|
Sport is good for kids. It's fun, social, educational, teaches all sorts of lessons like practice and preparation and etiquette and respect for rules and trying your hardest and the joy of victory.
There are few things as frustrating as hearing a young girl come off the field or the court and say "I don't want to do this any more" after she has been forced to compete against boys and has been fucking smashed by them. This applies even with boys and girls on the same team. A girl who plays every game but never gets a touch of the ball because her male teammates don't trust her to catch it is going to quit too.
The boys want the ball more, they want to cross the line first more, they're more aggressive and confident and it becomes a positive feedback loop. They're more aggressive and confident and they win which teaches them how to harness aggressiveness and confidence.
The girls get smashed or excluded, quit the team/sport/competition, and they never get that first step in the positive feedback loop. Girls missing out on lessons of aggressiveness and confidence is a NEGATIVE feedback loop. That's why girls are and should be a protected class of athletes. They should not be forced to compete with and against male teammates and opposition. To be encouraging female athletes to participate in activity that offers its participants important lessons but which is set up in such a way that the female participants all want to quit--and thus the lessons are only imparted to the male participants--is simply discriminatory.
That seems to be the essence of Gabbard's bill.
|