this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
236 points (83.3% liked)

Showerthoughts

30316 readers
988 users here now

A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted, clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts: 1

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. No politics
    • If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
    • A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
    • If you feel strongly that you want politics back, please volunteer as a mod.
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct

If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.

Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report the message goes away and you never worry about it.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Obviously this won’t work for all sports, but things like football, track, soccer, it would allow for de-gendered team, even allowing athletes with the skills but not the genetically-endowed physical attributes to have a place to play.

Note: I know very little about sports and being on a sports team, so please point out anything that doesn’t make sense.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

It's a phenomenon that's been observed across multiple sports, not just between men and women chess players. It's particularly poignant in men vs women's chess... because of people repeatedly telling women they are inherently worse than men. Like you are doing right now.

There's been multiple studies on this. So yes, I side with the data that stereotype threat phenomenon has a significant impact on women's performance in chess against men.

[–] kava 3 points 7 months ago

Show me. Link me a couple.

I don't think this effect can account for more than a small fraction of the difference. Let's look at the research. I couldn't find anything from a quick search but maybe I'm using wrong terms.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The bigger difference imo is the brain development due to hormones in the womb. Old TLC program had a whole section on this suggesting it's why STEM fields are generally male dominated. Turns out hormones that determine biological gender also very much effect the development of the brain, and the male chemicals tend to develop the spatial reasoning part of the brain faster/more thoroughly than those who get don't get the male chemicals and stay female. This average higher spatial reasoning capacity creates an advantage in tasks or objectives where complex visualizations are necessary, like visualizing chess moves in your head.

It's not some massive, overwhelming difference, but it's enough to tilt the table. Play out that average enough and you have 42 women out of 2500 chess grandmasters

[–] [email protected] -1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

TLC is name I have not heard on a long time. Did they really use the term "biological gender"?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Bro they had a lot of wild shit back in the day. I remember that term specifically because they couldn't use the word "sex" on the program and had to bend over backwards using every other possible phrase.