I’m old. Pre-title IX old. I remember wanting to play hockey. But girls couldn’t be on the hockey team.
I remember being a kid and asking, “Why?” Restricting me from a sport based on my gender made zero sense to my developing brain. How it made sense to anyone else, was beyond me.
When I was twelve years old, I was at least as big and strong as most boys in my class. I figure skated 12 to 15 hours a week. Sure I could do little jumps and spins — but more than that — I skated fast! Backwards and forwards, I tore up the ice. And I wanted to play hockey.
But no.
No penis, no hockey.
I thought about a lot of things when I was in middle school — but penises was not one of them. It infuriated my little social justice mind, that someone thought I couldn’t keep up just because I’d been born a girl. Worse than that — the prevailing wisdom dictated that I shouldn’t even be allowed to TRY!
Nobody made exceptions because I could skate circles around the boys. I couldn’t even show anyone what I could do. No hockey for me — never — case closed.
Here’s the history of girl’s sports, in a nut shell. It wasn’t until the 1970s that girls had a chance at playing the same sports as boys. And there literally had to be a law! A law to let girls have access to the same activities boys had had. But only if the opportunities remained separate.
Why deny girls the ability to play sports? Gender.
Seriously? A social construct that has nothing to do with ability, desire or talent!
A bunch of really stupid people decided that playing sports needed to be segregated by gender. (I’d say men, but who in their right mind would forget the Phyllis Shaffleys and Anita Bryants of the world?).
Mind you, this was shortly after segregating by skin color went south, so the bigots really needed a place to spend their energy. Excluding girls transformed to separate but not-equal opportunities for females to play shitty little sports with left over equipment.
And now — now that equality is being extended to some kids who reject the gender definitions they’ve been assigned — now those same types of people that patted female athletes on the head and told them to go play elsewhere, insist that girls’ ‘sports’ have to be protected.
Hogwash and hypocrisy!
Here’s an idea! Eliminate gender designations from sports, entirely. Have sports tiers based on ability, talent and heart. Let everyone play together and build a tiered team system. Have competitions in similar proficiency classes. Pick who plays whom based on ability and not chromosomes. I promise you — the games will be awesome. And the outcome will be better self-esteem for everyone who plays.
The only people who will suffer are those angry toxic parents (and a few of their tragically brainwashed kids) that think cis (white) boys are better than any other subgroup in the world.
All sports will benefit when we do away with girls’ sports, because we’ve done away with boys’ sports at the exact same time. Let everyone play with everyone else!
And that’s the very definition of sporting behavior.