More title IX garbage

Yeah, Jim, we'll do that as soon as we figure out the biology to let the men share equally in the work of childbearing, OK? Amy, please don't get me wrong. I think what happened to you in the 80s--and to almost all women my age in the 70s and earlier--was shameful. I also think, and have said this before when this topic occasionally rears its head, that it's absurd that college teams have the number of players that dwarfs what is found on NFL teams. What I worry about, however, is what some of the other people have suggested--trying to translate equal opportunity to equal outcomes. It really does seem unfair to cut men's sports to equalize the gender ratio in participation. It also seems unfair to trump up scholarship opportunities for women with no previous interest in a sport (women's crew is a great example of this--lots of women with little previous training can learn how to row a boat and get a scholarship for doing so). You take a guy who has been training in a sport since first grade, he makes his college team, then they cut his sport entirely while women's crew coaches roam the campus looking for large girls who might be able to pull some oars and offer them a four year scholarship? Okay, this is clearly an incendiary example. How about a modest proposal: offer unisex sports that do not come under the purview of Title IX at all. Swimming, cross country, track, tennis, golf, all the "minor" sports could have separate competitions so that men and women aren't necessarily competing against one another, but have group practices open to anyone who makes the squad. If there are limited training facilities (not the case, usually, with swimming or track), then maybe try to equalize the numbers a bit, perhaps weighted a little by the numbers of people of each gender interested in doing the sport, or by coming up with gender specific time cuts. From my point of view, it is increasingly hard to argue that females are a terribly disadvantaged gender in the US circa 2010. You guys now predominate in numbers in college, graduate school, professional school, etc. There remains the wage gap, but this, too, is falling. Beware the unintended consequences of beating us lads too deeply into the dirt. Hypergamy is universal in human culture. This is the tendency for younger, less well-to-do females to seek out older, more successful males to marry. With the emergence of more and more college educated, high performing, athletic superstar Super Girls, and more and more college drop out, shlubby, overweight because they gave up on sports slacker guys, you are going to all be jockeying about for the same small handful of Alpha Male supermen. True, I am flattered by the attention. But I just can't handle you all.

Yeah, Jim, we'll do that as soon as we figure out the biology to let the men share equally in the work of childbearing, OK? Amy, please don't get me wrong. I think what happened to you in the 80s--and to almost all women my age in the 70s and earlier--was shameful. I also think, and have said this before when this topic occasionally rears its head, that it's absurd that college teams have the number of players that dwarfs what is found on NFL teams. What I worry about, however, is what some of the other people have suggested--trying to translate equal opportunity to equal outcomes. It really does seem unfair to cut men's sports to equalize the gender ratio in participation. It also seems unfair to trump up scholarship opportunities for women with no previous interest in a sport (women's crew is a great example of this--lots of women with little previous training can learn how to row a boat and get a scholarship for doing so). You take a guy who has been training in a sport since first grade, he makes his college team, then they cut his sport entirely while women's crew coaches roam the campus looking for large girls who might be able to pull some oars and offer them a four year scholarship? Okay, this is clearly an incendiary example. How about a modest proposal: offer unisex sports that do not come under the purview of Title IX at all. Swimming, cross country, track, tennis, golf, all the "minor" sports could have separate competitions so that men and women aren't necessarily competing against one another, but have group practices open to anyone who makes the squad. If there are limited training facilities (not the case, usually, with swimming or track), then maybe try to equalize the numbers a bit, perhaps weighted a little by the numbers of people of each gender interested in doing the sport, or by coming up with gender specific time cuts. From my point of view, it is increasingly hard to argue that females are a terribly disadvantaged gender in the US circa 2010. You guys now predominate in numbers in college, graduate school, professional school, etc. There remains the wage gap, but this, too, is falling. Beware the unintended consequences of beating us lads too deeply into the dirt. Hypergamy is universal in human culture. This is the tendency for younger, less well-to-do females to seek out older, more successful males to marry. With the emergence of more and more college educated, high performing, athletic superstar Super Girls, and more and more college drop out, shlubby, overweight because they gave up on sports slacker guys, you are going to all be jockeying about for the same small handful of Alpha Male supermen. True, I am flattered by the attention. But I just can't handle you all.