"Court: Boy Can't Join Girls' Gym Team"

[Connonym]

"A state appeals court on Thursday rejected a lawsuit by a boy who wanted to compete on his high school's girls' gymnastics team.

The District 4 Court of Appeals upheld a judge's dismissal of Keith Michael Bukowski's lawsuit against the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association, which has a rule prohibiting boys from competing in girls' sports.

Courts have previously ruled that letting boys compete on girls' teams jeopardizes opportunities for girls. But Bukowski, who had competed in gymnastics at a local YMCA, argued the case was similar to recent examples of girls who were allowed to compete on boys' teams in football and wrestling." http://www.salon.com/wire/ap/archive.html?wire=D8LNGQ681.html

For the record, I consider myself to be a devout feminist. But equal is supposed to be equal and if women can play on the men's teams shouldn't the reverse hold true? This kind of stuff strikes me as patronizing to women and I think it only feeds into the perpetuation of us being second-class and less capable than men.

This will probably spark a TON of controversey but I feel the same way about drunk sex. If both parties are drunk, why is it that a woman is incapable of giving consent but a man in the same state is guilty of not getting consent? I may be missing some vital point of law but, again, it seems to imply that women need men to protect them.

[Dora]

1. If he's a legitimate competitor and there isn't a boy's team...

They have to let him play. It's the fair thing to do.

[LynneSin]

2. I think if there is a male team he can compete on then "no" but...

...if the school does not have a team for boys then they should accommodate him. I mean all schools usually have basketball teams for both boys and girls; therefore, someone of one sex shouldn't play on the opposite sex's team. But with gymnastics, just like with football, it's a sport available only for one sex and therefore they should be accomadating

[Connonym]

7. Right, in this case there is no boys' team

I neglected to mention that. I agree that if there are teams for both sexes that one should play on sex specific team but in the absence of a male team this seems discriminatory to me.

[Reverend_Smitty]

3. If there is no boys team, then I see no reason why he can't join the girls

Title IX should protect both ways, I honestly don't see the harm in letting him join...gymnastics is pretty much an individual sport anyway. For the record I feel the same way if a girl wants to join the boys wrestling team.

[Oeditpus Rex]

8. Anecdotally...

One year when I was sports editor of the paper here, three girls went out for the high school wrestling team. (Wrestling is second only to football in this town.) The school has a thing called the "Challenges" — a big wrestle-off by which it's determined who'll be on varsity and who'll be on JV.

I was shooting photos at the Challenges this one year, and after the film was developed I discovered I'd gotten a shot of a guy wrestling one of the girls, trying to get a reversal on her. She was on top of him, her back to his chest, and he had one arm around her, trying to turn her — with his hand clamped firmly on her breast.

We didn't run the photo. :rofl:

[Reverend_Smitty]

10. lol...scandalous!

When I was in HS there was a girl (I think a year older than me) who was on the wrestling team. She was on the JV squad and nobody would dare say anything bad to her because she could seriously kick some ass. Honestly I think once the boys get past the "she's just a girl" factor and sees that she is really good, they stop caring about gender

[Oeditpus Rex]

11. One would hope, anyway

One of those three made the JV or frosh team and became a pretty good wrestler.

[Broken_Hero]

17. We had four women wrestlers, on our high school

squad...one was very good, she was in the 125lb weight class and beat the other male wrestlers...often.

[lukasahero]

4. If there is no boy's team, he should be allowed to join

Same rules for a girl joining a boy's team.

[Oeditpus Rex]

5. I don't understand this

Title IX is supposed to work both ways. How did the WIAA skate? :shrug:

[tigereye]

6. boys and girls gymnastic skills are very different

I'm wondering if they simply didn't want to hire a guy's gymnastics coach....

My son has taken gymnastics classes, and the skills and equipment can be quite different.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

9. That's true...

It seems odd that they wouldn't have a boy's team.

But since they don't, the kid should be able to work out with the girls.

[tigereye]

12. yeah, you would think there would be a way to do that

the place where my son goes has one gym, and separate teams and classes as the kids get older; everybody works out there, but the boy's skills have a different coach. The guys have different bars and horse skills than the girls.

I agree with the other poster that it really isn't fair to just have girls join guys'< team and not the other way around. [br />

[Oeditpus Rex]

13. The story says they don't have one

because of lack of interest.

Schools can't be forced to field a team to comply with Title IX if there aren't enough students interested. For example, if five girls wanted to play softball at a school that didn't have a team, they'd be SOL if they couldn't get four more.

In the early years of Title IX, though, schools were doing just that — recruiting women to form teams to get the federal funding.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

14. Maybe the girl's coach should receive training in spotting and coaching

boys' skills.

When I was in Jr high, our school had a "gymkhana" team, which competed locally, but only had two guys on it. Still, they managed to give them adequate coaching in mens skills.

[petronius]

15. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I have the impression that Title IX requires equality of

athletic opportunity, e.g. the same number of slots on sports teams, but not necessarily identical opportunities. So, if a school has, for example, a boys' baseball team and a girls' field hockey team they could still be in compliance, and would not have to accommodate a baseball-playing girl or a field-hockey playing boy. In this case, I'd imagine that as long as both sexes have equal chances to play a sport, the school is not required to put this one boy on the girls' gymnastics team just because there isn't enough interest for a boys' team. (FWIW, I think they should let him on, but I'm not sure they have to.)

My guess is that in the cases of girls playing football, the problem wasn't that there wasn't a girls' football team, but that there were insufficient/unequal athletic opportunities overall, and so the football team had to allow girls who wanted to play...

[Rabrrrrrr]

16. Ah, good - the reverse sexism bullshit is still going strong. Whew!!

I thought we entered that "equality" bullshit stage of human evolution.

Thank God we haven't!!