Obviously this won’t work for all sports, but things like football, track, soccer, it would allow for de-gendered team, even allowing athletes with the skills but not the genetically-endowed physical attributes to have a place to play.

Note: I know very little about sports and being on a sports team, so please point out anything that doesn’t make sense.

  • JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    5 months ago

    The chess one isnt quite right. There’s been experiments where if a woman player didn’t know her opponent was a man she would perform better. It’s called stereotype threat phenomenon.

    It also happens when a male player knowingly goes up against someone higher in the league than himself and he performs below his own standard average.

    Basically people in general psyche themselves out of their best performance when going against someone they perceive to be better than them whether that’s factual or not. Confidence and undermining confidence can change a whole lot about how a person does in any given game or task.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      5 months ago

      There’s an effect on both sides.

      Contrary to what people assume, aggressive chess is a good strategy.

      Due to a lot of factors I don’t really want to get into, most chess players think men are naturally better than women.

      So a woman who thinks she’s playing a man is immediately on the defense, and a man who thinks he’s playing a woman starts out very aggressively.

      Which means a man and woman of equal skill, the man will likely win.

      It’s called stereotype difference and it’s not just chess related.

      I don’t know why people always pick chess because there’s no physical difference while ignoring the mind games we even play on ourselves in those situations.

      Just people completely ignorant of what they’re talking about and grasping at straws to find something that agrees with them

      https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797620924051

    • kava@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      5 months ago

      You think that accounts for the differences? 42 of 2500 grandmasters are women because all the women are scared and intimidated of the men?

      Maybe this plays some small effect but I doubt it’s statistically significant enough in this context

      Like you said, it happens to men playing higher rated men. In order to go up in ranking, you need to play and beat progressively higher rated opponents.

      By the very nature of being a high level player, that player would have had to go through that.

      • JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        11
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        5 months ago

        It’s a phenomenon that’s been observed across multiple sports, not just between men and women chess players. It’s particularly poignant in men vs women’s chess… because of people repeatedly telling women they are inherently worse than men. Like you are doing right now.

        There’s been multiple studies on this. So yes, I side with the data that stereotype threat phenomenon has a significant impact on women’s performance in chess against men.

        • kava@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          5 months ago

          Show me. Link me a couple.

          I don’t think this effect can account for more than a small fraction of the difference. Let’s look at the research. I couldn’t find anything from a quick search but maybe I’m using wrong terms.