|
|
Male Scholastic Sports:
A Case FOR Affirmative Action
Proportionality is doing irreparable harm to
a large population of young gay males
A federal commission was established to
determine the impact of Title IX, the legislation passed to make
athletic opportunities equal for men and women in federally funded
schools. The legislation turned 30 this year. Outsports is reprinting
testimony from two people who focus on the law and its impact on gays
and lesbians.
Related:
Homophobia still rampant in women's sports.
Remarks made by
Gene Dermody to the Title IX
commission in San Diego on Nov. 20. Dermody is past president of the
Federation of Gay Games.
Good afternoon. My name is Gene Dermody and I am honored to be here.
For the sake of brevity, a degree of rhetorical hyperbole will be
employed in the hope of achieving clarity. However my research is
solid and it is supported by my own experience:
a.) 35 years with the sport of wrestling as a competitor, coach, and
organizer (I just turned 54 last week).
b.) 13 years as a New Jersey high school chemistry teacher and head
wrestling coach.
c.) 15 years as a Freestyle club coach.
d.) 10 years as an organizer and executive with the Federation of Gay
Games.
e.) 20 years as a sports organizer, competitor, and coach with all 6
Gay Games.
f.) 1 year as a board member with the Bay Area Sports Organizing
Committee, the group which recently promoted San Francisco to the USOC
as one of American bid cities for the 2012 Olympics.
Politics:
I believe sports are a crucial component in the proper socialization
and education of our youth. My purpose here today is to articulate a
different consequence of Proportionality.
The noble intent of Title IX is not at issue. The problem is
Proportionality as a standard of compliance. Instead of it being an
Affirmative Action tool or metric, Proportionality has become the
goal, a quota; a de facto "end in itself."
Proportionality assumes that men and women would participate equally
in sports all other factors being equal. The data does not validate
this assumption, especially at the university level. It is also
glaringly unfair that Proportionality has never been applied to other
university programs where there are more striking gender gaps: e.g..
orchestra, marching band, chorus, spirit team, and dramatic arts to
name a few.
Proportionality imposes an unrealistic "top-down" solution at the
university level that requires immediate proportional gender
representation in athletics. But consider the success of women’s
soccer. Significant female participation at the elite level first
required long-term investment of resources at the grass root level.
The American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO) produced those
successful women’s soccer programs, not Proportionality.
In short, Proportionality is based upon poor research and inaccurate
sociological assumptions. Yet Proportionality is still used with
impunity as a solution looking for a problem.
The Gay Games have always been sensitive to the inclusion of women,
and have gone through great lengths in terms of research and
expenditures to increase female participation since 1982. However
after six Gay Games, we have yet to break the 40% barrier of female
participation in athletics, and in frustration, I have come to
question the very premise of gender Proportionality. Not that I would
recommend a rollback of commitment, resources, and effort, but it is
unthinkable for the Gay Games to consider restricting men’s
participation in order to achieve Proportionality. Accomplishing the
greatest good for the greatest number is still paramount regardless of
gender.
Demographics: Cultural and Morphological Diversity:
There is no denying the biological nature of young males. The larger
athletic types have an easier social adjustment because they have more
opportunities in which to excel. The ‘All American’ athletic paradigm
is still pervasive at the grass roots level; football, baseball, and
basketball, in which size (gross morphology) is paramount.
But the numbers of the young males who currently compete in scholastic
sports just in California is contradictory. Would it startle anyone to
learn that there is an extraordinarily high number of young males who
are blue-collar to poor, minority (Asian, Black, Latino, mixed), under
5’8”, and under 150 lbs ? Are they not the new majority? Do we not
have an obligation to offer sports programs and scholarships in line
with that cultural and morphological diversity?
Social Risk:
Young males are at greater risk in society than young females. The
risks include academic failure, violence, mental disorders, learning
disabilities, drug addiction, alcoholism, incarceration, suicide, HIV,
and general mortality rates. Some of the risks are congenital, some
are social. The cause of many of the social problems is self esteem,
and it manifests itself in the extreme in young males as an antisocial
syndrome with two paradoxically opposite behaviors:
(a.) The aggressive male, often the ‘bully’, who persecutes his peers,
and is consequently isolated by them
(b.) The passive male, often the ‘sissy’, who is persecuted by his
peers, and consequently isolates himself.
Regardless of whether it is too little or too much self esteem, the
isolation compounds the antisocial behaviors. Interestingly, the
condition cuts across all demographics. Bullies and sissies can be big
and little, jocks and geeks, straight and gay. But despite the
persistent stereotypes, there is little correlation with any one
factor save the lack of persistent healthy interaction with
traditional male institutions of socialization, e.g. SPORTS.
Lack of Diverse Opportunity:
Team sports like baseball, football, and basketball work well with
many externally directed young males. These males respond well to
traditional discipline, peer pressure, and the group ethos, the
military "group dynamics" approach.
Baseball requires exceptional hand-eye coordination, and football and
basketball limit participation by gross size. Sadly, in all three
sports, it is genetics that is the excluding factor. But
Proportionality is not threatening these sports.
Threatened by Proportionality are the individual sports that appeal to
the other demographic of male athletes; sports like gymnastics,
diving, and wrestling, which have an element of art in them. These
sports have an important place in an enlightened society because they
have a rich tradition for being more inclusive; especially for the
more introspective/inner directed young males who do not fit the
morphological, group dynamic, and kinematic requirements of the
baseball-football-basketball paradigm.
The Gay Perspective:
If the objective of our educational system and our Affirmative Action
policies is to enhance the level of fairness through diversity and
equal access to opportunity, then the contribution that scholastic
gymnastics, diving, and wrestling have made to the self esteem of
young gay males is an asset that is of value to a pluralistic society.
The leadership provided by just two of our Gold Medal Olympic
athletes--Bruce Hayes and Greg Louganis--along with David Pichler, as role
models to young gay males has been inspirational and noteworthy.
However the university athletic programs that produced these and other
gay Olympic athletes are either threatened by, or already a victim of
Proportionality. This example is not anecdotal, and can be easily
replicated in other sports, not only with Olympic athletes, but with a
vast network of university coaches and competitors known to us within
the Gay Games movement.
Conclusion:
Whatever social risks exist for a young male, they are dramatically
increased if he is gay. If we as a society really care about all of
our scholastic male athletes, then the importance of these athletic
programs must be elevated to the level of requiring Affirmative
Action.
In short, Proportionality is doing irreparable harm to a large
population of young gay males who are already more socially at risk,
by destroying athletic opportunities and erasing the possible
emergence of desperately needed role models.
If one accepts the premise that male scholastic sports are one proven
remedy for male antisocial syndrome, then one must consider the
logical conclusion. If the cultural and morphological demographics are
correlated with both the statistics of greater social risk, and the
decrease of diverse athletic opportunities, then is there not a
compelling case to be made against Proportionality?
Personal Perspective:
I know what it was like to be "different," to not be able to catch or
throw a baseball, to be too little for football, and too short for
basketball. I know what it feels like to be the runt, to be violent,
aggressive, and angry that I could not play because there was no game
for me.
I can only shudder to think where I would be today if I had never
wandered into my first wrestling practice at NYU as one of those now
prohibited "walk-ons."’ One need only look at the tragedy of my
generation, HIV, to comprehend how that program saved my life. I would
not have had that chance if Proportionality was practiced back in
1966.
|
