IeSF Wants International Game Tournaments Segregated By Sex [Updated] 221
RockDoctor (15477) writes The Guardian is reporting that a Finnish heat of an international gaming competition is being segregated into male and female branches in accordance to international rules. The International e-Sports Federation (IeSF) want "eSports" to be recognised as equivalent to physical sports. And that, it seems, requires that competitors be segregated on grounds of sex. Which may be appropriate for pole vaulters, but not necessarily appropriate for ePole vaulters. This leaves the organisers of national heats of eSports in a rather invidious position of having (in this case) a tournament only open to "Finnish male players." Update: 07/03 14:38 GMT by T : As several readers point out in the comments, this policy has been abruptly reversed.
simple fix (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:simple fix (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever old people want it to be.
Seriously, just abandon the word "sport". It's not helping in any way. Trying to avoid "gaming" is understandable, as it means "illegal gambling" to many people, and in many laws, but there's got to be a better word than "sport".
"eSports" is trying to come down on the wrong side of the great jock-geek divide. Why do that?
Re:simple fix (Score:5, Funny)
"real sport": Competitions I like watching on TV.
"fake sport": Competitions other people like watching on TV.
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Does this mean for me all sports are fake?
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Sports VS competition (Score:3, Insightful)
I dunno, I've always equated "sport" with some physical activity. Certainly gaming can be a competition, but is it really a sport? Similar I've heard of chess tournaments referred to as competitions rather than as sports.
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"real sport": ESPN channels 1 through 3
"fake sport": ESPN channels 4 and above
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What is a "real sport" anyway?
Well, let's see... There has to be some kind of physical skills involved. Check. There has to be some kind of scoring system in place by which one can observe the participants and objectively declare a winner. Check.
Or, in other words: Bowling is a sport. Figure skating is not. Video games are.
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What is a "real sport" anyway?
It is essentially a freak-show. The freaks of nature win the competition.
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How about rock-paper-scissors?
[X] physical skills involved
[X] some kind of scoring system
[X] objectively declare winner
Ticks all your boxes!
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How about rock-paper-scissors?
Yes, it's a sport. A stupid, boring, incredibly lame sport, but...
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What about Bingo?
Bingo involves the physical act of moving your hand to tick the scorecard, and there's a clear, objective winner.
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Bingo involves the physical act of moving your hand to tick the scorecard, and there's a clear, objective winner.
I think it's arguable, because that act is not a skill, and there's not a whole lot of variation in how well people do it. I think winning involves the purely mental act of being first to notice that the just-drawn ball completes your bingo, and that the placement of the marker comes after, just to keep track before the next round starts.
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Bingo involves the physical act of moving your hand to tick the scorecard, and there's a clear, objective winner.
I think it's arguable, because that act is not a skill...
Go to bingo-night, see the ones running 10+ bingo cards, and still manages to tick off all the numbers being called :)
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Go to bingo-night, see the ones running 10+ bingo cards, and still manages to tick off all the numbers being called :)
Yes, but they don't tick them off before calling bingo, because if they did, they wouldn't win ;-)
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And guess what? It's [usarps.com] a [worldrps.com] sport! [foxnews.com]
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Well rock-paper-scissors is physical in the sense that you can't play it without atoms/molecules/energy/etc (i.e. physics). But the game itself is basically random (if you do it right).
You don't need any physical skills beyond having a semi-functioning physical body. Having a body and being able to move your arms and hands is physical I guess. Would you really call this a skill? Are the rock-paper-scissor champions more skilled compared to the mediocre in any regard other than luck?
rock paper scissors i
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If figure skating isn't a sport solely because it's not objective, then there are a lot of Olympic sports that aren't actually sports either (high-dive, gymnastics,etc) as well as most of the X-games (freestyle BMX, half-pipe, etc)
By your definition, any sport that is subjectively rated by technique, instead of objectively rated by pre-defined goals, isn't a sport.
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If figure skating isn't a sport solely because it's not objective, then there are a lot of Olympic sports that aren't actually sports either (high-dive, gymnastics,etc) as well as most of the X-games (freestyle BMX, half-pipe, etc)
I was being simplistic in that sarcastic comment. The thing is, that figure skating (along with all the other sports you mention) does absolutely have objective criteria for much of the scoring. But in figure skating, far, far, more than any other sport, the judges have a long history of simply ignoring the objective criteria when they so desire.
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Chess.
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By definition (sport: an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature), chess is not a sport. It's a game.
("Sport" is a subset of "Game", but idiomatically some sports -- trap shooting for example -- are not considered "games".)
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Science has basically abandoned Descartes concept of dualism (i.e. that mind and body are separate). We now know that the mind is in the brain and is just as physical as the rest of our bodies. Chess is a game which requires incredible mental skill. And since the brain is physical, mental skills *are* physical skills.
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And since the brain is physical, mental skills *are* physical skills.
Nice try, but no.
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It's not like these games are mind-controlled.
There is much physical finger movement.
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Pretty much.
Now I don't deny that playing many of these games at the top levels involves lots of skill and practice.
But it's more akin to playing an instrument than participating a sport.
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If I had a spare pair of ear defenders (or two), I'd head up the road to the local highland games (I think it's Braemar this weekend, but I'm not sure) and ask the competitors in the bagpipes competition if they're more or less sportsmen than the caber-tossers.
Can I use your name when I ask?
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True. That said, sports shouldn't be segregated by sex in any case.
Why is it better for women to be able to say they're the best women player then being able to say they're the 200th best player in either sex?
Its the same thing.
Let them compete against the men.
They're 21st century women. They want to go into the fire... to compete... do it and be done.
Now if you're concerned about women getting hurt... that's sports. Men get hurt all the time. They get concussions. They tear ligaments. They break bones.
Migh
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Is chess or poker a sport? I would classify professional video-gamers in the same category as professional chess players or professional poker players...
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Is it? Go to a busy street corner and ask 100 people if they think Chess is a sport. The overwhelming majority will say no.
Chess is a sport in the same way that spelling bees are a sport - they're not. They are competitions with rules and winners though (like sports).
Re:simple fix (Score:4, Insightful)
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Then anything could be a sport. And it probably could be, because these terms are ambiguous as hell.
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Then why is Chess considered a sport. Sports do not require physical activity, they require competition.
Because people are afraid of the word "game".
Chess is a game. Not a sport. Football is a sport and a game. Running is a sport and not a game.
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When physical activity is required in order to get better at the sport. You don't train for chess by moving pieces around the board, for example, so not a sport. You don't train for "eSports" by typing on the keyboard (it certainly can help, but it doesn't help you become a better player because of it)
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This is completely arbitrary. Your basically saying practicing in the sport makes you better at it, but only if I find that practice to be a physical activity.
You do become better at star craft from typing keys. You do this by running small practice runs and skirmishes.
You do become better at chess by moving pieces around the board, but you do it in practice runs or skirmishes. Hell some people play themselves. Which is no different then running a track and trying to beat your best times.
Additionally in all
Sex? (Score:5, Funny)
requires that competitors be segregated on grounds of sex
Right, those that have sex with a partner and those that don't.
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Right, those that have sex with a partner and those that don't.
Makes it easy - rent one giant auditorium and one meeting room.
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Welcome to newspeak, where you can have a penis but still be a "woman." One is sex (the penis part) the other is "gender" according to our new "politically correct" overlords.
It's not "newspeak" or "politically correct", it's how things actually are. Havelock Ellis and Magnus Hirschfeld figured that out almost a century ago.
Sex is what parts you have, Gender is how you feel about yourself (and how you feel about the parts).
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Especially since the Finnish language has no gender...
Cargo-Cult Sociology (Score:5, Insightful)
"I don't know why it's important for physical sports to have gender segregation, but they do it and people recognize them as legitimate! If we segregate by gender, maybe that's what will make people recognize us as legitimate!"
Just like in programming, this line of thinking clearly translates down to "I have no idea what I'm doing, and I have no idea what the consequences of these choices are, but I'm just going to bang at things until something works or everything breaks."
(Spoiler alert: usually, everything breaks.)
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(Spoiler alert: usually, everything breaks.)
Damn. I was going to see that movie! :(
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NASCAR doesn't have gender segregation, Men and Women can compete in NASCAR. Granted there are not a lot of women NASCAR drivers. But they are a few and they can compete with the men.
I would say unless there is a statistical evidence that gender will give someone an advantage or disadvantage in terms of performance, I say let anyone play.
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Applying the logic that works with tennis to a sport where males have no intrinsic advantage really fits the title (Cargo-Cult Sociology) perfectly.
not the norm in other non-athletic competitions (Score:5, Informative)
Poker tournaments aren't gender-segregated, for example, and they are probably one of the more successful non-athletic sports. The main chess competitions are also open to people of any gender.
There are sometimes gender-specific events, but they are promotional/recruiting things rather than the main event. For example there's a Women's World Chess Championship, but some of the best chess-playing women choose not to enter it, and enter the main (gender-integrated) tournaments instead.
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Poker tournaments aren't gender-segregated, for example, and they are probably one of the more successful non-athletic sports. The main chess competitions are also open to people of any gender.
I don't think there is any sport that is specifically male-only. Sometimes women do well in baseball, for example [wikipedia.org]
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I believe professional baseball in the U.S. is officially male-only, or at least it used to be. Jackie Mitchell [wikipedia.org] was briefly pitcher for a minor-league AA team in 1931, but the commissioner expelled her from the league after it came to his attention.
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to help future generations of dorky male teens.. (Score:3, Insightful)
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im old now and happily married..
So trick to being happily married is to be old ... makes sense .. :)
No Longer News (Score:2, Insightful)
They already changed their stance.
http://ie-sf.com/bbs/board.php?bo_table=iesf_notice&wr_id=105
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They changed their stance slightly, they're still going for gender-segregated tournaments. They'll have "mixed" and "female-only" tournaments. That isn't an improvement.
interesting times... (Score:5, Interesting)
i see this debate in shooting sports going the other way.
there really aren't any good reasons why a female should be a worse marksman or shooting competitor than a male. in fact, small efficient muscles and better color eyesight make females more ideal than males.
so a lot of people think that there should be no gender seperation in shooting sport competitions, and I tend to agree. but for some reason, the top females can never quite break into the top levels with the top males. just last year, Jessie Duff became the first female USPSA grand master-level shooter. on paper, there's no reason why they can't be as competitive as the guys, but in reality it just hasn't happened. so we end up with segregated competitions (in most cases. there ARE plenty of gender-immeterial competitions out there) to keep it "fair".
disclaimer: i will never be able to compete against the competitive girls.
Re:interesting times... (Score:4, Insightful)
so a lot of people think that there should be no gender seperation in shooting sport competitions, and I tend to agree. but for some reason, the top females can never quite break into the top levels with the top males.
This is simply not true. Margeret Murdock [wikipedia.org] won a silver medal at the 1976 Olympics (she lost the battle for gold under very controversial circumstances) and set four individual world records. In the eighties, most shooting sports became gender-segregated, the only exceptions being skeet and trap, which became gender-segregated right after a woman (Zhang Shan [wikipedia.org]) had won the gold medal in the skeet competition in 1992. There are other examples as well.
So, if today's women are no longer competitive with men, then that's certainly a consequence of gender segregation and not an argument for it.
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+1 insightful. Wish I hadn't already commented.
Re:interesting times... (Score:5, Informative)
ahh, the "certain amazonian society" argument whereby someone seeks to argue against the prevalent facts by citing some small exceptions.
of course there will be a few exceptionally talented black swans that show up from time to time. these are exceptions to the rule.
for the year-after-year slog of shooters making their way to various competitions up to the top... WPW's, Camp Perry, USPSA nationals, IPSC championships, and all the hundreds of others, including the olympics, the males statistically dominate the top.
as far as I know, none of the scores are scaled differently for male vs female. the courses-of-fire are generally the same. the scores can be compared apples-to-apples, but we just hand out more trophies. females don't do worse BECAUSE of the separation, that is ridiculous.
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AKA Champions. If you aren't an exceptionally talented black swan you aren't a champion and shouldn't be called one. First, if you can't win the game on a level playing field with all genders and weight classes, you aren't really a champion. Second, assuming girls could never do this is highly sexist. Third, if you genuinely believe girls can't do this, then propping them up ar
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Male physiology is no advantage whatsoever in shooting sports.
[Citation needed]
I may be wrong but I am fairly certain males tend to perform better in spacial reasoning tasks as well as reaction times.
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[Citation needed]
I may be wrong but I am fairly certain males tend to perform better in spacial reasoning tasks as well as reaction times.
To put it in your words: [citation needed] and also with reference to how these help with shooting.
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Are you serious?
Spacial reasoning is probably the most important skill in shooting. How could you possibly think that judging distances and positions and how to align them is not paramount to shooting?
When tracking and hitting a moving target I would think that reaction time's importance would be obvious.
As to the rest: reaction time males vs female [google.ca] and spacial [wikipedia.org]
These are both fairly well understood. I put "[Citation needed]" because the GP's statement was demonstrably false.
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Are you serious?
Yep.
Spacial reasoning is probably the most important skill in shooting. How could you possibly think that judging distances and positions and how to align them is not paramount to shooting?
Well, from the wikipedia article on spatial intelligence:
Spatial Intelligence is an area in the theory of multiple intelligences that deals with spatial judgment and the ability to visualize with the mind's eye.
I'm not really sure that has to do with lining stuff up because that's not a reasoning thing. Not that it matters because:
and spacial
Nice reference! And, from the reference:
and thus gender difference in spatial ability may be linked to a difference in spatial experience, rather than actual difference in innate spatial ability. Indeed, University of Toronto researchers have discovered that differences between men and women on some tasks that require spatial skills are largely eliminated after both groups play a video game for only a few hours
So please try again. Your citation actually refutes your own point.
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You are not sure what "spacial judgement" has to do with lining things up or shooting targets? Judging objects in a spacial sense has nothing to do with this? Exactly what skills do you think hitting a target requires? I'm seriously asking here.
The gender difference may be linked to other things. Whether or not it is innate is irrelevant (and in no way settled). The difference is there and is statistically significant. I am entirely unsure how someone theorizing what causes the difference refutes the diffe
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hence my original post.... that females on paper should be able to compete just fine with males and there's no reason to hand out separate awards.
females do compete on equal terms, but their scores are compared only to other females for awards. you are blaming the symptom for causing the disease.
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If I hadn't come across ("fnarr, fnarr") pole vaulting as a comparison, then I might have lit upon shooting ("fnarr, fnarr"), if only because a friend's daughter was a serious competitor for a place on the national biathlon team on that winter sports thingy recently (the thing with the logo of rings ; sorry, not a very sporty person myself). (That's cross-country skiing and target shooting, for those that don't know or have forgotten already.)
But yeah - good example with no obvious reaso
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Another random piece of data that floats in my mental files is that many of the biggest salmon hooked in Scottish rivers have been caught by women
("fnarr, fnarr")
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I don't think that GP is saying that it's bad, just that it is.
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he says "but in reality it just hasn't happened. so we end up with segregated competitions"
My point is why is it a foregone conclusion that we end up with segregated competitions. Why can't we have integrated competitions and the woman just lose because they can't compete.
For the same reason we have weight categories in weightlifting and combat sports, the paralympics, etc.
When you were in grade school, did the 1st-graders compete against the 6th-graders?
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If gender isn't a factor that will come through in time. If it is, that will come through. More males will flock toward things where males are better eq
Pay attention, people.... (Score:3)
I'm betting they received enough bad press and comments about it to realize that this particular approach was not the appropriate avenue to take for being "recognized",. as they say.... as equivalent to sports.
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They did, and they also got a negative response from Blizzard (who own the relevant game). Faced with that, they wised up.
I think you can attribute this one to stupidity more than anything else.
Oh please (Score:2)
There are sports that are a lot more physical than gaming (although 1 is also a lot more than 0) where men and women compete against each other. Online, in arcades, in split-screen games on couches - that is, in the "real world" of gaming, men and women compete against each other. I'm pretty sure in Chess, which is roughly as physical as gaming, again men and women compete against each other.
This is silly.
Already changed (Score:3)
This has already been changed: http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/... [polygon.com]
There was a huge backlash on social media, which drew Blizzard's attention. Blizzard kindly made it clear that they didn't want their game being used in a male-only tournament, and the problem was fixed.
Slashdot is pretty far behind on this one.
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They still have gender-specific tournaments. They've changed their policy, but they haven't fixed it.
...Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
I know plenty of competitive game players, mostly from the competitive Team Fortress 2 scene. Now, I can understand why real sports are segregated by sex - there are irreconcilable physical differences between men and women in terms of athletic performance in some sports, thus it's simply not fair to have men competing against women. However, I don't get how this would apply to video games, where there is effectively no difference between the sexes. I have, in fact, seen female comp players who completely destroy me (largely because I don't play comp due to my favorite and only class being Engineer).
Also, there were at least two or three female runners at this year's Summer Games Done Quick. One of them did a very skilled race of Octodad against a male player, and was even ahead at one point - until the very end when she failed to get a very RNG-centric glitch to occur (the male player got it on the first try, but they both admitted that getting that glitch to occur is purely random). Another did a 7.5 hour run of Final Fantasy VI and actually out-lasted the male player she was co-opping with (from what I remember, he switched out about 5 or 6 hours in).
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Not saying I agree with separating the sex, but I can see why you would want to.
When talking about competition like this, you're talking about the very tip top of players, at which point, differences that would be minute to insignificant day to day (practice and training trump any biological difference, even when playing football. A girl who plays football 50x more than a guy will kick his ass at it pretty much no matter what) start showing up.
At the 0.1%, maybe men can click faster, maybe women can keep tr
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I don't think she's competitive, but one of the regulars on the TF2 server I usually go to is female and usually plays Medic; this doesn't sound too odd for TF2, until you go against her and find out that she is absolutely lethal with the Ubersaw (melee weapon, for non-TF2 players). If she gets the jump on someone (usually when her heal target loses uber and about to die, she'll split off and dive into the enemy team) she can easily take out two or three people with just that, and I've seen her clear half t
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Why does boxing segregate by weight? Why not send the 100 lb guy against the 400 lb guy?
Having separate competitions gives more people a feeling that they have a legitimate chance, which makes it more entertaining and encourages more people to try the sport which ends up being good for the sport.
Hippism? (Score:2)
Hippism is not segregated, as far as I know, and is an olympic sport...
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PS: Sorry, it's called "Equestrianism" in english, sorry :P
None of the equestrian disciplines are segregated by sex as far as I know...
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The policy has been updated (Score:2, Funny)
...so that now it's only men that are excluded from some events. Victory!
Hooray for "equality"....
No reason to be "outraged." (Score:2)
Missing the point (Score:2)
Sorry for repost, but I want to see potential feedback and was AC.
Basically, normal sports are segregated so that there can be top athletes who are non-male.
This allows them to inspire young women to be good in sports.
Women are allowed to compete in maie competetitions, they just don't stand a chance in almost all sports.
I hardly ever watch E-sports, or normal sports.
But if women are grossly underrepresented the same could be true there?
I dunno.
ummm (Score:2)
Easy to get around (Score:2)
Just select a male/female avatar.
Re:the real reason? (Score:5, Funny)
If you read up on the IeSF, it becomes much more clear what is going on.
-The IeSF is a South Korean organization; it is not Finnish. Ok, technically, it has a number of "member nations," but it is dominated by South Koreans. This tournament in Finland was a local qualifier for a larger international tournament. The local (Finnish) tournament organizers protested against the male-only rule, but couldn't convince the IeSF to relent until the media backlash started.
-The people who run the the IeSF aren't young male hormonal gamers. They are, by and large, middle-aged male executives at media and marketing companies. Their ultimate goal is to become the equivalent of the International Olympic Committee of e-sports, so that their companies can commercialize e-sports in the same way the Olympics were commercialized. However, they haven't been all that successful yet - they don't control any big-name tournaments in any of the games that I follow.
-As I mentioned already, the guys making the rules are older Koreans. I'll quote an interesting anecdote I saw on Ars Technica's [arstechnica.com] comments:
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Beach Volleyball (Score:2)
I think the real reason is popularity and ratings.
I think it is very easy to say that there are WAY more guys playing video games than girls. Of that ratio, I would also say it is very easy to assume that of that subset it is even further segregated by having WAY more guys interested in playing e-sports than girls also. Due to the simple inequity in numbers, girls and guys being equal at e-sports aside, very few girls will make it anywhere in e-sports. The same way as making a hockey team out of Canadians w
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Three words in reply to the "real sports are all segregated by sex" argument: "Mixed doubles tennis".
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The word "all" was indeed incorrect, but sports that do not have an enforced male/female ratio are segregated for good reason.
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There's no good reason for curling in the first place, let alone gender divides within curling.
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Which is segregated by sex. You *must* have one man, and one woman. You can't have a man in the woman's slot, you can't have a woman in the man's slot.
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Maybe jumping over Poles is a popular sport in Finland
I heard it was popular in Germany back in the 1940s....
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It took along time for females to compete in ski jumping at the Olympics. The international community in general needs to desegregate a lot of sports. Unless you can really show a sharp division between female and male participants over the history of the sport I feel they should have the opportunities to compete together. In addition if you can meet the qualifications and show no equivalent tournament exist you should be able to enlist.