And no one is stopping girls from forming their own leagues to play in if they can’t make a boys’ collegiate team. However, Title IX says schools MUST provide equal opportunities for the girls but does not provide equal opportunities for the rest of us genetically disadvantaged folks. Why is one type of genetic disadvantage given preference over others?
But they did form a team. The OP is talking about a girls’ field hockey team (in high school, not college.) And now a boy wants to play on it. So when the boys dominate that team, do the girls form another team? Great. And then do the boys get to play on that one, too?
Because women are massively, massively discriminated against and have been for millennia, and if they do not have their own sports teams will not be able to play organized sports. Because there is a clear societal benefit to Title IX. Because there is no other genetic demarcation remotely as clear, bright and connected to societal privilege and disadvantage in sports as the line between men and women.
Because a long line of people who shared that particular type of genetic disadvantage spent a century promoting the rights and privileges of those people. It seems your short, wheezy, uncoordinated forerunners failed you. For what it’s worth, even the most fumble-fingered men were voting in this country long before the ladies.
In all sincerity, events like the Special Olympics, Paralympics, and Deaflympics were organized to allow people who are disadvantaged a chance to compete athletically against their peers. And I previously mentioned weight classes in certain sports (not to mention leagues restricted to certain age groups). Gender is not the only way that sports have been segregated, and women aren’t the only “protected class” in athletics.
Sure. Show me where colleges are require, by law, to provide classes of groups opportunities to compete like Title IX provides for women. As was pointed out above, when these groups wanted to compete, they went off and formed their own competitions. Great! But it wasn’t legally mandated.
Women are the only “protected class” in athletics when it comes to rule of law.
Exactly what does voting have to do with opportunities in athletics?
Girls were never excluded from playing on the other high school teams. They were free to try out for them, just like the vast majority of boys that weren’t genetically gifted enough to make the team. But someone, somewhere, decided that girls need athletic opportunities. Why are only the girls, based solely on genetic makeup, thought to need those opportunities but boys with an equal genetic disadvantage are not?
The vast majority of us have been excluded from these competitions and sports opportunities and yet society and civilization have managed to go on. If it is better for society as a whole for one genetically disadvantaged group, why wouldn’t it be better if others were given the opportunity?
That is plainly false. In fact, in the past, it was common for girls to be officially or unofficially prohibited from athletics.
The primary reasons, as I have already said but will explain further, is that girls are at far more of a genetic disadvantage, have had huge social and cultural disadvantages that no boy ever has, and that the distinction is the easiest distinction one can possible make on a genetic basis.
There is simply no comparable “Genetic disadvantage” a boy can have, unless we are actually getting into the realm of significant disability (which is why we do have divisions for people with disabilities.)
Wow, really? The VAST MAJORITY of young men can’t play organized sports? Well, that’s just bullshit, and you know it is. Of course that is false. In fact, the majority of boys DO play organized sports at some point - to be honest, I am hard pressed to name very many guys I knew who have not - and it is absolutely false to state that all the ones who have not were “excluded,” as opposed to simply being disinterested. (Indeed, the one friend I have who never played organized sports I am aware of is actually in very good shape. It just never was his thing as a kid.)
Schools will often have many levels of the same sport. There may be varsity, jr varsity, and maybe jr varsity A, B, C,… depending on popularity. It’s not unusual for schools in Texas to have 3-4 football teams for different levels of abilities. Some of the sports (e.g. cross country) may be no-cut, which means anyone can be on the team almost regardless of ability. So just because someone can’t be on the varsity football team doesn’t mean they can’t play sports. Not everyone will get to play on their sport of choice regardless of ability. Because of budget reasons, not every sport can support all participants. But if you were in a school where everyone wanted to play football, there likely would be many jr varsity teams and the lower level ones might be no-cut where anyone could be on the team.
I don’t think this is ambiguous at all. Title IX says:
This has been interpreted and implemented as essentially saying that schools need to give girls an equal opportunity to play sports as boys. Not that there’s a sport-by-sport equivalence.
Emphasis mine. That last point tends to be the critical point for most schools in the US. The rules are different as they apply to the “underrepresented” gender. Meaning that boys do not get the special privilege to play sports designated for women. It would be obviously anti-competitive and dangerous but you simply can’t point to “equal treatment” as an excuse, the statute is pretty well established here.
Think about this from a practical standpoint. A women’s field hockey team with 10 boys will almost always beat a team with all girls. Teams will recruit boys to compete. Over time every team will become a all boys team in practice simply due to competition. Allowing boys to play girls sports has the same effect as converting that sport to a men’s sport and removing “equal participation”.
This has been tried in court and failed every time.
This would especially happen in schools in which the boys version of a sport was cut. Sometimes in sports which might traditionally have boys and girls versions (e.g. swimming), the school will only have a girls version because of budget reasons or whatever. If boys were allowed on the girls swim team, then it would likely become a team with almost all boys.
IMO, the girls are more “susceptible” to an injury from a really hard shot than the boys are.
Strangely enough, Massachusetts, which let the boy compete in a girls’ meet, did this in late 2017 when a girl, who went to a school without a girls’ golf team, played on her school’s boys’ team, and ended up “winning” a regional individual championship, only to be told that she wasn’t eligible for the individual title as she could only compete in the girls’ state golf tournament if she wanted to compete as an individual rather than as part of her school’s team.
If there is an issue that girls aren’t allowed to play on boys’ teams that are due to policy, change the policy. However, most of the arguments here are about giving girls their own leagues because they can’t physically compete against the best of the boys. That same limitation applies to the vast majority of boys.
Two different issues. Genetic disadvantage or social and cultural disadvantages. Title IX didn’t say give girls an opportunity to make the boys’ teams, it said you have to have as many girls playing sports as you have boys (percentage wise). If the issue is cultural, just legislate that girls must be allowed to try out for boys’ teams. If the claim is that they don’t stand a chance because of genetic disadvantages, well, welcome to world where most of the rest of us reside.
Genetics, not desire, not opportunity, not training, are what keep me from being able to compete. How is that not comparable? I don’t care how hard I train, I will never be able to compete against the best athletes. So I have the same genetic disadvantage as any girl. The genetic disadvantage is completely comparable.
The majority of boys play organized sports at some point? Sure. As do the majority of girls. I’d be hard pressed to name any girl I knew growing up who didn’t play sports. I grew up in the 70s. In high school is where things start to separate. At that level the number of boys I knew playing sports dwindled, significantly. As it did with girls. By college, the number playing for the college team was likely in the single digit percentages. I didn’t know a single male playing on any collegiate teams in any of the three colleges I attended. So yes, the VAST majority of men can’t play organized sports once you get beyond grade school.
Based on this argument, there shouldn’t need to be a special team just for girls. If they can’t make the varsity football team doesn’t mean they can’t play sports. Maybe they can go play on the jr varsity team where there might be no-cuts.
You’d still have inequality because there are typically quality and funding differences at the different level. The varsity sport will have the best coaches, uniforms, transportation, etc. Jr varsity will be lesser quality. If there was just one sport called “Swimming”, the varsity would have all boys, jr varsity would be mostly boys, and jr varsity B might be 50/50. There would not be an option for highly competitive girls to have the same experience as the highly competitive boys. With a varsity version for both boys and girls, each gender gets to have an equal experience of top-level competition.
Yes, you are exactly right which is why it is great we have leagues dedicated to only women. It is important we recognize that having opportunities to compete like that are good for the participants, even if they aren’t the best of the best.
Which also means the boys who aren’t good enough to make the varsity team are similarly working with inferior coaches, facilities and such. For a football team, a few dozen boys out of hundreds get the best opportunity, whereas the rest are given an inferior one. Creating a girls only option allows for some girls to compete at that level, but that decision was made because the girls can’t compete against the best boys. Which is also true for most of the rest of the boys.
One difference is that the non-competitive boys typically will have imperfect skills even if they can beat the top girls. Their greater strength gives them an inherent advantage that a girl can’t overcome regardless of skill. Like in swimming, the difference between boys and girls is almost totally due to muscular development. The top boys and girls will both have excellent technique, but the boys are almost always stronger. They boys are not better swimmers, they are stronger swimmers. The jv boy swimmers may be faster than varsity girls, but they are not better swimmers. Their advantage comes from being naturally stronger and having hearts that can push more blood. The highly competitive girls need coaches who can spot small changes that give .01 second improvements. That kind of coaching would not be as relevant at the jv level. The jv boys would not need the same level of coaching as the varsity boys. Lumping top girls with jv boys would not be useful to either group as they need different coaching.
You say, “their greater strength” as if every boy has greater strength than every girl. That just isn’t true. Even if it were true, only the top boys get to compete at the varsity level because they are stronger than the boys at the lower levels. There are going to be boys with better skill who can’t make varsity because they aren’t as strong as some of the boys who can overcome the skill deficit with strength. So here again, there are boys who are just as left out of sports as any girls. But we don’t bat an eye at the boys whose genetics keep them from those highest levels. We tell them to go find something else to do and don’t think twice about it.
One reason why there aren’t special teams for boys with lesser athletic ability is this… How would that even work? Do you have a “kind of fast” team, a “kind of slow” team, and a “really slow” team? What about the “weak muscle” team, the “no depth perception” team, the “constantly out of breath” team? There is no clear way to divide up competition for boys who are of varying athletic ability due to genetic factors.
Boys and girls, that’s easy to divide up though. And weight classes for certain sports. If it’s simple to make such a delineation, it’s more likely to happen.
Another thing to remember is that girls who are poor athletes are unlikely to qualify for girls’ teams. I don’t know why there is this focus on boys that can’t compete physically being discriminated against in favor of girls. The girls have the same obstacles to overcome.