Here is the true history of college sports under the Federal Title IX mandate. Some events have not yet come to pass.
In 1972, the Most Beneficent Government of the once United States noticed that its citizens preferred spectating at and participating in male rather than female college sports. This produced a disparity, and disparities must needs be corrected.
President Richard Nixon thus decreed Title IX, “a comprehensive federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity.”
The immediate effect of the Decree was silence. It was thought by many that the Government was kidding, that the Decree was meant to placate critics who saw any evidence of Inequality as manifest intolerable injustice. The many were wrong: the Government was in earnest.
It was soon understood that strict Equality was demanded. Although it was not seen at the time, one particular ruling based on the Decree was to have far-reaching consequences: “Whether the selection of sports and levels of competition effectively accommodate the interests and abilities of members of both sexes”.
By 1996, lawyers were growing fat on suits fed by Title IX, the Grove City case being illustrative. “In 1996, a federal court referenced Title IX in ruling that LSU violated the civil rights of female athletes by refusing to fund a trip to a women’s volleyball tournament in Hawaii, when earlier in the year, travel for a men’s basketball tournament was funded.” That citizens preferred men’s basketball over women’s volleyball was not to be considered. Note the ominous phrase “civil rights”, a highly amorphous term which was then defined as the amount of money a potential offender could be expected to cough up if sued.
Many colleges, previously free to to decide just which sports they, their donors, and their students wanted, were forced under pain of the withdrawal of Government funds to create programs for females to meet mandated Equality quotas. By roughly 2000, a kind of balance was reached where enough programs for women were available that demands for new ones slowed to a trickle.
It was at that point that Gender Ideology hit. No longer would science, biology, or logic be used as the basis for human sexuality; instead, desire was all. If a man wanted to call himself a woman, then not only was he allowed to call himself a woman, but everybody else had to call him a woman, too, or suffer Draconian penalties. If a woman wanted to call herself a gay man, she was encouraged to do so. By 2016, any manner of fanciful redefinition was allowed. The species boundary was breached: one man called himself a yak.
Initially, Gender Ideology was applauded by the same people who supported Title IX, for it seemed that this would increase Equality. But in mid-2016, an infamous blog frequented by malcontents, geezers, and contrarians made the suggestion that if one were to be consistent, any recognition of differences in sex must be eliminated. This was reluctantly agreed to.
Starting in 2017, colleges eliminated all distinction by sex in athletics. There was no more “male football” and “female lacrosse”, but just football and lacrosse. Entry onto teams was based solely on merit and ability and not on any notion of sexuality, because basing decisions on any notion of sexuality was recognized as Discrimination.
By 2021, a horrible truth dawned. The vast majority of teams were comprised of majorities of men identifying as men (MIM). Some teams, notably football programs (colleges’ true moneymakers), had only MIMs. Such was the curse of merit and ability. MIMs recognized that it would be easy to gain scholarships in sports (such as field hockey) which were previously designated for woman identifying as women (WIW). WIW in sports were soon found at rates far below those before Title IX was passed.
The near complete absence of WIWs was a disparity, and, as always, disparities must needs be corrected. It was then the hitherto unnoticed clause of Title IX came into play. In order to “accommodate the interests” of WIWs and redress the imbalance, all sports programs that evinced an MIM/WIM imbalance were eliminated or were amended to mandate Government-designated sexual category quotas. Unwilling to accept the removal of their football programs, the majority of colleges accepted the mandatory quotas.
Historians agree that the football match between the University of Oklahoma and Notre Soignant (this was the previously named Notre Dame) in August of 2026 represented the final stage of Equality in sports. The game was tied before the match began, and it was decided after the pre-game Official Dialoging that it would remain a tie.
Trophies were handed out to both sides before the match, and the teams took to the field. Notoriously, a MIM from Oklahoma was witnessed tackling a MIM from Notre Soignant, after the latter found a football lying in midfield, picked it up and began running toward the end zone. The tackle was penalized as “He shouldn’t do that” and the offender was sentenced to three weeks of Diversity Training. The remaining players sat in loose groups on the unmown organic weed-and-grass mix and discussed their feelings. The game was finally called after six hours when it was realized the stands had been empty for some time.
And by the 24th century, Earth will be rename Angel One.
… an infamous blog frequented by malcontents, geezers, and contrarians …
Be grateful for us. Otherwise your infamy would languish unappreciated.
Today’s Dilbert:
http://assets.amuniversal.com/2b52dd403c8a01349b01005056a9545d
Sports are good for the development of character and teamwork. Good for men and women. If the schools are going to take federal money, then they least they can do is offer the same opportunities for the development of character and teamwork for men and women. It’s not jut about “equality,” a term you Social Darwinists abhor, but about equality of opportunity, a pillar of a First World civilization.
JMJ
“… an infamous blog frequented by malcontents, geezers, and contrarians …”
Oh poo! Three out of three.
Here’s a representative analysis based on data, not Briggs’ fears, showing the real effects of Title IX (basically, more athletic scholarships for women with a bit of a zero-sum trade-off for male athletic scholarships — nothing to support the fear mongering presented above):
http://www.athleticscholarships.net/title-ix-college-athletics-3.htm
That goes to show, things could be much worse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1feEqgRZQI
In reply to Ken: It is the responsibility of statistics and statisticians to make projections. Utilizing past data for forecasting the changed conditions of gender erasure is nonsensical. Therefore your feeble link to forecast by linking to an historical article is meaningless. Since Title IX obviously means there can be no differentiation by sex and reliance must be on gender identification I suggest you rethink your premise.
To JMJ: Isn’t offering “the same opportunities for the development of character and teamwork for men and women” so 20th century retrograde. We don’t differentiate in such outmoded categorization.
/Snark (but was this mark really necessary?)
To state the obvious, sex is biology, gender is language. Gender is just a social construction and has no physical existence. It is imaginary, like unicorns and dragons. The talk of gender identity is nonsense because the claimed identity does not exist.
I’m offended!! This is clear, cis-, trans-gender identity discrimination! You identify (no pun intended) MIM, WIW, WIM, but completely ignore MIW (men identifying as women). You cis-, trans-gender non-inclusive sexist.
/s (hopefully, not needed)
Here is an application of Title IX: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/08/22/west-virginia-transgender-pronoun-crime/
– Madness
… an infamous blog frequented by malcontents, geezers, and contrarians ….
I resemble that remark.
JMJ,
From the Wikipedia link in the article: “LSU is one of only three NCAA programs that are 100% self-funded and that do not accept financial contributions from the university or government.[32]”
And yet Title IX was used to adjudicate the case.
Gary,
Your remarks need some editing, in key parts:
” It is the responsibility of statistics and statisticians to make projections” BASED ON OBJECTIVE FACTUAL DATA, NOT FEAR MONGERING.
“Since Title IX obviously means there can be no differentiation by sex and reliance must be on gender identification I suggest you rethink your premise.”
THAT IS FALSE – TITLE IX DOES NOT MEAN DIFFERENTIATION IS OR CAN BE BASED ON GENDER IDENTIFICATION. A Federal judge a day or so ago over-ruled the Obama Administration based on several fundamental points (one of those being the legislative intent of Title IX incorporated traditional meanings of male & female, which cannot be redefined retroactively, per press representations). This has made new headlines; the actual ruling can be found here, among other places:
http://apps.npr.org/documents/document.html?id=3032393-Injunction
Note the discussion re Sect 106.33 [about page 32] — under Title IX the requirement is very clear–genders are to be separated and provided comparable facilities. Title IX statutory criteria mandating separation by gender simply do not accommodate gender co-mingling at the same time.
Given the real-world statutory requirement, reconsider Brigg’s [so-called] “projections”: They depend from the outset on a presumed/projected elimination of sex [gender] based team rosters in athletics (gender co-mingling), which, under Title IX’s mandates for gender separation simply cannot occur.
A projection based on an impossible feature in an existing law, a contrivance concocted to create a scenario that violates basic provisions of that law presented without any acknowledgement that the scenario presented can only occur if Title IX were drastically changed or revoked & replaced, constitutes “fear mongering” because the scenarios presented not only do not, but cannot, derive from the law as represented….but are represented as a real possibility without noting that a series of highly unlikely regulatory changes must necessarily occur first to get to those scenarios.
If it is the “responsibility of statistics and statisticians to make projections” presumably
‘statistics and statisticians’ as a discipline have standards of performance to include a degree of integrity well above what’s observed here.
The fundamental issue is not sex (an irresistible topic to Briggs of late) but rather Federal/Executive Branch judicial overreach, and just in the past day or so a bit of judicial correction. (come to think of it, that’s kind of like how science, over time, self-adjusts…)
It is worth noting that athletics is never mentioned in the text of title IX.
Beauty pageants, though have an enumerated exemption.
I say, let all sports be club sports. (Including big time football). Let the football team hire the coach, pay their own travel expenses, lease the stadium from the university, pay a royalty fee for the use of the school name and logos, and keep the profits for themselves.
The Feds taketh away, and the Feds giveth back, laden with commandments.
Those commenters above who think this is all fine seem not to have noticed that the whole trans rights/define yourself thing is about to destroy competitive sport for women at every level.
This has already started: all three medalists in this year’s Olympic Women’s 800m were not women in the conventional sense. Men – not intersex persons, but men – may (from Rio onwards) compete as women at the Olympics provided they take certain drugs (!) for a period before the competition. In the current political climate across the West, there is little reason to doubt that trans rights activists will remove even that requirement.
“… an infamous blog frequented by malcontents, geezers, and contrarians ….
I resemble that remark.”
And I represent the same remark!
Pingback: This Week in Reaction (2016/08/28) - Social Matter