National Women’s MEN’S Law Center
National WOMEN’S Law Center throws women under that bus yet again.
…and success in school sports depends on a whole range of factors including how hard you work, and coaching, and access to really good resources and facilities, and trans students participate in sports for the same reason as their kids: because it is fun, because it creates belonging and community, because it teaches so much about persistence and leadership and discipline, and last they learn to lose gracefully, hopefully, and often they learn to win with dignity, hopefully – um – they learn to do the sort of work that means you have higher grades and stay connected to school – I want every kid to have that chance – to have the chance to play.
So, in fact, contrary to the two tweets, she didn’t say female athletes have to learn to lose gracefully to men, at least not in this clip. She’s talking about the benefits of sports in general (and much exaggerating them, in my view, but then I always hated school sports), not the benefits to trans people or non-trans people or women or any other subset.
But what she is doing, of course, is ignoring the real issue in favor of saying things no one disagrees with. School sports good for kids; apparently I’m the only person in the world who doesn’t take that as gospel truth. Ok school sports good for kids; so what? What’s your point? Her point, as always in these disputes, is that school sports good for kids therefore boys must be allowed to play on the girls’ teams if they want to. It’s a ridiculous non sequitur, but it always is.
She says, with the usual pathos, “I want every kid to have that chance – to have the chance to play.” Her implication is that if boys aren’t allowed to play on the girls’ teams they won’t be able to play at all. That’s an idiotic implication. Of course they’ll be able to play: on the boys’ teams.
And in conclusion, it is indeed pathetic and disgusting that she’s making this flimsy “argument” on behalf of the National WOMEN’S Law Center.
Not the only one…you’re not lonely in that.
There are also some aspects of school sports that are potentially bad for kids – the cost could take away from the overall education budget; the athletes often bully the other kids; the enforced attendance at school pep rallies (I hated those; I’d rather be in math class, which I enjoyed).
When you say something is “good” for someone, it is necessary to weigh any bad against it in order to know if it is net good. Such as, if you weigh the disadvantages on nuclear power, you would certainly come up net good. Same with GMOs and many, many products of Big Pharma.
Since no one seems to want to do this for school sports, I don’t automatically accept them as a good thing. Show me the evidence.
I too think school sports (really, competitive athletics in general) are overvalued. Sure they can be fun and healthy, but they can also bring out the worst in people. Women and girls being advised to “lose gracefully” to male cheaters is a good example.
iknklast, here’s a news article from my local paper about a retiring coach of girls track that gets into the value of sport for girls:
New Richmond icon Judy Weiss calls it a career: Coached Tiger girls’ track since 1974
Note the importance of Title IX, which is why I’m not pleased with recent proposals to make it apply to discrimination about gender rather than sex. No thanks.
J.A. you and I live very close together.
The thing I always hated about school sport is not the individual competitiveness (though I suspect we could do well to lose that) but the group dynamics that were actively encouraged – the exhortation to demonstrate “school spirit” via inane songs and chants (“war cries” as they were actually called). The fact that it wasn’t taken remotely seriously (the boys who cared about sport all had allegiances to outside teams) somehow didn’t make it any better. It was like fascism with training wheels or given how pathetic it all was, a long-failed communist state.