from Hacker News

Women’s gymnastics is legal child abuse

by antibland on 10/13/20, 7:51 PM with 87 comments

• by mcv on 10/14/20, 11:23 AM

  One thing that always surprises me about gymnastics is how inherently sexist it is. For nearly all sports, the male version of the sport is identical to the female version. Maybe women don't lift as much, don't run quite as fast, or do shorter distances (like in speed skating), but the basics of the sport are the same. Not so in gymnastics: men and women do entirely different things. Men are all about upperbody strength, women are all about flexibility and elegance. They're basically completely different sports, which I guess goes a long way to explain why athletes peak at totally different ages.

  What if a female gymnast wants to do the horizontal bar or other "male" events? And even when they do have the same event in name, like the floor, they're still different for unnecessary reasons. For example, women have music, men don't. Why?

  Obviously there are biological reasons why women aren't as strong, maybe it's unreasonable to expect women to do a heavy event like the rings, but most events could be equally accessible to everybody. But the sport itself forces athletes into very gender-specific roles. I can't help but wonder if unifying the sport may help to reduce this kind of abuse as well.

• by nix23 on 10/14/20, 11:28 AM

  It has nothing todo with gymanstics or womens, it's the whole highend sport at a young age, same with Ballet, Icehockey, Tennis, Cycling and playing piano. It should be banned and the parents and the coach punished. And ask you for what? Just for having a goldmedal for your goddamn country.

• by jedberg on 10/13/20, 8:31 PM

  It seems like a good first step would be to set the minimum age to compete at world championships or the olympics at 16 or 17 or maybe even 20. Then delaying puberty wouldn't be a thing because everyone will have passed it.

• by ValentineC on 10/14/20, 9:48 AM

  Reading this reminds me of the article on a 17-year-old girl who joined Nike: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/opinion/nike-running-mary...

  HN discussion on that one:

  1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21505600

  2) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21476304

• by TMWNN on 10/13/20, 8:34 PM

  Would raising the minimum age for Olympics and other high-level competition for women to 18 or 20 help?

• by shwoopdiwoop on 10/14/20, 7:39 PM

  Let’s not forget about the disgusting sexual abuse they have to suffer from, under the premise of medical treatments. They caught Nassar in 2018 but god knows how many others are still out there.

  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/well/live/pelvic-massage-...

• by hevelvarik on 10/14/20, 5:03 AM

  Wow, where are the parents? I mean bad parents here and there I expect, but enough to fuel an international industry is a surprise...

• by andi999 on 10/14/20, 12:28 PM

  So why do people believe this behaviour is legal?

• by 188201 on 10/13/20, 8:06 PM

  Tough training is kind of an abuse. Why brings sex in the table when they can talk about training abuse on both sex?

• by axilmar on 10/14/20, 10:20 AM

  It's not gynmastics that is child abuse, it is the bad behavior of coaches that is child abuse.

  Let's not confuse the issues and terms, please.