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Arizona Catholic school baseball players won’t make it to second base with a girl

Caperton

As it is written, “Engage thyself not in coeducational sporting endeavors, lest thou get thine ass kicked by a gi-irl.”

Instead of playing in a championship baseball game, Paige Sultzbach and her team won’t even make it to the dugout.

A Phoenix school that was scheduled to play the 15-year-old Mesa girl and her male teammates forfeited the game rather than face a female player.

Second baseperson Sultzbach voluntarily had sat out her team’s last two games against Our Lady of Sorrows, which has a policy prohibiting co-ed sports. “It was on their field and I felt the need to respect their rules,” she said. But she wasn’t about to miss out on the state championship.

So OLoS did instead. In a statement to the press, they said:

This policy is consistent with the traditional approach of education. As a Catholic school we promote the ideal of forming and educating boys and girls separately during the adolescent years, especially in physical education.

Our school aims to instill in our boys a profound respect for women and girls. Teaching our boys to treat ladies with deference, we choose not to place them in an athletic competition where proper boundaries can be respected with difficulty.

Translation: We have not prepared our boys for the likelihood that they will someday get their asses handed to them by to a girl.

Mesa Prep remains undefeated this season and stands as state champions thanks to Our Lady of Sorrows’s forfeit. This has to stick in the craws of any of the OLoS players who would have loved to have a stab at the state championship, gi-irl on second base or not. It also has to stick in the craws of the other teams in the ACAA Western Division, who certainly would have been happy to take on Mesa Prep in OLoS’s place. But I’m guessing the craw in which it sticks the most is that of Sultzbach, who watched her team beat OLoS twice on their turf and is now deprived of the opportunity a) to spank them on neutral ground, and b) to actually compete in the state championships and enjoy victory on her terms.

“The very idea that such stereotypes are so strong, they’d actually forfeit a game simply because a girl was on the field,” [American Association of University Women Director of Public Policy Lisa] Maatz said. “Does she have cooties?”

104 thoughts on Arizona Catholic school baseball players won’t make it to second base with a girl

  1. If anybody is interested in more on this, they’re is a piece on ESPN’s Grantland website. They have a opinion piece where the writer connects the school in question to the Society of St. Pius X (fun fact: Milquetoast when to St. Pius X elementary a wee child). It’s a pretty good acerbic piece. Warning for Anti-Semantic and misogynistic triggers (quotes in the piece, not from the author).

  5. Our school aims to instill in our boys a profound respect for women and girls.

    And I’m pretty sure that boys can’t possibly learn to respect women and girls by regarding them as people and not treating them as aliens from another planet. That idea is far too reasonable to consider.

  6. Our school aims to instill in our boys a profound respect for women and girls.

    And I’m pretty sure that men and boys can’t possibly learn to respect women and girls by regarding them as people, not treating them as aliens from another planet, and interacting with women and girls as frequently as they do with other men and boys. That idea is far too reasonable to consider.

  8. Yeah, and also what about the girls? Some girls I knew who are the same age/1 year older than me went to an all-girls catholic school and are now reportedly very nervous/afraid around young men in general, even in the most harmless possible social situations.

  9. A wild concern-troll appears!

    im – I’ll use an analogy from nature. If you hand-rear a baby prey-animal, benevolent interaction with humans means it’ll never develop the healthy, natural fear it needs to survive in the wild.

    If the young animal is raised solely among it’s own kind, with virtually no human interaction, it will retain that instinctive fear, and stay safe.

    A skittish, shy, baby rabbit is safer in the wild than one who has learned to trust humans.

  10. Thanks for the laugh, partial human. 🙂 I’m just a skittish little bunny and men are big bad predators. Right.

  11. I went to an all-female college. Our alumnae (and the alumnae of other women’s colleges) are confident, strong, and more than able to interact with men as equals, not as mysterious creatures to be deferred to and/or feared.

    Not that this has anything to do with Paige Sulzbach being discriminated against by the students and faculty of a school sponsored by a fanatic ultra-conservative Catholic institution that’s more Catholic than the Pope, mind…..

  12. The saddest part is that Sulzbach’s initial decision to sit out out of respect for their beliefs partly contributed to their ability to screw up her chance to play the championship games… If OLoS had forfeited earlier games because she wanted to play, then MESA probably would have ended up playing a different school.

    Just another bullet on the list of myriad reasons that discriminatory religious beliefs should not be “respected” or coddled.

    (not putting the blame on Paige.. It just sucks that she tried to play nice and ultimately got screwed over in the end)

  13. The notion that non-co-ed schooling makes girls nervous and boys rowdy is kind of hilarious to me because of anecdata. I have a lot of friends who went to single-sex high schools (none of them Catholic though) and it seems it’s more like it makes girls confident because they’re not put down all the time and boys socially inept outside of all-male environments.

    For example: my boyfriend went to an all-boys boarding school that shared dances with a nearby all-girls boarding school. They were awkward to say the least. The two factions sat at opposite sides of the room while the girls basically sent out scouting parties and the boys cowered in terror, too scared to venture out on their own to the bathroom lest they be captured by marauding girls who wanted to dance.

  14. The comments of the head master of Mesa Prep (the school with the girl on their team) also really piss me off:

    http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/11/baseball-final-forfeited-because-of-girl-at-second-base/?hpt=hp_t2&fb_source=message

    “It takes tremendous moral courage to stand by what it is you believe, and they are doing what they think is right,” Mesa Prep Headmaster Robert Wagner told KTVK.”

    Um, NO! It does not take the Catholic school “tremendous moral courage” to be a bunch of misogynist assholes. And to say this is a slap in the face to his own student.

  15. Clearly Our Lady of Sorrows (what a fucking name…) is trying to protect these moral young men. This “Paige Sultzbach” might at first glance appear to be an ordinary 15 year old but, like Eve, she is a vile succubus waiting to tempt good Christian boys with her apples of knowledge and evil.

  16. Ah, Milquetoast beat me about the Grantland article. I confirm that it’s a thorough examination of the case, and well written at that.

  17. I think it is a shame that that girl doesn’t get to play and also props to her for being able to hold her own while playing with guys. But still I have a feeling that sports should be kept separate for the genders.

  18. You know, In a way I think this is more damaging to those little boys on the Catholic School team than that brave, awesome little girl. They are being taught that it is dangerous to play and learn with females – so dangerous, in fact, that it is safer to quit rather than learn about good sportsmanship.

  19. So if they’re in sales and the competing company’s salesperson is a woman, will they forfeit the prospect and just let the saleswoman get the client?

  20. So I guess when their boys go out into the real world they’re not going to compete with girls? WTF? How are these dudes going to walk out the door in the morning?

  21. “So if they’re in sales and the competing company’s salesperson is a woman, will they forfeit the prospect and just let the saleswoman get the client?”

    Sounds like the best result for everybody concerned, all things considered.

    Although it does deny the saleswoman the chance to put together a really kick-arse presentation and show the guys she’s a better saleswoman than they’ll ever be, though…

  22. Translation: We have not prepared our boys for the likelihood that they will someday get their asses handed to them by to a girl.

    That was kind of funny.
    Good luck winning the top troll award this year, Partial Human.

  24. The two factions sat at opposite sides of the room while the girls basically sent out scouting parties and the boys cowered in terror, too scared to venture out on their own to the bathroom lest they be captured by marauding girls who wanted to dance.

    This sounds exactly like my experience in a co-ed middle school. Hilarious times.

  25. I love how they decide what is respectful to the girl instead of asking her if she feels respected by their misogyny.

  26. I think it is a shame that that girl doesn’t get to play and also props to her for being able to hold her own while playing with guys. But still I have a feeling that sports should be kept separate for the genders.

    Why?

    I think it is pure sexism to discriminate against a gender without a very solid reason (such as otherwise one gender would have no practical chance of competing)

    My opinion: All sports should by default be gender neutral. Only if there is an actual need should there be a gender specific version for the disadvantaged gender. For example: there should not be a men’s 100 metre dash. There should be an open category and a women’s 100 metre.

  27. It’s the bat, y’all. The Catholics don’t want that big ol’ phallic symbol appropriated by a girl. I still think the Catholic Church should be prosecuted under RICO statutes, but what does a hillbilly know?

  28. Andie/12:

    The saddest part is that Sulzbach’s initial decision to sit out out of respect for their beliefs partly contributed to their ability to screw up her chance to play the championship games… If OLoS had forfeited earlier games because she wanted to play, then MESA probably would have ended up playing a different school.

    Seems unlikely, since Mesa Prep beat Our Lady of Sorrows in both games anyway. Their record would have been the same.

  29. I don’t think Caperton’s assessment is right, though my interpretation doesn’t make it better. I don’t think they fear that the boys might lose, I think they fear that the boys might become violent rapists if they are allowed to play sports with girls, whether they win or lose.

    I went to a similarly segregated Catholic school, and we were DEFINITELY taught that all boys are rapists or potential rapists. Any kind of physical contact (including accidentally bumping into them on the sports field) might make us vulnerable to violence or rape.

    I don’t know which gender received the worst end of this particularly creepy perspective on the world, but basically nobody wins.

  30. “But still I have a feeling that sports should be kept separate for the genders.”

    This isn’t a contact sport. And she’s played against boys before.

  31. But still I have a feeling that sports should be kept separate for the genders.

    Because?

  32. BTW, SSPX is a traditionalist Catholic group that officially split with the Catholic Church back in 88. They’re one of a number of splinter groups stemming from the post-Vatican II years that see themselves as the only true orthodox Catholics. Wikipedia has a pretty thorough article on them, as does the Southern Poverty Law Center.

  33. Forgot to add: there was a similar case in 2008 at a SSPX school in Kansas, at St. Mary’s College, when a woman referee was told that she would not be allowed to referee a basketball game because she was a woman.

  34. The notion that non-co-ed schooling makes girls nervous and boys rowdy is kind of hilarious to me because of anecdata. I have a lot of friends who went to single-sex high schools (none of them Catholic though) and it seems it’s more like it makes girls confident because they’re not put down all the time and boys socially inept outside of all-male environments.

    For example: my boyfriend went to an all-boys boarding school that shared dances with a nearby all-girls boarding school. They were awkward to say the least. The two factions sat at opposite sides of the room while the girls basically sent out scouting parties and the boys cowered in terror, too scared to venture out on their own to the bathroom lest they be captured by marauding girls who wanted to dance.

    This is pure crap. I went to an all boys school for a significant part of my life and it’s just the opposite; the boys tend to be more assertive. But I get the message: all girls = good, all boys = baaad!

  35. @mh

    I got the same message growing up (re: all boys are rapists) and I went to regular old public school. In fact it’s probably the reason I refuse to “initiate” with women to this day (because I was taught that to cross the line from “friendly conversation” to “flirting” was very rude for a boy to do).

    … heh In fact I still have memories of the “birds and the bees” conversation starting because I brought home a “no means no” sticker from the cafeteria in kindergarten.

  36. But still I have a feeling that sports should be kept separate for the genders.

    Because?

    I have to reiterate the “Because?”

    My daughters’ high school has a co-ed wrestling team as there are girls who want to go out for wrestling but not enough for a team. Do they win all their matches, of course not they win some , lose some. And if the person they are supposed to wrestle on the other schools team doesn’t want to wrestle a girl..the other team forfeits that matchup.

    Its 2012 if people have problems with coed teams, maybe they need to do a little re-thinking. I know I will probably hear “But what if the girl gets hurt” Same thing that happens if they are playing soccer or basketball…have you watched a womens high school or college basketball or soccer game!? Do you think players on those teams don’t get hurt?

    So its a contact sport, so what? If a bunch of teenagers are not going to be able to control their sexual urges during a practice or meet, they have problems anyway. I am not saying they aren’t going to think about their sexual urges, but that doesn’t mean they need to do anything about them. Learning self control is part of becoming an adult member of society. Just because you HAVE urges does not mean it is appropriate to act on them in all situations. And the idea that teenage boys are incapable of controlling themselves is ridiculous(and kinda insulting). Perhaps they are not always EXPECTED to control themselves…..

  37. My daughters’ high school has a co-ed wrestling team as there are girls who want to go out for wrestling but not enough for a team. Do they win all their matches, of course not they win some , lose some. And if the person they are supposed to wrestle on the other schools team doesn’t want to wrestle a girl..the other team forfeits that matchup.

    Agreed. This is my understanding of the rules in most states. There are both boys and girls basketball teams so they can remain segregated. And track teams etc.

    But the rule does not seen to extend to boys on girls teams. Apparently, some are upset about boys playing field hockey. In this blog I find the limits placed on boys if they do play to be very revealing. As far as I know Cody was eventually kicked off of the team:

    http://blog.timesunion.com/youthsports/male-field-hockey-player-in-section-2-complaint-filed-for-dangerous-play/3350/

    No boy can be a goal keeper?

  38. Maryland:
    The Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association allows mixed competition during its regular season, but any team that does not want to play against an opponent with a boy on its squad, and opt out of the game without penalty. However, playoffs are strictly girls’-only. According to Ned Sparks, Executive Director of the MPSSAA, boys are “not invited to represent their school” in field hockey’s playoff season.

    New York:
    Male or female students who want to play on the sports team of the opposite gender have to be cleared by a review panel that consists of the school physician, a P.E. teacher, and if desired, a physician of the family’s choice. The panel evaluates an athlete’s readiness to participate in a mixed sport based on medical health, maturity, fitness and skill of the individual in relationship to other members of the team. According to the New York State Education Department’s guidelines for mixed competition, “When the physical abilities of the individual are deemed by the panel to be short of or exceed the physical abilities of other team members, thereby creating a hazardous condition or unfair advantage for that student or other members of the team, denial of participation would be appropriate.”

    While I think they should have played, what OLoS did was thier own choice and they chose to give up a shot at a championship.

    But the crap above is actual state law. Really?

  39. Chiara, I played starter left midfield on my school’s men’s varsity soccer team because there was no girl’s team. Should I have not done that?

  40. Segregation of the genders in sports is probably the best thing that ever happened for female athletes.

    If every single Sports team from Peewee League to High School to The Olympics was integrated by gender, it would be disastrous for female athletes. Young girls would initially get more freedom to play sports in elementary school but when biological realities set in for most of them and they find even the best of the female athletes can’t compete against above average and even average male athletes, they’ll have a lot of doors shut on them. Which means the generation after the initial integration will probably avoid sports altogether. I mean, why even try if you’ll just get beaten out by an average man in the future.

    Even if imperfect, sports segregation by gender is still the best for female athletes, especially later in their lives when they are afforded more opportunities because they aren’t competing with men.

  41. Joe@36

    You make a good point. It doesn’t seem fair that Cody was apparently eventually removed from the team. I am from the North East and some of the girls on the field hockey teams are tall and pretty muscular, especially if they are from rural areas and expected to help with farm chores (my second cousin who is now a large animal vet comes to mind, she is glad to be strong enough to deal with difficult deliveries). Would it be right for a girl of Cody’s size and skills to be removed from playing? Apparently Cody plays on other field hockey teams(not school affiliated) which probably also helps him improve his skills. I don’t know what the answer is.

    An I have probably pulled the comments off topic, for which I apologize.

  42. I have a feeling that sports should be kept separate for the genders.

    Why? Aptitude for any sport depends on the ability of an individual player – sex, let alone gender, are irrelevant. And it never should be. And sex-segregation in sports probably just contributes to sexist attitudes about women and girls.

  43. @Mxe354

    You really don’t know what you’re asking for. If you integrated all sports teams, there would be more sexism about women and girls, and it would have the added benefit of evidence as female athletes drop out of sports teams after middle and high school, confirming what they think.

  44. Gender may be irrelevant, but sex really isn’t irrelevant when it comes to sports; the normal distribution of female physical ability is shifted over from the distribution of male ability, and that’s just a reality. Although there are exceptions, the mathematical norms support sex segregation as being at least an option for girls and women who wish to be competitive.

  45. @Oswald

    The best female athletes get beat out by average males?

    Next time you want to hide your misogyny in supposed expertise, be more subtle. It might work.

  46. @BabyRaptor

    I said average male “athletes” not average males in general. And this much is true. Our girl’s varsity basketball team in high school would do practice games with the male JV team and most of the time they lost. Against the male varsity team they would get slaughtered.

    But nice of you to search for misogyny somewhere in my post and, failing to find it, omit a word and invent the issue.

  48. Young girls would initially get more freedom to play sports in elementary school but when biological realities set in for most of them and they find even the best of the female athletes can’t compete against above average and even average male athletes, they’ll have a lot of doors shut on them.

    Really? And you’re basing this on your school’s basketball leagues? Tell me, were they playing these practices with men’s or women’s basketball rules?

    I have a friend who played varsity-level softball and lived next door to Mark McGwire. She consistently struck him out; he never hit her pitching at all.

    Unless you have something more than anecdote to back this shit up with, I call bullshit. All the “best” athletes are freaks of nature. Men in general have greater upper-body strength than women in general. Is that true of the freaks of nature who are the “best” athletes? I have no idea, and I bet you don’t either.

  49. I could be wrong, but I seem to recall that there are at least two and maybe more Olympic sports that aren’t sex-segregated: events having to do with riding horses and shooting. Maybe also sailing?

    Oswald, your claim is overstated. An Olympic-level woman athlete in most sports would do just fine against an “average” male athlete at the high school or college level, except for sports where success is almost entirely a product of body size. You don’t think the “best” female marathoner or swimmer is better than the “average” man who runs marathons or swims competitively? And so on?

    And no, I’m not suggesting that sex segregation in sports is a bad thing in general, or that it doesn’t give women athletes competitive opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise have. Hence the misplaced cries of “unfairness” from some women athletes every time a trans woman tries to compete in women’s sports.

  50. Men in general have greater upper-body strength than women in general. Is that true of the freaks of nature who are the “best” athletes? I have no idea, and I bet you don’t either.

    You don’t?

    The results of these freaks of nature are very well documented. For example look at the world records in any sport strongly based on physical power.

  51. Yep, that’s the issue. When we’re talking about schools, we’re not comparing best to average, or best to best. We’re comparing average to average. And on average, men have more upper-body strength than women. On average, men are taller and heavier than women. The question is which sports those things affect and which they don’t.

  52. Also, the number of years it takes for men and women athletes to reach particular milestones differs depending on the track and field event. The best women’s marathon times now are as fast as the best men’s times were as recently as the early 1960’s, and the gap between the best men’s and best women’s times is quite a bit less than it used to be.

    On the other hand, my great-uncle the Olympic broad jumper — a 5′ 7″ Jewish boy from Syracuse, New York, the only athlete in the entire history of my family! — had a lifetime best jump of 24′ 7″ that only one woman has surpassed, and that took almost 90 years. It depends.

  53. Competitive ultimate frisbee (go ahead, laugh, but it is rapidly morphing into a serious sport) has three divisions these days: Open (functionally tends to be men only), Women and Mixed. Mixed avoids turning into Open by requiring that at least 3 of the 7 players on the field from each team be women. This seems to work fairly well. Depending on skill level, teams can and do choose to place a female defensive player to guard a male offensive player or vice versa.

    All the “best” athletes are freaks of nature. Men in general have greater upper-body strength than women in general. Is that true of the freaks of nature who are the “best” athletes? I have no idea, and I bet you don’t either.

    Okay, but we’re not talking about “elite in the world” best here, we’re talking middle and high school. I think giving more women, not just those who will ultimately be world-class athletes, the opportunity to participate in sports and be truly competitive is a good thing. This doesn’t mean preventing them from playing on mostly male teams they have the skills for, but I think it does mean providing opportunities to play either in Women’s-only divisions or something like the mixed division described above.

  54. You make a good point. It doesn’t seem fair that Cody was apparently eventually removed from the team. I am from the North East and some of the girls on the field hockey teams are tall and pretty muscular, especially if they are from rural areas and expected to help with farm chores (my second cousin who is now a large animal vet comes to mind, she is glad to be strong enough to deal with difficult deliveries). Would it be right for a girl of Cody’s size and skills to be removed from playing? Apparently Cody plays on other field hockey teams(not school affiliated) which probably also helps him improve his skills. I don’t know what the answer is.

    An I have probably pulled the comments off topic, for which I apologize.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone,

    Yes, I saw a picture of him with 4 of his former teammates and he was smaller than all of them, which is why they didn’t think he should have been excluded. Good point about the girl being removed for being “too” good; that wouldn’t happen. Although, I think the NY statute was clearly aimed at boys. I’m not sure what the answer is as well.

    Why? Aptitude for any sport depends on the ability of an individual player – sex, let alone gender, are irrelevant. And it never should be. And sex-segregation in sports probably just contributes to sexist attitudes about women and girls.

    Mxe354,

    While I’m sympathetic to your point of view, and don’t want to wade into Oswald’s semi-statistical comparisons, I can’t imagine any girls would have made my H.S. boys basketball team. At 6’3” I was one of the shorter players on the team, only three or four guys shorter than me, and the shortest was 5’9” or 5’10”.

    I think the point of the Mesa Prep story is that where a sport is not available to a member of the opposite sex then they should be able to try out and play. That should be for all sports, regardless of whether it’s a boy’s or girl’s team.

    Now here is where I get into trouble: Why do we have baseball for (mainly) boys and softball for girls? Boys never try out for softball (I’m not sure they’d be allowed), mainly, I think, because they consider it to be a less prestigious sport. What does this say about the girls? Shouldn’t softball be phased out and the girls moved to baseball?

  55. @EG

    Did you just refute an anecdote with an anecdote? One that somehow involves a friend and Mark McGwire? And you call bullshit on me? Whatever.

    But if you insist, you can research biology and find that your average man is quite a bit stronger than your average woman in every respect, not just upper-body strength. Also you can go and compare world record progressions for many sporting events like the 100m dash or the hammer throw and see how the top women athletes would get beaten out by athletes who failed to even qualify for the Olympics on the men’s side.

    Here’s another example. The current Olympic qualifying time for male athletes in the 100m is 10.2 seconds. The current world records for the Women’s 100m is 10.49. Men have to, at the very least, run 2 seconds faster than the fastest woman of all time, Florence Griffith Joyner, to even qualify for the 100m dash.

    These points bring me back to my original statement, that sports sex segregation is a great thing for women, because sports sex integration, while indeed being more equal, would shut the door on female athletes on a professional and international level on most sports as they would never qualify for anything higher than high school sports and very rarely college sports.

  57. @EG

    Also forgive me if I misread, but did you just call all the “best” athletes “freaks of nature?” I hope you didn’t mean that negatively.

  59. Open (functionally tends to be men only), Women and Mixed.

    This doesn’t mean preventing them from playing on mostly male teams they have the skills for, but I think it does mean providing opportunities to play either in Women’s-only divisions

    OK, where does equal rights come into this? Do women need a division where they are protected from competition from men?

  60. OK, where does equal rights come into this? Do women need a division where they are protected from competition from men?

    Sure, why not? If men are given the opportunity to succeed athletically then women should have an equal opportunity to succeed.

  62. I just want someone to explain why there are still separate men and women’s titles in chess.

  63. I just want someone to explain why there are still separate men and women’s titles in chess.

    At the very top, there are separate women’s titles, but not separate men’s titles and the vast majority of play is done coed. For example Judit Polgar – the strongest female chess player in history – has never played for the women only titles.

    Still, there are large de facto sex differences in chess, which I have always found somewhat puzzling.

  64. This isn’t a contact sport.

    While I understand your point with this, I don’t agree with it. Even if it was a contact sport, I don’t see any problem with her playing if she has the physically capability. Touching another player during a match is not sexual. Let me repeat. Touching another player during a match is not sexual! I am a queer woman who plays rugby, which is arguably has the most physical contact between players of any sport. My position (lock) requires my head to be between two girls butt-cheeks while I hold on to the crotch on one of their shorts. And I have never felt aroused by being in a scrum, I’ve never felt like that was a sexual situation.

  65. God, I just wish people, namely Oswald, would stop equating strength and speed only with “better athlete”. There are other things involved in athleticism, like flexibility, balance, hand/eye co-ordination, and stamina that aren’t so caught up in whether or not someone is male or female.

  66. Okay, but we’re not talking about “elite in the world” best here, we’re talking middle and high school. I think giving more women, not just those who will ultimately be world-class athletes, the opportunity to participate in sports and be truly competitive is a good thing. This doesn’t mean preventing them from playing on mostly male teams they have the skills for, but I think it does mean providing opportunities to play either in Women’s-only divisions or something like the mixed division described above.

    Yes, this is a very good point. I made it in comment number 50. My discussion of the best was specifically in response to Oswald, who is embarrassing all the Bastables, as usual.

    Did you just refute an anecdote with an anecdote? One that somehow involves a friend and Mark McGwire? And you call bullshit on me? Whatever.

    Yes, that’s the point. The point is that we cannot make policy based on anecdote. Congratulations at finally arriving at it.

    Also forgive me if I misread, but did you just call all the “best” athletes “freaks of nature?” I hope you didn’t mean that negatively.

    I did indeed. The ability to do what they do is freakish. I’m so very sorry if pointing that out contributes to the horrible oppression the athletically gifted endure in this society, but so be it.

  67. Men are not overall better at sports, except insofar as the popular sports tend to be ones that privilege physical abilities that men tend to be better at, like upper body strength. I did rhythmic gymnastics, which AFAIK is all-female. You don’t need more than average upper body strength, and what strength you need is in the legs to leap, etc, which are well within the reach of most fit young women. The two most important skills are (a) hand-eye coordination, which AFAIK is gender-neutral and (b) flexibility, which women seem to have an advantage in (though that might have to do with more women and girls getting funneled into sports that increase their flexibility). Sure, there are flexible men and boys, but maybe not as many*. Since it is a very feminine-coded sport (ribbons and hula-hoops, anyone?) and men don’t have the advantage, I don’t think there is much of a push for men to enter.

    Regular gymnastics sometimes seems like two different sports for men and women, and I think that’s so that each gender gets to play to its stereotypical strengths.

    * Certainly, there are plenty of boys who are more flexible than I was when I did rhythmics, but I never was very good.

  68. Joe, you’ve never heard of Title IX?

    DonnaL,

    So women can go out for the men’s basketball team, while the women’s team is protected? That’s news to me. My H.S. team did not allow girls to try out for the boys team. I better alert them they could be sued under title IX. Or have you not understood what title IX is?

  69. Natalie, my little sistedr plays rugby on the high school level. Although I am not sure if she has boys on her team (shame on me for not going to a game yet) she does PRACTICE with males and during one of the co-ed practices she fractured two ribs. Rugby is a serious contact sport and anyone who has the ability to play well – male or female- should play. I dont see the point in separating the genders.

  70. Sure, why not? If men are given the opportunity to succeed athletically then women should have an equal opportunity to succeed.

    Bagelsan,

    You need to read my post and what I was responding to very slowly.

    Having a situation where the girls can tryout for and play on any boys team, but the boys can’t tryout for the girls team is patently sexist.

  71. DonnaL,

    So women can go out for the men’s basketball team, while the women’s team is protected? That’s news to me. My H.S. team did not allow girls to try out for the boys team. I better alert them they could be sued under title IX. Or have you not understood what title IX is?

    There’s been a reading comprehension failure on your part. (How typical of people like you!) My reference to Title IX was in response to your question “Do women need a division where they are protected from competition from men?,” and had nothing to do with allowing women to try out for men’s teams. The answer to that question is “Yes.” Title IX was intended to remedy the inequality of athletic opportunities in high schools and colleges for women and men, and requires overall equal opportunity, not equality in each individual sport taken one by one. And, yes, it certainly does protect a women’s basketball team from having men trying out for it.

  73. Even if it was a contact sport, I don’t see any problem with her playing if she has the physically capability. Touching another player during a match is not sexual. Let me repeat. Touching another player during a match is not sexual! I am a queer woman who plays rugby, which is arguably has the most physical contact between players of any sport. My position (lock) requires my head to be between two girls butt-cheeks while I hold on to the crotch on one of their shorts. And I have never felt aroused by being in a scrum, I’ve never felt like that was a sexual situation.

    But you’re a girl. Playing with

    guys

    . It’s inevitably sexual! That’s just how humans are.
    /sarcasm

    I maintain my point; let’s stop giving a damn about biological sex and focus on individual ability rather than making silly assumptions about someone’s strength just because of their biological sex. It’s not. That. Hard.

    The same argument that applies to women in the military applies to women in sports.

  74. That obnoxious quote box around “guys” wasn’t meant to be there. Apparently my brain can’t tell the difference between quotation marks and italics. X_X

    To clarify on the military argument: a lot of people often speak against women joining the military because they aren’t strong enough. And I think this is silly because the only thing that should matter is individual ability, regardless of sex. The same thing applies to sports.

    After all, some people say that black people are poor swimmers (I don’t believe that but let’s assume it’s true); that doesn’t mean that all black people should be barred from competing with white people in a swimming competition. I fail to see how that’s hard to understand.

  75. Mxe354, that ridiculous old theory makes about as much sense as asserting that black people are genetically bad at ice hockey. Did it every occur to the people who come up with that kind of racist proposition that there might be socio-economic reasons for the differences in swimming proficiency between black kids who grow up in the inner city and white kids who grow up in the suburbs?

  76. Azalea,
    Go see your sister play! Jk in all seriousness though we practice with boys as well and honestly there hasn’t been any issue there, the only “problem” we’ve had is sometimes when rookie boys first tackle us they are super timid and afraid they are going to hurt us…until one of us pancakes them…

    Donna,
    No I don’t think that racists ever think to consider socio-economic reasons behind things…that would require empathy, something racists lack completely.

  77. (To clarify, I meant to say that the belief is that black people are bad at swimming on average. Without “on average” my analogy sounds daft.)

    DonnaL,

    Sadly, I even hear people pass that “fact” around like a joke. I’ve heard countless people make that “joke” casually. Can people please jump off of that ridiculous biological determinism bandwagon? It’s really pissing me off.

  78. Are we really sitting around having the “are men better than women at sports” debate? I would argue that that debate is irrelevant to this particular story. The Catholic school didn’t forfeit because they thought their boys would have an unfair advantage over Paige; they forfeited because the idea of engaging with a young woman as an equal competitor is repugnant to them. They forfeited because of some bizarrely applied variant of so-called chivalry, which is bad for both genders.

  79. @Oswald

    You really don’t know what you’re asking for. If you integrated all sports teams, there would be more sexism about women and girls, and it would have the added benefit of evidence as female athletes drop out of sports teams after middle and high school, confirming what they think.

    Yes, I do. Like I said, we need to focus on individual ability, not sex and gender.

    Segregating all sports teams, regardless of individual abilities of women and girls, is far more sexist and gets the same sexist message across: the idea that women and girls necessarily have to be separated from men and boys in sports because all women and girls are weak. Therefore, letting a female join a sports team because of her individual ability is more likely to erase sexist attitudes than banning her from joining just because she’s female,and females in general are weaker than men
    in regards to upper-arm strength, etc. (Oh, and as some posters here have pointed out, physical strength is not the only important thing in sports.)

  80. ” My position (lock) requires my head to be between two girls butt-cheeks while I hold on to the crotch on one of their shorts. And I have never felt aroused by being in a scrum, I’ve never felt like that was a sexual situation.”

    As a fellow queer woman I would never be comfortable with some man putting his head next to my arse during a rugby game, let alone grabbing my crotch! Sure, maybe it’s not supposed to be sexual, but that doesn’t stop men from sexualising buses, workplaces and other non-sexual places. I don’t have much faith that the rugby field is any different. So, while I agree that touch during sports shouldn’t be sexual, I think we have to be aware that there’s more to it than just saying “sports isn’t sexual, so get stuck in there” to somebody who finds it triggering.

    Of course it’s different with these Catholic schoolboys. I doubt the reason they don’t want to play baseball with girls is because they’ve been sexually abused by girls!

  81. Forgot to add: there was a similar case in 2008 at a SSPX school in Kansas, at St. Mary’s College, when a woman referee was told that she would not be allowed to referee a basketball game because she was a woman.

    This story incensed me back then… If anyone remembered, Kathleen Sebelius was the governor of Kansas at the time. I emailed that school and kindly reminded them that they need to move if their religion does not allow men to take orders from women.

  82. I believe these are the same people who don’t find slavery morally objectionable. Their website is kind of a hoot when you read their answers to questions about moral issues. I mean, things that are morally objectionable: co-ed sports; performing jazz, gospel, or rock music; cremation of human remains; women singing in the choir. Here’s something that’s not morally objectionable: slavery. I ask you.

  83. monkeypedia@52

    One way my daughters high school approaches this issue:

    I think giving more women, not just those who will ultimately be world-class athletes, the opportunity to participate in sports and be truly competitive is a good thing.

    (Except change the word women to kids) is that the majority of the sports in her public high school are no-cut, that means as long as you show up for the practices and work at improving your skills you stay on the team. I appreciate it because it means that the kids who love that particular sport but aren’t necessarily the fastest or the best still get to play. In the more competitive sports as it gets later in the year you might not get to play as much. But I think it does encourage the kids(both girls and boys) who like team sports but are just OK players to go out for a team.

  84. If you integrated all sports teams, there would be more sexism about women and girls, and it would have the added benefit of evidence as female athletes drop out of sports teams after middle and high school, confirming what they think.

    Yeah, ’cause there are TONS of middle/high schools with all-girl baseball teams. Or football teams. Or wrestling teams…

    By age 15, girls involved in certain sports have to take part in mixed sex teams if they want to keep competing at school.

    These points bring me back to my original statement, that sports sex segregation is a great thing for women, because sports sex integration, while indeed being more equal, would shut the door on female athletes on a professional and international level on most sports as they would never qualify for anything higher than high school sports and very rarely college sports.

    You do know that male and female athletes in most non-contact sports train together on the same teams up to college, right? Runners (generally) compete in the same races– same course, same start time. They’re just given separate gender rankings in addition to an overall ranking or team place ranking. No high school female runner I’ve known has had her delicate lady psyche crushed from the realization that boys tend to run faster. And college scouts don’t seem terribly disappointed when an excellent girl runner comes in third overall behind two decent boys.

  85. One way my daughters high school approaches this issue … is that the majority of the sports in her public high school are no-cut, that means as long as you show up for the practices and work at improving your skills you stay on the team. I appreciate it because it means that the kids who love that particular sport but aren’t necessarily the fastest or the best still get to play. In the more competitive sports as it gets later in the year you might not get to play as much. But I think it does encourage the kids(both girls and boys) who like team sports but are just OK players to go out for a team.

    That’s why I like the model of conference and intramural sports. As much as I hate the “they’re going to run into competition in the real world anyway” trope because it’s so frequently used as an excuse to act like an asshole to little kids, the fact is that students are graduating into a world where hiring/casting/whatever is based on skill, talent, and politics. At the same time, if a person wants to play soccer, just freaking let them play soccer. I like the idea of having opportunities for people who want that competitive, exclusive experience and for people who just enjoy playing sports.

  86. You do know that male and female athletes in most non-contact sports train together on the same teams up to college, right?

    I know tennis coaches who play male and female players against each other in practice to build skills. A man who’s used to just standing back at the baseline and slamming balls to the other end of the court will play a woman who can drop it right over the net and put it pretty much anywhere on the court she wants to, and they both end up better players.

  87. Well when I said that I think sports should be gender segregated I just saying that’s what I have like a feeling that it should be; that’s how it feels to me in my personal experience. Like sports is very much about competitiveness and superiority which seems like more of a guy thing, I just find it hard to imagine where a woman would fit into that if it was like one of the more popular sports like football or something where they are always getting into weird stuff in the papers and headbutting each other.

    Anyway nevertheless that’s just my own feeling and it’s not important, I think it’s good that girls are allowed to play on teams with boys, like I said, props to that girl. Also I don’t think she should be trying to be so nice to the Catholics, IMO it’s not necessary to respect all the beliefs of other people, especially if they are hateful. In my childhood I was in a Catholic school and if you ever said or did anything what they always came out with was ‘you should respect other peoples beliefs’. It’s such a crappy response.

  88. Like sports is very much about competitiveness and superiority which seems like more of a guy thing,

    Have you been talking to Roger Ebert?

  89. Why? Aptitude for any sport depends on the ability of an individual player – sex, let alone gender, are irrelevant. And it never should be. And sex-segregation in sports probably just contributes to sexist attitudes about women and girls.

    Except I know lots of women who loved playing ice hockey in college, and would never have had the chance to do it if there was just one co-ed team that everyone tried out for. In particular this part:

    Aptitude for any sport depends on the ability of an individual player – sex, let alone gender, are irrelevant.

    while true, doesn’t mean there is no sex/ability correlation. At the D1/Olympic/Professional level, the best male and best female athletes would be competing, so while the best female athletes could beat the average male athlete, they’d still be excluded (or largely excluded) from competing in many sports.

    The fastest male runners are faster than the fastest female runners. That really doesn’t seem to be very good evidence for not letting females run track at all- which is what would happen if you had a co-ed track team at the D1/Olympic level.

    I think a more valuable approach is to a) consolidate sports where men and women can compete on even footing and b) form teams for sports currently only played by one gender in the US (female football teams, male field hockey teams); that would do a lot to address stereotypes about what sports are ‘real sports’ and which ones aren’t.

    Like sports is very much about competitiveness and superiority which seems like more of a guy thing

    Ah yes, superiority, that quintessential male trait.

  90. Something like this happened in my area. A girl won enough wrestling matches to go to State. She was paired up with a boy who refused to wrestle her because she was a girl and his brand of religion claimed it was “disrespectful” to touch a girl. So he conceded his match, essentially letting her win.

    These boys have declared through their action that women and girls are not worthy adversaries. A worthy adversary is one to whom you can lose to, and feel that you were bested by someone more skilled than you.

    If they don’t consider someone a worthy adversary, there is immense shame in losing to that person, so in their cowardice, they refuse to play.

    These boys are going to get a rude awakening when they hit the real world. Will they refuse to apply for a job when they find out there are women applicants and only one job? Or will they instead try to fix society so they never have to compete with women for anything?

  91. Or will they instead try to fix society so they never have to compete with women for anything?

    Judging by the current political discourse, I’d say they will.

  92. I could be wrong, but I seem to recall that there are at least two and maybe more Olympic sports that aren’t sex-segregated: events having to do with riding horses and shooting. Maybe also sailing?

    Sailing is definitely mixed. Shooting… not so much. Until 1992, Olympic Skeet competitions weren’t segregated. It became male-only for the 1996 games. An all-female event finally was added to the 2000 games.

    Fun fact: in 1992, the olympic champion of the last non-segregated event was a woman, Zhang Shan. The fact that the competition went segregated afterwards is kind of a weird coincidence, right?

  93. Will they refuse to apply for a job when they find out there are women applicants and only one job?

    It’s strange to have to deal with other attorneys, and clients, who refuse to shake hands with you because you’re a woman, for religious reasons. (I guess they don’t want to accidentally get any menstrual blood on their fingers, not that that’s a major concern in my case!)

    It’s even more strange when the very same people used to shake hands with you once upon a time, whether they realize that fact or not.

  94. Like sports is very much about competitiveness and superiority which seems like more of a guy thing, I just find it hard to imagine where a woman would fit into that if it was like one of the more popular sports like football or something where they are always getting into weird stuff in the papers and headbutting each other.

    I don´t know about this assertion. Following Donna L., the women playing in high-level, school/college/pro/Olympic competitions seem pretty invested in competing with, and beating, their opposition. Many of the athletes I knew in school, including my sister, were fierce, swearing-up-a-storm competitive in absolutely anything, from soccer to grades to Dr. Mario.

    Also, I´d imagine many of the posters here who were/are on teams could share stories about the “weird stuff” athletes do when bonding. Cram a bunch of people together in a team enivornment, with high stress, people just blow off steam in odd (and sometimes unhealthy, yes) ways. Are their hijinks probably different from their male counterparts? Sure. But hijinks nonetheless. I think the “stories” about male football and/or basketball players are more a product of the entitlement—and the superiority-complexes produced by that entitlement—afforded athletes in those super popular sports.

  95. Like sports is very much about competitiveness and superiority which seems like more of a guy thing, I just find it hard to imagine where a woman would fit into that if it was like one of the more popular sports like football or something where they are always getting into weird stuff in the papers and headbutting each other.

    Serious question:
    Do you know any athletes who are women? I’ve played with both men and women and the attitude is pretty much the same: we want to be the best, we want to win. Maybe this is just a rugby thing, but most guys and ladies teams practice together, drink together, and yeah sometimes do weird stuff like hit each other with phone books…

    As a fellow queer woman I would never be comfortable with some man putting his head next to my arse during a rugby game, let alone grabbing my crotch! Sure, maybe it’s not supposed to be sexual, but that doesn’t stop men from sexualising buses, workplaces and other non-sexual places. I don’t have much faith that the rugby field is any different.

    I totally understand where you are coming from, and yes there are guys who would take advantage of that sitution. Personally I have been in scrums with guys and had no problem with the closeness and touch, but that’s because there is a trust between my teammates and I. If I was thrown into a scrum with a bunch of dudes I didn’t know I might feel weird. And yes I am a sexual assault survivor if that matters, so I understand that things not meant to be sexual can be triggering. The thing with this story is that Paige wasn’t the one worried about accidently touching those boys, it was the other way around. So that’s why I think it’s important to note that teammates and opponents touching each other is not inherently sexual. Particularly during a game the last thing I am thinking about is whether or not I accidently grazed someone’s breast, I’m just trying to get the damn ball and score!

  96. Also, I´d imagine many of the posters here who were/are on teams could share stories about the “weird stuff” athletes do when bonding

    HAHA I didn’t even read this before posting. But yeah word. Stuff gets weird really fast if you throw a bunch of athletes together, espically if it’s during a trip and you add booze. The phonebook thing is actually pretty tame compared to other crap we do.

  97. Joe, you’re in over your head here. Maybe try competing somewhere you stand a chance of winning? YouTube comments? 🙂

  98. There are only two Olympic events that are not gender segregated, sailing and equestrian. The latter has three distinct disciplines, all of which have both team and individual competitions. I’m not aware of any gender segregated equestrian event — certainly none of the major international or national competitions anywhere in the world. It helps, of course, that any difference in the average strength of men and women is massively outweighed by the big horses they’re mounted on, but that doesn’t mean that riding isn’t hugely physically demanding — just that you can choose mounts that play to your physical strengths in ways that make any physiological differences between men and women largely irrelevant to overall performance.

    Speaking in very broad generalities, I’d say that men tend to do slightly better at the highest echelons of show jumping, women better in dressage, and there’s a relatively even split in eventing. The interesting thing, to me, is that the lower levels of all of those disciplines are overwhelmingly female — so a really disproportionate number of men end up performing at the highest levels relative to how many there are in the lower and mid levels of the sport.

    /equestrian nerd-out

    I do think that there’s something valuable about having some amount of gender segregation in some/most sports — as people up thread have pointed out, there are very few athletic competitions in which you would see many (or any) women competing at the highest levels if the competitions were co-ed (which isn’t meant to diminish the accomplishments of elite female athletes in any way — 99% of the population, male or female, couldn’t come close to doing what they do). But there’s no need for that type of gender segregation to be at every level, and what happened here is just sad for all concerned.

  99. Also, a note on the “are men better at sports than women” discussion:

    We need to consider the existence of stereotype threat in sports. These sports events don’t occur in a cultural vacuum, after all. Of course, men clearly tend to have a physiological advantage in certain sports, but that advantage is not necessarily the result of only biological factors.

  100. Speaking as someone who did play tennis in high school, on a team, we all did it for fun. Maybe there were one or two of us on it who really, REALLY cared about winning their games, but most of us just wanted to play and improve our skills. (I know that the best match I ever played was one I lost, and even my coach praised me for how well I performed. And the time I won against the girl whose heart would skip a beat from time to time, that was a hollow victory that doesn’t fill me with pride to this day.) And sure, throughout the school district we were probably considered one of the more pathetic teams, but I highly doubt that the more serious and competitive teams enjoyed the games just for playing them than we did.

  101. Sailing is definitely mixed. Shooting… not so much. Until 1992, Olympic Skeet competitions weren’t segregated. It became male-only for the 1996 games. An all-female event finally was added to the 2000 games.

    That has less to do with the sport than with politics. Theres really no explanation for segregating women in any kind of shooting competition I can think of. The big divisions in shooting tend to come down to equipment and whether people are using (nominally) stock weapons or specialized competition weapons. Outside of Olympic feeder competitions, which are segregated because of the Olympics, competitive shooting tends to be pretty mixed. Most of the big name shooting teams have female members and I know the NCAA rifle competition was won by an all women’s team (in mixed competition) pretty recently.

  102. Yeah, ’cause there are TONS of middle/high schools with all-girl baseball teams. Or football teams. Or wrestling teams…

    By age 15, girls involved in certain sports have to take part in mixed sex teams if they want to keep competing at school.

    I think you are missing the point. I said if we integrated all teams at every level, which means there is only a single team for any sport and boys and girls could try out for that one team, then girls and women, despite achieving greater equality, would quickly find athletics to be a dead end career track. It would resemble the PGA tour, where occasionally a woman would qualify to enter the tour, despite most players still being men.

    In fact, sports team integration is a great canard among MRA’s and other sorts because they know that it would lead to less women playing sports. They would relish in young girls trying out for sports against young boys and being flatly destroyed by even the lesser of the boys. It even has the benefit of being more egalitarian than the current setup. They would get to shut women out of most sports by being more equitable and knowing what the results would be.

    In this instance, segregation by sex is important in order to preserve female sports from being marginalized to non-existence.

  103. @randomized, I agree that “all boys are rapists” is a pervasive cultural meme and does a lot of damage to everyone.

    However, in my own experience, it was taken to incredible extremes at the schools my brother and I attended. We were taught “sex education” by a nun and later by a “lay” unmarried female PE teacher. It mostly involved scare tactics and shaming – “boys are like light switches, they can be turned on in a second; girls are like irons, slow to heat up” – so girls need to be IN CHARGE and CAREFUL. We were told to only go on group dates; don’t get into a car/go in a bedroom/living room/family room/sit on a couch/sit on a park bench with a boy…it goes on.

    I guess there are Catholics who are able to navigate these kinds of crazy messages and still come out having a normal life, but I wasn’t one of them. Glad it’s behind me.

  104. @mh

    Oh I wasn’t insinuating that catholic schools aren’t sexually bias, I was just stating that the kind of sexual policing that goes on there isn’t special to just catholic or private schools.

    A personal example that always sticks in my mind is the one with the no means no coaster I mentioned above. Not only was I NOT taught that girls would ever welcome my romantic or sexual advances; but from the age of 4 to around 6, I thought if a girl asked me for a pencil or something and I said no, it was rape.

    I actually have memories of understanding the concept of rape and being told that I had to always be careful not to scare girls before I even knew what sex was. It’s probably why my water boils every time I see somebody advocating that “we don’t preach to boys enough about not being rapists”.

    I have such vivid memories of being afraid of a girl touching me because it would make me a rapist, it undoubtedly contributes to my strict social code of never approaching or hitting on women for any reason, despite being able to read signals pretty well.

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