The other day I realized something that annoyed the hell out of me. When giving out Awards (Oscars, Golden Globes) we draw a line between an actor and an actress. Why is this necessary? There is no reason why we should give out separate awards.

Looking at sports we obviously see the same type of separation of the sexes. I watch sports quite a bit (basketball, football, tennis, golf, baseball, and hockey) and have watched women's golf, tennis and basketball. I would love to see women in every professional sport. Although it seems like almost different sports altogether so it doesn't seem as bad as the oscars.

If I must pose a question to debate it must be "Do you feel ok with these and other types of separation of sexes?"

Very good topic for debate.

In an ideal world, this would not at all be needed. In the real world as it exists now, perhaps this is still a necessary evil.

As far as sports go, it seems that if women and men were to compete, there would be many sports in which men would be completely dominant, and maybe a few in which women were dominant. This would be discouraging to, for example, women who want to play professional basketball. Whether this domination is due to genuine biological differences between the sexes (and, of course, we're only talking about average differences, for what little they may be worth) or to the different way in which men and women are raised in society is a subject for another debate.

It's harder to defend things like the Oscars. Why not Best Performance? I doubt whether one sex or the other would dominate things. Of course, this is such a tradition that I doubt it will change in the near future, if ever.

One area in which the sexes have been separated for competition is chess. If there were not women's championships, men would be utterly dominant. Is this because chess at a championship level makes great physical demands, like sports? Is it because men have some biological advantage in the brain for chess? (Again, I'm just talking about averages, not individuals.) Or is it because of the way that men and women are raised in society, with particular emphasis on their level of aggression? Again, interesting topics for another debate.

Thank you for giving me a lot to think about!

I think they have seperate oscars for men and women because if they didn't they oscars would be over in less time. Nothing left to watch on the TV.

There are a multitude of areas where the sexes can compete on equal footing. Acting, chess, bowling, darts, writing, just to name a few. There are more areas where the playing field is far from equal. In those areas, mixing the sexes would eventually result in artificial restrictions on the competition and an overall reduction in the quality. For instance, some women are going to compete in golf this year but they are going to play from the same tees as the men. If they can do it and compete from there, that's great. Just don't let them play from the ladies tees. Sometimes I think we go too far when we try to equalitize the sexes. There are some fundamental differences that should be celebrated instead of eliminated.

momof in terms of time it really wouldn't change much. It would mean two categories leaving since they only seperate for actor (M and F) and Supporting actor (M or F).

And they could always make up for lost time by seperating the awards as the Golden Globes do: Best Performance/Supporting Performance in a Drama and Best Performance/Supporting Performance in a Comedy/Musical - which makes more sense to me than a gender division. (The Golden Globes, btw, do still divide those categories into Actor and Actress as well.) Besides, would it make that much difference if the Oscar ceremony only ran three-and-a-half hours rather than four? Or would it just mean that some of the technical awards relegated to a seperate ceremony could also be included?

Anyway, I think that a gender division for the Oscars (or any other performance awards) is as silly as a gender division would be for the Pulitzers, the Nobels, or any other non-physical competitions. Clearly, though, there are physiological differences between men and women and it's unlikely that there'll be much of a level playing field for sports competitions any time soon.

The way you say that, it reads like you believe the end goal of evolution/society/whatever should be not just equality of the sexes, but sameness of the sexes. Interchangeability. While I don't doubt there are some people who view that as a laudable goal, I'm confident that the vast majority would rather appreciate the differences between the sexes than eliminate them entirely. Let me know if I misread you. IMO, "different" does not imply an inherent superiority in one case and a corresponding inferiority in the other. If equality of the sexes means women get bigger and hairier, I'll have to pass. But I don't think that's what it means.

I don't know about the Oscar situation--I suspect they like it as it is because 1. it's traditionally been done that way and 2. it means they get to give out more oscars. Maybe this question has been posed before, and it's been answered on the internet somewhere--I'll take a look.

You misread me somewhat - I'm certainly not speaking of a sameness or interchangeability of the sexes, but of women eventually reaching a more equal status with men in terms of physical prowess (and a ceiling on certain skills - it's unlikely we'll ever see homo sapiens running a two-minute mile, e.g.). This has much to do with the theory of morphic resonance - the discussion of which would lead us well off topic. PM me if you want more on this - otherwise treat my final sentence as appreciating the physical difference between the sexes and leave it at that.

Victoria-my contention has always been that it's in the upbringing