#gender segregating sports is so fucking stupid. i will kick your ass either way bc im full of spite and a bastard cheat

[octopus-defence-squad]

SO. I have opinions on this from time playing and also time coaching. I am 5'10 and built sturdy. I played volleyball and was naturally better than a lot of kids by sheer fact that I was always tall and volleyball is a sport where height gives an advantage. I beat a lot of boys I played against for fun because I was taller than them and more skilled, due to years of playing and practice and clinics.

I also coached both boys and coed teams for elementary and middle schoolers. There were frequently complaints in that league about the unfairness of boys playing with girls.

HOWEVER I remember from my time playing at that level the same arguments happening about girls that were "too tall" or who played club or who otherwise were better than the others on the court. Of the kids I coached, there were quite a few girls who were at the same level as or better than the boys, and quite a few boys who (kindly) sucked ass at the sport.

But because volleyball is gendered as a "female" sport more often, and because there are very few opportunities for boys to play competitively (one option was a club that I played at, where I was bullied with the permission of my coach and which was Horrible, the other was in a different state and over an hour away), the boys that wanted to play tended to be good (because those who weren't would drop it), motivated enough to play in a sport which doesn't have strong support for boy players, and they didn't have options other than the coed league.

I will admit that part of it was likely due to my co-coach and I being strong coaches (most were parent volunteers who hadn't played in years) who had coached many of these boys for years. We often had either the only or the most boys on our team of any in the league.

But there was selection bias there. The boys looked stronger than the girls because the audience ignored W, who was a lovely kid but very weak. They ignored C, who was quite average. They ignored all the girls who played club and could also overhand serve, who were half a foot taller than any of my boys, because those were girls.

When I coached only boys, our games were 45 minutes away, rather than 7. Our area had 3 teams of boys (with quite a lot of variation in their skill sets) which is a lot more than there were when I was that level, but isn't enough to form a league.

I taught an equal number of boys and girls how to jump serve. I taught an equal number of boys and girls how to pass without the ball going wildly out of bounds. ESPECIALLY at a younger level, experience, size, and passion matter far more than anything else, much less gender.

People just don't like to admit that sex matters less than they want it to.

crazy that in the 1970s they were like, "fine, women can play sports. but because they're innately less athletic than men, only in a special ghettoized League For The Frail And Delicate where they get paid less 😊". And not only is that still the system in 2023, but viciously lashing out at the smallest challenges to that system gets framed as Feminist Praxis