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Women’s gymnastics is legal child abuse
- 188201 6y agoTough training is kind of an abuse. Why brings sex in the table when they can talk about training abuse on both sex?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jeffbee 6y agoAs pointed out in the article, 14- to 16-year-old girls often win gymnastics championships (and in fact nobody over the age of 20 has won the olympic all-around since 1972), whereas no man under the age of 20 has ever won an olympic all-around. Being a grown adult is a huge advantage in men's gymnastics and a massive disadvantage in women's. (I have a kid of each gender in local gymnastics programs and I have to carefully keep this stuff in mind. It's great that the kids are strong, and gymnastics makes people absurdly strong, but I don't think I would ever let my daughter anywhere near a high-level competitive program.)
- saurik 6y agoIt sounds like you might have the experience required to explain what is different about men's gymnastics that causes it to not have this same youth bias?
- jeffbee 6y agoNo amount of verbal abuse is going to make a 15-year-old boy as strong as a 25-year-old man.
- saurik 6y agoBut why is strength important for male gymnastics but not for women gymnastics? The argument for women's gymnastics was that they are smaller and lighter weight and thereby can do crazier stunts... doesn't that apply to men? It just sounds like there is something fundamentally different to the sports themselves that I am not understanding as someone who knows nothing about either.
- dagw 6y agoTwo factors. First of all men's and women's gymnastics have some different events and different judging criteria for the events they have in common. On the whole the men's events and scoring criteria require more core and upper body strength to pull off successfully. Secondly while the strength to weight ratio of women might peak at 15-18, in men it keeps increasing into their mid-late 20s. In general, the strength difference between a 15 and 25 year old man is much much greater than that between a 15 and 25 year old woman. Basically a 20-25 year old man can pull off feats of strength that a 15-16 year old simply can't. The same isn't really true for women (again in general).
- BrandoElFollito 6y agoThe last part is great. My children always liked sport but I told them that this is for their fun and not a medal for the organization (they were never interested in the competition part). They switched sports either when it was getting boring or they felt that the competition part was over the fun one. This does not mean that they abondonned early, but for instance both stopped karate after their black belt, to do rock climbing or ping pong. Because the fun was gone.
- noneeeed 6y agoI'm the same. My son struggled with his motor skills when he was little so we got him interested in gymnastics and he loves it and it's really helped. I'd like to do the same for my daughter when she's old enough but I'd hope she doesn't want go into competition. She also likes dance so that might be a better option.
- milesvp 6y agoFYI, Dance can have similar problems. I’m convinced a world reknowned ballet school had a major negative psychological effect on someone I know. Not sure how common that is in lesser schools, but something to be mindful of.
- noneeeed 6y agoYeah, I'm just thinking that dance seems less about the competition than gymnastics, so might be a healthier atmosphere. Our gymnastics club has a kind of parkour club which seems more about having fun and being active which I think me might move my son to when he's old enough.
- jesseendahl 6y agoThe ballet world has similar levels of competition and harmful psychological effects as women’s gymnastics. There are a huge number of girls and women competing for an extremely small number of available jobs as a full time professional dancer for a top-tier ballet company, of which there are only a small handful in the world. And almost everyone in ballet has struggled with disordered eating at some point, including the men.
- jedberg 6y agoIt 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.
- nitwit005 6y agoThere have been multiple accusations of age falsification. If winning simply becomes a matter of faking a passport, several countries would be happy to do so.
- jedberg 6y agoTrue. What about a minimum height? Like 5’3” or so?
- uranusjr 6y agoThat’s discrimination.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> True. What about a minimum height? Like 5’3” or so? That's above the median adult female height in many countries. And gymnasts (even at full adult height), of both genders, tend to skew short.
- topkai22 6y agoSounds like a great way to get a multi sport IOC ban. Those athletes that win medals will get intense international scrutiny, I suspect consistent faking of records will get found out eventually. Anyways, just because some participants may cheat doesn’t inherently mean a rule isn’t worth making.
- newsbinator 6y agoIs it possible to reliably and non-invasively determine someone's age ± 1 year? Athlete's do doping checks all the time. Might as well do a single-time age check as well.
- TMWNN 6y agoWould raising the minimum age for Olympics and other high-level competition for women to 18 or 20 help?
- mcv 6y agoI would think so. Part of the problem here is that they're trying to get these girls to win before puberty changes their body, which puts enormous time pressure on the training. If they're only allowed to compete from 18, all of those issues drop away.
- gowld 6y agoWhy? They'd still train and body modify while waiting to compete. Pro sports have age minimums but kids start prepping at age 8. This problem with women's gymnastics is the rules of the sport favor children's and childlike bodies.
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- hevelvarik 6y agoWow, where are the parents? I mean bad parents here and there I expect, but enough to fuel an international industry is a surprise...
- sumedh 6y ago> where are the parents? Sometimes the kids hide the abuse from their parents.
- mcv 6y agoAnd I imagine some parents push their children into these situations because they want their children to "succeed".
- helge9210 6y agoWhen my daughter came to me in tears and complained coach is yelling at her, I explained this is a good thing. This means coach is looking at her and is trying to correct her mistakes.
- hitekker 6y ago> “I fall off the beam and land badly, and I’m hurting. The coach unleashes a torrent of curse words, yelling at me to get up again. I wait too long. ‘Get your butt up there right now or I’ll make you wish you had.’” > “He grabs me by the throat with both hands and lifts me into the air by my neck ... I hear him clearing his throat, followed by the sound of spitting, and feel a thick glob splat into my face.” You should read the article.
- ThePowerOfFuet 6y agoThanks to you, I no longer need to.
- watwut 6y agoSmall kids are not as good as verbalizing what happens. Meaning, at the age when this all starts, they will not put it into words like this. There is also strong cultural assumption that if coach is tough it is good. When kids are complaining, typically unable to explain exactly what the issue is, they are talked about as spoiled by helicopter parents or oversensitive moms. So, even parents who eventually take their own kids away dont treat the whole thing as systematic abuse issue - they talked about it as personal preference of the kid.
- ValentineC 6y agoReading 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-cain.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/opinion/nike-running-mary... HN discussion on that one: 1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21505600 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21505600 2) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21476304 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21476304
- axilmar 6y agoIt'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.
- MereInterest 6y agoThis is exactly the idea that the article explains over and over to refute. Women's gymnastics by the scoring, culture, traditions, and biology, has all the incentives pushing toward child abuse. It isn't just a matter of pruning out bad actors. It is a matter of restructuring the sport to prevent bad actors from becoming prominent.
- andeee23 6y agoThe whole point of the article is that women's gymnastics is set up in a way that requires coaches to act like this if they want to win medals.
- mcv 6y agoOne 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.
- nix23 6y agoIt 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.
- andi999 6y agoSo why do people believe this behaviour is legal?
- shwoopdiwoop 6y agoLet’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-can-be-legitimate-but-not-in-larry-nassars-hands.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/well/live/pelvic-massage-...