Are women's events sexist?

[Aestro]

This has been bugging me lately, and I would like the opinions of others on this subject. Why do women's events ratings carry over into mixed/open events? I see two simple points of views here:

The first is that women (as a whole) are equally skilled at fencing with men. In the case of this, why should there be women's-only events? As far as I've seen, men-only events only exist due to the seperation of women, such as at divisionals. One would think that if women were equally capable, mixed events would be the only events.

Of course, this leaves the other option: women are not equally skilled at fencing, either through physical or other means. In this case, why should ratings earned at women's-only events carry over to mixed events? It seems unfair that I am more likely to fence a male A or B in pools simply because another fencer won a female-only tournament. It would create the idea of inflated ratings - i.e. a female rating is worth less than a male rating.

I do not wish to imply that either notion is correct, but simply that neither seems to make sense in terms of women's-only events. One could make the same argument with youth events, who are also allowed to compete in open but may earn ratings in tournaments limited to only a portion a part of the population. Novice tournaments have the same limitation, but because of the ratings system, they are limited to giving away a D at most. Women's or Youth tournaments are capable of giving away up to an A based upon the scale.

I also wish to stress that I do not wish this to be a broad generalization that I think I can beat any woman fencer, or something else stupid to that effect. I get slaughtered by both men and women. I have been told that these tournaments are to promote diversity, but I fail to see how a tournament which by nature eliminates half the competition is diverse. Any explanations?

[noodle]

this questions has been brought up before. do a search on it (i don't have time, taking a short break from work) if you want some of our previous insights.

[MyrddinsPrecint]

i can answer this question without having to answer the "are women any good at fencing" question..........

it seems that most things are directed towards making the rules very similar for higher-up levels and low levels......... meaning... right of way is the same, penalties for things are the same, the interpretation of right of way is as similar as possible, the anti-doping rules are the same......

which all seems to be designed to benifit the people who start fencing and eventually become very good, fencing in NCAA nationals or the Olympics or something.


With Olympic and NCAA Sports, it seems that the convention is that there are separate womens and mens events--- are there any that are separate?? I don't think so, but I'm not sure.

After a long period of women mostly competitively fencing other women and men competitively fencing other men, the styles are different--- now, why would we train men and women to fence each other for years and years, and then when they become good, take away the opposite gender, and thus making things somewhat confusing???????

[kalivor]

You're making an assumption: That a rating earned in a women's event isn't really "earned" because there are naturally inferior women fencing it. However, they do have to place well enough in a sufficiently difficult tournament.

A quick search of askfred revealed this set of results: http://askfred.net/Results/results.p...rnament_id=948

Now, let's take a look at where the feminine names occur in comparison to the masculine names in the mixed events:

Epee ... we've got a Mary, who's a B ... not doing great, below some Ds and Es. Though she's also sitting 13/41, not too shabby, and is ahead of 2 male Bs (a Brian and a Richard). Probably safe to say that she's more or less B-class.

Then we've got Sarah, a C in 16th and an Aimee, a D, in 20th. Both are ahead of one B (male). Aimee is also ahead of one C, and all but one E. Do these look wrong? Those look to be all the classified women in mixed epee.

Taking a (briefer) look at foil and sabre: Foil we have a "Libby" in second, re-earning her B. She probably deserved it in the first place, then. Our next classified woman is Lauren, who is a D, and finished ahead of all the Es (both male and female). The only really doubtful one is the D that finished 34/37.

In mixed sabre, there are only two classified women, both Es and near the bottom ... no surprises, I guess.

Basically, my point is that the women who have earned these rankings don't appear to be doing any worse than some of the men who have the same rankings (and in some instances, they appear to be doing better). They need to get the right result in a sufficiently difficult tournament ... same as you.

[Peach]

There used to be a convention of dropping women's ratings a couple of letters in mixed events for seeding purposes. This resulted in women who had earned, say, a C in mixed events, being consistently seeded E. It resulted in women winning mixed events and never being given the classification they had earned. This meant the seeding was consistently messed up in a manifestly unjust manner.

The fact is, seeding is messed up, period. People have As who don't "deserve" them and U fencers come in under the radar. It's a rough performance-based method of seeding people into pools for tournaments, and like all rough methods it has its weaknesses but is good enough for the purpose. A numeric method was proposed a couple of years ago which would give absolute ratings based on your performance in every competition relative to the absolute numeric strength of the competitors in the competition, but someone recently remarked that only one person understood how the process worked and unlike chess players (from whom the system is borrowed) fencers weren't willing to wait around for a couple of months for their classifications to be updated.

There are many different kinds of "specialized" events, including veterans only (and you can earn a classification at those) and men-only, and the main idea is to give people many different kinds of competition at many different levels. People like to argue about what the "real" criteria are for judging someone to be a certain level, but when it comes down to it, the answer is, it depends.

Actually, the answer is "I win!" but I don't want all you poor deluded under-50 non-female independently wealthy five-days-a-week serious gifted athletes to be shattered by having to compare yourselves with me.

[oiuyt]

Originally Posted by Peach

but someone recently remarked that only one person understood how the process worked

Just to clarify (and partially threadjack), since I'm fairly certain I'm the "someone" referred to here, my actual comment was much more along the lines of almost no one at the national level with the exception of the creator understood it. I KNOW that there were people not at the national level who understood it (being, at the time, one of them myself). The process wasn't actually all that hard, it merely looked intimidating and invovled lots of math... exactly the type of thing which most people are not willing to spend any time trying to understand and therefore dismiss as non-understandable.

Mmm, just went and searched for my actual comment. Here's the thread. My discussion of the numeric system (which is brief, there have been other, considerably more complete, discussions in other (dedicated) threads) is in post #10.

-B :)

[lochinvar]

Originally Posted by Aestro

(snip) The first is that women (as a whole) are equally skilled at fencing with men. In the case of this, why should there be women's-only events? (snip) Of course, this leaves the other option: women are not equally skilled at fencing, either through physical or other means. In this case, why should ratings earned at women's-only events carry over to mixed events?

There are valid reasons why athletic competitions are separated by gender at the top levels; they are adequately detailed elsewhere and need not be repeated here.

That having been said, there is no such thing as an "A" classification that is more "A-y" than another "A" classification. Classifications earned at women-only events have to meet the same criteria as classifications earned at mixed or men-only events--e.g., an "E" is awarded to anyone who beats six other fencers, regardless of whether those six fencers are really good or really bad.

Classifications are not an absolute measure of your ability; at best they are a snapshot of the best single day you've had in the last four years. It may be the norm or it may be a fluke, but the classification is the same either way.

Don't fret too much about it. Play. Enjoy. Then move on.