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03-05-2016
Think for a moment about basketball. You see the ball, the court, the ring.
Now, think about the players who play in competitive basketball, you have these tall men that can jump a few meters in the air, men who can slam other men into submission.
That’s a traditional sport.
Now by definition a sport “is an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.”
That definition alone can qualify a lot of things, simply because what do we classify as “physical exertion”? So let’s define the “physical exertion”.
Let’s start with the physical, by definition the physical is “of or relating to the body as opposed to the mind.” exertion on the other hand is defined as “physical or mental effort.”
Now, so with those two defintions given, we can clearly say that physical exertion is body effort. Certainly jumping, running and slamming can be considered physical exertion. But what about key presses and hand movements? Are they physical exertion?
This is where most people draw the line and say; “Oh no you, they’re not. You’re referring to that video game thing right? They are certainly not sports.” But as we can see, by strictly adhering to the definition we can clearly see that key presses and hand movements are physical exertion and it fulfills our definition of sports. So, techncially they are sports.
Welcome to the realm of eSports.
eSports has very unclear roots, some say that it originated in Korea when the immensely popular StarCraft: Brood War game took the country by storm. Some say that it originated in the West with local tournaments. But one thing’s for sure. They’re all competing on who’s better at playing games.
eSports came to be this global phenomena with games like DOTA 2, League of Legends, CS:GO, etc. take into popularity. Now, I won’t dive deeper onto what makes those games good for being an eSport, that’s a topic for another time. But we could see that the core essence of eSports is basically the same as it was, to find who’s the best at playing this game.
In the olden days, females are ought to be separated to men when playing sports, traditional sports mind you. Simply because there’s no way to fill the gap between the physical capabilities of men and women. It’s just too unfair for females to play a game in which their opponent are objectively physically stronger than her. That’s why female leagues in Traditional Sports are invented, to give females an avenue to see who’s the best at playing this game in fair grounds.
Well, the problem lies when you convert those ideals to eSports. Since eSports, although a sport, it doesn’t emphasize raw physical strength but rather command execution and reaction time, factors that both genders can be quite good at. Now, there are people who claim that men have a better reaction time than women. If there are any objective researches done along this topic and if it 100% infalliable and say that men really do have a better reaction time than women then I’ll gladly retract my following statement, but as it stands, that claim is just bollocks, reaction time is a skill that everyone develops over time. No one is born with a better reaction time the same way as bodybuilders aren’t born with well toned, perfectly sculpt muscles.
So why am I blabbering about this? Simply because there exists a “Female League” in a popular competitive game called Counter Strike: Global Offensive, CS:GO, right now. Which is for me is simply nonsensical because the physical differences between men and women in eSports doesn’t even matter.
So what then is the reason why there exists such league?
Gender politics. Gender politics is, I believe, the sole reason why this league exists. Which is enraging because we are perpetuating this attitude towards each other. This league’s existence further cements the idea of elitism and othering in the eSports pro scene. It shows an endemic problem in our society that we are treating the difference of each other’s sex as a basis for secluding them in a community or scene that they can clearly participate in fair grounds.
We should stop segregating the pro scene, especially if it’s because of gender politics. We should stop involving gender politics in eSports simply because it doesn’t matter in that field. Because in the end, what matters in eSports is how good you are, not what private parts you have.