Equal does not mean the same (title IX) 5.28.02

There are two things I don't get into: George Will and sports on TV. I despise George Will. His smarmy elitism and ministry-of-propaganda style of prose leave me cold.
Watching televised sports and listening sportscasters go on about said sports does nothing to trip my trigger. That's me. To each his own. I could care less if a guy paints his whole body to support a football team or because he is going to a sci fi convention. It's the same to me.
I played baseball and football as a kid. It was good exercise and occasionally quite fun, but even in the little league and public school ranks, sports have a dark side.
Unfulfilled adults tend to live vicariously through kid sports in a most unhealthy manner at times. No hockey dads needed to die to prove that point. And why anyone who didn't go to a particular college should care how that school does in the playoffs is beyond me as well, especially when that school is in another state.
I occasionally find some reasons to agree with Mr. Will and this week his Newsweek column struck a chord. While I still found his manner of expression as soothing as chewing on tin foil, his position on Title IX made sense.
Title IX is the 30-year-old policy that outlaws sexual discrimination in education. It makes it actionable for males and females to be unequally represented on the playing fields and gym floors of America's schools.
Now I may not be able to tell you what channel ESPN is, but I do appreciate athletics. Children and adults alike should participate in competitive sports for their health as well as for confidence and discipline.
Last year, my alma mater, Iowa State, was forced to cancel its baseball program because there were more men playing sports than women. Old George says the liberal establishment would like to social engineer everyone into androgyny, i.e. men and women are all basically the same in interests and skills and should be given exactly equal opportunities in all things until we have a society that is 50-50 down the middle in everything.
George is a tool and makes no allowances for good intentions, but he has an agenda and only accusations of mind control can cause enough fear to make us George's willing servants.
Regardless, he is essentially correct when he says Title IX is not only unfair to men who just like sports more than women, but that by trying to make society conform to a model in which women are not equal until they act like men, is unfair to women.
Does George care about women? Probably not. I care, though, and I still think Title IX hurts more than it helps.
Studies have shown that girls who participate in sports are much less likely to grow up to be doormats, victims or bundles of molly-coddled eating disorders. I am in favor of anything that genuinely improves the lot of women. Should I not speak in hushed, reverential tones glowingly about all things feminine, you will forgive me, I learned this behavior from my mother.
Yes, my mother, a woman as intolerant of weakness in her own gender as any man accused of misogyny. She cannot stand prissy little hausfraus who talk a good game about being equal to men while crying to get what they want and asking their hubbies to take out the trash 'cause its icky. She works construction and at just a shade over 40 (wink) not only keeps up with the 18-year-old males on her crew, sets the pace.
Her mother was much the same way. She could kill chickens all day half drunk with a cigarette in one hand and a knife in the other. She could cook Sunday dinner for 12, beat 10 grand kids and do the dishes without the help of automation. Did she complain? Yes, yes she did. She was strong, not insane, but like she used to say, "somebody has to pop out 6 kids and it ain't gonna be a man."
Oddly enough, neither of my maternal influences would be considered darlings of the feminist movement because underlying most feminist movements, there is this constant drone of self-affirmation. "We're strong, we're smart, we're just a good as any man."
The dirty secret of self-affirmation is that you only need to say those things because you DON'T believe them in the first place.
My progenitors never believed women were inferior and had no need for reassurance. I treat men and women as equals and if a woman comes to me like we're at recess and wants to know why I'm so mean, I get just as irritated as I would at any man who came to me with that nonsense.
From my mother and grandmother, I learned women are equal in spirit, not identical in ability. Equal in potential, not similar in interests, skills, goals and desires. And that's OK.
Both would disdain Title IX and what it does to sports and women. It does not ultimately serve women because it treats them like weak, little girls who need a head start in a foot race on the assumption they can't win with equal footing. That is no message to send. I learned in fifth grade that the head start meant you never could win even if you crossed the line first. It was a ruse.
It has been very frustrating for me as a man ahead of the equality curve because I refuse to say with a delicate patina that I believe in equal pay for equal work. That men and women are entitled to equal treatment under the law. That when it comes to professionalism, basic humanity, self-sacrifice, loyalty, friendship and worth, men and women have equal claims to endowment by their creator.
As the comedian Sinbad once said, "Women be different than men." By the same token, men be different than women. Is that wrong? Far from it. Our differences can be strengths.
Just give everyone the opportunity to play sports and maybe women will one day participate in the same numbers as men. But maybe they won't.
Eliminating America's pastime because the women's swim team only has five members does nothing to help women except make a few of the more insecure ones feel less inferior while perpetuating the illusion of absolute equality.
So let the games begin in earnest and maybe we will eventually figure out that men and women don't need to talk alike, think alike and act alike to be equal.
- Greg Jerrett is a Nonpareil staff writer. His column runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays. He may be contacted at 328-1811, Ext. 279, or by e-mail at gjerrett@nonpareilonline.com.