy to send mass into space, plus space ships are really small. Why would you send somebody who is 200 lbs when you could send somebody who is 100 lbs and then send another 100 lbs of equipment? The astronauts could spend more time in space and get more work done. Yet so many more astronauts are men. I wonder how much time and money sexism has cost us in the space program.
It used to be that they think women will ultimately reach parity on 100m records, specially after incredible records being broken one after another in the 60’s and 70’s. (This was before elite black runners rules the Olympic)
but now it seems woman records is flattening, just like man’s…
The difference is quite large, about .7 seconds or so…
I think we nearing the limit of human body and modern training, records gain is 0.02/year or so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Record_progression_100_m_men
-
Pro cycling is territory of blood thicking and heart attack..
definitely near the edge of human body performance.
—
race car is not a sport. just put a robotic driver and be done with it already.
btw, female 100m records hasn’t been broken since 1988 !
She dies of massive seizure btw.
Given that auto racing is probably the most expensive sport …
And thus is dominated by the wealthier people on the planet, who happen to mostly be white males.
But some of it is cultural as well. Why the hell does Finland, a nation of 5 million people, produce an immense number of high quality world-class championship winning drivers while Japan’s 120 million car obsessed people can’t produce a one?
RE Finland being over-represented, the theory I’ve heard, which actually does make sense, is the abysmal driving conditions during much of the year in Finland expose and hone the talents of drivers who can cope. Most Finnish drivers are on the world rally circuit, where those skills are highly valuable. So some some extent it’s cultural.
Can’t speak to a lack of Japanese drivers, but I would guess it’s because of an emphasis on different racing formats, such as drifing.
Plus, where the hell are the great Chinese drivers? Or the great Indian drivers? Between those two countries, they account for more than a quarter of all the people on earth…
Mrs Nice Guy here.
When our kids played basketball in the local kids’ leagues, every team seemed to have a small fast guy on it, who could run rings around some of the larger guys (”guys” used without gender specificness here). I note that when I see college or pro basketball on TV that many of them also have a small fast guy. So how important is size really, if you have the skills?
MikeEss: “Auto racing (of all flavors) is another one of those (almost exclusively) white male sports.”
Umm, ever heard of South America? You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about, unless you consider Helio Castroneves a white male. Moreover, auto racing draws its talent largely from lower socio-economic strata.
Tangential, minor point however. Racing is a male-dominated sport, and not for physical reasons.
depending on the sport. the older and more mechanic the sport is, the more important physicality is.
I mean, you don’t see a huge guy or gal doing gymnastic right? It’s always somebody who has smaller, rounder body. Because the center of gravity is important. And a person with smaller body can move center of gravity much faster than a big or skinny guy. That’s just law of physic.
with short distant runner, it’s almost all biophysic and training technology.
Sharp shooting or archery probably isn’t about who has the biggest muscle that can deliver biggest burst of energy. It probably be about control.
Chess? get the biggest computer, no puny human can match computational power by now. (is this still an olympic sport? it was before right?)
That may be true regarding rally racing, (makes sense) but most kids going into formula cars start racing karts before they can legally drive passenger cars. My own guess is just a better quality of developmental ladder. Japan has been trying desperately to get a formula car star to go with their manufacturers’ increased participation, it just hasn’t happened for them yet.
Michelle Mouton for her World Rally
Thank You Sarcastro! In the age of the frightening “Killer B” group B rally cars, when 500-horsepower, all-wheel-drive monsters tore over dirt roads so fast and so close to the edge that spectators got killed, Michelle Mouton could handle the beasts better than any other.
I say lets do a 25 year social experiment. There will be no sports for boys and all funding and other resources for sports will go to girls. Any boy that thinks he can run or play ball will be discouraged and made to watch girls play sports. All male professionall sports will be illegal and only women will be allowed play professionally, along with very high salaries to promote the best. After 25 years, men will be allowed to get back into sports, but only if there is enough funding and resources to go around and after women sports are taken care of first. Then 50 years later we will do all sorts of physical tests between men and women and see what differences exist in overall/average skills. my guess, women will come out on top.
RE Finland being over-represented
Two of the six best F1 drivers of the post WWII era are Scots. Argentines and Brazillians are disproportionately represented among racing disciplines as well. I think it’s just a matter of culture and popularity. Motorsports have followings, and particular motorsports have followings, in some places and recruit from there. Same reason Kenya produces great runners: with runners as national heroes, running gets first crack at the talent.
And why not, since the evolutionary conditions that created it in the first place have disappeared.
That wasn’t evolutionary, it was cultural. Most populations have an overlap - unless, of course, women are discouraged from exerting themselves or doing tasks requiring strength training, etc. That makes a small gap seem larger than it really is.
I remember seeing my great grandmother do the sorts of farm chores that required a lot of strength - she was only about 4′11″ tall and 100lbs. That’s because she had been doing these things all her life.
seroj, trouble reading?
I believe I said: “(almost exclusively)” and “Of course, there are often notable exceptions.”
Nothing is absolute, and I’ve apparently learned that fact of life better than you have…
Even you are not ALWAYS wrong - it’s just that the Wingnut Koolaid causes your brain to malfunction far too often…
Amanda,
I disagree with many of your posts, particular the ones on abortion and religion. But you are completely right on this one. Men will always be better, on average, at sports like baseball and basketball because of the physical demands (of course, the star women hoop players are just as good shooters as the men, they just don’t have the quickness to compete in a full court game). But I myself have always wondered why women rarely get the chance to compete with men in racecar sports or bowling. There is no reason men should dominate these–they have no physical advantage–other than sexism.
Conservative Sports Fan
Amanda’s research is, if anything, even more poorly informed than MikeEss’s.
Headline:
Danica Patrick most popular IndyCar driver for 3rd straight year
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/wire?section=auto&id=3018004
I figured as much, having been to an actual race and paying attention to the people around me. Amanda should realize that google can be helpful when writing about who is a choad, or who is a MikeEss-level researcher.
Long Beach was better.
For skilled woman race drivers, I’ll take Jutta Kleinschmidt.
The difference in weight allowed by not including the driver was no small thing. It was about time the IRL changed that.
50 lbs lighter is going to get you 1/2 a second a lap on an oval. The IRL finally brought their rules into line with the rest of the motorsports world.
I am very proud to have been a Danica Patrick fan since 2005. I was jumping up and down like a pogo stick when she won at Motegi, Japan.
Dude, the weight advantage is nothing. Danica won the race because she never had to pull over to pee. It’s women’s brass bladder’s that give them that unfair advantage.
Raging Red wrote (gee, that’s alliterative!):
My sister is a horse farm manager in Kentucky, and, other than me, the whole family has been involved in the thoroughbred business at one time or another.
A lot of women have tried to make it as jockeys, though few have succeeded. Jockeys have to be short and light, but they also have to be very strong for their size, especially in their legs and forearms and wrists. These guys are made of wire and mustle and horn!
I not sure what race encephalopath was watching. Long Beach, while interesting, wasn’t quite the race Motegi was: Will Power led all but a few laps, was never seriously challenged for, and won easily by 5+ seconds (an eternity in racing).
Weight is INDEED important in racing but most IRL experts conceded Danica’s weight would be miniscule, and especially not equal to a half second (most racers would sell their souls to be a half-second faster). Yes, by changing the weight formula to include the driver, IRL did come into line with most of the racing world.
And who is Jutta Kleinschmidt? [BTW, I googled her. According to Wikipedia, she is offroad competitor from Cologne, Germany, best known for winning the Paris-to-Dakar Rally in 2001 in a Mitsubishi, the first woman to win the race. She apparently isn’t well-known in the U.S. but if she won the Rally, she obviously is very talented at what she does.]
“All astronauts should be women too.”
Logically, they should be midgets or dwarves. Or leg-amputees (I doubt legs are much use in free-fall.) But nooooooooo…..
Barring that, due to a lack of qualified personnel, certainly the smaller of any candidates should be favored.
Chess? get the biggest computer, no puny human can match computational power by now. (is this still an olympic sport? it was before right?)
Is squash an alien or a rogue AI?
The first group of astronauts (the Mercury seven) were height restricted, to 5′10″ (or was it 5′11″?) due to the size of the Mercury capsule. The Gemini had slightly more headroom, so another inch was added to the maximum allowable height.
But women were not considered, because NASA wanted to use test pilots as astronauts, and there were no women test pilots.
@ Jim H from Indiana
1/2 a second was hyperbole.
Who are these experts you’re talking about who say the weight difference would be be a minuscule advantage? I’ve never seen anyone suggest that. It’s an advantage. It’s a big advantage.
Racing teams spend millions and millions of dollars to figure out how to move a few pounds around. Not lose the few pounds, but just move them to a differnt place in the car.
50 pounds is a huge advantage. And including the driver in the minimum weight still leaves her with an advantage. That 50 pounds can be added as ballast anywere they want giving them more flexibility to balance the car. And it will be placed lower in the car giving it a lower center of gravity than anyone else has.
I can give you a link farm of writers who think the weight difference is a big advantange and can’t find anyone who thinks it’s insignificant.
3 years ago when the IRL announce it wasn’t including the weight of the driver in the weight minimum, it was referred to as ‘the Danica rule.’ There was lots of speculation that the IRL was trying to help her win because it would be good for marketing.
She’s a good driver, just not spectacualar. The Japan win for her was a fuel strategy win. That’s why I think Long Beach was better. Will Power DROVE for that win with a pretty incredible standing start too. Of course I think oval racing is just plain boring anyway.
Actually, they were considered, and considered very seriously. They’re referred to as the Mercury 13.
However, they were disqualified at the last minute on extremely specious grounds. If they wanted experienced pilots, why choose John Glenn and his 5,000 flight hours over Jerrie Cobb and her 10,000 flight hours? (Hint: starts with an “s” …)
The first group of astronauts (the Mercury seven) were height restricted, to 5′10″ (or was it 5′11″?) due to the size of the Mercury capsule.
Downright spacious for the 5′ 2″ Yuri Gagarin (an inch shorter than Valentina Tereshkova the first woman in space). Funny thing is that in 1995 Nadezhda Kuzhelnaya was scrubbed from a Soyuz flight because, at 5′ 4″, she was too small to fit in the space suit correctly.
To be fair, I’ve always found my chest to be a real disadvantage with archery. I’ve never shot a gun, but I bet it makes balance and bracing yourself a little more complicated there too.
Encephalopath, maybe Danica Patrick’s weight is an advantage in racing. But, as other people have pointed out, size matters in a lot of sports, and no one calls unfair advantage when someone really tall makes a lot of jump shots. If anything, it makes me more impressed with her if she figured out that she had a size advantage and how to use it.
Just to be clear for everybody, Danica and her car did NOT weigh any less than all the other cars and drivers. As I mentioned above, all cars and drivers are weighed together and must weigh a minimum amount in IRL.
Weight is critical in all forms of racing but momentum is even more important in oval racing and negates weight in many respects.
The whining about her winning due to fuel strategy is just bogus. Jimmie Johnson and numerous other drivers in NASCAR win races due to fuel and other strategies. A win is a win is a win. It pays the same whether you blow the rest of the field off or you coast by .0001 second in front of them, for whatever reason.
I’m not saying a fuel strategy win isn’t legitimate. Of course it is. That one of the great things about racing: all the different elements that come into play to affect the outcome.
I’m saying a fuel strategy win is not as interesting to watch.
Wow, when I hear “NYC” linked to “Indy”, I really don’t think of race cars; I think of hipsters playing guitars.
I had to read the post two or three times before I figured out how it was related to the title. I take it “Indy” is some kind of car-driving game people play in flyover country?
- Matt, East Coast city boy
Wilt Chamberlain was totally cheating by being tall.
Well, if we’re going to whine about Danica Patrick winning just because she doesn’t weigh as much, when can we start whining about 7 foot tall men winning at basketball or 300 lb linebackers winning at football?
The human body is, in general, a generalist machine — all non-disabled humans can do all things that are designed for humans to do, with varying levels of success — but at the extreme of elite sports. the way your body is engineered makes a big difference, and of course a body better engineered for a sport will help you win. I was watching women’s gymnastics the other day and marveling at the awesomeness of these women, with their small, compact bodies and their massive legs. *those* are legs that could do anything the average man’s legs can do twice as well as he could do it. I am so impressed by physical strength in women, and the way these women are designed, they must feel God called them to be acrobats. (Of course anyone who wants to be a gymnast who has the wrong body won’t succeed, so it’s not that God called them, it’s that they are the intersection set of the women with bodies good for gymnastics who also have a strong interest in the sport. But I digress.)
So Danica Patrick kicked men’s asses in a male-dominated sport because of an advantage that being a woman gave her? Men: quit yer fuckin’ bitching about it RIGHT NOW or forever lose the right to say “But men are stronger than women so should naturally blah blah blah.” This is not heads you win, tails we lose. You have many sports where your bodies are better engineered for it than ours are, and women do not bitch that men outclass them in that sport. You thought of it as your own special sport because NASCAR’s so manly? There’s nothing biologically manly about driving a goddamn car. After two years of driving 90 miles each day in an ice storm once a week for three months a year, I can kick *any* Southern guy’s ass at driving in bad weather, and insurance companies believe women are such massively better drivers than men until men have had a chance to let sexism kick in and give them three-fourths as much driving experience that teen boys’ car insurance is 6 times more expensive than girls. So suck it up. Maybe the equation MAN = GOOD DRIVER isn’t as biologically based as you thought it was.
IMO, that’s being done to draw the distinction with drag racing, where Shirley Muldowney was winning top-level events 30 years ago.
Good point Thlayli, I’m sure more Americans are familiar with Muldowney than Mouton, but is a drag strip a “circuit” of any sort? I’ve also heard it qualified with “in open wheel racing” which covers all the bases nicely… although I’ve seen precious few fenders on top-fuel cars
There is sexual dimorphism in the human species, in bone, in muscle, in brain. Just sayin’!
it kinda makes me sad because I’ve had my “unique” name for so long (almost 33 years) that now it’s going to become popular.
Poop.
also everytime I hear my name I assume that people are talking to me so it’s weird hearing it all over tv/radio.
“There is sexual dimorphism in the human species, in bone, in muscle, in brain. Just sayin’!”
…and that means that whole “let’s treat women equally” stuff is all wrong?…
Danica Patrick’s win makes me all the gladder that the hoopla surrounding Michele Wie has finally died down. The difference between the two is that Patrick is actually, you know, good at her sport. I’ve become convinced that regardless of age or gender, Wie is just a mediocre golfer.
seroj:
We can always trust you to completely miss the point, can’t we, seroj? Amanda writes a piece of relatively uncontroversial cultural analysis, and you counter with what amounts to little more than garden-hedge gossip. Familiarize yourself with the phrase “fallacious appeal to popularity” and come back tomorrow. Or not at all.
It should also be noted that the only other three-time most popular IRL driver was also a woman. No possible way that there’s an element of “oh, look at the cute little woman playing a man’s game,” right?
I’ve always seen the “Danica rule” refer to the exact opposite, the recent rule that driver weight counts against total weight. A quick use of “google” confirms this is the more popular usage.
Eric, Rejector of Memes April 21, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Chess? get the biggest computer, no puny human can match computational power by now. (is this still an olympic sport? it was before right?) // Is squash an alien or a rogue AI?
what? it’s true … the biggest computer by now is several order of magnitude bigger than ‘Deep Blue’.
Average computer chess tournament with PC rigged together is now at grandmaster level, compared to 10 years ago. Even kasparov will have a hard time winning against those, nevermind IBM biggest box.
Actually, sexual dimorphism in humans is quite limited when compared even to other primates, and seems to have a large cultural component. Frankly, spending a lot of time trying to prove profound sexual dimorphism in humans is about as scientific as spending a lot of time trying to prove profound differences between the various human races.
deep blue spec
http://www.thocp.net/hardware/deep_blue.htm
One Trillion (2) operations per second (500.000.000 for a high end PC 1999)
we are now at 10petaflop.
http://www.top500.org/lists/2007/11/performance_development
about 4 order of magnitude faster.
Same reason Kenya produces great runners: with runners as national heroes, running gets first crack at the talent.
You don’t buy theories about West Africans and muscle types?
Frankly, spending a lot of time trying to prove profound sexual dimorphism in humans is about as scientific as spending a lot of time trying to prove profound differences between the various human races.
We males will stop attempting to invoke sexual dimorphism as a rationale for our unearned status as the superior gender, when you females stop complaining about our back hair.
Actually, many males probably won’t. Pointed comments about dimorphism and the number of female university graduates might make them shut up.
So, if fans don’t like her it’s because they’re sexist. If they do like her, it’s because they’re sexist.
Dan, Grand High Emperor of Bananas Foster, is one tough feminist to please.
Drag strip is point-to-point, oval or street-course is closed circuit, and things like rallying are open course (which can be circuit or point-to-point). Easy!
All this bitching about Danica’s weight is sour grapes. Helio Castro-Neves was so tiny that the only thing holding him down from being blown away by a stiff breeze was his driving suit.
seroj:
Because obviously, it must be only one way or the other, and all people must behave and think exactly the same. No possible way that human social dynamics really aren’t as childishly simplistic as you’re trying to make them out to be, right?
If you want a sport where men and women compete at almost the same level (except for a handful of exceptional climbers), try rock climbing. It’s also a sport where men and women can play together.
When I was first climbing, one day a week I’d climb indoors at the gym, and one of the guys I climbed with always climbed with women. I asked him why one day, and he said it’s because women are better technical climbers. He said men tend to rely on muscle especially up to intermediate levels, and since most women couldn’t “cheat” and do that, they tended to have better technique. Climbing with women gave him a chance to learn from that, and better his own technique. He had a point, climbing is far more about technique than it is about muscle.
MikeEss said:
Not sure about the other sports, but participation in competitive international skiing is certainly not almost exclusively male, except for nordic ski jumping and flying (and therefore nordic combined). All of the alpine/boarding disciplines have been gender integrated for decades or since inception. Biathlon and cross country have been gender integrated since the Late 70’s.
In North America, skiing participants have been predominantly Caucasian and Native American , and the trend transfers to the elite level, but the Caucasian dominance is obviously not the rule for Iran and Japan.
Gender equalists: Don’t rejoice yet, as the usual funding disparities and general sexism still exist, though maybe not to a visible degree for a layperson.
Here’s a link that covers every international sanctioned race in most disciplines since the mid 90’s, and incomplete records back as far as the 50’s. The genders are specified. The races you would have to research independently, as many of the countries that excel border Asia, or have other indigenous populations
http://www.fis-ski.com
er, to clarify, last sentence should read
The ethnicity of the participants one would have to research…
@ MikeEss: “Plus, where the hell are the great Chinese drivers?”
I lived in Beijing for about a year. Most Chinese drivers participate in what could best be called “free-style driving” (hat tip, Amy Tan). A friend from NYC came to visit, and we took a shuttle bus downtown. After about 2 minutes on the road, he turned a noticeably paler face to me and said, “Manhattan cab drivers are pussies.”
It would certainly make professional racing more interesting to have a few Chinese drivers involved…
Yet it was enough for patriarchy to develop organically from it.
http://www.amazon.com/Cannibals-Kings-Cultures-Marvin-Harris/dp/067972849X
Women are on par with men in college sailboat racing. Got my ass handed to me more than once by women crews. The coed camaraderie and post regatta parties made for a wonderful experience.
I’m 5′ 8-1/2″ and weigh +165.
I’ll drive that damn car and smack the frak out of any mofo who says any woman who wins is b/c women are tiny.
Knobs.