Of course it doesn’t work. It is a continuous spectrum of abilities and genetics that would make it impossible to create delineations between. Using sex is a great way to help divide different genetics as was pointed out earlier. It is about the best we can do.
You make my point when you say there are girls who are poor athletes unlikely to qualify for girls’ teams. But there aren’t legal obligations to setup special leagues and teams and competitions for those girls simply because they can’t qualify. Because of Title IX, special leagues and teams were setup so girls could compete because there is no way they could compete against the boys. Apparently it is imperative that some people with a genetic disadvantage be given these opportunities but for others it apparently isn’t that important. That goes for both boys and girls.
I don’t know of a better way to divide things to give more opportunities to all who want them. It is great we give women these opportunities. We should try to do more of that. But if a girl can’t compete against the boys and has to find other avenues, well, welcome to the world in which many of us somehow manage to get along just fine.
I just cannot summon an ounce of concern when people are excluded from competitions because of genetics. It is a reality most of us face, including boys.
Even if there were no girl sports, this is still the case. In football this exact situation happens since there is only boys football programs. There are only so many spots for varsity football. Boys who don’t make the cut for varsity play in one of the jr varsity teams. If the non-varsity boys were allowed to play for the varsity girls teams, then the varsity girls teams would be almost all boys. So there’d essentially be two varsity boys teams and girls would be only on the lower-level teams.
And it’s not the case that lesser-skilled boys are shut out from sports. They may not be able to play on the highest-level team, but that would happen regardless of whether there were girls teams or not. Even at an all-boys school, not every boy will be able to play on whatever team at whatever level they like.
While I certainly agree that resources spent towards girls teams means that fewer boys can play sports, I don’t see that as a bad thing. Many girls are highly competitive and sports are a great outlet for them. Without an artificial balancing of opportunity, girls as a gender were effectively cut out of sports. They would have just a few sports and they would be poorly funded. The personal development benefits that come from being on a highly competitive team did not exist for many girls before things like Title IX. And now that we have had a generation of girls going through competitive programs, we are seeing the emergence of first-rate professional women sports like basketball and soccer. Without girl-only teams, that level of talent would not have been developed.
You expressed no concern that boys at an all boys school who aren’t good enough for the highest levels don’t get to play. Most people don’t. Yet to many it is important girls be allowed to play. Every justification that is given to provide girls their own leagues and opportunities where they don’t have to compete against boys can be used to justify forming leagues for boys with genetic disadvantages. Some of those boys are competitive and sports would be a great outlet. Without artificial balances boys with genetic disadvantages would be cut out. They would have few sports and would be poorly funded.
None of these justifications for providing opportunities to girls elude me. But for whatever reason, people don’t seem to feel those sames rationales apply to boys.
I think it is fair to say, “All that does apply to boys, but it is impossible to create the opportunities for boys of all genetics in practicality”, that’d be fair. But that is never the argument. The argument is always, “Girls can’t compete against boys because of genetics” and I think that is a weak argument for the reasons I’ve been saying.
Probably only in that, at high school level, “typical” boys who are athletes tend to be bigger/heavier than “typical” girls that are.
If you want true “equality” in sports, it’s simple; all sports are co-ed, and set up so that boys and girls compete separately. In, say, basketball, one sex plays the first half, and the other sex plays the second half (“Which plays which?” Have the home team decide) - I would say “alternate quarters,” but I am under the impression that having a team play the first quarter, sit out the second, and play the third (or second, third, fourth) is just asking for any number of pulled muscles.
It is easier to do in most “individual” sports like track & field, swimming, or cross country (and aren’t most high school varsity track meets simultaneous boys’ and girls’ meets anyway?); have everybody compete “normally” and then add up the boys’ and girls’ points.
For tennis, my idea is, start with three doubles sets - one boys’ doubles, one girls’ doubles, and one mixed doubles; then, each team has three boys’ singles players that each play a set against each opponent (i.e. each player plays three sets), and three girls’ singles players that also each play a set against each opponent. Best of 21 sets wins.
“But what about football?” Wait for enough mothers to say, “I’m not letting my son play football!”; problem solved.
The meets are still scored separately as boys vs. boys/girls vs. girls. There are occasionally invitational meets where the points are added together for a mixed team championship but the actual competition is still gender divided.
Nothing, other than a history of discrimination has led one of these groups to call attention to itself and demand unique opportunities. If the unathletic care about having their own athletic opportunities, the onus is on them to make the case for it. Usually, at the college level at least, this comes in the form of club sports.
Sure, I know that but are they less resilient to injury from a ball struck by a boy than a boy would be? I can’t think why they would be and if they aren’t then the risk of injury in a mixed sport is not worse than in boys v boys game.
cmosdes, I’m one of those guys who have those genetic disadvantages you mention. There are a lot of women who are physically stronger than me. But one obvious practical problem with a league just for guys like me is, how do you identify us? If you have any sort of competitive tryouts, then the teams will be full of the guys who have genetic disadvantages, but who practiced and worked out harder, or who had other genetic advantages that compensate for the disadvantages, or whatever. And how do you tell the difference between one of those guys and the guys at the lower end of those who don’t have such disadvantages?
With sex, it’s easy, because there are a whole lot of easily-detectable traits that go along with the traits that disadvantage women in sports (at least, usually, and those cases where the correlations aren’t perfect do indeed cause headaches for things like sex-segregated sports). If you have a vagina, it’s generally assumed that you also have a package of genes that make you physically weaker. But there’s no obvious marker that I have the genes I do. You’d have to isolate the specific genes and run DNA tests, and even then, there’d be other genes with similar effects that you’d be missing.
“Women are more prone to injuring joints such as the shoulders and knees. Weaker shoulder muscles and looser supporting tissues mean the joint is less stable than in men, reports writer Michael Lasalandra, in an interview with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center sports medicine physician Bridget Quinn. Also, the injury rate to the anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL, a major knee ligament, is significantly higher in female than in male athletes. By proper training and strengthening of supporting muscles, women can prevent such injuries.”
“Male athletes have longer and larger bones, which provide a clear mechanical advantage over female athletes. The increased articular surface and larger structure of male bones provide them with a greater leverage and a wider frame on which to support muscle. Similarly, the ligaments of female athletes are generally more lax and fragile than those of their male counterparts. This gives male athletes an advantage in sports that involve throwing, kicking and hitting, and explains the higher incidence of musculoskeletal injuries among female athletes. On the other hand, female athletes have a wider pelvis and a lower center of gravity, which provides excellent balance.”
This article from Duke University shows the overwhelming performance gap between men and women and makes a very strong argument why it’s necessary to have separate athletic competition for the sexes:
I’m not really bothered if people don’t get access to sportsball because of genetics. That is the reality most of us face, boys and girls.
Access to sportsball for all who want it is the right thing to do but impossible. So we do the next best thing and divide access along clear demarcations, as you indicated. That’s fair and fine. But to ignore the fact we are still denying access to sportsball for equally disadvantaged peopled is disingenuous.
Everyone seems okay denying access to sportsball for the majority of boys, but if we deny that access to girls it all of a sudden becomes vitally important to have access. That is the part I’m railing against.
Yes, they are; my point was, if they wanted to “combine” them, they could do it without any hassle. Also note that, in all of the sports I mentioned, it would always be “boys against boys, and girls against girls.”
One reason this will almost certainly never happen; it disqualifies all single-sex schools that can’t find a “partner” school where all of its students are the opposite sex from competing. For example, one of the top football high schools in the country, De La Salle of Concord, CA, is boys-only; however, literally “right next door” is all-girls Cardonelet High School.
I believe this statement is false and I would appreciate if you could provide some concrete examples of it. I’m not understanding your position.
Many sports have both varsity and jv levels. Some sports will have multiple jv levels to enable less talented people to play. How is a genetically disadvantaged person denied access to sports? Just because they can’t be on the varsity team doesn’t mean they can’t play sports or have a competitive experience.
And many sports have positions which don’t require a significant amount of genetic luck. Take the setter in volleyball as an example. The setter is all about finesse to get the ball to the power strikers. A setter doesn’t have to be particularly strong or fast. Being a defender in soccer is another example. Someone doesn’t have to be super fast to be a good defender. They can use strategy to prevent shots taken on goal. So you don’t have to have super strength or super speed to play at the varsity level if that’s what you want.
Or the person could join a less popular or no-cut sport. Sports like diving often don’t have many people on the team and would have slots for just about anyone. Sports like cross country are setup to be no-cut and everyone who wants to is allowed to join.
Why do we need separate leagues for girls if all that is true? Why not have the girls just do what you are advocating the lower skilled boys do?
What does it mean to you to have someone participate in sportsball? To me, it is getting to have more than a pittance of play time in an actual competition. By junior or senior year of high school there are very few of those positions available. By college they are even rarer. While some of what you say is true, that no cut positions and lower skill positions are available, usually by the time kids are in their 3rd year of high school even those are gone.
Also, much of this depends on what level of sportsball you want to discuss. Title IX is collegiate level. Are you saying there are jv football teams and no-cut cross country teams in collegiate sports at most universities? That would be news to me. Even at the high school level, there aren’t an unlimited number of spots available. By the second half of high school even those are generally only going to be for freshman or sophomores. If you can’t make varsity by your junior year people are often encouraged to go find something else to do. And then what? A junior who trained the majority of their time in soccer is supposed to go show up and try to make the varsity volleyball team as a setter or take up diving? Right.
At the high school level and beyond, the concept of equal play time is gone. So now you need to define what participating means when you have people who technically made the team but ride the bench the entire season. My son’s junior year in high school he played about 20 minutes the entire season in soccer. He was cut his senior year. He was on the team his junior year, sure, but all that meant was that he got to practice with the team and then sit on the bench while everyone else played. Is that really participating? Because if it is, we can solve this really, really easily. Let the teams have as many people as they want on the team and then only play the top X number of them. There, problem solved. Now the girls can be on the boys’ team. If that isn’t participating, we are back to my original statement, which is that participating is not available to those with genetic disadvantages, boys or girls.
Youth hockey is coed until about age 14 when the girls seperate.
Thing is girls can “play down” one year. Meaning a 14 year old girl can play on an under 13 team. That tends to make them sometimes the best player on the team until about age 14 when the boys are equal or better and the girls switch to all girls teams.
Same as in little league baseball. Many girls play at the younger levels but stop about 6th grade and switch to all girls softball.
I spend a lot of time in soccer and this is patently false. A defender does a lot more than just “use strategy to prevent shots taken on goal.” Way more. Let alone the notion someone without significant soccer experience can pick up the strategy within a few weeks. Someone that has spent the previous 10 years playing football and suddenly finds themselves outweighed by 50lbs and shorter by 6" to everyone else around them will NOT be able to just walk over to the soccer pitch and say, “Okay, I’ll just be a varsity player here.” I can only assume the same is true for a setter in volleyball. There isn’t any high school sport I know of that the “genetically disadvantaged” can just walk on and get significant participation at the varsity level. And, as I said, if you aren’t varsity worthy by junior year you likely aren’t going to have a spot on the jv team.
With transgender women and girls competing, can we still point to genetic differences? What is the genetic difference between a transgender girl/woman and a cisgender boy/man?
cmosdes, I still don’t see how you think allowing boys to play on girls teams would solve all those problems you mention. Aren’t all those things issues at an all boys school with all boys teams? Some boys won’t make varsity. Some boys will have to play at a lower level. Some boys will sit on the bench for significant parts of the game. Some boys eventually will not make the team at any level. Some boys will have to learn a new sport and start at the bottom. All that happens at a boys schools. So what would letting boys be on the girls team solve?
And keep in mind that the reason many of those girls teams are there in the first place is the parents supported them being created so girls could play on them. If instead the girls teams were turned into gender-neutral teams and boys played on them, those teams would likely go away because the parents wouldn’t support them being funded. So don’t look at them as two bonus extra teams that boys can play on. They were created for girls, and they would go away if boys started playing on them.