Today, Joe Biden will announce changes to a Title IX loophole that has allowed schools to determine male and female sports requirements based upon student surveys of interest in participation. In 2005, the Department of Education allowed student surveys to be used to determine the number of sports programs required per gender rather than relying on the metric that men’s and women’s sports teams be in line with sex ratios at college campuses.
Feminists will hail the measure’s alteration because it allows the demand for sports teams to be divorced from the actual market demand for said teams. As with most feminist agendas, a resolute detachment from simple supply and demand decisions does wonders for their cause. By wiping a simple method for determining the level of interest in female sports, feminists gain an undeserved hand in controlling school administrators’ purse strings which will inevitably encroach on sports funding for more popular mens’ programs.
But, if feminist agendas were rooted in logic rather than ideology, there would be one important fact undermining their cause: girls don’t want to play sports nearly as much as boys do. Therefore girls high school sports shouldn’t have nearly as much funding or spots available and neither should womens’ college sports. Creating a lot of positions for girls who only have ho-hum attitudes to sport participation would be no different than creating 3 varsity teams for each NCAA college. Why not let any young man who enjoys playing any sport participate at an upper level?
First, it is clear that fewer girls than boys participate in sports. But feminists respond to that by saying that girls have fewer opportunities than boys to participate and that there is a cultural barrier that curtails their sports involvement when they are children. Erase that barrier and girls will enjoy sports just as much as boys – say feminists.
The feminists, of course, operate on the premise that boys and girls are the same. Citing research published in The New England Journal of Medicine, the Women’s Sports Foundation which was begun by Billie Jean King, reported that girls’ sports participation declines during adolescence. From my interpretation, this strikes a gigantic hole in the feminist argument for gender-parity and egalitarian sports participation. Some natural occurence – lets call it “puberty” – reallocates girls’ priorities away from sports. This makes sense as she is naturally compelled to worry about potential procreation and child-rearing rather than playing sports.
Compound this with another finding published at WSF that 49% of boys aged 6 to 11 participate frequently in sports while only 32% of girls do, and we figure that the gap in frequent participation grows as boys and girls age. As such, even after 30 plus years of Title IX, girls still don’t participate as much, practice as hard, or generally care about sports as much as boys do. Since youth sports at the high school and AAU levels are feeder programs for university level sports that Title IX is mostly concerned with, not only do we find that there are fewer girls than boys willing to fill an equal number of positions, we also find that the young women who do participate are less motivated and less dedicated to their particular sport than young men. Since colleges are mandated to provide a certain number of positions and scholarships for both genders, this pulls a large number of females up to the college athletic ranks that wouldn’t have normally chosen to play college sports if the supply of sports teams was in line with bottom-up high school participation/demand. Feminists have sought – and succeeded in – letting the supply create its own demand.
So when I came across a “10 Point Play” list put forth by an AAUW (American Association of University Women) branch drumming up support for female sports I figured I’d share it with you so we could laugh in unison. They suggest:
1. Buy a basketball, glove, soccer ball or other sport gift for your favorite sports girl – send her the message that you think she can play sports.
Why, so the basketball deflates in a moldy corner of the shed in the backyard, or the glove gets sold in a garage sale 2 years later?
2. Take your friends and family to a women’s sports event: high school, college, or professional sports.
Why, so they can be bored to tears and never want to hang out with you again if your idea of fun is sitting around a bunch of chicks’ parents and boyfriends/girlfriends while they screech Grrrl Power euphemisms and ring cowbells for good deeds – or at least good intentions? If you must subject your “friends” to such torture you better hope there is a good concession stand near – hopefully with beer and that good nacho cheese.
3. Watch a women’s sports program on television and call the station to thank them for carrying women’s sports (so they’ll continue to air women’s sports programs).
Only to be laughed at by the station worker who thinks you’re prank-calling them.
4. Write a letter to your local newspaper editor either asking them for fairer coverage of women’s sports or thanking them for great coverage.
This is based upon the premise that women’s sports doesn’t already get “fair” coverage. From my observation women’s sports gets plenty of fair coverage – it is completely in line with the demand the sport warrants. A short blurb once a week on page 6D is plenty fair. Oh, wait, we have different definitions of “fair” don’t we?
5. Buy women’s collegiate and professional sports merchandise like T-shirts and hats. It ‘s an important way to advance the economic success of your favorite team.
Are we also supposed to wear this gear or can we use it to clean up refuse and kitchen spills? I’d like to have an option here; I don’t want to be tied in to having to wear this shit.
6. Take someone who has never attended a women’s sports event to a high school, college, or professional women’s sports game. Introduce others to the excitement of women’s sports. Help grow the fan base!
I think they (and ostenbsibly I) covered this in point 2. above. But it bears worth repeating: if you value family and friends and don’t want them to hate you, don’t follow the advice of points 2. and 6.
7. Visit your local sports retail store. If they are not carrying licensed merchandise for your favorite women’s sports team (college, WNBA, WUSA, etc.), write to the manager to tell him or her you want to purchase this product and you would appreciate it if they would carry it. If they are carrying the product, thank them for doing so.
Ah. I see the tactic. Drum up faux support for these teams so that the support will become legitimized and the merchandise will actually have value to real sports fans rather than feminist activists out to make an ideologically-driven point. Quick: Who holds the record for most points scored in a WNBA game? Who holds the record for points scored in an NBA game?
8. Write to sponsors of women’s sports to tell them how much you appreciate their support of women’s sports.
These points – all relying on activist-inspired displays of support – don’t provide a proper picture of the real market demand for womens’ sports. I sincerely hope that sponsors and retailers recognize this; the money-generating fanbase is actually much smaller – respective to other sports supported by fans rather than non-activists (i.e. men’s sports) – than the vociferousness of the supporters suggests. In other words, feminist activists are organizing a “Google bomb” tactic to trick the system into supporting their cause. These women don’t actually care about female sports qua sport, they merely want to reallocate attention, resources, and power to women and girls.
9. Conduct a sports clinic for local elementary school girls. Tell each girl why it ‘s so important for them to play sports and how much fun it is.
Except, don’t do it if you’re a man. They’ll all think you’re a pervert and pedophile. The last sentence is laughable; tell a girl the importance and enjoyment of sports. And here I always though telling a girl/woman something was anathema to The Cause. Funny, we don’t have to tell boys this because they already know, and boys know because they are predispositioned to enjoy sports. Using this tactic on young girls is like telling me that I like gay porn (to avoid confusion, I don’t like gay porn).
10. Grade your school on whether it is treating male and female athletes equally. Write a letter to the principal either asking for change or applauding the school’s commitment to girls’ sports.
Boys and mens sports suffer from the guerilla-warfare tactics of feminists. You see, female sports have a niche audience. Usually it consists of parents, families, and hardcore gamblers who had to sniff around for a decent 4-team parlay. Other than that, televised female sports have a TV rating on par with CBS’s 4 a.m. “National Anthem” sign-off. Because female sports don’t have an audience, they can put pressure on admins and sponsors and boycott male sports. While the damage would be miniscule, no organized group can have that affect on female sports. Since there is nobody watching female sports – since these feminists have nothing to lose – they can create an outcry and take potshots at male sports.
The people who want to watch sports have already drawn their battle lines. Demand for those sports – in either viewership or participation – can’t be fuddled with any more. Girls who want to play know that they can play; if they don’t, that means they choose not to. People who want to watch women’s sports on TV will have already chosen to do so; they know the product is out there, but their choosing men’s basketball over women’s is like being given the choice between a Mercedes and a Hyundai – when the sticker price is the same. As such, the number of available spots and resources dedicated to both gender’s sports should be in line with what people want to play and what they want to see.
