Yet in sports in which women are allowed to compete against men, they’ve fared quite well. Serena gave her own assessment of such a match in 2013 on US television’s David Letterman Show: “If I were to play Andy Murray, I would lose 6-0, 6-0 in five to six minutes, maybe 10 minutes.” She was more confident as an 18-year-old in 1999 when she claimed: “I can beat the men,” and asked for a wild card entry for the Eurocard Open in Stuttgart, then one of the elite tournaments on the men’s circuit. Similarly, it appears self-evident that a female athlete, no matter how proficient, could be accomplished enough to beat an equivalently proficient male, less still beat a man of her own rank. It’s so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter our understanding of it substantially. McEnroe’s statements actually were “factually based.” At least in the way evolution is a factually based. ![]() ![]() “Dear John, I adore and respect you but please please keep me out of your statements that are not factually based.” Serena Williams was replying via Twitter to John McEnroe’s impolitic remark that if she ventured to play tennis against men she would be “like, 700” in the rankings. ![]() Given open competition, women could achieve parity with men in virtually all events, apart from those very few that require the rawest of muscle power.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |