Because of genetics, men tend to be faster and stronger than women. Because of this genetic difference, women are generally unable to compete head to head against men, leaving women with far fewer opportunities to participate in athletics if every athletic program were coed. Along comes Title IX which says that women must be given an equal opportunity. Because of genetics that lack of opportunity still exists for many people, both women and men.
Title IX was created because gender difference is an obvious distinction. But in the end it comes down to genetics. As far as sports goes, I’m as genetically handicapped as any girl, but no one is going to write a special law for me. Once I had reached high school age, many girls would have been closer to making a team than I would have. I’m not saying any of them would have, but they would have been closer. Once you reach college level only a small percentage, men or women, have ANY hope of making a team with or without Title IX.
I’m glad Title IX exists. But for the vast majority of people it does nothing. We are still excluded from sports because of the luck of genetics. No one is shedding a tear for the small and uncoordinated guys (or girls) of this world and their lack of opportunities.
My friends and I played lots of sports growing up. We just never played in a stadium or with refs or even any sort of spectators. Parents don’t generally build bleachers to watch their kids play pickup basketball, football, or baseball. No one I knew was thinking how unfair that was.
Shit yes they are, if they’re doing it on public grounds. There’s no magical difference between parents of boys and parents of girls; it’s not like girls’ parents are all hippie feminists and boys’ parents are all cigar-chomping cowboys. They’re the same damned group of people with the same damned prejudices and the same damned enthusiasm about sports. It’s just that this group of parents tends to care more when their boys are playing sports than when their girls are playing sports.
And if school sports programs were built for the benefit of parents, as many adults seem to believe, that’d all be fine and dandy. But the thing is, they’re not. They’re built for the benefit of the kids. And the wretched sexism of their parents is no reason why girls who want to play sports should have to suffer compared to boys who want to play sports.
So yeah: if parents want to provide sporting opportunities for kids on public grounds, they need to be sure they’re not being sexist assholes toward some of those kids. If that makes you weepy, here’s a hanky.
Why is the baseball field considered exclusively the boys and the softball field exclusively the girls? Do girls not play baseball/boys not play softball in this school?
Yeah…and? Every sport my school played had a male and female team. Only exception was football (everybody was lumped into one team), or when not enough people showed up. Male/female baseball, basketball, volleyball, etc.
That was a response to running coach. Also, Snowboarder Bo, that number is astoundingly low. I’d have put it in the thousands at least.
What kind of idiot builds a structure without making sure it complies to local laws? This isn’t some obscure loophole. This is a piece of law every school with an athletics program has ample experience with.
If I want to build a puppy hugging center for orphaned veterans, that’s fine. But if I do it without a building permit, I have to either find a way for it to comply with the law, or give up on my venture.
What state university is that? I would be surprised if that’s not a perfect example of why Title IX exists. Baseball and softball are different sports, and other than the fact that they both uses bases and a home plate; the fields are different. Every baseball field I’ve ever seen that was also used for softball showed a completed disregard for the requirements of a softball field.
What I have seen however is any or all of the following…
[ul]
[li]Lack of a skinned infield[/li][li]softball players having to play with a pitchers mound at 45 or 60 feet from the home plate (softball doesn’t use a pitchers mound)[/li][li]The ‘softball’ field being set up in the outfield, never mind that the bleachers are built to face the baseball infield[/li][li]Rubber throw down style bases.[/li][/ul]
Wow. I totally misread the quote that I responded to. Sorry about that KimballKid. I thought you said you knew of a state university where they used the baseball field for softball too.
This AFAIK isn’t common in the US for sports like Baseball/Softball which are basically considered the same sport with different rules for boys/girls. It’s just that these differences require different fields. Boys/girls basketball, hockey, volleyball, etc can all be played in the same facility. Not true for boys baseball and girls softball.
Part of the problem is that the rules seem to require ignoring that there is a significantly different level of demand between men’s and women’s sports. Men are more interested in playing sports, and they attract a larger audience. Thus the boy’s team was able to involve enough parents to get funding, and the girl’s team didn’t. Is that “fair”? I don’t know - is it “fair” that the average attendance at an NBA game is two and a half times that of a WNBA game?
Everyone keeps saying that in this thread, as if the girls tried to upgrade their field and failed because no one cared enough, but no one here knows the situation. It could be one rich parent behind the boys field, maybe it never occurred to the girls that they could buy their own bleachers, maybe there is no room at their field for an upgrade. For all we know, the girls parents raised 10x the money then decided to give it to charity instead. I have the same amount of evidence for those scenarios as the people saying the boys parents care more than the girls parents.
That’s entirely the point. The sports exist for the benefit of the students, and women students benefit just as much as men students from participation in sport. The increased spectator interest in mens sports should not result in men having better sport opportunities than women.
Hammarskjold High School in Thunder Bay. Apparently they haven’t had enough players to field baseball teams the last few years. And while girls were always permitted on the football team there were rarely more than one or two played. There’s not really any sort of write-up on it because it’s sort of ubiquitous. As far as I know this holds for every High School in Ontario. I’m thinking the US takes it’s High School sports a lot more seriously.
