April 12, 2003
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TITLE IX
I saw something on the news the other day about the anniversary of Title IX. What’s Title IX? Oh, it’s something about how the government passed a law that allowed “girls to participate in sports”. I suppose it may have been banned at one time, for high school girls to request to participate in certain sports.
There was a time when I tried to become active in a local group whose main purpose is to get girls interested in activities that are normally considered guy activities. It was the anniversary of Title IX, and the woman who was the leader of this group wanted women in the community to volunteer to set up programs to teach girls about their respective sports. Well, I don’t know how many women actually ended up participating in this, because the leader of this group didn’t call me back. Since the whole thing seemed pretty disorganized, I didn’t care to call her back either.
I’ve found that sailing is simply predominantly a guy sport, and have to face the fact that most of my companions are going to be male, simply because most women are not interested in my types of sports. I ask them if they want to go sailing, but most of them would rather do other things which don’t interest me either.
So Title IX or not, if girls aren’t interested in sports, they aren’t going to do them, even if they are “exposed” to them. Furthermore, if they eventually find a sport they like, there’s nothing now to keep them from pursuing it.
Sailing included.
