Jamie Reidy calls bullsh** on Title IX.
I wasn’t looking for the emotional combo platter when I sat down to read this Sumathi Reddy essay about problems New York City high schools are having in funding boys’ sport teams. Anger, depression, and helplessness are not the way I normally kick off my weekend.
The Public Schools Athletic League approved 100 new girls’ sports teams citywide for the current school year…But few, if any, new boys sports teams got off the ground. The reason? According to Marge Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Education, a continuing federal probe into its high-school sports programs has left the PSAL focusing on adding girls teams.
The federal government did the right thing when it enacted Title IX in 1972. Female athletes in high school and college simply did not have equal access to participation and facilities as did their male peers. And that was some bigtime bullshit.
Fortunately, Title IX succeeded wildly in its main intention: enabling women’s sports to prosper.
But forty years later, men’s sports are footing the bill for that prosperity. (See: earlier “bullshit” comment)
These teenage athletes in New York don’t care about budget shortfalls and recessionary challenges. These kids care about trying out for shortstop and challenging the senior starter at point guard for playing time.
I love how Ms. Reddy ended her essay:
The school system should be grooming the next Jennifer AND Jeremy Lins, not choosing one over the other.
We need to find a solution. GMP readers, who’s got next?
Guys are guys and girls are girls …. feminism wants them to be the same. It’s that simple. Some of the things I’ve read in here make me want to blow chuncks. I’m not saying that one has less value then the other but they are not the same. Guys are physical, it’s that simple. And no Heather, they don’y have the same physical capabilities. Take anatomy course. Women are build differently.
My school openly flaunted title IX in our faces, even when we demanded that they treat men’s sports on par with womens (they had 3 more women’s teams). Title IX is a joke.
Here’s the real answer, from a veteran high school teacher and administrator. High school football programs have swelled into a bloated sacred cow, diverting scarce financial sources from other boys programs – but only a few of those football players will see real time on the field and many of the others will not have a true competitive experience. This on-field hierarchy establishes an unhealthy off-field hierarchy as well, which lowers these boys’ self-esteem and their behavior is often sycophantic. Instead of learning to compete, the third string are learning to accept being less-than, third-rate, which is not a positive… Read more »
When I was in high school, there was, of course, girls’ gym class. And on one afternoon a week, after school, there was GAA, Girls’ Athletic Association. They could wear shorts and, iirc, play volleyball and girls’ rules basketball and so forth. No boys allowed in the gym. In 1962, we started a lax club at Mich State. After a number of years of club status, the team went varsity. Some years after that, it was Title Nined back to club status. The womens’ lax team is varsity, with all the support that implies. I figure it means the girls… Read more »
The idea of Title IX was good. In 1972. This is 2012. The problem with Title IX is that it is still specfically architected and engineered to cut/eliminate boys’/men’s teams to make room for girls’/women’s teams to create numerical equality, even if there are more boys/men who want to play. It’s an artificial / contrived equality. The good news is that Title IX has been a tremendous boon for girls and young women (which was needed), but it has been a 36 car burning train wreck for boys. It has decimated hundreds and hundreds of boys/men’s high school and college… Read more »
How dare you confuse the issue with logic and reason Eric! Seriously though,, your so right about the general physical state of young men. Isee high school aged boys with the bodies of neglectful middle age men everyday and shudder to think what they’ll be like when they are in fact middle age. One thing that I feel would help is phys ed classes that focus on fitness training instead of making teenagers play sports in gym class that most of them don’t want to play. Fitness training is something everyone can do. No special athletic skill is required. And… Read more »
The problem is that “fitness training” is a meaningless term
I can distinctly pick out in the article Ms. Elizabeth Crowley, Ms. Angela O’Heir, Mr. Bruce Gascal, and Mr. Radu Negru all voicing their concerns about their children. How about: “Parents of Boys Cry Foul Over Title IX in New York City.”
My usual weird response to stuff like this: How does the district really know or prove that a player is a boy or a girl? Someone somewhere down the line must have challenged Title IX on the grounds of inadequate gender categories. There are more than two possibilities, you know. What about transgender or transsexual or intersexed people? What if the parents choose not to designate one or the other? In answer to TG, I think the argument is that boys and girls are physically different. There is an actual significant physiological difference, whereas racial difference is really just a… Read more »
Title IX is trying to do something on the basis of gender that the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional on the basis of race: have separate and equal institutions. When it comes to racial categories, the wisdom is that whenever there is racial segregation it will tend to be unequal. One will always gain at the expense of the other(s). Our legal system came to the conclusion that “separate but equal” is an awful idea. So, what’s the theory to explain why it’s acceptable and practical to segregate on the basis of sex? Should we also have separate drinking fountains and… Read more »
“So, what’s the theory to explain why it’s acceptable and practical to segregate on the basis of sex? ” For separating sports based on sex, I’ve always heard the explanation is to do with different physical abilities between boys and girls. I’ve personally found this a bit bogus….just have a Varsity and JV team…and maybe a third division. And mix the genders up – if more boys happen to be on the Varsity team, then so be-it. I also question just how valid the argument is about boys being more physically able than girls, particularly at a young age….which is… Read more »
Being only 25 years old (and so having never been around when girls sports were non-existent), I’ve always had a problem with Title IX. Girls sports teams are valued now…we don’t need policies to force them into existence. Whenever I’ve thought about a solution, I’ve always wondered why we don’t just take kids sports and de-gender them. Not at the high school age…but younger. Is there really that much of a difference between the physical abilities of a boy and a girl before they hit puberty? (I’m not looking for a agenda-charged answer to that. I really want to know… Read more »
“… why we don’t just take kids sports and de-gender them …”
Brilliant. I thought we would never agree on anything 🙂
lol. I bet we agree on quite a few things…it’s just that discussing the differences in ideas and opinions is where change and growth happens. Or at least…I know that I’ve never grown much when I’ve been surrounded by people who agree with everything I say. 🙂
Youth sports teams are “degendered” to some extent . My daughters played soccer on boys teams growing up and my son had girls playing in his local Little Leauge baseball program, and in fact had 2 girls on his baseball Travel team. Of course , the crossover is only allowed in one direction.
Hmm interesting. In my town there was a big push to keep sports separated. I played on the boys baseball team for one year before they got girl’s softball…then after that they didn’t allow girls any more.
I’m thinking instead of even allowing for crossover – i.e. having girls play on a boys team (or even boys playing on a girls team), they just shouldn’t be separated at all. Just make a local team, and don’t designate whether it’s a girls or boys team.