GIRLS’ SPORTS + BOYS = GIRLS’ SPORTS?
Nope.
GIRLS’ SPORTS + BOYS = MIXED SEX SPORTS
Calling something what it’s not has covered up the utter abolition of a major sports category, deeming half the population unworthy of rights or protections in sports. Yet, so effective has this lie been that the vast majority of people, even those most directly affected, are unaware they’ve lost all meaning and value as a group.
I’m talking about girls’ sports. Girls’ sports in 23 states have been abolished. Haven’t existed for years. What appears to be girls’ sports, what passes for girls’ sports, what is being called girls’ sports, what girls are signing up for and the public is being sold, is Mixed Sex Sports. There are no boys in girls’ sports. The instant a boy is included in girls’ sports, by definition, the girls’ team ceases to exist and he turns that team into a mixed sex team. Twenty-three states have mandated and are enforcing girls and boys on the same teams, in the same bathrooms and locker rooms. They have abolished girls’ sports and spaces by enforcing mixed sex sports and spaces, but they’re covering their appalling unthinkable violation by calling them girls’ sports, girls’ locker rooms, girls’ bathrooms.
The NCAA put it plainly in their 2011 Athlete Handbook: “a male participating in competition on a female team makes the team a ‘mixed team.” This is not an arcane bylaw specific only to the NCAA; it’s a well-known foundational principle of sports eligibility. In violation of their own policy, the NCAA allowed males into female competition in 2010, thus turning all women’s sports into mixed sex sports, but they continued to call it women’s sports for 15 years. That’s how male inclusion works. By lying about it. By calling it what it isn’t.
There is nothing wrong with mixed sex teams. At the recreational level, there are plenty of coed teams. But they are identified as mixed sex teams, and all players are aware and have consented to playing on a coed team. Competitive sports—most high school and college and professional teams —are single-sex because of the well-known (the WNBA pretends they don’t know this) sex differences between males and females. It is unfair, unsafe, unthinkable to have mixed sex competitive sports. Which is why everyone associated with competitive high school sports is lying about the elimination of girls’ sports in favor of mixed sex sports.
This is state-facilitated, state-enforced abuse of girls on a scale never before conceived of, much less implemented. And they’ve gotten away with it. For more than a decade. Few people in those states realize girls’ sports no longer exist, partly because there is a concerted effort by athletic associations, school boards, state legislatures, and the media to lie about their shameful elimination of girls’ sports, and partly because the scale of the abuse and the unadulterated misogyny of it are simply hard to believe. Athletic associations still offer “girls’ sports.” School boards still talk about “girls’ sports.” Lawmakers and attorneys general still discuss “girls’ sports”as if that’s a thing. The LA Times and the Minnesota Star Tribune still write about girls’ sports, as if it exists. They are lying. Like calling a boy a girl, these ideologically captured institutions call mixed sex sports girls’ sports.
And because the truth, that people whose job it is to administer girls’ sports have in fact abolished girls’ sports, is so horrific, most people, even girls who have competed against a boy, cannot name the crime. Like a rape victim, when her rapist calls it consensual sex, and society tells her to shut up and not make trouble, and the police ask what she was wearing, it’s very hard to face the truth, the awful violence, of what has happened. The truth is, girls’ sports do not exist in 23 states. In those states, there is only mixed sex sports, and has been for years.
I realize I’m a broken record, I know it sound hyperbolic, but I’ve just come to this stark realization myself. We’ve all been lied to. We have to stop using the violators’ language. Stop calling it what it isn’t. Every team in every middle and high school in every city in 23 states is offering, no, enforcing, fighting with the full power of the state for Mixed Sex Sports. We must call it out. We must call it what it is—not girls’ sports. Mixed sex sports.
Why didn’t athletic associations in Minnesota and California and Washington and every school board in 23 states tell girls and parents they were abolishing girls’ sports in favor of mixed sex sports when they did it more than a decade ago? What’s wrong with mixed sex sports? “Inclusion” is a good thing and progressive, right? Why lie about it? Why are they still, years later, telling girls they are signing up for girls’ basketball and girls’ volleyball? The people who perpetrated this crime and those who are perpetuating it, all know that’s a lie. It is illegal in Minnesota to keep a boy out of girls’ soccer. The state, the school boards, the Minnesota State High School League all demand that it be mixed sex soccer. They know it’s not girls’ soccer, and they know it’s fraud to call it that. They know it’s horrifically, spectacularly wrong but they are covering up their crime with a word—girls’. It’s a soothing lie, to lull the public into thinking nothing has happened, while behind that word “girls’” they are enforcing mixed sex teams and locker rooms and bathrooms with the full power of the state. If a girl points out that her bathroom is actually a mixed sex bathroom, she will be silenced. If a coach points out that her “girls’” team is actually a mixed sex team, she will lose her job. In 23 states, it is illegal to offer girls’ sports without including boys, but all 23 states continue to call the sport in which they force girls to accept boys, girls’ sports.
In the way of transgenderism, “girls’ sports” is now a lie. We’ve been lied to, and it’s repeated so often, most people have come to believe the lie. We’re calling it girls’ sports when we all know it’s mixed sex sports. Every time we call it girls’ sports we perpetuate the lie. Girls in California still imagine they are playing girls’ volleyball, when in fact, the California Interscholastic Federation abolished girls’ volleyball in 2013. The LA Times is writing articles about mixed sex track and field and calling it girls’ track and field. The locker rooms in Washington are mixed sex locker rooms, by law. No boy can be kept out. Girls have no right to keep boys out. But the sign outside says girls’ locker room. Because virtually everyone knows that it’s marrying-your-cousin wrong to eliminate girls’ sports and spaces, the idea that girls’ sports and locker rooms and bathrooms still exist is a deception that’s been imposed on the public, on everyone. This deception is being perpetrated on every single person in those 23 states, and everyone everywhere who thinks girls’ sports exist throughout this country.
Eliminating a category, any category, in sports had never happened before the International Olympic Committee decided in 2003 to eliminate women’s sports in favor of a mixed sex category with women and men who were required to cut off their balls. Setting the precedent for how to violently dehumanize women in a progressive way that would fool the public, the IOC smoothed over their outrageous crime by simply continuing to call it Women’s sports. Easy.
Categories are created to include a certain defined group of people, and exclude those who do not fit that definition. They provide opportunity, fairness, privacy, and safety for that group. Establishing a new category is based on years of research demonstrating that the group in question is alike in a definable way and substantially different from those not part of the group. Forming a category demonstrates that the group is deserving of its own rights and protections. It has inherent value as a distinct group. The thoughtfulness and scientific evidence that goes into creating a category ensures that a sports category, particularly sex categories of which there are only two, never loses its inherent and distinct value as a group.
But, astoundingly, that’s what happened. There are only two sex categories, male and female. First the IOC, and then high school athletic associations decided one of those categories simply did not have inherent value as a group. Females did not warrant their own category. They were not important enough. Maybe not fully human. Not men., so, not important. Girls, half the school population, simply didn’t matter as a definable group and were thus not deserving of special rights and protections. This is the definition of dehumanization.
The first state to abolish girls’ sports, Washington, in 2007, actually eliminated girls’ sports even though zero boys had asked to join girls’ sports at the time. The WIAA just wanted to make girls’ sports available to any boy should he want to. That this would erase the entire girls’ category and change that category into an open, amorphous, all-comer, no-holds-barred meaningless dumping ground was assiduously avoided in the rush to accommodate some as-yet unidentified boys. The level of disrespect for girls as the other half of humanity, as full human beings worthy of their own rights, their own sports, their own things without boys, is shocking. That they were willing to violate ALL girls’ Title IX right to single-sex sports on the off chance that at some point some boy might want to join the team for which he was ineligible, is eye-watering. Even now. And blithely done, casually, in one day. In one day, the WIAA abolished girls’ sports, ceased to exist, in favor of mixed sex sports. The WIAA, of course, continues to lie about their weapons-grade abuse of girls by claiming that they offer girls’ sports, while fighting tooth and nail to enforce mixed sex sports.
Opening a category to those it is designed to exclude does not simply expand the category; it makes the category meaningless. Mandating that those who are not eligible must be allowed into a category, whether or not even one ineligible person takes advantage of it, abolishes the category. It ceases to exist. The ring fence is broken. A single-sex category becomes a mixed sex category, which is to say, very specifically not for girls’ only. No category—weight classes, age groups, skill levels, para abilities—has ever been abolished in the history of sports. Other than sex categories. (Boys’ sports was also wrongly opened to girls. However, the impact was not parallel. See also; boys are not girls. Nonetheless, boys’ too deserve their own sports and spaces.)
Imagine that the 112-pound weight class was no longer deemed worthy of their own category and was opened to any wrestler up to and including 186-pound wrestlers. The 112-pound wrestlers would rightly feel devalued. In fact, they would be devalued. Imagine further, that even though the 112-pound class ceased to exist as a definable category, the athletic association still called it the 112-pound class. A lie on top of injustice on top of base level disrespect for that group.
Now imagine that it’s not just one weight group in one sport that is devalued, eliminated, lied to, but half the athletic association’s purview, in every sport, in every middle and high school, in 23 states. That’s between 1.5 million and 1.7 million girls who, school boards and athletic associations, and state legislators have decided are not deserving of their own category. They are being forced to compete in mixed sex sports and use mixed sex locker rooms and bathrooms. Of course, they’re being lied to about that. And punished if they speak up about it. Of course, their parents are also being lied to, the school telling parents that sports fee is for girls’ sports when the school and the state have a battalion of lawyers ready to fight to make sure any boy can compete on that “girls’” team. They’ve demonstrated they are ready to die on the hill of dehumanizing, devaluing girls’ as a definable group, so that girls have nothing of their own.
The other reason schools and athletic associations and lawmakers and the media must keep lying about the fact that girls’ sports is actually mixed sex sports is that the boys who are choosing to participate according to their gender identity don’t have a mixed sex identity. They have a girl identity. They very much do not want to compete on a mixed sex team. But the instant they join a girls’ team, it becomes a mixed sex team. Uhoh. Then you get AB Hernandez, the boy winner of the mixed sex track and field championship, on the podium with the girl winner. Lose-lose. Hernandez’s mom was livid, girls were humiliated, and the CIF looked at once cowardly, stupid, and mendacious.
While catering to gender identity in sports eligibility has managed to thoroughly dehumanize girls, well, actually all humans, eliminate dignity and integrity from everything it touches, and fool a lot of people, the fact remains—boys are not girls. Boys are not being allowed in “girls’ sports.” Girls’ sports have been abolished and, forced to include boys, have become Mixed Sex Sports.
Calling something what it isn’t has to end. Wherever law and policy demand that girls give up their rights to boys, those institutions must own their crime. The crime scene must be called Mixed Sex Sports. We must call it out. Girls’ sports no longer exist in the following states and Washington DC. Please correct any reference to “girls’ sports” in these places, loudly and persistently. Call it what it is: Mixed Sex Sports.
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Hawaii
Illinois
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Nevada
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
Vermont
Washington
Wisconsin
Washington, D.C.)
It is the same situation with the "ladies room" and "women's spas" which are now mixed.
Sarah, you do not sound like a broken record. This is an original observation and challenge. I think we should take you up on it and use this terminology of mixed sex sports instead of girls’ sports when talking about those states and other circumstances such as locker rooms, which you also note.