Can boys wrestle girls?

[Igg]

and what of the girls already on wrestling teams? do you feel they should be kicked off because they might get hurt? despite the fact that they've already proven themselves to be more than capable of wrestling boys?

Yes. You need rules and boundaries in sports.
The girls can wrestle each other.
Just because they are more than capable than wrestling boys doesn't mean that everyone else will be too, and all the girls should be treated the same.

If girls wrestle each other and get hurt, people won't complain. If boys wrestle each other and get hurt, people won't complain. If a boy wrestles a girl and gets beaten, people won't complain as such but he will get mocked, as by rights he should be able to win. If a girl wrestles a boy and gets hurt, people will complain, and rightly so. And it doesn't even matter whether the girl says it's alright, she knew what she was taking on bla bla bla. It is irresponsible of the person organising the match to pit a girl against a boy.

If you want to concentrate on gender equality, go for an all-girl wrestling team and spend your time campaigning for that.
Or go to the IOC. Or the Wrestling Specific Governing Body, and tell them they males and females should fight each other.

[joe_malo]

As long as all parties involved are well aware of the risks, I see no problem with co-ed sports. Besides, aren't girls age 12-15 bigger than the boys of the same age?

Note: saying "one gender cannot be sexist" is by itself, a sexist statement.

[skizzy the wonder lizard]

and what of the girls already on wrestling teams? do you feel they should be kicked off because they might get hurt? despite the fact that they've already proven themselves to be more than capable of wrestling boys?

Yes. You need rules and boundaries in sports.
The girls can wrestle each other.
Just because they are more than capable than wrestling boys doesn't mean that everyone else will be too, and all the girls should be treated the same.


If you want to concentrate on gender equality, go for an all-girl wrestling team and spend your time campaigning for that.

what often happens is, there are only one or two girls going out for the team anyway, which isn't enough for an entire team.

of course not ALL girls should be allowed on the teams. THAT'S WHY THERE'S TRYOUTS. if a girl can't keep up with the work she doesn't make the team. same with the boys. no reason to keep girls off simply because of their gender.

i really find it unbelievable that you think girls already functioning well on wrestling teams should be kicked off. if your only reasoning is that they are weaker than boys, and they've proven that reasoning false by wrestling boys and doing just fine, what's left of your argument? you can't keep saying that the strength thing is an issue when there are multiple instances showing this to not be a problem.

[Qanda]

I think you all are debating out of the topic. The topic was whether boys are emotionally ready to wrestle girls, not whether girls have the ability to wrestle boys or not.

I have alread stated my opinion on the issue, which is that, no, boys of age 12 - 15 are not emotionally ready and may not use their full strength or end up touching sensitive and private regions of the girls, accidental or not. And this is speaking from a boy's perspective. Also a boy beaten by a girl will be faced with a lot of ridicule from his peers.

[Bangel]

no reason to keep girls off simply because of their gender.

For God's sakes, that's not what she's saying.

Again, it is a proven fact that boys are stronger than girls. Call me sexist, I don't care, because I know I'm not. Bottom line, it's not safe. Not to mention the incredible embarassment a girl would go through if she was accidently touched in an area where, well, guys shouldn't touch.

It doesn't matter if they're functioning well already. The only reason Igg is bringing this all up is because, again, not safe. Maybe they haven't been hurt before, but that doesn't mean it's not gonna happen.

As for you calling Igg sexist, all she wants is for the girls to be safe. If that's sexist, maybe you need to relearn the word's meaning.

[Base]

Can I just say that niether my friend and I are scared of being hurt, niether of us are expecting to be hurt, the boys on the team are fine with wrestling girls, and being stronger than your opponent does not make you better wrestler.

And you know what? They could get rid of the rule and if the other team didn't want a boy wrestling a girl, they could forfiet. Where's the problem? If a boy doesn't want to wrestle a girl, he doesn't have to. Boy's wouldn't be forced to wrestle girls, they would be allowed to. And I would get to actually contribute to the team.

And, I might add, freshmen girls at my brother's highschool wrestle boys. They are around 15. Some of them win, some of them lose. No stupid sexist pattern. The boys aren't afraid to try against a girl, and they aren't so much stronger that they always win. If a boy was a lot stronger than a girl, he would probably be in a different wieght class and therefore not wrestling her.

[Igg]

Oh for crying out loud.

I'm not even going to bother properly anymore.

But I will add- how is it fair for a team to have to forfeit a match because the boy doesn't want to wrestle the opposite gender?

[Base]

It happens a lot. And my school would lose anyway; we suck.

But on the safety issue, my team has an ice hockey team that is coed. How on earth is ice hockey safer than wrestling? No one in proffesional wrestling gets their teeth knocked out. *insert swear word here* Can't boys just say whether or not they're okay with wrestling girls and then have them wrestle? I haven't had a single match because of this stupid rule!

[Igg]

Ice Hockey is (supposedly) not a contact sport.
Which makes a hell of a lot of difference, trust me.
It means that each person is just as likely to get hurt if the game is being properly despite weight/strength/size etc.

We have some sports co-ed, after a fashion (explaining my school's PE schedule is not my favourite activity, so bare with me) and they're all things like Rounders, netball, hockey. Non-contact activities, where although boys could have an advantage, it's not as clear and it's teamwork. That's another thing, they're working as teams.

The problem with anything co-ed, if you make it a school team, is to be fair you'd have to have the same number of boys and girls, and this could mean not having a team to the full potential- i.e. leaving off a boy for a girl who isn't as good, to make up numbers

[Base]

Why would you have to have the same number of girls as boys?

And why is it always assumed that boys have an advantage in anything physical? Haven't you ever seen a boy that is out of shape or scrawny? Or a girl that is really fit? I'm not saying that I'm the strongest person on Earth, but that doesn't mean I'm not just as strong as most of the boys on my team.

And you seem to have forgotten the girls in highschool who wrestle boys and sometimes win. I saw a girl wrestle a decent sized boy just the other day, and she pinned him in about 30 seconds.

[skizzy the wonder lizard]

no reason to keep girls off simply because of their gender.

For God's sakes, that's not what she's saying.

Again, it is a proven fact that boys are stronger than girls. Call me sexist, I don't care, because I know I'm not. Bottom line, it's not safe. Not to mention the incredible embarassment a girl would go through if she was accidently touched in an area where, well, guys shouldn't touch.

It doesn't matter if they're functioning well already. The only reason Igg is bringing this all up is because, again, not safe. Maybe they haven't been hurt before, but that doesn't mean it's not gonna happen.

As for you calling Igg sexist, all she wants is for the girls to be safe. If that's sexist, maybe you need to relearn the word's meaning.

if you think that's not what she's saying, then you're not paying attention to her message. she's saying girls shouldn't wrestle because as females, they're weaker than males. simply being female makes them weaker than males. their being female makes their strength inferior to males' strength.

this is sexist.

sex·ism
n.
1. Discrimination based on gender, especially discrimination against women.
2. Attitudes, conditions, or behaviors that promote stereotyping of social roles based on gender.

this is absolutely discrimination based on gender. many females are very strong. stronger than a lot of males. but that individual strength (or wrestling talent) doesn't seem to matter, because of the statistical weaker bodies of females. the discrimination isn't happening because the female isn't up to par. it's happening exclusively because of her being a female. this is sexist, according to the definition.

any girl who joins a wrestling team should be observant enough to realize that the sport involves a lot of touching. if she is uncomfortable with that, i'm sure she wouldn't join the team. come on now. we're not talking about forcing every 13-yr-old girl to wrestle boys. we're talking about girls who know what wrestling involves and wants the chance to participate.

it matters quite a bit that there are girls who are functioning well already. it's tangible proof that girls can be matched with boys, despite all this HYPOTHETICAL worry that the girls might get hurt. it's a silly and overly-protective worry, and definitely a step backwards for females. women once weren't considered capable of entering the workforce, because there was a fear that they couldn't take it emotionally and that they'd never be able to compete with the males. you used to never see female construction workers, because they were thought to not be able to handle it physically. no one would make those claims now. to make those claims about female wrestlers is to deny all the strides forward women have made in typically male-dominated fields.

of course there are women who fail in male-dominated fields. but they don't fail because of the weaknesses or differences they have as females. they fail because as individuals, they aren't good at business or whatever the case may be. if a girl gets hurt wrestling, it's not because of her weakness as a female, but because she wasn't being careful or because of an accident. this is proven by the thousands of female wrestlers, including the one on my boyfriend's high school team, that are matched with boys and don't get hurt.

speaking of that girl, i asked my boyfriend about her last night. he said she was an excellent wrestler with very strong legs. her social life and interactions with the opposite sex were not damaged by her wrestling at all; on the contrary, she had a boyfriend on the basketball team and ran with a clique of girls. there was no protest from either the team or the administration when she started wrestling. she started wrestling in middle school, which is about the ages we're talking about. my bf said she won the majority of her matches.

she thrived. to have denied her the right to wrestle just because she's a female, and according to statistics, females are weaker? that's unfair. that is, by definition, sexist.

furthermore, to hold back ANYONE based on their perceived weaknesses, based on the ASSUMPTION that they might get hurt, is unbelievably wrong! under this reasoning, people with dyslexia shouldn't be allowed to read because they MIGHT get frustrated or MIGHT not be able to figure out a certain word or MIGHT get teased at school. people with one leg run marathons. people with english as their second language make it to national english-language spelling bees. the "maybes" just have no place here. the assumptions have been proven false.

base, i totally have your back, girl. i hope you get to wrestle, as by rights you should.

[Igg]

As dictionary.com's definition includes 'especially againt women' you might think more about trusting it.

[Drake Redcrest]

Ice Hockey is (supposedly) not a contact sport.
Which makes a hell of a lot of difference, trust me.
It means that each person is just as likely to get hurt if the game is being properly despite weight/strength/size etc.

We have some sports co-ed, after a fashion (explaining my school's PE schedule is not my favourite activity, so bare with me) and they're all things like Rounders, netball, hockey. Non-contact activities, where although boys could have an advantage, it's not as clear and it's teamwork. That's another thing, they're working as teams.

The problem with anything co-ed, if you make it a school team, is to be fair you'd have to have the same number of boys and girls, and this could mean not having a team to the full potential- i.e. leaving off a boy for a girl who isn't as good, to make up numbers

I really like this last point. It honestly wouldn't be fair on a co-ed team if there weren't an even number of boys and girls, and if there wasn't people would point at the coach and go "OMG SEXIST!!!11!1!"

Also, girls generally have smaller bone structures than boys. It wouldn't matter how strong a girl was, there'd still be a larger chance for them to get hurt than the boy. There's no other way to look at it. DO NOT jump down my throat going "omggg girls are just as strong as boys, blah blah blah," because the fact is that NO, generally WE ARE NOT. Yes, I happen to know that there are some females who are quite strong out there, infact my friend's wrestling coach was the co-ed province champion (and she's a female, by the way) but I also happen to know that we actually ARE the weaker sex. Would YOU want to wrestle a guy who was in your weight class, but could snap you in half because he's BIGGER THAN YOU? I know I wouldn't.

[Igg]

Why would you have to have the same number of girls as boys?

Why have the same number? Why, to be fair of course. Equal numbers to avoid sexism. Surely all you who've been jumping down my throat saying I'm sexist would know this.

[shapu]

I was terrified to join this topic until I saw Joe's post - wish me luck...

I won't get into debating sexist ideals and chauvinsim and traditional roles. I won't I won't I won't I won't I won't I won't. I'm a member of the debating forum for a reason.

The question of emotional readiness is the key here, and I think the biggest reason not being discussed above is the one of, for lack of a better term, "embarrasing situations."

But something to keep in mind is that if you really get psyched into a wrestling match, you've got adrenaline going - which, not coincidentally, prevents that kind of thing from happening. So if you're a guy and you're really stoked about wrestling someone, anyone, and you're afraid of what will happen if you lose, then your adrenaline is flowing and it's pretty unlikely that you'll get laughed out of school or given crude nicknames.

That said, even if it does happen, the question of emotional readiness doesn't depend on YOU so much as it does on everyone else. Boys and girls ages 12-15 have already had a pretty decent sexual education class where I come from, and so at least know the basics of how various body parts work. Chances are pretty good that giggling fits will be the end result, but if other people aren't mature enough to shrug it off and say, "well, that's what can happen," then....

No. Boys and girls shouldn't wrestle one another at that particular age. Later? Sure. Earlier? Why not? But that age group is a pretty rough age to be anyway, and kids can be mean. I guess it depends on the student body and the education system beforehand.