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Thursday, June 21, 2012

Gender differences Part XIII: Sports fans

One major gender divide is the extent to which the genders follow sports. Men will often fixate on a sport, and that sport will forever be part of the fabric of their lives. Women will leave their sport and never look back.

Women simply don't waste their time following sports the way men do. A man will fly all the way to Las Vegas to watch a championship boxing match. If a woman did so, it would only be to accompany her boyfriend. On the flight out, rather than think about the fight, she would think about the luxury of her hotel room, the spa she planned to go to, and the celebrities she might see attending the match.

You never hear two women arguing passionately about, say, who the greatest female tennis player of all time was.

Go to any sports message board. It will be filled with guys arguing about which athlete was better in his prime, who is on steroids, which team will win, etc. Women are absent from those discussions.

A woman will never plan her afternoon or evening around a televised sporting event.

Women, even when they watch a sport, tend not to be knowledgable about the ins and outs of that sport, its rules and its history. They are more likely watching because they think the players are cute.

Women don't consider pennants appropriate interior decor. Nor do they consider jerseys with the number of their favorite player a positive fashion statement.

Talk to any bookie. All of their customers are men. Period.

How many famous sportswriters are women?

How many women go into coaching? Perhaps more to the point, how many of the women who do go into coaching are feminine? (That there are a few lesbians in a profession hardly negates the gender divide argument.)

Boys who run will pore over Track and Field News, comparing their times to those of runners around the country. Girls who run almost never do this.

The reason Sports Illustrated's bathing suit issue doesn't have any male models is simple: the magazine has no female subscribers.

There are exceptions to these rules, but they are just that. 

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I beg to disagree on most of this: the first page I look at in the 4 newspapers we get is the sports page; I argue about tennis players etc with any and all comers, including my friend, the director of tennis at the Claremont club in Berkeley; I arrange almost all my activities around tennis and swimming, whether on tv or doing it myself; I also watch football, less baseball now than before
and basketball when my son watches; recently, on my way back to Venice from Vicenza I decided to take a water taxi for 100 euros so I could get to the hotel in time for the French open final. I really think the way girls were brought up had a huge effect on their view of sports.

John Craig said...

Anon -- I certainly can't dispute your credentials as a fan, but I do think you're the exception. Even among most of the women who are active runners and swimmers etc. that I know, most don't really follow the sports at the top levels very closely, certainly not to the point where they are interested in placing a bet with the local bookie.

I will admit, I probably exaggerated here to make a point, and the paragraph about why the woman would go to Vegas was below the belt. But a lot of it was true.

Brian Fradet said...

John--

What you said is overwhelmingly accurate in all my life experience. In nature, 100% does not exist, so that was assumed. Innate feminine. Very nice! Brian

John Craig said...

Thank you Brian, it's been close to -- but not quite -- 100% true in my experience too.

Anonymous said...

Agree with John and Brian...

Apparently the show "While The Men Watch Hockey Night" generated quite a controversy and backlash, but my guess its much closer to the female norm based on this description "the program [will follow] the discussion of two women watching sports 'from a woman’s point of view including everything from interpreting the rules of the game to coaches in need of a makeover.' Apparently, it’s been called ESPN meets 'Sex & the City.'" (I never saw the show).

And why such controversy over While The Men Watch? Because it bucks the leftist brainwash that men and women are the same.

My efforts to teach the women I know the basic rules of American Football have mostly been in vain. Women are so disinterested they cannot concentrate long enough to take it in and remember it. The rules are not that difficult.

At the root of this is the radical idea that men and women are really different, and that its not - as Anon postulates - all due to the way we are raised.

- Ed

John Craig said...

Ed --
Thank you, and Amen.