Who Wants To Be A Lemming

smokebuddy [he/him]@lemmy.today to Lemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world – 361 points –
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This has always been my stance, Women make up approximately 50% of the population and the WNBA generates 2% of the revenue that the NBA does...

My wife and her friends go to some restaraunt once a month and they buy brand name workout clothes. Go to a game, buy a jersey, take your daughter and make it a thing.

So basically, "gender pay-gaps are fine, because the value of a woman is decided by the free market."? Fuck that capitalist drivel...

Tear down the entire sexist gender-segregated professional sports industry for illegal/unconstitutional gender discrimination and require professional for-profit sports be co-ed like every other industry in this country is mandated to be.

The fact that the NBA doesn't admit women should be grounds for dissolving the NBA as an illegal organization. The fact that the NBA and WNBA operate in-tandem while maintaining such an egregious gender pay-gap is proof of a conspiracy to discriminate against women.

Fuck the centuries of sexist tradition around sports. Just because it's the way things have been, doesn't mean it's the way it ought to be. I'm sick and tired of the sexism and sexist apologia. If you think women deserve less, I don't care what your excuse is, especially if your excuse is "the free market". smh...

The fact that the NBA doesn't admit women should be grounds for dissolving the NBA as an illegal organization

The NBA, like most pro sports leagues, has no rule preventing women from trying out. They're already co-ed. The NBA doesn't admit women because they don't beat men in try-outs.

That last sentence is a bit misleading, women aren't trying out for the NBA left and right. There also is a massive cultural barrier there, some of the best wnba players could likely play in the NBA and yet it hasn't happened. I think someone would have to be willing to sacrifice their wnba career to try it out. If the person that does this isn't built physically for it, it could paint a negative perception for years to come. Thus far it's just been easier to keep separate. I do think we will see women start to enter sports dominated by men in the coming years though.

"Some of the best players in the wnba could likely play in the NBA..."

As an avid NBA fan (occasionally watch wnba) this is absolutely not true. Golf, Nascar, Tennis, yeah. It's more likely to happen in the NFL than it is in the NBA though, because specialists positions like kicker. The NBA, players are required to play both offense and defense. For a woman to have both the pure athleticism to be competitive with the best 500 male basketball players in the world? Not an impossibility but she'd still likely be bench depth and seen as a pr motivated move. That level of nba player gets paid, maybe, 3x the top paid WNBA player but it's give and take with potential endorsements etc.

Are you an athletic person? Do you enjoy playing team sports and exercising?

Something makes me think you aren't.

Not only am I athletic, played team basketball for years.

How often did you play with women/ girls?

I know 2 people that have played/do play in the wnba. I did play with one of them, when I was a kid.

How would you say women compare to men? Are there any areas where they are noticeably worse than men?

Height and muscle mass obviously make a difference. But it's important to note that uncoordinated, weaker, or shorter men all find roles in the NBA. So the argument people make that women can't match up seems suspect. No one is saying Caitlyn Clark will be able to play like LeBron in a decade, but when she hits her prime she could absolutely fit a role on an NBA team, not as a starter at her size unless she bulks up. I think especially with the newer batch of wnba players coming in it will be hard to argue that at least the top 20 wnba players couldn't fit roles in the NBA. (But most won't because they'll make more money on endorsements as stars in the wnba)

Women get bullied around playing against men in a way that is just not apparent when they play with women. I can't speak for basketball too much but whenever I have played against the best girls in football the different in strength is astronomical. Someone like me who's not great at football but always been athletic the effort to overcome that strength difference is too much. A women could have way more skill and ability than me, yet that gap is smaller than the advantage I have with strength and even speed.

Sure but Steph Curry in his first year got absolutely bullied because he was tiny and weak and still threw up points. I'm skinny and not very strong, I got bullied in basketball, but had I had better handles I could have found a role. I could shoot, rebound, block and guard despite the disadvantage, I couldn't dribble with a skill level that would get me anywhere though. I played thousands of hours of basketball in my life. I don't think people understand where value really lies in the game. Plenty of players in the NBA look uncoordinated and weak and somehow carve out significant roles. Because they're tall, or good 3 point shooters, or talented at rebounding, etc. I fail to see how talented women couldn't carve out roles in the NBA.

I also think it's worth noting that most women, even in sports, are strongly culturally discouraged from bulking up. As soon as a woman is strong enough to bully her peers she is accused of being a man. As things change, even though women don't have the muscle mass of men, some women will bulk up enough to compete as much as they need to. A lot of this stuff is far more cultural than people want to admit.

We are just going to have to disagree on this. There no way I think women can compete at that level and unless they do something like play an u16 team and lose to prove it the discussion probably won't go anywhere.

If people don’t watch, then there’s fundamentally no money to be given to the players. If you want money to be given to the player, you need to watch.

That’s how it works for women’s sports, and that’s how it works for men’s sports as well.

Pay for all athletes is dictated by the viewership they bring in, not their performance. WNBA players actually make disproportionately more relative to viewership.

You honestly talk like someone who’s never watched a sport in their life.

Men's minor leagues all pay shit salary too and for the same reasons. Teams and leagues fold all the time.

Hockey, football, baseball, soccer- unless you're at the top you make about as much as you would at Costco.

The NBA allows women to try out though? It doesn't ban women from competing at all.

So basically, “gender pay-gaps are fine, because the value of a woman is decided by the free market.”? Fuck that capitalist drivel…

Pay differences between different groups of performers are fine, because you can't pay more than you bring in in revenue and be sustainable. The WNBA makes 2% as much as the NBA and also gets subsidized by the NBA (as in the NBA pays the WNBA to be a thing).

Tear down the entire sexist gender-segregated professional sports industry for illegal/unconstitutional gender discrimination and require professional for-profit sports be co-ed like every other industry in this country is mandated to be.

Every "men's" sports league in the US allows women to compete, presuming they can compete at the same level. This is rare because of the general differences in height, weight and upper body strength between men and women, which are exacerbated when you start talking about professional athletes as they tend to be on the tail of the curve for those things.

Only women's sports leagues discriminate with respect to sex. Same as competitive chess, amusingly. This extends down to the school levels too, where a girl that wants to play a sport with only a boys team must be allowed to try out and make the team if she can perform at the requisite level but a boy wanting to play a sport with only a girls team is simply SOL as according to Title IX policy the former is sex discrimination but the latter is not.

The existence of women's sports is a form of protectionism.

Fuck the centuries of sexist tradition around sports. Just because it’s the way things have been, doesn’t mean it’s the way it ought to be. I’m sick and tired of the sexism and sexist apologia. If you think women deserve less, I don’t care what your excuse is, especially if your excuse is “the free market”. smh…

Professional sports is only sustainable if the athletes are paid less than the total amount of revenue less the costs of equipment, facilities, etc. In the case of the WNBA, their regular revenue is something like 1/50th of the NBA, and the NBA additionally pays about $15 million per year as a subsidy to help keep them afloat.

So what is your plan to close that wage gap? You recognize that money exists and is important (otherwise you wouldn't be angry over disparity in money) so how do we get the appropriate amount of money to these women.

The WNBA makes less than $100 million in revenue. The NBA makes over $10 billion. It's bringing in less than 1% of the revenue of the NBA. Do we take money from the players in the NBA to subsidize players in the WNBA?

Would it be fair to the players in the NBA that people are paying a lot of money to go see? Like if I spend $500 to see LeBron James play, then $250 of it goes to pay someone I didn't even see play... is that fair?

If another league starts up that doesn't take away players salaries, don't you think all the best players would go to that league? Then both the NBA and WNBA don't exist anymore.

You're throwing out a lot of rage but no real solutions. There probably isn't one. People pay more money to see the top players. The top players are men. It's unfair, but at the end of the day, it's just sports. It's nothing to get upset over.

Can you point me to the NBA rules that relate to gender identity?