Progressives Dismantling Girls’ Sports

The Democrat preoccupation with transgender-izing everything, including women’s sports, is simply nuts.

Nothing in life seems without controversy, but America should celebrate Title IX as the 50th-anniversary approaches. What is it? How did it help girls and women succeed? Put parity in education, women’s sports, the Olympics, even defend childbearing? And what threatens it? Progressives.g

Title IX is a civil rights law signed by Republican President Richard Nixon in 1972. In essence, it banned sex discrimination in federally funded education, creating equal access for girls to everything, college admission, and academic options to teaching posts and sports.

Controversy swirled for obvious reasons. In a world of limited resources, the natural fear was that opening doors to girls – especially in sports – would reduce boys’ options. While true in some cases, courts largely leveled incongruities, seeking to preserve the maximum opportunity for all.

The backdrop was incontrovertible.  Historic discrimination against biological girls, not eclectic, self-identifying, subjective, neo-gender sub-groups but female students, was undeniable and profound.

The history of discrimination against biological girls in education fills libraries. It is part of a larger battle for fairness in countless venues.  The battle for ballast in education was fought – and won – by Title IX.

So, what did it do? How did it help? Who did it hurt? Truth is predictions that gender parity would produce Armageddon, where boys’ sports vanished to accommodate girls, did not come to pass.

Yes, football teams cost more. Some male sports, like wrestling, paid a dear price – schools choosing club status over the team. But the net effect is often missed. It is not reduced male sports participation.

In fact, male participation increased. Between 1988 and 2010, NCAA schools added 3,727 men’s teams and dropped 2,748 – so men came out ahead by nearly 1,000 teams, with overall male participation up.

So, what suffered? Expensive, less popular sports declined as baseball, lacrosse, and soccer gained. Inevitable? No, since a few sports wag budgets. Nationally, 80 percent of athletic spending goes for football and basketball – odd, but true historically and now. Schools make choices within genders.

On the flip side, over the same period, 4,641 women’s teams were added, 1,943 dropped. The disproportionate gain reflects the original deficit in girls’ sports. Net-net, women’s sports lost slightly in 2010-11, suggesting a slowdown, sustainable balance.

What else did Title IX do? Title IX did not mandate cuts, quotas, or equal spending on male and female sports – so long as preferences were accommodated. In other words, a school could spend more on football than a female sport if both genders got equal options. Spending still favors boys’ sports.

What else was accomplished? Turns out, a lot. In 1972, 300,000 girls played sports in high school or college, only 30,000 on intercollegiate teams. Girls’ sports got less than two percent of sports budgets.

Today more than three million girls participate in high school and college sports. One in five girls plays interscholastic sports, a jump up from one in 27 in 1972. Is that nine-fold gain in girls’ sports participation and five-fold gain in interscholastic teams good for America? You bet.  

On pure fairness, it does us credit. But there is far more than fairness. Lifetime improvements in health, attitude, academics, overall wellbeing suggest more boys and girls in sports create a net good. 

US Olympic performance among women is objectively extraordinary, compared to the world.  American women dominate in many sports. In 2016, the US won a record 61 medals. In 1972, just 23 medals.

What else? On the academic front, Title IX women expanded subjects studied, success within them, and degrees earned.  In 1972, women got seven percent of law degrees, nine percent of medical. Today, men and women are at rough parity, and STEM-track professorships jumped from nine to 30 percent.

Hidden benefits attach to Title IX. Pregnancy was a career-ending event, pushing teachers (and students) to abortion or to the sidelines. Today, pregnancies can go to term, no threat to teachers’ jobs – no issue.

So, where are we now?  In a twisted irony. On one hand, historic discrimination against biological girls and women continues to be addressed by Title IX, benefiting fairness and overall achievement.

On the other, we now face absurdity – dressed as reality.  Men are redefining themselves as women, then stealing Title IX gains for which biological females fought decades, stripping women of dignity, equality, and generations of hard-won legal battles for fair treatment. 

We have “transgender” men – that is, biological men who redefine themselves as women, upending all the Title IX gains, breaking female records, running roughshod over women’s sports, a trend rightly infuriating to most women, parents of girls, anyone who understands fairness in a traditional sense.

What is happening? Men – redefined as women – are insisting they can take back what Title IX gave girls. Thus, you have a University of Pennsylvania “transgender women” swimmer competing on the intercollegiate level, mopping up – to the utter dismay of hard-working biologically female athletes.

Reducing things to biology, you have a male who was winning male-only swim meets four years ago, redeclared a girl, now breaking Ivy League records as a “transgender woman,” destroying Title IX.

What is the point? Only that logic is leaving the stands, parents and female athletes are up in arms, defending women’s sports, defending Title IX, as many Republicans are now doing. The Democrat preoccupation with transgender-izing everything, including women’s sports, is simply nuts.

The issue is not about integrating the latest self-declared victim into a world that has lost compass. It is not about politics but fairness – not an opinion or subjective, but about truth, biology, and equality.

As time passes, Democrats are becoming increasingly subject to progressive nonsense, while Progressives abandon logic, law, and objectivity.  If you support Title IX, if you want fairness for girls, think hard about where you stand. Progressives are dismantling girls’ sports. There are times to fight for fairness, and this is one.