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Caroline Wozniacki pretending to be Serena Williams?

I don't think you can look at it as either-or. I'm not sure you can even simplify down to single issues like "wages" because there will be outliers on either side.

I think on average (if I can use such a term) we still have a male supremacy in many if not most areas.

I think gender is important and our physical bodies dictate many of our abilities or potential abilities; I don't think it's possible to be entirely gender neutral on most issues. Women should have less winnings in Tennis, because they play less and they play less well. Hell, they could just abolish women's and men's tennis and only have a joint competition - then it certainly would favor it fairly. It would however mean that the female to male ratio would be 1:20 all of a sudden, since the male body is built stronger in general.

How it should be approached I don't really know. It won't be easy to change the people's minds in a positive way. Too many feminist proponents think they're Rosa Parks and feel completely justified in debasing and downright embarrassing behavior like the girl at the end of the video, the PyCon incident, "Elevatorgate" etc. I don't have a problem with them standing up for themselves at all - everyone should be free to protect their space, but they should also respect others' space (now I'm talking PyCon particularly).

Right now the male/female discussion has very little scientific base (at least as far as I know), we only have anecdotal stuff. It would be interesting to have studies going in neutrally and examining the basic differences in women, so we have some basis to argue from.

Some things are relatively simple - women can have babies, men can't - this means time off from work, etc etc. Right now employers consider this when hiring and shouldn't they?

Other things are grabbed out of thin air like: men focus on single things better, while women multitask better. I'd like to see some data for that and for other differences between the sexes.

Gorillaman seems to want to gender/sex out of the discussion entirely; I'm not sure that's really fair or helpful since we are different.

I suppose I would like people to not be thought of as a mass of blue and red, but rather as individuals and judged on the individual skills. Like say, compare ME and Serena Williams - there's no possible argument that I would beat her in tennis (or most any physical activity) ever. She should clearly be valued higher than me in those areas.

Sports solve the issue by going around it - making guy sports and girl sports. That's one solution, but segregating society is not cool. Imagine making guy workplaces and girl workplaces. Not really cool, is it? So, how do we find jobs, places in society that appeals to the individual? I would imagine we figure out the requirements of job and judge applicants on their merits - some women would beat all men in some jobs, and vice versa.

I don't think society is trying to keep women down, at least not consciously. Consider if the present position is caused natural evolution of society or if its patriarchal rule enforcing it? If you look at the hyper-muslim countries, I'd say it was the patriarchal rule, but over here? I'm not sure.

Ramble ramble.

Caroline Wozniacki pretending to be Serena Williams

>> ^Deano:

Does anyone stop to think why the hell are we staring at flags like they're amazingly important and significant. I'm beginning to feel abnormal seeing the number of wide-eyed flag-waving Brits on the tv. They really buy into this nationalistic crap.
Makes a change from all the wide-eyed flag-waving nationalistic Americans that saturate the media the rest of the time.

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>> ^Deano:

Does anyone stop to think why the hell are we staring at flags like they're amazingly important and significant. I'm beginning to feel abnormal seeing the number of wide-eyed flag-waving Brits on the tv. They really buy into this nationalistic crap.


The reason to wave a flag is to support your "team" at the olympics, and perhaps for the home country to show the athletes how welcoming and encouraging we are towards their efforts. We're there, we're making noise, we're helping people get to events. Foreign friends are telling me "You're welcoming and friendly even if you don't know the answer." This is the most british i've seen britain in years and i'm loving it.

We're a small country and we're 3rd in the tables and top based on relative size. That's something to be pleased about and we've not had much to be pleased about recently. We also come from independant countries, and that makes us even smaller and more divided so when we wave a british flag, sometimes it's to show that we've come together and we're there to support each other.

I see people chatting to each other about the olympics in the street, and why's that a bad thing? Anything that brings us closer together has got to be good. I want people to take pride in this country because i want it to stop being a shit hole.

>> ^Deano:

Does anyone stop to think why the hell are we staring at flags like they're amazingly important and significant. I'm beginning to feel abnormal seeing the number of wide-eyed flag-waving Brits on the tv. They really buy into this nationalistic crap.


So, in your opinion there should be no national boundaries and no national teams? We should be just a huge dispassionate group, representing nothing but ourselves? Your comment makes you sound as if you have no loyalty, affinity, or pride for the country where you were raised. Very sad

>> ^raverman:

The whole Olympics is a stupid outdated nationalistic joke.
Nobody watches global individual sport championships but for a couple of weeks they go insane supporting "Their countries team".
Half the Athletes trained in other countries or by coaches from other countries, wearing sport tech researched and developed in other countries.


So? They're still representing their country.

>> ^Deano:

Does anyone stop to think why the hell are we staring at flags like they're amazingly important and significant. I'm beginning to feel abnormal seeing the number of wide-eyed flag-waving Brits on the tv. They really buy into this nationalistic crap.


Look, you can go the pessimistic route and say that the games are just the Colosseum all over again, placating the masses by entertaining them with a grand spectacle.

OR, you could enjoy it and see it as encouraging some pride in achievement, hopefully showing some good sportsmanship (almost every games there's some great example of someone being a great sport over winning), and getting kids excited about sport. Considering obesity these days, anything that gets kids excited about participating in sports is a good thing.

My kids have been running race after race after race around our house during these games as the eldest is obsessed with Usain Bolt. There's also a lot of basketball being played as the Australian basketball teams are doing well. And the kids are also going extra hard in their swimming lessons the last two weeks.

So lighten up a bit, let yourself get carried away with the moment. I for one have been getting almost tearing over OTHER country's victories, and our competitors close victories moreso than wins by my country (maybe because Australia has had ONE gold only so far... amazing!)...

You can bemoan how much money goes into training these athletes, but I'd take money being spent having people compete in games and at peak physical fitness any day over it being spent on military spending.

>> ^DuoJet:
I don't get it. Everyone in the band stopped playing, nearly simultaneously, when the flag fell? Why?
(Psst...did you forget to check the sarcasm box? There is no spoon band.)

>> ^lurgee:

did that just symbolize the falling of the merican empire?


Nah, it would have had to have dragged everyone else down with it.

from wikipedia:

Criticism
Azarenka has been criticized by ex-professionals for the noise she makes when hitting the ball. During the 2010 Australian Open quarterfinal between Azarenka and Serena Williams, ex-pro Pam Shriver, who was providing court-side commentary, noted that Azarenka's screams were so long that she was still yelling when Williams returned the ball. She has also been noted for her tendency to lose her temper during matches. In Wimbledon 2011 she grunted at 95 decibels, which caused the chief executive of the All England Lawn and Tennis Club Ian Ritchie to raise the issue with the press. He issued the following statement – "Officials would prefer to see less grunting". Her average screams were recorded to last on average 1.5 seconds. She does not make the noise during practice.

Don't try to sell me that Serena Williams is the world's sexiest tennis player. Not by a long shot.