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pktechgirlbackupAs presented in Warrior Girls, the conversation on girls in sports goes something like this:
person 1: I am concerned about the higher rate of injuries in girls and women
person 2: The idea that sports are bad for a woman's reproductive system is preposterous. In fact, men get many more reproductive tract injuries on account of external genitalia.
person 1: ...but ACL tears.
And the thing is, they're both right. They're just not responding to each other. First, Person 1 is not suggesting that there are injuries that only occur to women, she's suggesting that there are injuries that occur in both sexes but more frequently in women. I think this is representative of a more general pattern in discussion of sex- and gender- based issues: confusing differences of kind with differences in amount. When popular articles come out saying that (straight) women value money and (straight) men value looks, feminists are quick to attack them as insane, or at best culturally based. The truth is that if you look at the actual data, you do see moderate differences in preferences- but in general, men and women have the same top five, and looks and money tend to be beaten out by things like kindness and sense of humor in both genders. It's inaccurate to say there are no differences, but it's equally inaccurate to describe women and men as wealth and boob seeking missles.
There's a really good metaphor for this in our endocrine system. We call testosterone the male hormone and estrogen the female hormone*, but the truth is that everyone has both, just in different proportions. And there are a ton hormones not affiliated with either sex, some of which have different distributions in men and women and some of which don't.
Secondly, Person 2 seems to be assuming Person 1 thinks the injury rate is a reason not to let girls play sports. She's not doing it maliciously, she's doing it because there are a lot of people who use concerns about safety as a trojan horse to getting their way, but in this case it's inacurrate. Person 1 just wants accurate statistics to make informed value judgements, and to minimize negative side effects. It's unfortunate that concern trolls will misuse this data, but you can't fight ignorance with ignorance.
*Which annoys me because estrogen isn't even a hormone, it's a class of hormones, and calling it a hormone allows people to market chemicals that match no molecule in the human body as estrogen. But this is not relevant to the story.
person 1: I am concerned about the higher rate of injuries in girls and women
person 2: The idea that sports are bad for a woman's reproductive system is preposterous. In fact, men get many more reproductive tract injuries on account of external genitalia.
person 1: ...but ACL tears.
And the thing is, they're both right. They're just not responding to each other. First, Person 1 is not suggesting that there are injuries that only occur to women, she's suggesting that there are injuries that occur in both sexes but more frequently in women. I think this is representative of a more general pattern in discussion of sex- and gender- based issues: confusing differences of kind with differences in amount. When popular articles come out saying that (straight) women value money and (straight) men value looks, feminists are quick to attack them as insane, or at best culturally based. The truth is that if you look at the actual data, you do see moderate differences in preferences- but in general, men and women have the same top five, and looks and money tend to be beaten out by things like kindness and sense of humor in both genders. It's inaccurate to say there are no differences, but it's equally inaccurate to describe women and men as wealth and boob seeking missles.
There's a really good metaphor for this in our endocrine system. We call testosterone the male hormone and estrogen the female hormone*, but the truth is that everyone has both, just in different proportions. And there are a ton hormones not affiliated with either sex, some of which have different distributions in men and women and some of which don't.
Secondly, Person 2 seems to be assuming Person 1 thinks the injury rate is a reason not to let girls play sports. She's not doing it maliciously, she's doing it because there are a lot of people who use concerns about safety as a trojan horse to getting their way, but in this case it's inacurrate. Person 1 just wants accurate statistics to make informed value judgements, and to minimize negative side effects. It's unfortunate that concern trolls will misuse this data, but you can't fight ignorance with ignorance.
*Which annoys me because estrogen isn't even a hormone, it's a class of hormones, and calling it a hormone allows people to market chemicals that match no molecule in the human body as estrogen. But this is not relevant to the story.
