Wie-cked
So Michelle Wie made the cut in a men's golf tournament. Yeah, it wasn't a top-quality field, and she didn't do so well on the final day, but it does continue the ongoing trend of Wie continuing to achieve the things that her critics assured everyone she couldn't, and those critics continuing to shift the goalposts further and further back, instead of just admitting they were wrong. So what else is new.
I'm not much of a golf fan, and I don't particularly feel like joining the bandwagon of mass-worship and adulation for any new pop-culture icon, but this is pretty interesting. What's so interesting about it for me, as an SF writer, is that not all amazing future developments in society will be predicated on whizz-bang new technology or visits by alien spacecraft, but will rather be a continuation of the same old thing that's always gone on -- social evolution. Amazing to think, for example, that the difference between some male and female sportspeople is far less than previously thought. And very, very threatening to a lot of people, male and female alike, because it would mean that our present understandings of gender are not universally accurate, nor genetically pre-determined, and that a lot of this stuff is pretty free-form in nature.
I'm suspicious about a few sports too, not just golf. Cricket, for example (non-Commonwealth readers can tune out here if they wish, at the risk of missing some brilliant insight). I recall Australia's recently-retired best female player, Belinda Clarke, saying that no female batsmen she knew could play against the men, primarily because they lacked the wrist-strength. But then, I recall it being said of women's basketball that women would never have good pullup jumpers because they lacked the leg strength. As participation of girls in basketball boomed, it became apparent that there were elite athletes out there who DID have what most did not, and could do pretty much everything except dunk. Women's participation in cricket, however, remains tiny, so there's no way even Belinda Clarke is anywhere near what the best female players COULD be... if there were a few hundred thousand juniors, like there are for the men. Most women can't do these things, no, but elite female athletes are no more representative of most women than Kobe Bryant or Tiger Woods are representative of most men. That's why they're elite, and we pay them millions to watch them play. But elite female athletes are always having to battle against this silly mentality where women are judged by what they supposedly CAN'T do, rather than what they can.
So what can Michelle Wie do? Well, as a 16-year-old, she can hit a ball over 300 yards. Apparently that's good. It's also the only aspect of the game of golf that could be conceivably limited by gender. If she can do that, there's no reason I can see why she shouldn't just play against men all the time, if she chooses. Of course, there's no guarantee she'll succeed -- she might miss puts and fluff bunker shots under pressure, but that'll just be good old fashioned human failure, not a female one.
As for cricket, I'd love to see the girls given all the same opportunities as the boys, instead of being forcibly segregated at certain ages. It's real Dark Ages stuff, really. I mean, how good would Ricky Ponting be (Australia's best batsman) if segregated from boys at age 15, (or whatever it is) not given a chance to face the fastest bowlers, play on the best pitches, receive the best coaching, etc, etc, etc? His development would have suffered enormously. In fact, he'd probably play like a girl. So what would a top girl play like, if selected from a huge junior talent pool, and given all the same development opportunities that the top boys are? I wonder.
One thing's for certain -- the fuss made by Michelle Wie in the PGA, or Danica Patrick in the IRL, is nothing compared to what would happen if a girl made a half-century for Australia in Islamabad against Pakistan. In the men's competition.
I'm not much of a golf fan, and I don't particularly feel like joining the bandwagon of mass-worship and adulation for any new pop-culture icon, but this is pretty interesting. What's so interesting about it for me, as an SF writer, is that not all amazing future developments in society will be predicated on whizz-bang new technology or visits by alien spacecraft, but will rather be a continuation of the same old thing that's always gone on -- social evolution. Amazing to think, for example, that the difference between some male and female sportspeople is far less than previously thought. And very, very threatening to a lot of people, male and female alike, because it would mean that our present understandings of gender are not universally accurate, nor genetically pre-determined, and that a lot of this stuff is pretty free-form in nature.
I'm suspicious about a few sports too, not just golf. Cricket, for example (non-Commonwealth readers can tune out here if they wish, at the risk of missing some brilliant insight). I recall Australia's recently-retired best female player, Belinda Clarke, saying that no female batsmen she knew could play against the men, primarily because they lacked the wrist-strength. But then, I recall it being said of women's basketball that women would never have good pullup jumpers because they lacked the leg strength. As participation of girls in basketball boomed, it became apparent that there were elite athletes out there who DID have what most did not, and could do pretty much everything except dunk. Women's participation in cricket, however, remains tiny, so there's no way even Belinda Clarke is anywhere near what the best female players COULD be... if there were a few hundred thousand juniors, like there are for the men. Most women can't do these things, no, but elite female athletes are no more representative of most women than Kobe Bryant or Tiger Woods are representative of most men. That's why they're elite, and we pay them millions to watch them play. But elite female athletes are always having to battle against this silly mentality where women are judged by what they supposedly CAN'T do, rather than what they can.
So what can Michelle Wie do? Well, as a 16-year-old, she can hit a ball over 300 yards. Apparently that's good. It's also the only aspect of the game of golf that could be conceivably limited by gender. If she can do that, there's no reason I can see why she shouldn't just play against men all the time, if she chooses. Of course, there's no guarantee she'll succeed -- she might miss puts and fluff bunker shots under pressure, but that'll just be good old fashioned human failure, not a female one.
As for cricket, I'd love to see the girls given all the same opportunities as the boys, instead of being forcibly segregated at certain ages. It's real Dark Ages stuff, really. I mean, how good would Ricky Ponting be (Australia's best batsman) if segregated from boys at age 15, (or whatever it is) not given a chance to face the fastest bowlers, play on the best pitches, receive the best coaching, etc, etc, etc? His development would have suffered enormously. In fact, he'd probably play like a girl. So what would a top girl play like, if selected from a huge junior talent pool, and given all the same development opportunities that the top boys are? I wonder.
One thing's for certain -- the fuss made by Michelle Wie in the PGA, or Danica Patrick in the IRL, is nothing compared to what would happen if a girl made a half-century for Australia in Islamabad against Pakistan. In the men's competition.
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