As a male and former high school athlete, I don’t think you have to be a radical feminist to see the value of Title IX. This is not about an injustice done to men, it’s about generations of injustices done to women.

Here is Gary’s response

Title IX specifically addresses “generations of injustice done to women”. That was the reason for its inception. Now it is about ongoing, in the moment, undeniable injustice being done to men by a law ostensibly designed to even the playing field for the female gender.

I support that noble goal but the pendulum has swung so far it’s distorted the playing field.

No one, except NOW, ever said Title IX calls for equal funding. In fact, I would argue that interpretation is unfounded and unjust. The point is male sports have been cut because the proportionality clause of the statute is misunderstood or inappropriately applied.

Here’s a paragraph from the NOW blog you cited:

Even under pre-existing Title IX guidance women still lack equal athletic opportunities. Women make up half or more of students in high schools and colleges, yet they receive only about 41 percent of the sports participation opportunities. In addition, women make up 53 percent of the student body in Division One schools, but receive only 41 percent of the athletic opportunities, 36 percent of the athletic budgets, and 32 percent of the recruitment budget.

That one paragraphs exposes the proportionality clause for the sham it is–and clearly verifies NOW does indeed believe Title IX “demands that institutions equalize funding.” That position is faulty on several levels:

First, women will never receive and can never expect to achieve an equal percentage of “sports participation opportunities” or the recruitment budget. WHY? In a word FOOTBALL!!! Most football teams at division 1 schools have 80-100 players on their football roster. That creates the unbalanced percentages Title IX’s fanatics yammer about. Also, Title IX doesn’t include only scholarship players in their definition of “participation opportunities”; the law-—or the fanatics who interpret it-—includes all males given an opportunity to play any sport. In most major college situations, I bet there are many more male walk-ons in most every sport than females.

I give the fanatic’s their due. They have a vested interest in bitching about something they know damn well can never be fixed using politically incendiary words like “equality” “injustice” and “sexism” to maintain the illusion of victimhood. They know very few American politicians have the balls/ovaries to go on national media and lay out the facts of Title IX and how it takes much more opportunity from males than females.

Go to any college or university. Randomly pick 100 boys and 100 girls, I’m willing to bet 60-80% of the males will have a genuine passion for or interest in athletic competition as opposed to 25-45% of the females. Why the hell should all of those 45–even if it were 60–women be entitled to have that need met and a grossly disproportionate percentage of men denied an equal opportunity?

On another level, the issue is money, at least, according to NOW.

NOW and its ilk contend a university’s athletic budget be dictated by the percentage of male/female population at the school. They want the funding of women’s athletics tied to the percentage of a given schools male/female split. That logic simply doesn’t fly. If you take the 100 top universities in America, the men’s football and basketball programs generate the lions’ share of the athletic department’s budget used to fund other male and female sports. Those ratios shrink in the smaller schools or in the handful of major colleges that have a successful women’s basketball program or other high profile women’s programs.

It will never evolve into women’s sports financially holding up men’s programs. Face it, culturally, physiologically, socially, psychically, men are driven to compete or conflict more than women. Until we evolve into androgens, women will not have that same drive as men.

The kernel of the issue is: how should money be apportioned? I believe a reasonable solution should partially depend upon the revenues created by all sports, the percentage of students truly interested in participating, the potential for sustained intra-conference and collegiate competition, and how the apportionment affects the participation opportunities of both genders.

NOW tends to think all women desiring to play sports must be allowed to do so even if 70 or 90% of men who want to compete will be denied the opportunity to compete.

That’s not “equality” or “equal opportunity” in any dictionary I reference.

The percentage of people of either gender denied the opportunity to participate in athletics should be equal. That means revamping the proportionality clause NOW and their fellow fanatics lean on to create the illusion of continuing victimhood.

Until then, many more young men than young women will be victims of senseless injustice.

• July 7, 2009 -- Title IX: A Picture of Dorianna Gray? (4)
• July 1, 2009 -- Fierce And Nerdy: Girls vs Boys = City vs Suburbs? (0)

I’ve raised and coached my three boys and most of their friends in baseball soccer, and football—some within community organizations some not. I also helped persuade our Pony League to let girls play on boys’ teams if they paid the money like everyone else. (I am embarrassed to tell you how difficult that was.) If I had daughters I’d be a fierce advocate of them having the same options—and the opportunity to exercise them—to compete as boys do.

But, I wouldn’t want a well-intentioned law that is applied perversely to take away opportunities from any child of any gender.

Title IX is bad legislation needing a judicious rewrite or serious amending.

Nate began his DIS post found here, http://www.deepintosports.com/2009/07/01/women-sports-title-ix-gender-equality-girls-school/ by writing:

“Although Title IX made no specific reference to athletics and in fact covers any school program, it’s most prominent effect has been to equalize expenditures on boys’ and girls’ athletics for any institution receiving federal funding.”

Hold on a minute. While the above may be true on its face, when we explore the entirety of Title IX’s impact on the male gender, the picture changes drastically. In fact, Dorian Gray offers an apt analogy: As the law has aged, it has ravaged many sports on the collegiate level—now trickling down to high school—for male athletes. The more we look at it, the more the picture becomes distorted, grotesque, downright ugly.

Many radical feminists—Title IX’s most vociferous supporters—won’t even allow an honest debate on the question; at least they haven’t for the last 37 years.

Let’s give it a shot and boil the issue down.

Title IX is a three-pronged law…

“Prong two requires that there be a history of continuous increase of opportunity for all females to participate in sports, and prong three requires that schools accommodate all female interest and abilities existing at the school.”
http://ncmat.com/title9/011100.html

Simply, this means if young women want to start or become part of a sports program, from kindergarten thru college, they can’t be denied the opportunity to do so and any expansion of opportunity for males must be equal to that of females. Prong three covers other school activities unrelated to sports.

Two points: 1.) The actual law, as Nate pointed out, “made no specific reference to athletics.” 2.) The second and third parts of the law are based upon the first part: the concept of proportionality—which grossly affects men more negatively than women.

In fact, it is proportionality, the soul of the legislation sold to the devil, that renders the Title IX’s picture a hideous caricature of what it should be.

Say there’s a school that has equal numbers of boys and girls and it decides to offer 200 athletic opportunities. If they have 100 girls who want to play sports and they have 1,000 boys who want to play sports, the law says you must give 100 opportunities to those 100 girls and you must give 100 opportunities to those 1,000 boys. In the end, 100 percent of the girls are fully accommodated but only 10 percent of the boys are taken care of.http://www.menstuff.org/issues/byissue/titleix.html

First, most schools, reflecting population trends, have over 50% female students so lets be clear what’s going on here. A law intended to equate opportunities for girls whose culture, gender, and physicality are the primary determinates for their desire to engage in athletic competition, (as it is for boys), has cost a perversely disproportionate number of males a disproportionate amount of opportunities.

Examine the issue and decide for yourself. You can find a detailed explanation of the law and its impact on male athletes here:

http://www.menstuff.org/issues/byissue/titleix.html

Other information cited herein can be found here:

http://ncmat.com/title9/011100.html

The site’s author, a wrestling coach who has seen opportunities denied to male athletes, interviews a lawyer and former wrestler who exposes an even more revolting aspect of Title IX’s proportionality clause:

“In other words, says Anderson, if 55 percent of the students in a university are female (the national average), then the percentage of female athletes must be 55 percent. “In order to achieve this absurd quota, educational administrators are simply dumping male athletes.”
“That will be the coup d grace for all male Olympic sports,” says Anderson.
“Nothing but football and basketball will remain for the men. The numbers will dictate that, without question.”

If you check these sites out, note two other items: The dates of these articles took place during Republican/Conservative rule in American politics. This means the issue will never face serious attention from Democrats who cater to their fanatics the way the right caters to its fanatics. Unfortunately, it also means dyed in the wool, paranoid, anti-government, libertarians like your humble columnist will heretofore be labeled as sexist right-wingers. I’m glad I have thick skin.

Getting back to Nate’s post, wherein he writes:

Even beyond the direct dollars spent, Title IX has had a profound impact on girls’ sports participation. Witness the rise of the WNBA and of the Women’s Final Four as a televised event. They may not draw the fans and advertising dollars of the men, but twenty years ago their success would have been unfathomable.

While it is true women’s sports has taken off in the past few decades, I would contend Title IX is responsible for only a little of that welcome change. First, the cultural distillation of new roles for women needed to trickle into the mainstream before any change could happen. Second, when it comes to athletics and television, one factor overrides every other—money.

Money is the star of the show and the only star media conglomerates worship. The WNBA and the NCAA exist, in part, because college administrators and NBA owners link the women’s game to network contracts for the men’s games. The WNBA has been saved from extinction several times thanks to the NBA. Its most recent television contract doesn’t even come close to matching that of the Versus’ contract with the lowly NHL. (Although, we can’t know for sure because unlike every TV contract the WNBA terms are not disclosed.)

If you couple that with the fact there are more channels starving for product, the rise of the WNBA, like poker, beach volleyball, or bull riding, has as much to do with filling an abundance of airtime–on an increasing number of channels–as with any other factor.

I’m all for giving female athletes the opportunity to compete in any sport. If they find an audience they should be able to showcase their product on every available media outlet. I’m just not going to sit back and watch the fairer sex act like it’s okay to subject men to the same unfair, ugly, distorted, inequities men have historically foisted on women.

And I sure as hell am not going to let the vast punditocracy pretend Title IX has created an even playing field.

• July 15, 2009 -- Dorianna Gray Not Getting Any Prettier (2)
• July 1, 2009 -- Fierce And Nerdy: Girls vs Boys = City vs Suburbs? (0)

A couple weeks ago the New York Times ran an article about the disparity between boys and girls’ sports.

Schools have made great strides towards scholastic athletic equality since the passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Although Title IX made no specific reference to athletics and in fact covers any school program, it’s most prominent effect has been to equalize expenditures on boys’ and girls’ athletics for any institution receiving federal funding. Even beyond the direct dollars spent, Title IX has had a profound on girls’ sports participation. Witness the rise of the WNBA and of the Women’s Final Four as a televised event. They may not draw the fans and advertising dollars of the men, but twenty years ago their success would have been unfathomable.

According to the Times article, “50 percent of girls in the suburbs described themselves as ‘moderately involved’ athletes,” compared to 54 percent of boys. Those are nearly even numbers.

In that statement, however, lies the rub: “in the suburbs”. The point of the Times article is that in urban areas, female athletic participation suffers greatly; only 36 percent of girls, compared to 56% of boys, in the city consider themselves “moderately involved” in sports.

Before questioning the efficacy of Title IX in the inner city, it should be noted that funding for athletics–and other school programs–in poor urban areas is terrible for both boys and girls.

The issue is a cultural one. A family needs a babysitter but can’t afford one? The sister is pressed into service, not the brother. For many children of immigrant families, the traditional divisions between boys and girls’ activities that most Americans no longer consider valid are still in place. And in those cases where local outside organizations (not beholden to Title IX) are able and willing to close the funding gap for school teams, they tend to be associations those with a male focus. Thus the boys’ team receive the extra money they need. The girls, many of whom would like to play (at least the ones profiled in the article), are left holding the short end of the stick.

The government can’t legislate cultural norms the same way it did for school spending with Title IX, so what can be done to equalize the playing field? Read the Times article. It shows just how far we’ve come, and just how far we need to go.

• July 7, 2009 -- Title IX: A Picture of Dorianna Gray? (4)
• July 15, 2009 -- Dorianna Gray Not Getting Any Prettier (2)
• June 29, 2009 -- Dear Diary… Why I Hate Basketball (1)
• May 30, 2009 -- Fierce And Nerdy: Baby’s First Sport (7)