A long time ago I was enrolled in a Kajukenbo class. The classes were segregated, and our Sensei overheard us making fun of the girls. You know the typical ignorant "girls cant fight" jokes.
He asked us to come next day to help out with the girls classes. Of course we had no idea what was to come.
Long story short, we were asked to put out the mats. Then asked to stand on the mats. My friend and I stood facing each other to spar automatically. Our Sensei corrected this with a chuckle and asked us to stand on one end of the mat.
Two girls with yellow belts (considerably lower than us) were put on the mat.
We got our asses kicked in .3 seconds by 2 girls, in front of the entire womens class.
I thank my sensei for teaching us this valuable lesson, and I will never forget it.
Women are in fact equal to men, even in contact sports.
As for size, that is why contact sports have "weight" classes.
And if you've ever seen UFC matches, you will often see the smaller guy win a fight anyway.
Its about skill, not gender.
Also nowadays with Pro Gamers competing in games like HOTS or LOL, I cannot understand the reason for gender segregated teams either.
I agree about e-sports, there isn't much of a reason you can't have mixed leagues. But your example about getting beaten by two girls is only part of the picture. It was the same point made in the original article; sometimes girls are especially talented, more so than males at the same age group. But that is anecdotal, and not the general trend.
One of my arguments is that if you mixed male and female leagues at the highest level(major league), a large proportion of female athletes would no longer have a viable career, and the top female athletes would now be mediocre by male standards. This is very supportable looking at the biological differences between male and female, and is the main reason we have gender segregated sports.
Things like Riggs vs. Court support this theory. Sure, that's anecdotal, but when anecdotal examples are being presented here, I just wanted to point out there are plenty of counter-examples. Girls beating guys are exceptions to a generally understood rule.
I never said lets abolish women leagues. The question was should women be allowed on boys teams. And I firmly believe that they should have that choice, should they want to pursue it.
Then can boys join girl teams? It only seems fair if girls are allowed to choose to be on boys teams.
Your question seems to imply that I stated this was not a good idea. My stance is gender should not play a role. Either sex should be allowed to join either team.
Fair enough. So your stance is gendered leagues should be abolished completely. Good to clear that up.