Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

I was, uncomfortably, stuck on a plane en route to our family Spring Break recently, yearning to be free to move, so I watched a movie about Billie Jean King, naturally. Then the memories of her and the Battle of the Sexes flooded in. I was so geared up in 1973 when she won. Planned it out, stayed up late, etc. I forgot how momentous her victory was, politically. I also forgot about Title IX. Title IX was used (mostly? forcibly) to fund separate but equal physical education opportunities for girls in the US starting in the 70s. I believe I, and my sisters nationwide, benefitted tremendously from that bit of legislation that was nearly overlooked. Ware made a valid, yet arguable, point that Title IX did wonders for girls� sports while keeping them mostly segregated from boys.

We, sisters and bros, warmed up together in PE but team sports were gendered. Segregation in sports ultimately, maybe allows many boys to reach their potential while the best, most promising girls cannot. Ware also thinks separation lead to increasing emphasis on sheer strength and bulk in male dominated sports like football. I remember being able to best the boys in elementary and middle school in everything but upper arm strength. Had I continued to workout with the boys, who knows? Not gonna play football with the boys but swimming, tennis, sailing�.

My public school PE experience, confirmed by friends on social media, was incredible. We girls all felt challenged and supported. I am still into fitness, in large part thanks to my schooling. I LOVE that I was trained in elementary school by an older, heavy, unathletic white guy who would get no sympathy today. He made angels sing on the gym floor. We ran around and around for him, excelled in the Presidential Physical Fitness challenges, played gym hockey after school, climbed ropes, square danced and did The Hustle. None of this makes sense, stereotypically. Also, I was blessed with two remarkable female coaches in Junior High who went on and beyond for us. I’m guessing one or both were in the closet. I still can’t assess the human touch vs government intervention on this one (most probably the latter let the former shine). But we surely must have benefitted from good policy.

Ware expresses decidedly mixed feelings for BJK. Like she was neither intellectual nor dogmatic and she, maybe, benefitted too much personally from her support of girls and women. Ware comes across as a first and third wave feminist while BJK is of the second. My temperament and life experience lands me firmly in the second wave, too. I respect the First Wave. The Third Wave seems to be inviting an infantilization of women. The third wave loudmouths seem to be undoing the progress the First made. I don’t place Ware in that subset at all.

An acquaintance from Argentina quipped to me in the 1990s that soccer (futball) never took off in the US because Title IX took resources away from boys. HAHAHA. Intuitively, without reading up on this, I know soccer eventually made its way across the US BECAUSE girls were discovering it along side their brothers. Soccer is a family sport here. Not to mention, immigrants (legal or otherwise) carted over their love of the game and helped make things happen here.

“I think the reason we [Billie and her pro baseball bro Randy] are here today is that our parents did not live through us; they stood behind us� I am doing the same but my kids are not sporty! What am I missing?

“From the start she had an outsider’s [class, gender, then sexuality] sense that made her want to shake up the game from its country-club tonyness and make it more of a people’s sport.�

As a child of a very structured household, BJK faced a world where “the rules all started to change, and it seemed there weren’t any rules left. {She} tried to go with the flow, but always seemed…at the front of the line.�

“As a popular sports superstar, BJK quickly moved beyond just tennis to become a symbol for something even bigger: women’s rights and women’s changing roles in society.�

BJK “grasped something that second-wave feminism often missed—that sports are politics and thus an integral part of the struggle for women’s liberation.� I think Ware means First Wave Feminism?

Getting involved in Title IX
For females and males to play sports on equal terms, it took “education, advocacy, political engagement, and even entrepreneurship. Just as she had done in the Battle of the Sexes, BJK dovetailed her personal and professional priorities with building support for women’s sports in the society at large..�

Beyond Title IX
Coed sports. “’Separate but equal� means women will always be second-class citizens in sports.� BJK
“Could this hyper emphasis on male size and strength be a reaction to the inroads of women in sports?� Mariah Burton Nelson, “The stronger women get, the more men love football.�
Ware offers suggestions on “how gender could be deemphasized in sports� on p. 175.
“More than 35 years of Title IX have shown what the female body is capable of—pretty much anything that the male’s is. Ironically, Title IX has also made it significantly harder to envision such a brave new [coed] athletic world precisely because sports revolution it sparked unfolded in a an athletic system so rigidly divided by gender. Reconciling these dual legacies—the unleashing of women’s athletic potential versus the inadvertent (or perhaps not so inadvertent) reinforcement of sex segregation in sports—will be a major challenge as the women’s sport revolution continues to evolve.�