Lets Talk about "Sex Games" [J. Mark English]
Jessica Gavora recently wrote a piece for the National Review about Title IX, and how it may be coming to a high school near you... Here are a few highlights, but of course you can read the whole article at National Review:
Title IX turns 35 this month and the bad gals have officially won. Sex quotas in sports under the anti-discrimination law are de rigeur on college campuses. And the Bush administration’s failure to even challenge this perversion of the law — concocted, for the most part, by and during the Clinton administration — means that eliminating men’s sports opportunities in the name of “creating” opportunities for women now has bipartisan blessing....
The war for how Title IX will be enforced in the nation’s colleges and universities is won. So where do aging, feminist, rent-seeking practitioners of gender politics go next? Why, to our high schools of course....
....This spring, as part of the festival of identity politics that is National Girls and Women in Sports Day, chick sports luminaries like Billie Jean King and Dominique Dawes fanned out across Capitol Hill as part of the Women’s Sports Foundation’s effort to lobby for increased Title IX enforcement in high schools. Because they’re nothing but canny and adaptable, Title IX quota advocates are now using the catch-all excuse of the so-called “epidemic of obesity” as their rationale for forcing teenage boys out of the chance to play lacrosse. Their message: “Get your girls involved in sports; their lives depend on it!”
Leaving aside for the moment the boys who will be reaching for the Doritos and the remote after their athletic opportunities are inevitably slashed as the result of Title IX quotas in high schools, the gals from the Women’s Sports Foundation need not have resorted to such alarmist rhetoric. Undisguised scare tactics, after all, are not necessary for members of Congress — be they Republican or Democrat — to stand by and allow Title IX to become the agent of the very discrimination it was passed to end.
At the center of the pro-quota activists’ marching orders for Congress today is something called the “High School Sports Information Collection Act.” It’s modeled after the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act (EADA), which for a dozen years has forced colleges and universities to annually report their athletic participation and expenses — broken down by sex — to the feds. The EADA was meant to be, and is, a one-stop-shopping list for trial lawyers and activist groups looking for schools to sue for failing to meet the Title IX quota. Now, courtesy of Senators Olympia Snowe and Patty Murray, they are about to have the same litigation hit list of high schools.
In a year in which Rutgers, James Madison, Ohio University, Butler, Clarion, Slippery Rock, and Syracuse have eliminated hundreds of men’s roster spots in full or in part due to Title IX, we have yet to see — thankfully — boys’ high-school teams eliminated under the law. But we are beginning to see boys athletic opportunities be limited due to Title IX quota creep in high schools.
Students, parents, coaches, fans, and administrators at South Sumter High School in Bushnell, Florida want desperately to add a boy’s soccer team. The athletic talent is available, coaching is available and financing is available. But what stands in the way is Title IX. School boards and administrators are increasingly concerned that if they add a boys’ sport, they have to add an equivalent — or more – girls’ sports....
....The reason high schools are having trouble finding as many girls to play sports as there are boys clamoring to take the field is apparent to anyone who takes the time to look: Girls have more varied extracurricular interests than boys. Girls out-participate boys in every extracurricular activity — band, drama, debate, student government — every one, that is, except for sports. The extracurricular gender gap so favors girls that the Independent Women’s Forum calculated that if the government were suddenly to require the same gender quota for participation in other extracurricular activities that it does in sports, 36 percent of female choir members, 25 percent of female orchestra members, and 33 percent of female debaters would have to be eliminated....
...with record-low approval ratings comes the opportunity for redemption. President Bush should direct his secretary of Education to issue a clarification stating unambiguously that the regulation that has given rise to Title IX quotas in colleges and universities does not apply in high schools. If protecting the ability of a twenty-something man to run track in college isn’t worth the political pain of offending the pro-quota women’s groups, defending the right of a 13-year-old boy to play baseball for the sheer love of the game should be.
Title IX turns 35 this month and the bad gals have officially won. Sex quotas in sports under the anti-discrimination law are de rigeur on college campuses. And the Bush administration’s failure to even challenge this perversion of the law — concocted, for the most part, by and during the Clinton administration — means that eliminating men’s sports opportunities in the name of “creating” opportunities for women now has bipartisan blessing....
The war for how Title IX will be enforced in the nation’s colleges and universities is won. So where do aging, feminist, rent-seeking practitioners of gender politics go next? Why, to our high schools of course....
....This spring, as part of the festival of identity politics that is National Girls and Women in Sports Day, chick sports luminaries like Billie Jean King and Dominique Dawes fanned out across Capitol Hill as part of the Women’s Sports Foundation’s effort to lobby for increased Title IX enforcement in high schools. Because they’re nothing but canny and adaptable, Title IX quota advocates are now using the catch-all excuse of the so-called “epidemic of obesity” as their rationale for forcing teenage boys out of the chance to play lacrosse. Their message: “Get your girls involved in sports; their lives depend on it!”
Leaving aside for the moment the boys who will be reaching for the Doritos and the remote after their athletic opportunities are inevitably slashed as the result of Title IX quotas in high schools, the gals from the Women’s Sports Foundation need not have resorted to such alarmist rhetoric. Undisguised scare tactics, after all, are not necessary for members of Congress — be they Republican or Democrat — to stand by and allow Title IX to become the agent of the very discrimination it was passed to end.
At the center of the pro-quota activists’ marching orders for Congress today is something called the “High School Sports Information Collection Act.” It’s modeled after the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act (EADA), which for a dozen years has forced colleges and universities to annually report their athletic participation and expenses — broken down by sex — to the feds. The EADA was meant to be, and is, a one-stop-shopping list for trial lawyers and activist groups looking for schools to sue for failing to meet the Title IX quota. Now, courtesy of Senators Olympia Snowe and Patty Murray, they are about to have the same litigation hit list of high schools.
In a year in which Rutgers, James Madison, Ohio University, Butler, Clarion, Slippery Rock, and Syracuse have eliminated hundreds of men’s roster spots in full or in part due to Title IX, we have yet to see — thankfully — boys’ high-school teams eliminated under the law. But we are beginning to see boys athletic opportunities be limited due to Title IX quota creep in high schools.
Students, parents, coaches, fans, and administrators at South Sumter High School in Bushnell, Florida want desperately to add a boy’s soccer team. The athletic talent is available, coaching is available and financing is available. But what stands in the way is Title IX. School boards and administrators are increasingly concerned that if they add a boys’ sport, they have to add an equivalent — or more – girls’ sports....
....The reason high schools are having trouble finding as many girls to play sports as there are boys clamoring to take the field is apparent to anyone who takes the time to look: Girls have more varied extracurricular interests than boys. Girls out-participate boys in every extracurricular activity — band, drama, debate, student government — every one, that is, except for sports. The extracurricular gender gap so favors girls that the Independent Women’s Forum calculated that if the government were suddenly to require the same gender quota for participation in other extracurricular activities that it does in sports, 36 percent of female choir members, 25 percent of female orchestra members, and 33 percent of female debaters would have to be eliminated....
...with record-low approval ratings comes the opportunity for redemption. President Bush should direct his secretary of Education to issue a clarification stating unambiguously that the regulation that has given rise to Title IX quotas in colleges and universities does not apply in high schools. If protecting the ability of a twenty-something man to run track in college isn’t worth the political pain of offending the pro-quota women’s groups, defending the right of a 13-year-old boy to play baseball for the sheer love of the game should be.
Labels: High Schools, Jessica Gavora, National Review, Title IX
posted by J. Mark English at 11:31 AM
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