It’s all fun and games until someone is the wrong gender – as is the case with a 13 year-old boy who wants to play girls’ field hockey.
A few weeks ago 13 year-old Keeling Pilaro was kicked off Southampton High School’s girls’ varsity field hockey team after playing with them for two years. As a bit of background, it’s worth noting that Keeling was raised in Ireland where, like most European countries, field hockey is very popular and there are plenty of opportunities for boys to play. However after coming to The States, Keeling’s only option to continue playing the sport he has been active in for so long was to join the girls’ team at his school. As a result he had to get special permission to play on the girls team.
It was determined by Section 11, the overseeing body of Suffolk County’s high school sports programs, that as a boy he had a very significant advantage over the girl players. The executive director of the governing body, Ed Cinelli, had a bit more to say:
“As a sport, it’s a girls sport. When a boy plays, it leads the way for other male players to come in and take over.”
However Keeling has been playing with the girls’ team for the last two years and I’m sure that if there were a bunch of male players trying to “take over” they would have been mentioned right?
But anyway there seemed to be a bit of a clashing of provision and law.
In one corner you have Title IX, a 40-year-old law enacted to provide women equal access to athletic opportunities. The use of this law by a male may be rare but due to boys’ field hockey not being available on Long Island, and scarce throughout the rest of the United States, it may be a valid claim.
In the other corner is Ed Cinelli of Section 11, with a provision of state education law that says they are allowed to ban boys from playing on girls’ sport teams if Keeling’s participation “would have a significant adverse effect on a girl’s opportunity to participate in interschool competition in that sport.” Officials seem to believe that Kelling’s skills are now at a point that he would have an unfair advantage over the girls that he would be playing with/against. (This may explain why they were fine with him playing for the last two years but now suddenly want to ban him from playing.)
An appeals hearing was held a few days ago and after a vote (that was not unanimous) he has been allowed to continue playing.
In the first ruling to bar him from the team it was cited that the young man made it onto the all-conference team last season when he was in the eighth grade.
At the appeal hearing, supporters for Keeling countered with citing that there was at least one eighth grade girl who made the all-conference team that year as well. Also while he made all-conference he did not earn all-county honors, far more prestigious than all-conference. Additionally the team only finished fourth in their conference that year.
So he has been allowed to continue playing with the girls’ field hockey team… for now.
The officials that kicked him off the team initially said they only considered his skills, not his size or strength. Well his size and strength are going to increase as he ages and they will influence his skills in the sport (think about whether or not Shaquille O’neal’s near 20 years of dominance on the courts of the NBA had anything to do with his size and strength). Chances are they will increase to the point that Section 11 will one day decide that he is indeed “too skilled” to play on the girls’ team.
So what do you think?
Should Keeling be allowed to continue playing, should he be barred now, or allowed to play until he does develop physically to the point that he is “too good” to play with girls?
Do stories like this and those of boys teams forfeiting games because of a single girl on the opposing team mean that even with things like Title XI that promote gender equality in sports we still have problems with boys and girls playing together?
Is it right to allow girls to play on boy’s teams as they wish but allow boys to only play on girl’s teams until their physical development surpasses that of girls?
Image of Hockey Stick on Field courtesy of Shutterstock
About Danny
When there is no difference in development, how is there going to be a superiority in the sport due to gender. If a boy feels okay about playing with the girls (I bet he already faces social stigma) then he should go for it!
I have to agree with you Hollowpetal. 35 years after I played little league baseball, there was at least one girl who pitched in every league/age group. No one said she had an unfair advantage due to puberty, being a girl, or the fact that her body produced more estrogen than any boy in the league – yet she was allowed to continue to play, despite the fact that she took a positition from a boy no one cried “foul”. None of the female players/pitchers had to file a lawsuit or any type of appeal and “win” the right to play with boys on any boys team – whether it be football, wrestling or the like. No one supported my “right” to play on the girls volleyball team and I was told that title 9 did not apply to me. I wasn’t even allowed to register for a softball class at the community college because the coach would not allow me to play (earn college credit) “with a bunch of girls”. Girls can play football, wrestling, and even be a placekicker on a college football team, but a boy four foot eight isn’t allowed to pick up his field hockey stick and play with girls that are taller and probably stronger than him – thanks title 9 for the state of equality you’ve achieved. The singer Beyonce had a song out recently entitled “if I were a boy”.., sometimes being a boy really is the pits.
The singer Beyonce had a song out recently entitled “if I were a boy”.., sometimes being a boy really is the pits.
Wasn’t that the song where Beyonce spent about 3 minutes cherry picking the so called good parts of being male and then leaving it at that?
Beyonce sang about gynocentric feminism?:P *don’t kill me plz!*
i’m with you Archy.., while she reaches for a dictionary and looks up the word “gynocentric”, i’m going to duck and cover.., YIPES!!
I think this is one of those areas where it is just silly to ignore the fact that men and women are physically different and boys in general do have an advantage over girls in terms of size and strength. Obviously there are individual variations. Maybe a particular boy is mediocre in a sport compared to other boys but average compared to girls. But how are you going to decide that this boy is “average” enough that he doesn’t have an unfair advantage? Where do you draw the line? If he is an asset to the team, is that the point you say he’s too good to play with the girls? (Which seems silly since why would the team want him if he’s not an asset.) There just doesn’t seem to be a good answer.
Sarah, this artical refers BOYS, not teenage boys or young men. Girls and boys are quite balanced until puberty where they start becoming stronger and have some advantages, but with hockey agility and speed are important perhaps in this sport men might be at a disadvantage to women. Who knows, but if its a case between the boy not getting to play at all because there might be A CHANCE he gives his team an advantage or not playing at all. What one is truely fair and rational? This isn’t about a boy just wanting to be on a girl’s team, he wants to play the sport he loves. I know when I used to play rounders and netball there would be A mixed team because there were not enough of one gender for there to be A full team.
Sarah: “I think this is one of those areas where it is just silly to ignore the fact that men and women are physically different and boys in general do have an advantage over girls in terms of size and strength. Obviously there are individual variations.”
Funny how this biological absolute is always trotted out when highlighting situations like in the article above. Yet, if a girl wanted to play on a boys team, you’d be hearing “There’s no differences between the sexes. Let her play otherwise you’re discriminating”.
I remember reading about a teen girl who played basketball. She wanted to play on the boys team to compete at a higher level. My understanding is this girl was incredible. She was head and shoulders better (and taller) than the best each school had to offer in her district.
It was posited that she had a right to play on the boys team to accelerate her basketball career. If I remember correctly she won. In other words, even though she had a girls team to play on, she was allowed to take a spot on the boys team, thus knocking a boy out of the game.
This isn’t the same situation with the boy. If he doesn’t get to play on the girls team, he doesn’t get to play AT ALL.
If he is willing to weather the social stigma of playing on the girls team to do what he loves, then it is a different scenario. Would he be knocking a girl from a spot on the team? Yes. However, since there is no boys team it becomes about everybody on the team chasing their dream of playing field hockey irrespective of gender. It becomes about who is the best, and if he earns a spot on the team, this is just as fair to the girl that got pushed because this is the only way he can play. This boy can’t be the only boy in his district with a love of the game. In this type of instance, I would be for just changing the rules to mixed gender teams districts.
When it is problematic and I believe it is wrong is when there are already a boys and a girls team and players of either gender want to switch. This turns things into a gender war.
As in the case of the basketball girl I mentioned above. If she can play on the boys team to accelerate her career, then in the name of equal rights boys should be allowed to play on the girls teams.
However, this would open the handful to several dozens of boys in each school who didn’t make the cut or are mostly benched on boys teams trying out for girls teams so they could actually play (and knocking a lot of girls off the team in the process).
Annika Sorenstam tried out for the men’s PGA tour to make some kind of point. It turned out she didn’t even make the first round of cuts (she placed 90th or so).
However, the PGA won’t allow men to play on the women’s team (for the same reasons I mentioned in basketball, the men would sweep the LPGA if they were allowed to enter).
Girls or boys who can already play on their genders team should not be allowed to try out for the other. It creates to much antagonism, anger at displacing another player and a gender war. Nobody wins in those situations.
In Ireland, I know what generally happens is that mixed sports teams split at puberty: and if a girl wants to/has to continue playing with boys, she usually plays an age group down. For example, there was no girls’ rugby team in my friend’s local club, so when she was 16 she played with the boys’ under 14′s team.
I also play field hockey, and in my experience, there is a noticeable difference in men’s and women’s playing styles in general, but that’s not to say that men are inherently better in the game. In secondary school we had an annual boys vs girls match, and the odds of either team winning just depended on how good the team was; boys didn’t dominate.
But maybe a similar solution could be proposed for Keeling? It’s not uncommon for players to move up an age group if they’re good, and it sounds like he is, and I don’t think they could argue too much about that: it’s not like he’d be advantaged (or significantly disadvantaged) by playing with girls 2-3 years older than him.
Where are all the commenters who were up in arms over the team that forfeited rather than play against a girl? Why don’t they care about this child being kicked off due to his gender? Because he’s a boy? Why the outrage over a girl bit indifference towards a boys not being allowed to play based on gender?
The pattern of anti-male bias is clear and rock solid consistent.. A boys team won’t play against a girl – harsh criticism of the opposing team. Girls team kicks a boy off. Silence. Indifference. Implicit support (as evidenced by the contrast in reaction).
Laws that blatantly discriminate against boys and men – enthusiastic defense and support.
And then they act surprised about their anti-male reputation. . .
So do you think all sports should be co-ed then? Where does that leave girls’ sports? Boys will generally outperform the girls, and then eventually all the sports will be boy’s sports, and girls will be on the sidelines.
There are very few girls who can be competitive on a boy’s team. Allowing an occasional girl to join a Little League team is not going to destroy Little League. Allow boys to play on a girls’ softball team, and it stops being a girls’ softball team. It becomes co-ed softball, where most of the girls are marginalized.
If you have daughters, do you want them to have the opportunity to play sports or do you want them to sit on the bench while the boys play?
Hey Sarah, I think your missing a big point. There is a difference between boys and men. Not all boys have an advantage in strength before they hit puberty.
And even being bigger and stronger doesn’t give everyone an advantage in a sport, sports like hockyand even some martial arts, agility and speed is of more of an advantage.
Girls should be allowed to play on boys teams if the situation requires it (no girls teams) but the same right should be offered to the boys.
If I had a son I would be up in arms isn’t he had to sit on the bench just because he was a boy. This isn’t about the Olympics this about giving kids a chance to have fun. And about girls or boys being marginalised, I have this to say, if a boy want to play a “girl” sport then how do you think his mates would treat him. It’s each person’s right to decide if they can deal with that or not. I did martial arts when I was a kid. There were more boys than girls but I was not marginalised and I did not fell as if I could not compete with the boys, I was dedicated and trained more than most of them. And if I was in a gymnastics squad or some such, and I was a boy and everyone else was a girl, and they were more agile and graceful than me I would show the same dedication.
Sarah: “There are very few girls who can be competitive on a boy’s team. Allowing an occasional girl to join a Little League team is not going to destroy Little League. Allow boys to play on a girls’ softball team, and it stops being a girls’ softball team. It becomes co-ed softball, where most of the girls are marginalized. ”
Double-standard with a capitol “D”.
When a girl wants to do something on a boys team, bend over backwards to ensure she does.
When a boy wants to do something on a girls team, he’s marginalizing them.
It’s all the boys fault.
@Sarah
“Allowing an occasional girl to join a Little League team is not going to destroy Little League”
And allowing ONE FREAKING BOY to play on a girl’s team will not destroy the field hockey league
You’re talking about a single boy. You know what you do when you have a hoard of boys who want to play field hockey? You make a boy’s field hockey team. .
So do you think all sports should be co-ed then?”
No. Just apply Title IX for boys and girls, not just girls.
Or, make all sports single sex. Do one or the other; stop discriminating against boys..
“Allowing an occasional girl to join a Little League team is not going to destroy Little League. ”
The dame csn be said about an occasional boy, like on this case.
Or, keep the sexes seperate. Thst woukd resolve your concern, right? Kick the girls off boys’ teams and vice-versa. No discriminaton. Problem solved.
“If you have daughters, do you want them to have the opportunity to play sports or do you want them to sit on the bench while the boys play?”
Yes, I do have daughters but I’m not prejudiced against boys as some show themselves to be when situations like this arise.
Title IX is applied in discriminatory ways, as evidenced here. There was one boy on the team. One. No way one boy could keep all the girls on the bench or off the team.
Even I’d one slot is too many, the exact same thing applies to the girl. She took a slot a boy would otherwise have gotten.
Again, just do the right thing and be consistent, and no one has a right to complain.
As well, from what I’ve read the girls are just fine with him on the team. He’s a good scorer but not too fast (and considering that field hockey is not a contact sport, there is little reason to say he had a strength advantage)
“Allowing an occasional girl to join a Little League team is not going to destroy Little League. Allow boys to play on a girls’ softball team, and it stops being a girls’ softball team”
How is this a fair comparison?
How about allow an occasional boy to join the girls softball team, and it’s still softball. Your comment is quite odd and confusing?
Sarah, check out the video; the guy is towered over by the girls. There is no physical advantage.As well, he had no other option. Simply put, there is no boy’s field hockey in North America.
Allowing an occasional girl to join a Little League team is not going to destroy Little League. Allow boys to play on a girls’ softball team, and it stops being a girls’ softball team. It becomes co-ed softball, where most of the girls are marginalized.
As far as I can tell in two years only this is the only boy that even tried to get on the girls field hockey team. But even still one “reason” that came out was what you say here. Claiming that boys are going to move in and take over. One boy in two years is not indicate boys trying to take over the girls’ team and it certainly doesn’t mean girls are being marginalized.
If you have daughters, do you want them to have the opportunity to play sports or do you want them to sit on the bench while the boys play?
If you have sons do you think they should have the opportunity to play sports or have to just go play something else or not play at all because he might try to “take over” a girls’ sports team?
Girls team kicks a boy off.
Just to be clear it was the governing body that oversees sports for that county that kicked him off. The girls on the field hockey that he played with supported him staying on.
I agree with much of what Sarah said above “I think this is one of those areas where it is just silly to ignore the fact that men and women are physically different and boys in general do have an advantage over girls in terms of size and strength. Obviously there are individual variations. Maybe a particular boy is mediocre in a sport compared to other boys but average compared to girls. But how are you going to decide that this boy is “average” enough that he doesn’t have an unfair advantage? Where do you draw the line? If he is an asset to the team, is that the point you say he’s too good to play with the girls? (Which seems silly since why would the team want him if he’s not an asset.) There just doesn’t seem to be a good answer.”
Eric, I also agree that most people express support for the girl when the tables are turned. The particular team with the forfeit incident is just around the corner from us, so we read a bit about it and it got some news coverage. I can see where, if there is a particular sport that just isn’t available for one gender, to play with the opposite sex, such as in both of the cases referenced. The girl on the Mesa team did not have a girl’s baseball/softball team at her school, same with the field hockey story. I’m guessing that if no formal action were taken against the boy on the field hockey team, he might eventually look to another sport or venue if he really DOES get to a point where biology wins out and he’s THAT much better than the girls. Maybe just let that happen organically? And who knows, maybe people are just making assumptions about his skill level because he’s a boy. But where to draw the line? I don’t know, because there ARE physical differences. I would be knocked dead on a pro-football field, no matter how awesome of shape I may be in, that’s just a fact of life.
Why should he have to look to another sport? That’s the whole point of Title IX – that no one should be denied their desire to play based on their gender. It’s that simple, or at least it should be.
I said other sport OR venue. they should not HAVE to look to another sport, hence the other venue, but sometimes there are just different things available recreationally for boys and girls, that’s a fact of life. You know, i’m not even opposed to the boy in question playing on the team, but if my daughter’s soccer team got slaughtered by a team that had a clear physical advantage because of a boy who was further developed playing for them, i’d be bothered. i think the reason girls tend to get more support in these situations (when it’s the girl on the boys’ team) is because girls are not at a physical advantage, so there is no throwing a team off balance from a skill standpoint. not that that mentality is even right.
i think ignoring physical differences in the name of equality is silly in regard to sports. yes, there will always be exceptions, less athletic men and more athletic women, but there is no denying men simply have a physical advantage. commenters above stated that there is little difference before puberty, but puberty varies by years depending on the person. so, how do you clarify? do you tell the boy “you can play on the girl’s team until your voice begins to change, until you get pubic hair, etc?” i mean, come on.
Correction: that WAS a fact of life before Titile IX. A girl being told to find another sport would not be tolerated.
There IS no other venue for the boy to play in. I’m sure that many parents would be upset with a girl on the boys team, but they would be told to deal with it.
I’m sure you’re right. But there also wouldn’t be the question of a girl having a physical advantage over most if not all of the other players. i’m not saying either is right or wrong, just pointing the many variables and physical differences. and on the topic of a girl on a boys’ team: one of my good high school friends (a girl) played on an all boys rec football team. The other boys new she was a girl, and the opposing team would never tackle her or barely tackle her because they didn’t want to hurt her, so she had a psychological advantage. she knew this, and quit eventually. no matter how many people said it was “okay” that she played, she couldn’t erase other player’s perceptions of her.
Look up Brittamy Griner. She has a physical advantage over all other women. What do we do with her?
But he doesn’t have a physical advantage! He has out scored other players, but that is a learned skill, not a matter of strength. The other players say he is by no means the fastest.
In case you didn’t know, Sarah, it’s discrimination. You keep harping on about how the threat of girls sports team becomes co-ed when a boy wants to join it yet don’t so much as mind when a girl does the same.
Do you even see the double-standard here, or are you just selective about equality?
My concern is making sure girls have a fair chance to play sports and I think that single sex teams are important for that reason. As a general principle, I think that’s more important than letting girls play on boys teams and if girls are excluded from boys teams, that doesn’t really bother me as long as they have equal opportunities to play sports on girls’ teams.
But THERE IS NO BOYS’ TEAM, and there isn’t going to be in the immediate future. When boys take up field hockey en masse, then maybe it should be revisited.
Alright here’s a funny question: If a kid goes to a school that’s small enough it doesn’t have a JV and Varsity team, and most of the kids are at the JV level…but a few kids are really good so they would qualify for the Varsity team (if one existed) should they not be allowed to play? In a game like American football, where physical strength really is a factor, should really strong boys not be allowed to play because they could outperform the other players? In baseball, should the really coordinated players not be allowed to play, because they outperform? No. That’s all bollocks, obviously. Part of sports is about the idea that the most capable team/player wins.
How about we have gender-neutral sports teams…like actually gender-neutral…it’d make all of these troubles go away. Title IX was a necessary starting point, for sure….but we’re a good few decades and bunch of pro-women’s sports teams away from the society that needed that law. We’re not far enough out that we could just totally get rid of federal regulations regarding women and sports, because there are certainly schools that are facing enough funding issues that they’d cut out women’s sports in a heartbeat. But it needs to be revised so that it encourages schools to have gender-neutral sports teams.
They cut most men’s sports out too, when they have funding problems. Thanks to Title IX, they prefer to cut men’s sports when they face funding issues, in order to maintain the two big ones — football and basketball.
The difference is that through TV rights mens football and basketball actually fund themselves and a lot of the rest of the athletics–but it still counts for proportionality for title IX.
Also, competitive cheerleading doesn’t count because it’s not considered a sport.
If football and basketball could be taken off the table of title IX because they are self sufficient, then a lot of men’s teams could come back.
Some 30,000 mens teams positions at college (many with partial or full scholarships) have been cut nationwide over the past 14 years or so. This is primarily due to the fact that women have sued and won because schools did not have direct proportionality between athletes and student body (which is not the way title IX was supposed to be enforced).
Essentially mens teams are getting cut (like wrestling and tennis) simply because there is not enough interest in the female student body to get together women’s teams.
Men are being unfairly denied opportunity simply because men and women exhibit different interest in team sports.
HeatherN:
How about we have gender-neutral sports teams…like actually gender-neutral…it’d make all of these troubles go away. Title IX was a necessary starting point, for sure….but we’re a good few decades and bunch of pro-women’s sports teams away from the society that needed that law.
But I wonder how far away we are indeed when the same society that would fight tooth and nail for girl to play on a boys’ baseball team and fight tooth and nail to keep a boy off of a girls’ team.
We’re not far enough out that we could just totally get rid of federal regulations regarding women and sports, because there are certainly schools that are facing enough funding issues that they’d cut out women’s sports in a heartbeat.
As has been said its not just women’s sports that get cut over this.
“How about we have gender-neutral sports teams…like actually gender-neutral”
Thing is, this is one of the rare cases where gender dimorphism plays a genuine part. Maybe not at 13, but for older teenagers or adults it’s important for women to have a space where they can compete at their own level. Other than, maybe, archery or something.
“Thing is, this is one of the rare cases where gender dimorphism plays a genuine part. Maybe not at 13, but for older teenagers or adults it’s important for women to have a space where they can compete at their own level. Other than, maybe, archery or something.”
Then make teams based on ability rather than age or sex. That shouldn’t be too hard for 12+ yo where people should know the basic rules and “prove their level of skill”.
Actually that’s a brilliant suggestion.
“How about we have gender-neutral sports teams…like actually gender-neutral…it’d make all of these troubles go away.”
I agree about making them gender neutral, though I think it would create political problems. I think that should include the Olympics as well. No more “World’s Fastest Man” or “World’s Fastest Woman,” just “World’s Fastest Person.” Have male and female downhill skiers run the same course, and no separate starting points for men and women doing luge.
After all, the employment market ought to be totally gender neutral, men and women competing for the same jobs, so why should sports be any different?
Of course, that would probably lead _de facto_ to predominantly male sports, and many track-and-field events with only men in the final events. Of course, the gymnastics events would probably wind up being about the same, men on rings and women on the balance beam, but who knows?
I bet when it comes to opening sports to boys and girls there is much more resistance by women than there is by men.
What are you, like some kind of antifeminist or something? : – )
I am less thrilled with the idea of making professional or Olympic level sports gender neutral, and here’s why: there are physical differences between most men and women, and when we’re talking about people who train to the nth degree to get their bodies in as top shape as possible to compete against each other, that is even more pronounced. I’d be for looking at what sports in the Olympics (and what pro-sports) where sexual dimorphism doesn’t really come into play as much, and then make those gender neutral. I’m also for the idea of having the same starting spot for men and women in luge and skiing and all that…especially since they’re only competing against people of the same gender. Like, hello…there’s no point in having women all start lower down if their times and scores are only being compared to other women.
At the high school level (and younger), though, we’re not talking about people who are in peak physical condition. We’re talking about people who might be really flipping good, and may be really fit…but still at a lower skill level. And at that low a level, I think the physical differences are probably much less pronounced.
@ HeatherN
There are rules concerning size in boy’s sports. My nephew at 5′ 8″ and 180 lbs when he was 11 could not play linebacker or running back because he was told that he could injure other players. He could only play offensive or defensive line.
Boys team, girls team, co-ed team … it’s that simple. Why can’t it simply be kept that way?
because there’s no boys’ team. It’s either the girls team or nothing .
I am curious, to those saying men have the physical advantage, would you also agree we should pay men in physical labour jobs more than women in the same job due to increased ability?
Even further than that Archy, should we also refuse to support male victims of violence from females since they have the physical advantage?
No wait, we already do it anyway.
That is already true in the sense that most male dominated jobs, such as construction, pay significantly more than, for example, clerical work, which is dominated by women.
The admin staff at my office are all female and earn 2-3x what most construction workers earn, except they also have a nice benefits package, get to work in a climate controlled environment, and do their online shopping while getting paid. They also often get to work from home. Too bad they didn’t choose construction instead. . .
Clerical though isn’t a physical job is it? So there is no point paying different, for the sake of this argument I meant 2 people, 1 man, 1 woman do basic labour/hauling heavy shit for a day. If men have more physical ability, could they carry more, do more work in the same time as the woman? If so should they be paid more? It seems physical differences are spouted when it benefits some people to talk about it, eg men shouldn’t play with the women, men cause more damage in domestic violence, but what about workload and efficiency?
That is already true in the sense that most male dominated jobs, such as construction, pay significantly more than, for example, clerical work, which is dominated by women.
Not the same.
A better question is this.
A man and woman are both working on a loading dock. Should the man get paid more becuase he is larger and stronger than the woman?
Or better yet how would people react to the idea that if the manager of that dock was looking to higher someone to load crates the manager chose to look at only male applicants because, as people like to say, “men tend to larger and stronger than women”?
Surely in that case pay should be discriminated by strength and height rather than by gender. There was a case recently where Dublin Bus were found guilty of discrimination by only actually applying their height restrictions to a female candidate (male drivers existed who were below the required height).
“Or better yet how would people react to the idea that if the manager of that dock was looking to higher someone to load crates the manager chose to look at only male applicants because, as people like to say, “men tend to larger and stronger than women”?”
By the logic of Suffolk County schools, the stronger people should be kept off the loading dock for fear that they will take over the jobs of physically weaker people.
Ah well, as I’ve already said I think we need gender neutral sports. However, I’d like to point out the problem with comparing high school sports to jobs. It is generally accepted that in a job, the best qualified is (theoretically) meant to get the job. That’s the idea, anyway…competitive job market and all that. When it comes to high school sports (and younger), there is an underlying thought and discussion about how, since we’re talking about kids, it’s not all about winning. It’s also about giving people a chance to join a team, or play a sport they might not be all that good at, or do something to become part of a community and a group. The way society treats kids in a competitive environment is much more sympathetic than the way we do adults, generally speaking.
Even if they are different its still matter of saying that one case its okay in one case (high school sports) to discriminate by gender but not okay in the other (jobs).
When it comes to high school sports (and younger), there is an underlying thought and discussion about how, since we’re talking about kids, it’s not all about winning. It’s also about giving people a chance to join a team, or play a sport they might not be all that good at, or do something to become part of a community and a group.
“giving people a chance to join a team” eh? I know that you’re all for our young man here playing on the girls’ field hockey team. But it seems that for a lot of people the “what its all about” seems to be conditional.
It’s a bit different: Docks and dock workers exist to unload goods from ships. Sports exist to have fun, regardless of ability.
Sarah: “That is already true in the sense that most male dominated jobs, such as construction, pay significantly more than, for example, clerical work, which is dominated by women.”
Yeah, you know what? When Clerical jobs become twelve hour days in wildly varying temperatures, with significant risk of permanent injury or disability, and a near certain risk of chronic injury… then we’ll talk.
Actually, I don’t disagree with you in principle. More dangerous and difficult jobs do deserve higher pay.
It’s a bit bluntly put but 8ball’s right: Construction is paid more than filing for a reason.
I’m honestly not sure what my position is on this. While I was angered by the refusal of the Catholic school baseball team to play a team with a girl on it, I can see that if I’m going to be bothered by that, I should be equally bothered by this. Yet I can understand concern about male “ringers” taking over a girls’ sport, particularly if we extend the gender exceptions through high school, when boys do start to have a significant size advantage.
Perhaps the best solution, while admittedly an imperfect one, is a cap on the percentage of players who can be of the opposite sex. That is, up to ten percent of the boys’ baseball team can be female, and up to ten percent of the girls’ field hockey team can be male. Coaches wouldn’t be allowed to have more than one opposite-sex player on the field at a time. If there are many opposite-sex children who would like to play but can’t because of the cap, maybe the school or organization should then consider creating a new team for that sex.
Frankly, this isn’t a problem I’ve ever dealt with personally. My daughter plays the violin, and she regularly trounces the boys against whom she competes in auditions. Most orchestras these days do “blind” auditions, wherein the judges can’t see the participants. Unfortunately, sports aren’t so simple.
Or on co-ed teams, it has to be 50/50
“While I was angered by the refusal of the Catholic school baseball team to play a team with a girl on it, I can see that if I’m going to be bothered by that, I should be equally bothered by this.”
Exactly. Yes, you should be. Thanks for acknowledging that. Everyone who was bothered by the former should be equally bothered by the latter, but sadly many are instead pleased that he was kicked off the team. Yet more evidence of their anti-male gender-bias at work.
Your solutions would work fine, as long as they are consistently applied across genders. And, this should be applied only in the case where there is no team for the opposite sex.
I realize that your solution does not suggest that boys not be allowed to compete but some claim that they might have a physical advantage, and therefore should not be allowed to compete. But that can be said of Brittany Griner, who is absolutely dominant in women’s college basketball. She is bigger, stronger, faster, and more talented than any of the other top players. Should that disqualify her from playing with the women? Should she be forced to play with the men? That would follow logically, based on her physical superiority. I’m asking rhetorically for those who make that argument.
. For me, it’s simple; if there is no team for the opposite gender, if the player is good enough they should be allowed on the team. Period.
There is no huge group of boys trying to join the field hockey team in this case. They should let him play.
That’s a very good proposal actually. It allows kids to play sports dominated by one gender while still keeping more popular sports gender segregated.
All the soccer teams in our recreation center area are co ed. I think teams should be co ed whenever possible. I feel pretty certain the young man should be allowed/able to play.
I think that as kids age and there are literal skill and physical disparities, then start looking to gender based teams AND some teams that are co ed.
I think there are great things about same sex teams as well as mixed. Shouldn’t have to be an either or.
I was not an athletic kid, and all the sports we played in PE in grade school through high school were co-Ed. I hated playing with the boys. They all picked on me, made fun of me, and mocked me for not being very good at the sport. I got no chance to learn anything, I got no chance to improve or to have a prayer at being even slightly competitive. The boys and maybe 2 or 3 very athletic girls took over every game while most of the girls stood around doing nothing. It didn’t matter what sport we were playing — softball, kickball, or whatever. That was my experience with co-ed sports education. It gave me a lifelong aversion to sports.
And that’s personal to you. Not to everyone who has played with boys. FWIW, I had a horrible time with PE in school and I played with all girls teams and it was filled with bullying.
I’m absolutely cool with all girl teams, all boys teams, and both so long as opportunity exists for choice in the matter.
I don’t do sports, so this doesn’t really affect me personally. It might at some point. I have two boys, one who loves soccer. My field is the arts and I see nothing wrong with all male theater groups or all female theater groups or a theater group of one color or with a mission for LGBT issues or not, or theater groups focused on poverty or shakespeare or whathaveyou.
Given that arts programs are generally funded to nil compared with sports teams, people do what they can with what they will and create those choices on their own and I celebrate the entrepreneurship that comes with that choice.
I think its a choice and accessibility issue. This child who plays well and who has always played is now being cast out due to gender (or was). Not cool. If he were black and the team was white, we wouldn’t tolerate it. I realize that’s not entirely apples to apples there, but the point remains that he’s being cast out because he has no other options.
Yeah, I wouldn’t really make a race comparison there. I don’t agree with their decision, but in a purely physical arena gender discrimination can make sense. Race, not so much.
I wasn’t any good at team sports either. I found out that didn’t mean that I wasn’t good at sports. After I took up kick boxing and weight lifting, I was no longer the last kid picked. Not because I got any better at team sports, but because some guys liked having an “enforcer” on the bench. Don’t sour yourself on sports. Find the one you love. Dance is a sport. You might try that out. You could dance by yourself or with a partner. You might even find a team somewhere. You can try kick boxing to taekwondo is a sport in Korea. It’s good for fitness. It should improve your confidence since it has self defense applications.
This is kind of difficult. The thing is at 13, his voice is probably changing and his peach fuzz is being replaced by coarse hair. His coaches can throw him in the weight room at this time and he will get bigger and faster than the girls his age. At the very least when opponents see this happen, they will ask him to get off the team.
Should the strongest, fastest girl be kicked off the team too? Doesn’t her superior speed and/or strength give her advantage?
At 13 I’m sure this boy (he’s a BOY people) is in the early stages of puberty. However, that does not necessarily confer a size/strength advantage. I don’t know a lot about field hockey, but I doubt it’s a sport with a lot of physical contact like football, hockey, and lacrosse. Additionally, and most importantly, there is ONE field hockey team at his school. Maybe his participation will increase male interest in the sport and in the future other boys will want to play resulting in the creation of boys field hockey teams in the region. If/when that happens he’s probably going to want to play the sport he loves with other boys his age. Right now he is one boy and should be allowed to play. Period. No quibbling over what-ifs. This is exactly like that recent baseball forfeiture. If we’re going to be against discrimination we have to be against it in all its forms. This is discrimination. For the record, in case anyone reading wonders, I also think boys should be allowed to play softball and girls should be allowed to play baseball. They are NOT the same sport. Similar, but not the same. Again, if/when there is enough involvement from both sexes to create a boys team and a girls team…well, again, they’ll probably segregate themselves.
The title is a bit ironic here, making a distinction between boys and girls sports, when in fact the boy is coming from a place where BOTH play field hockey.
As I see it, in the spirit of equality the school has two options: let him play on the girls’ team, or create a boys’ field hockey program. School’s choice.
As I read the Title IX language (which never mentions sports specifically), it’s gender neutral. Boys have to have equal opportunities as girls and vice versa.
Seems to be a tension here between the spirit of athletic competition and the spirit of equality. If the goal of playing a sport is to achieve victory within a system of rules, then making the team better ought to be the first concern. If opening the football team to girls would help the football team win, then it ought to do it. If opening the girls’ field hockey team to boys would help it win, then it should do so.
“But then they would take over!” is not a very good argument, to my mind. School basketball teams all over the country have been taken over by the tallest, most athletic people. Not fair at all, really. Never should have let them take part, because look what’s happened. Thin end of the wedge and all that. Why can’t we slower, weaker, less coordinated people get to play school sports???
I can see some smartass with no legal training (like me) attempting to challenge the policy by showing that the school district has no way of testing whether a player is a boy or girl. How can a boy be prevented from playing on a team if there is no mechanism to prove that he is in fact a boy? Innocent until proven guilty, I say. Kick him off the team for failing to score enough points or for hogging the ball, which are both quantifiable, but if you kick him off for being a boy you better have proof that he’s a boy. Has there been a blood test?
I hope the school district is not falling into tired old stereotypes by suggesting the coach can just look at the player and know what the sex or gender is. What happens in the case of a transsexual or transgender student? Is it based on cis- or trans- status?
My dojang had a similar problem. We had two women in class so things were OK when both showed up, but when one was missing, I was often selected to spar with the other because I’m only 5′ 7″ and weighed about 140 pounds at the time. I was roughly the same size as they were, but loads stronger. I was weight lifting and on the juice. I also knew I was faster than either of them. They may have had better technique. Women often do because they can’t fall back on strength and speed if they get lazy with technique.
I guess it got out that I was only going at these women at half speed. Speed and strength are both components of power so if I came at them fast, they’d get hit hard. One woman found out and took exception. When her sparring partner wasn’t there and I matched with her, her first three kicks were front snap kicks to my groin. I wasn’t wearing a cup at the time and that was my fault, but they were all illegal kicks. After the third kick, I was planning on breaking whatever bone I happened to connect with. The instructor saw the change in my demeanor and stopped the fight. I’m glad he did.
Some time after, her partner didn’t show up again and the instructor picked another guy to spar with her. I guess he wasn’t considering the strength disparity and kicked her hard. She blocked the kick, but it broke her forearm. We all felt bad for her and the other woman didn’t stay long after that. Sports should be sex segregated. I was in the same boat as the wrestler and baseball players. When we signed up, we promised to respect each other, respect women and defend women and the weak. How was going at her half speed respecting my classmate, but hurting her isn’t a good option either. Why put athletes in that position?
In full contact sports like wrestling, football, hockey, and martial arts segregation should be the rule with no exceptions. Sports with less contact like baseball, field hockey, and (maybe) soccer can probably be assessed on a case-by-case basis. The woman who kicked you in the groin should have been ejected from the dojang.
Sometimes people let their politics overrule their common sense, and maybe I am doing that here, but it does seem unfair to deny this boy the opportunity to play. I don’t know this case well, but it seems like he’s being discriminated against because he’s a boy and not because valid factors like size, strength, and weight (things that potentially affect the safety of his teammates and players on opposing teams) have been considered. Participation in any sport carries risk of injury, but unless he’s already of a size and strength that is going to cause injury every time, or severe injury, unless he holds back (which is possible but unlikely for a 13 year old) it comes across as sex-based discrimination. If his participation is already a safety liability, then, yeah, ban him. Safety has to come first. If safety isn’t a factor then it’s just sex-based discrimination.
Your main problem john it seems to me was a bad coach, when I did martial arts (although a less offensive, more defensive style that put women at an advantage due to agility. Aikido) if anyone kicked anyone else in the crotch, that caused injury, that person would be out. I was in a mixed group because of the nature of aikido size and strength are no advantage. (so be careful when you try and spilt boys and girls Jo) but if I was in a sport where my coach picked partners for me, and I got with someone who constantly fouled me or was too strong for me (male, female or other) My first step would be not to talk about issues of gender but talk about why the coach matches up so poorly. If girls are willing to be in those sports then they should not get anymore or anyless support than an underdeveloped, undersized male. Because what would happen if he blocked a kick from a really strong guy?
I think the instructor was basing some of his decision on my reaction. The first time she kicked me I looked up at the ceiling, shook my head and reentered my back stance. The second time I looked up at the ceiling, turned around, walked off the mat, returned and took my back stance. The third time she kicked me, I looked at her, said, “Let’s go.” and widened my stance. It wasn’t like I was particularly injured. I was really POed
I fought guys 40 lbs heavier than me, who were weight lifting and popping “dietary supplements” also. I was never injured. I was telling a female friend how I once got kicked in the side of the neck with a round house and couldn’t move half my body for about 10 seconds. She was more upset that I was laughing while telling her. I don’t know if it was the juice or the conditioning, but I couldn’t get hurt. I didn’t feel the cold either, which should have scared me. I wasn’t even close to being injured in that sparring session.
I felt bad that she felt disrespected. It felt bad to break at least the spirit of a promise. I know that if women are going to enter the sport at the time they’d have to be taught by men and have to spar men. My instructor probably knew it too. I feel bad that two women dropped out. I hear what you say. There are sports like ultra marathons, gymnastics (balance beam), and horse racing (light weight) were women will generally have an advantage over men, but given the choice between injuring someone or walking off the mat, I’m walking off the mat.
No matter how you look at it, its still a TEAM sport, a single player will not automatically make that team better. Besides, from many reports his skills are only slightly better than average, and he is actually small for his age. All that aside he is on a middle school (Junior High) team, an age where there still is not any real physical differences in the different genders. If he was 16 or 17 and asking this in high school then its worth looking at, but he’s not, so it isn’t. On that note, the indead that this would lead to marginalizing the girls? Please, this is ridiculous, he is one boy, I don’t see boys lining up to play field hockey, 1 boy does not marginalize anyone but 1 girl who is cut because she isn’t that good, people are cut all the time, it happens. If suddenly a bunch of boys start wanting to play field hockey, do you know what you do. You make a boys team! But that isn’t happening, so why don’t we simply let this one kid play? Its not like the world will implode…
Even though men are physically stronger , girls can still compete in other sports that boys play. Also, the boys on the team might be worse than the girls so there’s a thought.
I believe the strength difference only comes into play after puberty for males n females, so prepubescent children can play at a fairly equal level in physical ability.
Girls should be barred from boys’ teams if there is a similar girls team. Period. End of sentence.
There is no reason for a girl to take a boys’ slot if she can play with the girls. The same is true of boys on girls teams. Either make the teams full open co-ed, or divide them by gender. Anything else is discriminatory, and robs a boy or girl of an opportunity to play they would otherwise have.
Co-ed teams I think would be quite interesting to see.
The heck with a boy wanting to play girl’s sports. When I was a boy I wanted to compete in girl’s beauty pageants and thought it most unfair that I could not. I did not want to do it as a boy competing against girls for a title and crown; I wanted to compete as just another one of the girls subject to all requirements placed on every other participant. I would have even been willing to accept any bathing suit competition portion as something that simply went with the territory. Albeit I did view bathing suit competition portions to be discriminatory toward boys in that they would have presented an unfair disadvantage to me, lacking breasts and hips. None the less, just as females in male sports must deal with any physiological gender differences as a hurdle or handicap to be overcome, I too would have professionally dealt with mine such accordingly and done whatever possible to develop breasts, hips and curves. I’m a bit older now but I would still love to compete as a woman in a woman’s beauty pageant even if only for the thrill of getting to show what an attractive woman I present as when crossdressed; no need to win although that would be really nice but just being able to do it, accepted for pageant’s sake as ‘just one of the girls’.
This is where individualism leads. There is nothing wrong with the old system.
Girls play with girls on girl’s teams and boys play with boys on boy’s teams. If there
is no team for girls: tough. Play a sport where there is. The same goes for boys.