Lady at my work is furious -- like weirdly intensely furious -- that the NBA isn't called the MNBA. To her, that makes it sound like the men's NBA is the "real" one and the WMBA is second-tier.

Only here's the thing: the NBA does allow female athletes. There hasn't been one yet, though Ann Meyers got close in 1979 and Britney Griner in 2013. One of these days a woman just might get in, and presumably my colleague doesn't want them to institute a rule to disallow women.

But I can't tell her any of that. Nor would I dare suggest that men might, just on statistical average, have more extremely tall people than women. (This is NOT to suggest anything about INDIVIDUALS: plenty of women are taller than plenty of men. Please don't track me down and fire me.) It's just not even a possibility you can consider. Women are just as tall as men and if you don't agree you're part of the problem.

Nope. It has to be discrimination. There is no other admissible explanation, so discrimination it is. Please don't fire me.

And here's the funny thing: I totally don't care. Fuck it. Just can't bring myself to worry about it. Once we have absolutely annihilated Donald Trump and his white nationalist followers, THEN I can worry about petty office shit.

It's too bad everyone is so wound-up about this stuff, because is prevents genuine discussion about these kinds of nuances. It should be perfectly acceptable to assert and opinion and have people disagree/argue with you about it without it being a huge social problem (i.e. getting fired).

I thought of a nice phrasing last night:
"While there are some biological aspects to gender, the social status, power, and assumptions that we assign to different genders are entirely socially constructed." You can replace "some" with "major" depending on how radical is your feminist discussion group.

Fun fact: the Tour de France actually DOES ban women from participating, even if they otherwise qualify. Something about their uteruses falling out or something.

Would the NFL allow a woman player if she otherwise qualified? There's no WNFL to fall back on.

There is talk that Becca Longo could make the NFL. I don't think they'd have a problem with a woman kicker. Maybe they'd balk at a woman in the scrimmages, tho.

Also, and pertaining to nothing much, I've often thought an "integrated" soccer league would be interesting.

I'd be in favor of any kicker with the last name "Longo."

I spent a week reading a bunch of stuff on sports science and how the Olympics classifies "men" and "women" for sports. The criteria they use to determine these things is an interesting field of study that tries to favor actual science over standard human rhetoric-stupid. The jury is still out on a lot of it, the criteria has been set, rejected, and re-explored a few times, but the main lesson I took away was this :

Never, EVER, speak to another human being about anything regarding anything to do with anything that they have a political opinion on.

It would take less energy to harness antimatter safely then to get them to stop screaming long enough to read a paper that didn't scream their political narrative in a chorus with them.

As if it wouldn't get invaded by sock-puppets MRA accounts from the word go.

That's all right too. Not every detail about one's private life needs to be shared with the entire world. Ultimately, people get the internet comments they deserve.

Some of the worst things to burden others with are a sense of victimhood and unwarranted righteous indignation.

If every woman you encounter refuses to look up from her phone, it may be a hint.

for teenertot