I was raised in an athletic family. My dad went to college on a full ride soccer scholarship to UCLA and my mom received her blackbelt in Tae Kwon Do a few years ago. From a very young age my brother and I were taught that we both had different skill sets. My brother has impeccable balance and strength, so he chooses to surf, snowboard, and skateboard. I have good balance, but I also am able to keep a beat. I chose to dance and play soccer. Not once were my brother and I ever pitted against each other. I knew he would 'out-board' me in his sports and he knew I would crush him in any dance battle.
Every single human being on this planet has different attributes. A man can sprint 100 meters in so many seconds and so can a woman. Put these two athletes up against each other and what will the outcome be? This is where our society encounters destruction. ONE person or ONE team will always have to be the best. By no means am I against this system because I am, by nature, a very competitive person. I am, however, identifying where we need to inform our generation and the generations to come.
In sociology we are talking about sex based sports. The professor posed the question, "should we get rid of sex based sports? Do they warrant gender segregation?". I was a bit confused by this question because women and men embody very different physical characteristics. Before I could answer this question, a male behind me raised his hand and explicitly said "men are statistically better than women. If you put a man up against a woman in any sport, he will win every single time. It is statistically proven that they are stronger and better than female athletes". I am not sure that this is a fair depiction of our society because clearly this student is far more ignorant than our masses. However, to a certain extent, this mindset IS illustrated in our culture. Athletic corporations such as Adidas and Nike are constantly creating marketing campaigns that either 1) only show male athletes or 2) show female athletes overcoming gender adversity. In Adidas' campaign "All In' their commercials show males scoring goals and crossing the finish line. The females, on the other hand, include cheerleaders (who are quite literally cheering on the males) and women who want the male athletes' autographs. Of course this student is led to believe that he and his male peers are better! It is what the media is teaching us.
Perhaps 'teaching' is not the right word. Teaching warrants debate and freethinking. Instead, more often than not, the media 'forces' its beliefs upon us. Nike and Adidas signify male centric athletic corporations thus that is what their campaigns advocate. The result of this is exactly what that young sociology student demonstrated- a factual conviction that male athletes are better than female athletes. Maybe I am in the wrong for calling his ignorance "the statistical downfall of our society". I don't blame him or his character for his outlandish comment because we are all oblivious to our societies unpalatable media feast. It is the unending cultivation of identifiable gender differences that force us into the dark hole that is gender inequality. Maybe we should all feast in the delight of growing gender equality instead of ingesting distasteful superiority.
