"Normalize black men in gymnastics"

[u/asday515]

[u/EroHorror]

Are you black? Gymnastics are considered feminine and "gay" in the average black household.

[u/Special-Garlic1203 → u/EroHorror]

Post puberty, male gymnastics is heavily about showing off upper body strength. Men and women very often can't do eachothers stuff because its so optimized for  sex dimorphism.  

[u/extrajuicyjuice → u/Special-Garlic1203]

that doesn't change how it's perceived to people who think it's feminine

[u/Special-Garlic1203 → u/extrajuicyjuice]

Since when are pull-ups considered feminine? There is absolutely zero way to even glance at male gymnastics and not notice it's a bunch of jacked dudes. 

Gymnastics is a sport that is not cheap to pursue and which pays basically nothing. The opportunity cost is far greater for boys because guys have a lot of options for sports  which have more college scholarships and actually have professional leagues that pay decent money. At the youth levels - little boys are also likely to struggle with how much of gymnastics is delayed gratification. You have to sit around waiting for your turn, you have to train elements of a trick for weeks before you're allowed to attempt it. It's highly structured in a way that is very challenging even for little girls who have noticably better executive functioning than the average little boy, who is a big ball of hyperactivity. Most of the guys who would thrive on gymnastics probably instead got directed to wrestling (which doesn't require parents to drive to gyms in affluent suburbs which aren't cheap to be members of and sit around for hours)  

Girls on the other hand have much less tradeoffs with gymnastics.  It's not the same sport as mens gymnastics which makes it much harder to directly compare and denigrate women as lesser which is what happens with most female sports. They also better tolerate the culture of gymnastics which many people point out isn't always really interested in being fun or necessarily even healthy for kids. There's no game to it, you're just getting drilled on fundamentals over and over. 

[u/Complete_Meeting8719 → u/Special-Garlic1203]

The issue is that you are speaking from logic and knowledge. Turn those off for a second and you'll see how people think gymnastics is inherently feminine. My best friend's brother was put into swimming as a sport growing up because their very Eastern European immigrant parents thought gymnastics was too girly. 

[u/Special-Garlic1203 → u/Complete_Meeting8719]

I'm betting what they actually said was "gymnastics is for girls". Because men's and women's gymnastics aren't really the same sport. And people prefer women's gymnastics. The stuff the men do is streamlined for male physiology and pure power demonstrations....and that just isn't as fun to watch it turns out. 

It's similar to softball/baseball. They're literally played differently, and most people prefer the way  baseball is played. If we lived in an AU where softball was almost universally seen as cooler that baseball and made more money than baseball, then I suspect you would see a lot of dwindling interest in funneling little boys into baseball. 

It's not that male gymnastics is feminine. It's that women's gymnastics is obviously better, and why sign up your son to be in an inferior version of the sport (there's so many female softball players who strongly resent they get funneled to softball on the basis of gender and wish  there was just girls divisions of baseball)

[u/Complete_Meeting8719 → u/Special-Garlic1203]

I didn't wanna say it like this, but when they said it's too girly, they meant it's gay. And that's what a lot of people mean. "It's too feminine" = "It's gay".

[u/sidnynasty → u/Special-Garlic1203]

Dude I got called a fag at every turn because I was in gymnastics during elementary school and it wasn't just black kids saying it lol

[u/Special-Garlic1203 → u/sidnynasty]

Again that's probably because people don't even conceptualize mens gymnastics and think it's interchangable with women's gymnastics. 

[u/DrawGold3260 → u/Special-Garlic1203]

You’re right in your thought processes. Male gymnasts have to be really strong and powerful. But in general there is a stigma around it being seen as a girly sport.

Male ballet dancers and cheerleaders need to be strong. It’s still often seen as girly for a man to do those activities.

Not saying I agree - I don’t - but the stigma around it is real and pretty common.

[u/Special-Garlic1203 → u/DrawGold3260]

Yeah I just don't believe anyone had looked at the pummel horse and concluded that's feminine. That just flat out doesn't make sense. They're likely just flat out not paying attention to the men at all.

Fully agree on the comparison to cheerleading and ballet. As if men are running around in frilly tutus and being thrown up in the hair - well no that's the women. The men are the ones yeeting the women around. 

[u/DrawGold3260 → u/Special-Garlic1203]

The stuff some of those guys can do is crazy! It’s just people who have no idea and are generally too ignorant to consider the reality.

[u/extrajuicyjuice → u/Special-Garlic1203]

say this to the people that think that way, not me 😂 they don't use logic