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Hoisted On Their Own Petard?
Veronica “Ronnie” Garcia
In 1922, the first women’s Olympics took place in Paris. By 1920, 22% of U.S. universities had women’s sports. It is well known that a professional women’s baseball league (A League of Their Own) took place in the 1940s during WWII. However these gains had not yet impacted elementary and secondary education for girls. Girls’ sports in high school in the 50s and 60s were largely intramural, physical education or nonexistent.
The passage of Title IX of the Education Act in 1972 put an end to this lack of opportunity to compete in organized sports for the girls in our county. This was needed due to discrimination and bias in the boys’ sports, but also significantly due to the unfairness for women to have to compete with males on a sports field. Yes, unfortunately in 2024, this is a controversial statement to make. However, that does not make it untrue. Imagine a contest between the Boston Celtics and the WNBA’s champion Minnesota Lynx. I’ll let Coach Dean Vergillo expand:
“The male [runner] is going to be stronger and more powerful, so you use that to your advantage to get yourself around the track,” he continued. “As a woman, the level of strength and power is different, so you end up having to do it with more grace and finesse.”
Oh my, what a dilemma for liberal-leaning and preening females! Do they support the ‘sisterhood’, or do they give in to the LGBTQ+ mafia? Do they deny biology and actual fair opportunities for their girls, solely in order to virtue signal to their cultural ‘betters’ that they are still liberal do-gooders in good standing?!
Today we have way too many women supporting boys competing in women’s sports. Evidently, they aren’t concerned that they are supporting the undoing of all of the gains made in opportunities for girls to compete in athletics. Such supporters have gone back in time to pre-Title IX days. Sad. It makes me think of Benjamin Franklin’s quote:
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither Liberty or Safety.
With this issue of endorsing males to compete in female sports, I would amend the quote as such:
Those who would give up essential opportunities for our girls/women in sports, to purchase a little temporary feeling of ‘moral’ preening/virtue signaling deserve neither opportunities for women or even the slightest degree of ‘moral’ superiority. Shame.
Published in General
My daughters have pretty strong views about boys playing girls’ sports.
This is bonkers.
As they should! Bonkers indeed. Up is down. Black is white. Right is wrong. Boys can be girls (and vice versa).
Meanwhile, notice how much of the “support” comes from women who no longer have to face the competition themselves? Megan Rapinoe for example.
An exception, I would call out positively Martina Navrotilova (link), who doesn’t put up with this nonsense at all.
You will like what Clay Travis said at Hillsdale.
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/sports-should-unify-not-divide-us/
I’ll bet they do! And I have another gripe, not that men destroying women’s sports isn’t bad enough. What about women supporting Hamas? “I am a woman, hear me roar”…is that before or after you’ve been raped and tortured and mutilated, along with your child? Oh, I guess I shouldn’t forget the Trannies for Pales (Palestinians). But that one just makes me laugh.
One of the great ironies of our age is seeing (some) feminists objecting to men competing in women’s sports. For decades, feminists have been claiming that there’s no inherent difference between men and women. Any differences in preferences or performance must be due to social conditioning. If we made boys play with Barbie and girls play with Tonka trucks, all the differences would vanish.
The trans movement has simply taken that idiocy to its logical conclusion. While I can sympathize with specific girls such as @drbastiat‘s daughters, I have no sympathy for the “women’s movement” in general. This is what they demanded, whether they knew it or not. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Until J.K. Rowling, Martina Navrotilova, et al, figure out that the true enemy is radical feminism (and leftist thought in general), not just the trans movement, they’re not going to accomplish much. I doubt they’ll ever understand this, however, so while I support their push-back, I also find the whole thing darkly amusing.
My girls did athletics because they were good at it.
They weren’t trying to make a political point.
I don’t doubt that at all. They need to direct their righteous ire about the whole fiasco toward radical feminism, where it ultimately belongs.
There’s something else you need to add there, I guess you didn’t notice.
No, I didn’t. Sorry.
Your girls did athletics because they were good at it, when competing with other girls.
At least so far as I remember seeing on Ricochet, you haven’t mentioned them playing on or against any teams with boys/men.
And that’s something of a political point in itself, although I guess it could be argued that THEY weren’t responsible for making it: the people who determined that there would be separate girls’ teams, did that.
Today one is never innocent of making political points. Isn’t that what woke is all about?
Herein lies the incoherence of your position, I think.
Your position demands a very strange type of “equality.” The girls don’t have to compete with the boys, but nevertheless get the rewards that go along with excellence in sport.
Girls who get sports scholarships are the beneficiaries of open sex discrimination. If they had to compete against the boys, they wouldn’t make the cut and wouldn’t get the scholarships.
This is not the result of “discrimination and bias.” It is the result of male physical superiority in the characteristics that make one good at athletics. It is the so-called civil rights laws that mandate open, blatant “discrimination and bias.”
One could take a more traditional, nuanced view of the situation, rejecting the simplistic reliance on claims of “discrimination and bias” and “unfairness,” which are applied inconsistently and hypocritically for the benefit of the favored group. But a traditional view would consider that women are generally unsuited to sports competition, as illustrated by the fact that they cannot compete with men, and sensibly direct them into other activities.
I perceive that either you didn’t have daughters, or if you did, they did not have any interest in organized sports. Your position demands a very strange type of equality and a callousness towards athletically-inclined girls/women.
But is it really significantly different than, for example, guiding a clumsy son – or daughter, for that matter – away from some dream of being a great ballet dancer?
The problem can be solved if we dispense with actual competition. Value should be assigned on a basis other than patriarchal, masculinist contests which are surrogates for and therefore tacit endorsements of rape and violence.
Referees should take time to get to know the players and declare affirmational outcomes for both sides unless they are mean or wear MAGA hats.
My feeling is that fair sports competition is a huge part of a complete education. I wrestled (poorly) in high school. My main claim to fame was that I was hard to pin. This meant that the state champion would use me to practice pinning. Although wrestling is nominally a ‘team’ sport, it is divided into weight classes, so you have a reasonable opponent.
The issue is that you tend to go into the ring with very little knowledge of the skills or style of the opponent. You just need to work with what you see and what you have and do the best you can.
Training and improving your skills also improves your chances at success.
This helped me very much in my career as an Engineer/manager. You often went into a situation where the solution (or even the problem) was not clear cut and you needed to keep ‘working the problem’
I would hate for girls (or boys for that matter) to miss that learning opportunity
Well, “in my day” everyone played some basketball etc just as part of regular PE. But there aren’t enough spaces on enough teams, for EVERY student to play against other schools etc.