[Cado]

Originally Posted by Lioness

It's also an issue in wrestling. Boys don't want to wrestle girls. If they win, it's seen as no accomplishment by their male peers and coaches, if they lose; it's utter humiliation they got beaten a by a girl. The other issue is, some boys don't believe it's right to physically tangle with a girl for religious reasons, and I think the huge unspoken issue could be involuntary erections in those tight clinches. I know these are what you might call minutia, but I think we'll be seeing a lot more of these kind of things.

That already happens. At least in this scenario no one has to say, "no homo."

In all seriousness, if there is a valid reason to separate the genders-and general preference can be a valid reason in private clubs-then I'm sure we can maintain that or implement it. The ideal is to eliminate the gender divide as an assumption. Why should our public bathrooms remain separate? Why should our sports teams remain separate? If the only answer to a particular question is to cite tradition or personal moral codes or religious beliefs then it shouldn't be accounted for when determining what we do on a broad scale.

A lot of what you're saying with the wrestling teams has to do with misogyny and social mores which have been driven deep into our psyche. After a generation or two of unisex wrestling teams it's unlikely to be as big of an issue, and personally I'd consider it a victory if it were no longer humiliating for a man to lose to a woman. Gender shouldn't enter the equation when skill is what matters.

And again, neither sex is inherently stronger than the other. Men may have an easier time gaining muscle as a general rule but for a lot of women the main thing that keeps them from competing at the same level is societal programming which tells them not to, that it's not lady like and thus it's unattractive. Strip that away, let everyone stand as equals who are free to make their own decisions, and a lot of the physical disparities will disappear.

The brain will make up for the ones that don't. People tend to put too much stock in size and raw strength. That doesn't mean a bloody thing if you don't know how to use it. I've seen scrawny children lock grown men into positions they couldn't break out of. If you measure and encourage the development of many kinds of skill then suddenly things aren't so clear cut.

Well sometimes it is and sometimes it becomes one. When people file discrimination lawsuits and win, laws get changed. For example, two of the public highschools where I used to live were all-boy and all-girl. A girl went to court because she wanted to go to the boys school. She won and now there are a good percentage of girls there. The all-girls school has so far remained the same, but I'm pretty certain it's now law that they can't deny a boy from going there. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, but I think there is something to be said for a single-sex school if you so choose. Public school kids there no longer have that option.

To me that seems fairly ridiculous as I can't imagine that one institution provided a substantially better education than the other, and as these aren't tax funded facilities it seems silly to impose this where segregation is part of the point. I don't agree with the practice but I think people should be free to do it as long as it's not taking away options from anyone else. If all we had was all boys and all girls schools there would be a problem but that's not the case.

Regardless, I don't think it's a major loss, I just think that in retrospect it was a poor use of the court's resources for something that's ultimately silly. That's without knowing the full content of the case-that could very well change my opinion. I don't really care enough to delve deeper. Either way I want to see more casual and relaxed interactions between the sexes and so I'd hope such institutions would be gone (voluntarily) within the century.