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Co-Ed Sports and Co-Ed Games Questions and Answers
A co–ed sports facility or sporting activity is one that both males and females use or take part in at the same time. [US] You have a choice of co–ed or single-sex swimming exercise classes. regional note: in BRIT, usually use mixed.
Mixed-sex sports (also known as mixed-gender or coed sports) are individual and team sports whose participants are not of a single sex. In organized sports settings, rules usually dictate an equal number of people of each sex in a team (for example teams of one man and one woman).
Males and females have major differences both mentally and physically, which creates the idea that they would not play well together. A major reason why coed sports teams may lack efficiency is the fact that the team’s coach may treat the players differently because of their gender.
Below are frequent questions and answers that always come up about Co-Ed Sports, co-ed games and co-ed activities.
Horse riding requires a good balance, a good use of pretty much all the muscles, but isn’t about rough strength. The competitions are not divided by genders, so you can have women and men competing. Horse riding is really various, so you can have sports that are considered more or less extremes. I think dressage is extremely technical, your body works in such a subtle way that the outside viewer can barely see the moves you do to make the horse move a certain way. And it requires all the muscles of the leg, pelvis, but also the back muscles to work. Then comes more visually extreme sports like Jumping which require different technical moves, but men and women can compete against each other. I think it is simply because it is about how you use your body and muscles more than how much you have to use them. It takes energy, it takes stamina, it takes balance, and it takes muscles to be built so you can compete with other riders, but it also takes to learn some technical things. Being the strongest won’t be the main factor that will make a difference in competition.
Also, for the people who think “Oh but the horse does everything”, well… that’s seriously ignorant, but in certain jumping competitions, the riders will ride their opponent’s horse. They will ride it for five minutes in a warm up area and try a few jumps before doing the actual competition. It is really interesting because it takes the rider to quickly adapt their riding style and technique to an animal they barely know and never trained or rode before. It shows how the horse does with another rider and it shows if the rider is capable of riding any horse well or just their horses.
With the exception of equestrian, there is hardly an elite sport were men and woman compete against each other in the same event. Obviously, there are mixed-sex events like the mixed relay in swimming or mixed-sex sports like korfball but these rely on a set number of participants.
In most sports the differences in results are huge. (Please disregard Gabriele Reinsch: she only threw the discus further than Jürgen Schult because a woman uses a different discus weight.) If we wouldn’t installed separate events for men and women, no women would qualify for the event. (Blame it on the Y-chromosome!)
You could compare it to weight classes in boxing, judo or wrestling. In order to have a fair match, we will not put a super flyweight into the ring against a heavyweight. In other sports, we didn’t make extra categories. There is no ‘short’ and ‘tall’ basketball league because we have decided that there is no real need to install such a division.
But we did install a male/female division and accepting trans women in the woman sex category will result in unfair advantages.
You could try to make it fair again. But unfortunately, you will end up if a lot of discussions about how to do it. One of the options is to reduce the testosterone level into the female range. Most likely a trans woman will have entered a program to reduce her testosterone levels anyhow. But besides the fact that there is a lot of discussions about the limit of testosterone that would be ok. There will always be a debate if only focussing on testosterone levels itself is sufficient enough in order to make it fair again.
May 2011 and June 2012, respectively, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) settled on a maximum level of 10 nmol/L for trans female athletes which is generous, to say the least. (The average for a CIS female is 2.8 nmol/L and the average male is in the range of 23-25 nmol/L)
The same level was applied to women with so-called hyperandrogenism. A rare condition where people have excessive levels of male hormones.
An infamous example is Caster Semenya. At the age of 18, she became world champion in the 800m event. Because she has no typical female characteristics she had to undergo humiliating medical investigations and her condition of hyperandrogenism was revealed. I’m not an expert in this, but I can imagine that as a young adult, it is very hard to deal with and you certainly do not want this information to be shared in the media. But in order to compete again, Caster had to take medicines to lower her testosterone levels. When we would chart her season’s bests in the 800m. (from IAAF: Caster Semenya | Profile) It is clear that the 10 nmol/L limit had an effect on her times.
Mid 2015 the IAAF had to drop the limit. The CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sports) ruled that the IAAF failed to give enough evidence that testosterone gave a competitive advantage. We do not have absolute proof that Semanya stopped taking her meds after this ruling. But most observers have little doubt about it. In 2014 she was not competitive anymore, and unless Semanya suddenly regained her confidence it is difficult to imagine why she became unbeatable again in the 800m event unless her testosterone levels are taken into account.
Unfortunately, Semenya is not the only controversial female. The full 800m podium in Rio is suspected to have unfair advantages against cis-female athletes.
Caster Semenya winning the 800 meters Olympic gold medal in 2016 before Francine Niyonsaba and Margaret Wambui.
Semanya already told she will fight against these new rules.
But if they hold up in court, I’m pretty sure she will not reach her 2018 times again. We will give Niyonsaba and Wambui the benefit of the doubt, but don’t be surprised if they will be ‘injured’ next year.
To conclude: there are no winners in this controversial subject. It is not Semanya’s fault to have her condition. The same holds for trans women.
But we did install a female/male division in elite sports for a reason. If we want to make it fair we need to set extra rules. I’m not claiming the limit as set by the IAAF will solve everything and I’m pretty sure it will cause a lot of discussions in the future. But in my opinion, it is a step in the good direction. Extra research is necessary to set reasonable limits in other events.
And unfortunately, the main marketing argument people who love women football is:
It’s not men football.
It’s a bit sad, first because it’s a negative argument. It’s like saying Keanu Reeves is a super actor, because he isn’t Di Caprio. How dumb is it?
Second, because it mutes the good aspects of women football, and resume it to an “under” men football. Who could be right in a way. But it’s not, it’s a different approach of the game. Same rules, different result. We should never compare the 2, it’s like women and men tennis, not the same.
Third, it gives a negative reputation to men football, so some macho men feel forced to trash talk women football in retaliation, and feminazi to defend it by principle. It’s dumb and low class. I let you have a look to this on twitter…
And finally, many women came to football thanks to men football, they were their idols. How dumb is to oppose men versus women? Especially when some girls grew up loving a Ronaldinho, a Baggio, or a Zidane.
Which sport do both male and female compete together?
Currently, male and female Olympians only compete head-to-head in equestrian and sailing. There are also mixed events in badminton, luge and tennis.
Which Olympic sports are mixed gender?Mixed–gender events in athletics, swimming, table tennis and triathlon have been approved for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, the IOC has announced. The Games will include a 4x400m mixed relay in athletics and a 4x100m medley mixed relay in swimming.
Sometimes sexism operates in such subtle ways that the experience leaves me wondering whether sexism even occurred at all. When a stranger grabs my ass, sure, I know what’s wrong with that situation. But my experience on my co-ed soccer team never felt like an obvious assault on my personhood. Instead, I gradually became aware of a slow, systemic wearing-away.
It started as a mystery. Why aren’t women playing adult co-ed sports? And why, once they start, do they so often drop out? The mystery actually started as a question to myself, but it was a different question: Am I crazy?, I texted a friend after a particularly frustrating Friday night soccer game a couple of years ago with my co-ed team. Wondering if I’m crazy is part of the experience of being a woman that I have come to accept, and when it came to playing soccer it was no different. As I stalked off the field in Manhattan’s Chinatown, I couldn’t tell if I was making a big deal out of nothing. Was I looking for something to be mad at? Were the guys really not passing to me, or was I just not as open to receive a pass as I thought I had been? Was it just me, or did they really only want the minimum number of women on the field, even though we had plenty of women subs? And why didn’t any of the other women there seem to be angry?
Figures from one multi-sport league show that its nationwide enrollment breakdown is almost exactly two-thirds male and one-third female, but that tells us nothing about actual participation, and, anecdotally,whywomen are less likely to come to games, and more likely to leave the league altogether.
“There seems to be a trend that women players do not show up for the games as much,” said Laura Lennon, who plays in co-ed soccer in the Philadelphia Sports Leagues. “Our team started out with seven girls and I’ve only seen two of them.”
“Where do these women go?” asked Kelaine Conochan, national marketing director of ZogSports, by far the biggest co-ed league in the country. Her questions were rhetorical, even if I felt like the second was directed at me: “Why do you stop playing?” Read more…
To start, choosing a coed team can allow boys and girls to join a group based on ability rather than solely on gender. This promotes a great level of competition, increases skills and it can help prevent less naturally talented children from feeling out of among their peers.
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