Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

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With the recent issues of transgender people in sports, why don’t we move some sports over to a weight-class system? (midwest.social)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The bigger difference imo is the brain development due to hormones in the womb. Old TLC program had a whole section on this suggesting it's why STEM fields are generally male dominated. Turns out hormones that determine biological gender also very much effect the development of the brain, and the male chemicals tend to develop the spatial reasoning part of the brain faster/more thoroughly than those who get don't get the male chemicals and stay female. This average higher spatial reasoning capacity creates an advantage in tasks or objectives where complex visualizations are necessary, like visualizing chess moves in your head.

It's not some massive, overwhelming difference, but it's enough to tilt the table. Play out that average enough and you have 42 women out of 2500 chess grandmasters

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

TLC is name I have not heard on a long time. Did they really use the term "biological gender"?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Bro they had a lot of wild shit back in the day. I remember that term specifically because they couldn't use the word "sex" on the program and had to bend over backwards using every other possible phrase.