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[–]Wanderingthehalls 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

What are they arguing about ice-skating? Ice-skating is largely marked according to multi-rotational jump sequences and more men can consistently quad jump than women. The majority of "women" who can do quad jumps, especially in sequences are in reality very, very underweight Russian teenage girls. Trained to use pre-rotated jumps that absolutely destroy their physical health by causing permanent bone and joint damage. Along with the damage of caused by maintaining ridiculously low levels of body fat and almost certainly taking puberty blockers to delay changes to their hips and breasts. Often these women have limited mobility, compared to non-athletes, before their 20th birthday.

Ice-skating is a potentially beautiful sport but healthy, adult women can't do the kind of quad sequences that men and teenagers can, because if you have fully developed bones, organs and adult body fat levels, you need male strength to lift yourself that high, for that long. Although as rotations increased last year with the first successful quad axel in competition, it will be interesting to see if fully developed men can keep up, as the jump is being done by a teenage boy. We can see in sports using similar physics for rotational jumps, like skateboarding, that speed and height for multi-rotation often peaks in childhood, sometimes for males as well as females.

[–]ClassroomPast6178 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Women’s gymnastics and figure skating are hellish (because of the demands placed on competitors, and the actions of coaches and support staff). Burn them down and start again.

[–]Wanderingthehalls 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yeah, I'm naturally quite good at both those sports and I love them, both to do and to watch at a high level. But I'm also very glad I never really got to find out how good I had the potential to be because the odds are my life would have been destroyed and I wouldn't have the reasonably good expectation I currently have of a long, physically healthy old age.

And I worry about the kids, especially the girls, involved in the new Olympic fields like skateboarding and breakdancing, because they could very easily go the same way. As in both, elite girls are able to perform impressive moves that elite adult women can't. You just have to look at the ages of the women's skateboarding medalists at the last Olympics, all teenagers, mostly aged 13. (Kokona Hiraki was actually still 12). And child athletes at the peak of their career can be taken advantage of in other ways too. I could write an essay about how Sky Brown is being treated. She's an extremely talented kid with a great work ethic, but one that I believe is being taken advantage of. But that's little to do with the topic at hand.

[–]alladd 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Oh I had no idea about any of that. I saw one of the comments try to argue that women were better overall as ice skaters and therefore men's domination in any sport was apparently suspect. Real equivocation highlight reel. It was in the midst of a larger cope essay that also included citing sources that if they had actually bothered to read, explictly stated the opposite, that men, even ones who castrate themselves, still have clear advantages.

[–]Wanderingthehalls 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Possibly they mean in pairs categories, especially pairs free figures, which involves a number of jumps and throws where the male skater literally throws the woman in the air, or will add his strength to assist her jump take off, or will hold her overhead, often with one arm while dealing with rotational force that is increasing her weight. It would be much harder for a male-male team to do this as males are naturally heavier than similar sized females. It would be possible with young teenage boys, but I think it would potentially end up looking really creepy. Especially as not only does the artistry in pairs usually involve the appearance of sexual/romantic chemistry between the skaters, but because it's known that there is a lot of abuse of power in pairs skating with is often sexual as well as financial. So it would be creepy as fuck to watch an adult and a child performing together.