Except, you know, all those sports where the pay is already equal so I'm hardly imagining a situation that hasn't happened yet in some sports.
Men, on average, are bigger than women, on average, but this doesn't make them more athletic, merely stronger on average. Your argument here isn't one.
Whether different groups are suited to different things is up to you to demonstrate before I need bother commenting on that.
lol, that fact that you think I need to actually demonstrate that last point to you says a lot about what you hope to actually draw from a conversation (or what you seem to prefer, an argumentative debate).
And I also don't think it is controversial to claim that men are more athletic than women overall. In fact I struggle to come up with a single aspect of athletics where women are superior. Maybe flexibility/balance? IDK about that one, tough to judge unless you watch a lot of gymnastics I guess. What do you think? Can you come up with other athletic attributes where women equal/exceed men?
For what it's worth I prefer watching women's curling (the only sport I'll actually go out of my way to watch) over Men's curling. Men are all about strength and slamming the rocks out, leaving relatively simple draws with only two or 3 rocks in play. Women's curling on the other hand, for whatever reason, leaves lots in play setting up far more interesting and technically difficult shots.
For what it's worth, I've heard several people make the same comment about tennis; that Women's tennis is superior because the men are so strong it's incredibly difficult to even return a serve, where the women are much more strategic and can get better rallies going because they're not just trying to blow each other out of the water all the time.
Why should we value each equally? What if one group is simply more entertaining at a given activity? In this case it is undisputed that men are bigger and more athletic than women, so why expect/hope that ~50% of people would want to watch lesser athletes?
Yours seems like an all too common viewpoint that equality is automatically better or should be expected. When in reality people are different. Different groups are actually better suited to different things.
You are conflating bigger with better. I'm never a big fan of football unless my home team or alma mater are playing and winning, and Case Keenum attracted a lot of attention despite being shorter than the rest of the UH team. We went from a no-name tier four university to one that is up and coming thanks to him. And Tyron Carrier is only a few inches taller than I am, but they were a dynamic duo.
Our endowments are up partially due to the seasons when they played.
Why should we value each equally? What if one group is simply more entertaining at a given activity? In this case it is undisputed that men are bigger and more athletic than women, so why expect/hope that ~50% of people would want to watch lesser athletes?
Yours seems like an all too common viewpoint that equality is automatically better or should be expected. When in reality people are different. Different groups are actually better suited to different things.
You are conflating bigger with better. I'm never a big fan of football unless my home team or alma mater are playing and winning, and Case Keenum attracted a lot of attention despite being shorter than the rest of the UH team. We went from a no-name tier four university to one that is up and coming thanks to him. And Tyron Carrier is only a few inches taller than I am, but they were a dynamic duo.
Our endowments are up partially due to the seasons when they played.
I don't think so.
People consistently want to see the best at something, pretty much regardless of the activity. Magic, poker, basketball, football, etc...the best players draw the most eyes. Men are consistently better than women at most sports, so it is natural to expect them to draw more viewers. Personally I'm a big bball fan, and in that sport men can do everything women do and then so much more.
Men also have had more opportunity at sports. We are, in many places, getting to compare television ratings for programs that are barely old enough to drink with ones that predate the Korean war.
Men also have had more opportunity at sports. We are, in many places, getting to compare television ratings for programs that are barely old enough to drink with ones that predate the Korean war.
Sure. That is why I tried to make my point wider than that, as otherwise you get too much noise from the biased history favoring men's activities. Fundamentally the point is two-fold:
1. People are generally drawn to watching the best at stuff, regardless of the stuff, and that's ok.
2. All groups aren't equally "good" at things, and that's ok.
Put those two together and you get my questioning of his assumption that it is somehow bad for men to get more money/attention in sports.
The best at stuff isn't solely reflective of genetics as there is a good bit of historical baggage associated with it. Thats why I phrased my statements the way I did, because it will take time for womens leagues to attain a level of clout at all similar to men's leagues, basketball being a great example.
Whether or not all groups are equally good doesn't, necessarily, matter. Particularly when it comes to strength. Tennis and Curling have been brought up as examples of things where the physical differences have led to the game being played in different ways and that people have found more enjoyment in the more technical lines of play in womens tennis/curling as opposed to the hulk smash that is the mens version.
If we look at it like that, then the pay disparity between the athletes as a function of the ratings disparity between the leagues starts to look a heck of a lot more like first movers advantage instead of some sort of inherent benefit.
People consistently want to see the best at something, pretty much regardless of the activity. Magic, poker, basketball, football, etc...the best players draw the most eyes. Men are consistently better than women at most sports, so it is natural to expect them to draw more viewers. Personally I'm a big bball fan, and in that sport men can do everything women do and then so much more.
LOL, men are not better than women at Magic or poker. They attract a disproportionate amount of males for various reasons. Personally, from what I've seen at MTG tournaments, every damn one of those players has ASD and women have lower rates of ASD. That doesn't mean males are better at playing these games.
One of the issues I'd love to see is more intermixing of the genders at the very least with things such as the NBA vs. WNBA and similar one off events in Pro Bowl fashion.
People consistently want to see the best at something, pretty much regardless of the activity. Magic, poker, basketball, football, etc...the best players draw the most eyes. Men are consistently better than women at most sports, so it is natural to expect them to draw more viewers. Personally I'm a big bball fan, and in that sport men can do everything women do and then so much more.
LOL, men are not better than women at Magic or poker. They attract a disproportionate amount of males for various reasons. Personally, from what I've seen at MTG tournaments, every damn one of those players has ASD and women have lower rates of ASD. That doesn't mean males are better at playing these games.
And Magic and poker are not "sports," by the way.
Autism spectrum disorder? The question is at what level, frankly I don't really see where autism has much to do with Magic. The issue goes farther back more towards that the game was popular with young males and has continued to include a male demographic over the years. There never developed a fan following from women such as the manga industry did in the US. Equally, many tribes such as horses that appeal to younger girls and so forth aren't placed highly on the list for tribes, either. The marketing over to "girly girls" isn't there, as compared to say romance manga or paranormal romance as a clear example. Urza vs. Bella fairly much contributes to branding.
Now Liliana, Elspeth, and other characters have shifted to be more mainstream as compared to say Freyalise getting her own book fighting the Phyrexians as compared to what occurred with Urza and Gerrard. It's one of the enigmas with Magic's importation into the game, however the lack of linkage of say using alternative walkers such as Dack Faydin and emphasizing storylines that appeal to women is a failure of the branding itself. I like Dack Faydin, but there comes a day when seeing books on the shelf that cover the paranormal romance section and other such things within the Magic brand combined with supplementary products like Conspiracy that cover those characters and worlds. ANd they have only begun this year to tinker with creating products that use their long and varied history with Magic as a brand, that seems to so far be working in their favor.
It's like I've said in other threads, characters need to display human life cycles.
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Life is a beautiful engineer, yet a brutal scientist.
Autism spectrum disorder? The question is at what level, frankly I don't really see where autism has much to do with Magic. The issue goes farther back more towards that the game was popular with young males and has continued to include a male demographic over the years. There never developed a fan following from women such as the manga industry did in the US. Equally, many tribes such as horses that appeal to younger girls and so forth aren't placed highly on the list for tribes, either. The marketing over to "girly girls" isn't there, as compared to say romance manga or paranormal romance as a clear example. Urza vs. Bella fairly much contributes to branding.
It's a game that's appealing to people with ASD. It's highly structured, requires a great deal of analytic thought for deckbuilding, strategic thought for playing, encyclopedic knowledge for cards and rules, and the play is more literal than other games like YGO.
And do you think all females are "girly girls?" There are legions of females who do not identify with that or were identified as tomboys when they were young. You're being quite sweeping with your assignment of gender roles and that's a problem.
Well there is the issue of manga being a medium while mtg is a specific game. Plenty of the manga that girls tend to like more have few males fans (I ever tell you about the coworker of mine in the navy who would get visibly aroused when talking about Tuxedo Mask from Sailor Moon?), but that kind of thing wouldn't work with magic since the clearer analog would be if the MLP game was solid.
I see magic and women being more of a gamer/gaming culture thing where we see less sexualized art, some alternative formats that are more group/cooperative based, and, I dunno, maybe WotC can release some "how not to be a jackass to the only female player at your smalltown game store" guides to TO's so they can instruct their playerbase how not to alienate women.
It didn't sound like he was implying that men were the best at magic or poker, just that they were the best at certain sports and that we only enjoy watching the best.
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Trolling can be defined as "A art, one specifically designed to misdirect, anger, or confuse others by reporting meaningful information in a clear, coherent way."
One day I will go infinate on a token combo then drop Scramble verse and watch as the trolling begins. That day will be a good day.
One of the issues I'd love to see is more intermixing of the genders at the very least with things such as the NBA vs. WNBA and similar one off events in Pro Bowl fashion.
You mean create mixed basketball all-star teams? Because if they are not mixed, then I predict that the men's all-star team would win 200-45. It'd be even more lopsided than having a fully loaded Team USA.
One of the issues I'd love to see is more intermixing of the genders at the very least with things such as the NBA vs. WNBA and similar one off events in Pro Bowl fashion.
You mean create mixed basketball all-star teams? Because if they are not mixed, then I predict that the men's all-star team would win 200-45. It'd be even more lopsided than having a fully loaded Team USA.
Basketball at least u wouldn't have such a lopsided victory. Basketball is less focused on absolute physical power and more on endurance, height and speed. There are some pretty tall women in the WNBA and as far as the other stats, they arnt far behind either
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Trolling can be defined as "A art, one specifically designed to misdirect, anger, or confuse others by reporting meaningful information in a clear, coherent way."
One day I will go infinate on a token combo then drop Scramble verse and watch as the trolling begins. That day will be a good day.
Basketball at least u wouldn't have such a lopsided victory. Basketball is less focused on absolute physical power and more on endurance, height and speed. There are some pretty tall women in the WNBA and as far as the other stats, they arnt far behind either
Maybe there could be a competition in tennis or golf or bowling, I'm not sure because I don't know much about those sports. Basketball would be an absolute drubbing. The men have the height, the strength, better overall athleticism, etc. I just looked this up and apparently there have only been 11 slam dunks in WNBA history, and one woman has 5 of them. That's a huge difference right there... there are probably 11 slams in the NBA each game. I would love to see it, though. I wanna see a guy like Carmelo Anthony post up against one of the better female players, it would be funny to watch.
Yeah, someone who thinks that a bball game would even be close probably hasn't played/watched much bball. I can tell you from personal experience that there is a huge gulf between men and women in bball. I was an average HS player, not even close to good enough to play in college. While in college, at an ACC school (i.e. high major in terms of competitiveness in sports) I got to play some pick-up with girls from the women's team...and I was definitely competitive with them. Someone with my skills/size could have made their team, or come close to it. OTOH while in HS I got to play pick-up with men's players from an ACC school...and I was completely out of my league, not even on the same planet. The difference in size and all-around athleticism translates into huge advantages in bball.
Elvish Crack Piper - To a degree I think your examples are making my point for me. The tennis example shows it perfectly, as fans simply prefer to watch one gender over the other, and that's ok. Expecting equality within a given sport seems unrealistic and unnecessary.
First, No, its not since you seem to have forgotten the point you keep making and that its about groups, not individuals. Yeah, some people here like women's tennis more, but other people men's tennis, some people watch both, some dont watch it at all. This is not about any given individuals personal preferences but, relative to the point you've been making about strength/"the best", a sufficient explanation for the disparity in pay, particularly as reflection in ratings, over other explanations for that disparity in pay.
Your initial point was about how their would be that ratings disparity, and the corresponding pay difference, because male physical superiority meant superior athleticism and therefore higher rating. You've used terminology like "the best at something" repeatedly and that simply does not hold up as a point of argument.
I had two basic counters to that. One that the ratings superiority is also due to cultural influences since womens sports leagues have been around for less time and, the more relevant one here, that using the cases of curling and tennis brought up by people in the thread, we can see that the differences between women and men have made for a game that some people enjoy more from the womens perspective because it isn't all about the strength. There is no particular reason this couldn't happen with other sports. Or, put more simply,
Your entire argument is treating athleticism likes its a monolithic thing.
Alternatively, your argument also falls apart if we make the comparison to, say, boxing or any other sport that uses weight classes. Even if the majority of heavyweights are going to win if they fight a featherweight that doesn't mean that people somehow wouldn't enjoy boxing/mma/whatever matches between people who aren't heavyweights, simply that the sport is played in different ways. We might as well point at the old school magic players who decried the creation of type 2 way back when on a similar basis that "Heavyweight/Type 1/Men's sports" was superior and that "featherweight/type 2/women's sports" are in some way unworthy for whatever reason, and yet fans of those sports still happen despite the Heavyweight defeating the featherweight, type 1 crushing type 2 in terms of raw card power, and men beating women at basketball.
It's not about being the best. The rise of Women's tennis to having equal pay with Men's is evidence that its possible, in theory, for this to happen with other sports that have people of both genders playing in their own leagues. The thing holding back the pay, the ratings, whatnot, is largely due to cultural factors relating largely to first mover effects.
Have you even noticed that the most popular weight class in boxing tends to be the one that has the biggest stars at the time, the most dominant boxers? Wonder why that is?
Regarding men's vs women's tennis, sure, that shows that it is possible. Not that it is optimal, ideal, or to be expected in other sports/activities.
I mean, I agree that revenue is purely due to the ratings and number of people who buy into a sports franchise and not necessarily athleticism — as if everyone stopped watching any professional sport and started watching Tee-Ball, then Tee-Ball would become the dominant sports franchise — but it's presumptuous to say the level of play is wholly irrelevant to why people are watching, right?
The both of you. I agree with you that the core is ratings and people choosing to watch a sport, but I think Golden has a point in that athleticism is a major reason people watch the sports they do.
It's not the only reason, obviously. There's a reason soccer never takes off here like it does in other countries, so culture is a factor. And, as you say, it's not just cultural interests, but also cultural views on women competing in sports.
That said, take the previous example of the NBA vs. the WNBA. The WNBA players do not perform to the level of those of the NBA. They don't perform to the level of those in men's college ball either. So as to why people don't watch the WNBA, I think it's safe to say athleticism is a major reason behind that.
lol, that fact that you think I need to actually demonstrate that last point to you says a lot about what you hope to actually draw from a conversation (or what you seem to prefer, an argumentative debate).
And I also don't think it is controversial to claim that men are more athletic than women overall. In fact I struggle to come up with a single aspect of athletics where women are superior. Maybe flexibility/balance? IDK about that one, tough to judge unless you watch a lot of gymnastics I guess. What do you think? Can you come up with other athletic attributes where women equal/exceed men?
For what it's worth, I've heard several people make the same comment about tennis; that Women's tennis is superior because the men are so strong it's incredibly difficult to even return a serve, where the women are much more strategic and can get better rallies going because they're not just trying to blow each other out of the water all the time.
You are conflating bigger with better. I'm never a big fan of football unless my home team or alma mater are playing and winning, and Case Keenum attracted a lot of attention despite being shorter than the rest of the UH team. We went from a no-name tier four university to one that is up and coming thanks to him. And Tyron Carrier is only a few inches taller than I am, but they were a dynamic duo.
Our endowments are up partially due to the seasons when they played.
I don't think so.
People consistently want to see the best at something, pretty much regardless of the activity. Magic, poker, basketball, football, etc...the best players draw the most eyes. Men are consistently better than women at most sports, so it is natural to expect them to draw more viewers. Personally I'm a big bball fan, and in that sport men can do everything women do and then so much more.
Sure. That is why I tried to make my point wider than that, as otherwise you get too much noise from the biased history favoring men's activities. Fundamentally the point is two-fold:
1. People are generally drawn to watching the best at stuff, regardless of the stuff, and that's ok.
2. All groups aren't equally "good" at things, and that's ok.
Put those two together and you get my questioning of his assumption that it is somehow bad for men to get more money/attention in sports.
Whether or not all groups are equally good doesn't, necessarily, matter. Particularly when it comes to strength. Tennis and Curling have been brought up as examples of things where the physical differences have led to the game being played in different ways and that people have found more enjoyment in the more technical lines of play in womens tennis/curling as opposed to the hulk smash that is the mens version.
If we look at it like that, then the pay disparity between the athletes as a function of the ratings disparity between the leagues starts to look a heck of a lot more like first movers advantage instead of some sort of inherent benefit.
LOL, men are not better than women at Magic or poker. They attract a disproportionate amount of males for various reasons. Personally, from what I've seen at MTG tournaments, every damn one of those players has ASD and women have lower rates of ASD. That doesn't mean males are better at playing these games.
And Magic and poker are not "sports," by the way.
Autism spectrum disorder? The question is at what level, frankly I don't really see where autism has much to do with Magic. The issue goes farther back more towards that the game was popular with young males and has continued to include a male demographic over the years. There never developed a fan following from women such as the manga industry did in the US. Equally, many tribes such as horses that appeal to younger girls and so forth aren't placed highly on the list for tribes, either. The marketing over to "girly girls" isn't there, as compared to say romance manga or paranormal romance as a clear example. Urza vs. Bella fairly much contributes to branding.
Now Liliana, Elspeth, and other characters have shifted to be more mainstream as compared to say Freyalise getting her own book fighting the Phyrexians as compared to what occurred with Urza and Gerrard. It's one of the enigmas with Magic's importation into the game, however the lack of linkage of say using alternative walkers such as Dack Faydin and emphasizing storylines that appeal to women is a failure of the branding itself. I like Dack Faydin, but there comes a day when seeing books on the shelf that cover the paranormal romance section and other such things within the Magic brand combined with supplementary products like Conspiracy that cover those characters and worlds. ANd they have only begun this year to tinker with creating products that use their long and varied history with Magic as a brand, that seems to so far be working in their favor.
It's like I've said in other threads, characters need to display human life cycles.
Modern
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Cube
<a href="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-lists/588020-unpowered-themed-enchantment-an-enchanted-evening">An Enchanted Evening Cube </a>
It's a game that's appealing to people with ASD. It's highly structured, requires a great deal of analytic thought for deckbuilding, strategic thought for playing, encyclopedic knowledge for cards and rules, and the play is more literal than other games like YGO.
And do you think all females are "girly girls?" There are legions of females who do not identify with that or were identified as tomboys when they were young. You're being quite sweeping with your assignment of gender roles and that's a problem.
Magic's appeal (or lack thereof) to individuals on the Autism Spectrum isn't really relevant.
I see magic and women being more of a gamer/gaming culture thing where we see less sexualized art, some alternative formats that are more group/cooperative based, and, I dunno, maybe WotC can release some "how not to be a jackass to the only female player at your smalltown game store" guides to TO's so they can instruct their playerbase how not to alienate women.
One day I will go infinate on a token combo then drop Scramble verse and watch as the trolling begins. That day will be a good day.
You mean create mixed basketball all-star teams? Because if they are not mixed, then I predict that the men's all-star team would win 200-45. It'd be even more lopsided than having a fully loaded Team USA.
Basketball at least u wouldn't have such a lopsided victory. Basketball is less focused on absolute physical power and more on endurance, height and speed. There are some pretty tall women in the WNBA and as far as the other stats, they arnt far behind either
One day I will go infinate on a token combo then drop Scramble verse and watch as the trolling begins. That day will be a good day.
Maybe there could be a competition in tennis or golf or bowling, I'm not sure because I don't know much about those sports. Basketball would be an absolute drubbing. The men have the height, the strength, better overall athleticism, etc. I just looked this up and apparently there have only been 11 slam dunks in WNBA history, and one woman has 5 of them. That's a huge difference right there... there are probably 11 slams in the NBA each game. I would love to see it, though. I wanna see a guy like Carmelo Anthony post up against one of the better female players, it would be funny to watch.
Elvish Crack Piper - To a degree I think your examples are making my point for me. The tennis example shows it perfectly, as fans simply prefer to watch one gender over the other, and that's ok. Expecting equality within a given sport seems unrealistic and unnecessary.
Your initial point was about how their would be that ratings disparity, and the corresponding pay difference, because male physical superiority meant superior athleticism and therefore higher rating. You've used terminology like "the best at something" repeatedly and that simply does not hold up as a point of argument.
I had two basic counters to that. One that the ratings superiority is also due to cultural influences since womens sports leagues have been around for less time and, the more relevant one here, that using the cases of curling and tennis brought up by people in the thread, we can see that the differences between women and men have made for a game that some people enjoy more from the womens perspective because it isn't all about the strength. There is no particular reason this couldn't happen with other sports. Or, put more simply,
Your entire argument is treating athleticism likes its a monolithic thing.
Alternatively, your argument also falls apart if we make the comparison to, say, boxing or any other sport that uses weight classes. Even if the majority of heavyweights are going to win if they fight a featherweight that doesn't mean that people somehow wouldn't enjoy boxing/mma/whatever matches between people who aren't heavyweights, simply that the sport is played in different ways. We might as well point at the old school magic players who decried the creation of type 2 way back when on a similar basis that "Heavyweight/Type 1/Men's sports" was superior and that "featherweight/type 2/women's sports" are in some way unworthy for whatever reason, and yet fans of those sports still happen despite the Heavyweight defeating the featherweight, type 1 crushing type 2 in terms of raw card power, and men beating women at basketball.
It's not about being the best. The rise of Women's tennis to having equal pay with Men's is evidence that its possible, in theory, for this to happen with other sports that have people of both genders playing in their own leagues. The thing holding back the pay, the ratings, whatnot, is largely due to cultural factors relating largely to first mover effects.
Regarding men's vs women's tennis, sure, that shows that it is possible. Not that it is optimal, ideal, or to be expected in other sports/activities.
Incidentally, you don't need to reply quickly since I'd much rather you respond thoroughly.
It's not the only reason, obviously. There's a reason soccer never takes off here like it does in other countries, so culture is a factor. And, as you say, it's not just cultural interests, but also cultural views on women competing in sports.
That said, take the previous example of the NBA vs. the WNBA. The WNBA players do not perform to the level of those of the NBA. They don't perform to the level of those in men's college ball either. So as to why people don't watch the WNBA, I think it's safe to say athleticism is a major reason behind that.