Ok Merriam-Webster please enlighten us with your definitions so we can all be on the same page and prevent you from being triggering by our sloppy verbiage.
we used to be split up in coed teams in elementary and have field day. part of field day was a distance run which my guess would be it was like 600 yds. we all ran it as a group and they awarded points towards which team won. i can even see now where for a girl it was a little tough, but it was a team competition so the boys on their team scored for them. anyhow, we would have done this through 5th grade, and no one complained.
junior high we had intramurals after school, this time by class, coed, no one complained. and we won softball because we had a guy off a literal LLWS team.
PE all the way up through college is usually coed. anyone want to freak out about that?
maybe i need to use the term "gender" to get people angry?
From most of the views expressed here, that there is no need for separate competitions for boys and girls of a certain age and they should compete together, it seems hard to argue the norm that later applies, that there should not only be separate categories for male and female - as is the case from puberty onwards - but that they don't actually compete against each other, which is what applies in most open sports. So why does this distinction between the sexes not matter until a line is somehow passed in the early teens that requires acknowledging it? Do "male" and "female" not exist until then? That would be news to biologists, let alone most boys and girls.
I'm not sure that most of the views say there is "no need" for separate races. Seems like most agree that both scenarios are OK. So if there are situations when boys and girls race together - even when the reason is gender inclusivity - that's cool because it's kind of a common thing anyway.
If you are concluding that participation and gender-based inclusion/exclusion should be the same across all levels, I think that premise is flawed. Middle school is distinctly different from HS, college, and world-class competitions. Puberty matters. We can be more flexible and prioritize things like inclusion at younger ages without undermining a stricter male/female standard at higher levels.
I'll argue that we *should absolutely* be more flexible and inclusive with younger athletes. Participation in sport at these levels is largely just that - driven by socialization with friends and peers. Competition and achievement are important, but shouldn't be the most important thing for younger athletes.
I agree with you that "puberty matters." But I disagree with the view that you and some others on this thread seem to hold, which is that puberty of adolescence only matters in sports once kids reach HS, college and beyond.
The reality is that puberty of adolescence is something that most kids, especially girls, go through in middle school. The normal age range for girls to start puberty in the USA is 8 to 13, though many in pediatrics say they think it's normal for girls nowadays to start puberty as early as 7.
Most girls start developing breasts at 10 or 11, though breast development is still considered normal at 8 and 9. The average age girls in the USA begin ovulating and menstruating is 12, though quite a few girls start at 9, 10 or 11. I personally started my own period a few days after my 11th birthday when I was in 5th grade. That was and still is completely normal. There were a couple of girls I grew up with who got their periods in 4th grade when they were 9.
I also agree with you that "participation in sport at these levels [imiddle school and younger] is... driven by socialization with friends and peers." But I'd point out that for girls and boys even in kindergarten and the early primary grades, socialization is different. Moreover, throughout school, but especially in middle school, interaction with peers for girls and boys is typically very different too.
Girls in primary school and middle school experience a lot of sexist insults, sexist bullying, sexual harassment, groping, body shaming and period shaming from their male classmates and older boys in school that their male peers don't face.
Of course, most boys in LS and MS don't sexually harass and bully girls - most are nice kids. But enough boys in LS and especially MS do sexually harass and bully girls to make MS often unpleasant and fraught for girls.
When I was in 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th grade eons ago, school was a total minefield for girls because of the frequent sexist taunting, leering, breast "feeling up"/groping, bra strap-snapping, ass grabbing, hair-pulling and prurience and mockery around being "on the rag" dished out on the daily by some of the obnoxious, troublemaking boys my own age and grade. And because of all the keen sexual interest shown in developing girls of 11, 12 and 13 by boys who are considerably older, including HS boys age 15, 16, 17 and 18.
The idea that mixed-sex sports are fine and fair to all kids prior to HS, and the view that the newly trendy ethos of supposed "inclusivity" should set the standard and be the main concern in MS sports, seems to rest on two mistaken assumptions: 1) there's no appreciable differences between males and females that matter in sports until puberty of adolescence; and 2) puberty of adolescence occurs entirely or mainly in the teen years, and thus the changes wrought by puberty of adolescence that make a glaringly obvious difference in male and female sports training, potential and performance only need to be taken into account once kids reach HS.
This post was edited 12 minutes after it was posted.
From most of the views expressed here, that there is no need for separate competitions for boys and girls of a certain age and they should compete together, it seems hard to argue the norm that later applies, that there should not only be separate categories for male and female - as is the case from puberty onwards - but that they don't actually compete against each other, which is what applies in most open sports. So why does this distinction between the sexes not matter until a line is somehow passed in the early teens that requires acknowledging it? Do "male" and "female" not exist until then? That would be news to biologists, let alone most boys and girls.
I'm not sure that most of the views say there is "no need" for separate races. Seems like most agree that both scenarios are OK. So if there are situations when boys and girls race together - even when the reason is gender inclusivity - that's cool because it's kind of a common thing anyway.
If you are concluding that participation and gender-based inclusion/exclusion should be the same across all levels, I think that premise is flawed. Middle school is distinctly different from HS, college, and world-class competitions. Puberty matters. We can be more flexible and prioritize things like inclusion at younger ages without undermining a stricter male/female standard at higher levels.
I'll argue that we *should absolutely* be more flexible and inclusive with younger athletes. Participation in sport at these levels is largely just that - driven by socialization with friends and peers. Competition and achievement are important, but shouldn't be the most important thing for younger athletes.
Why is it that you consider puberty is the criterion which should apply to the separation of the sexes in sports competition? Is male competitive advantage that is brought in by puberty the only legitimate rationale here? Do you not consider that children before puberty have an identify that is also based on sex/gender - and that also should be recognised in their participation in sports?
Sex. Read the hundreds of posts about Hiltz. Hiltz is not female gender. Hiltz gets upset if you call them, "she". We have been counseled and corrected that they can compete against women because the category is for sex, not gender. If tou want to change it to gender, then any sex male can compete against women if their gender is female. And Hiltz can't compete against women.
the parent on here who complained about ability differences might be the closest one to having a point. in select soccer we would usually play girls' teams 2 age groups up. in HS soccer the JV would play the girls' varsity. my college's women's soccer team would play U17 or U19 boys. i grant when we get super serious maybe it should split.
i say this in part because given a little thought, this varsity-JV-open approach could be problematic if girls aren't allocated onto each level in fair proportion. the idea is to encourage participation, not dump most of the girls to JV or below.
but i do think JV in junior high isn't the dumbest idea, not unlike a 5th quarter in basketball, which we had. my junior high had 3 slots per event. we won our district and had some guys who went on to compete at state as HS kids. and so you start out with a football team of kids who want to try out and then less than a school bus load who make the events and travel. i think we should be encouraging turnout. the fastest kids are already going to soak up what they do. so i don't think some different divisions for the same schools are a bad idea. you just need some girls sprinkled each level.
i also think we work, while generally gendered, on the same principles in small college sports. there is usually a slow heat, on up. we encourage participation but by the last heat it's the fast kids. everyone is happy. and i don't think unified races for beginners are a dumb idea. like i said, it's basically field day. the idea is do i enjoy this where i take it more seriously come TF season or run HS. i think the more kids you run the more it feels like you have competition. i think if you split it all up by sex and grade and such, the more it's like, wow, i am slow.
i keep going back to, i had one goal my first K league soccer season, and i went on to be co-MVP in college. the idea is to encourage people to stick with it.
hiltz is an awkward comparison because for someone who apparently presents in public as male, she willingly goes back in the box as a girl for track. plus she presents the easy case unlike the biologically intersex ones. you can chase over-politicized trans bans -- i mean, how many good athletes do you really seriously think will emerge from boys who see themselves as girls, who are then into sports and competing as girls (answer, near none in reality) -- and you still have the semenya issue.
and to circle back to topic, this is not elite 25 year olds, it's 6th graders getting a XC race. we didn't even have 6th grade XC races. if i remember right, we had one meet for 7th and 8th grade. the kids now can run a full schedule in the fall, if they want. i kind of don't care if that 6th grade meet is unisex then. we're talking 11 year olds where one kid may be 6 feet and another 4' 8" still.
i actually feel like open could solve a lot of the issues. wheelchair kids, special olympics, trans, intersex, the slow kids, or anyone who wants to pick the category. bring everyone in the umbrella instead of making it just about the fastest 3 kids per event when people are still growing.
I'm not sure that most of the views say there is "no need" for separate races. Seems like most agree that both scenarios are OK. So if there are situations when boys and girls race together - even when the reason is gender inclusivity - that's cool because it's kind of a common thing anyway.
If you are concluding that participation and gender-based inclusion/exclusion should be the same across all levels, I think that premise is flawed. Middle school is distinctly different from HS, college, and world-class competitions. Puberty matters. We can be more flexible and prioritize things like inclusion at younger ages without undermining a stricter male/female standard at higher levels.
I'll argue that we *should absolutely* be more flexible and inclusive with younger athletes. Participation in sport at these levels is largely just that - driven by socialization with friends and peers. Competition and achievement are important, but shouldn't be the most important thing for younger athletes.
Why is it that you consider puberty is the criterion which should apply to the separation of the sexes in sports competition? Is male competitive advantage that is brought in by puberty the only legitimate rationale here? Do you not consider that children before puberty have an identify that is also based on sex/gender - and that also should be recognised in their participation in sports?
But sports divisions traditionally have not been based on the self-perceived "identity" of the participants. Sports categories were not established to divide participants up based on their self-perceptions and "identity," whether related to age, school grade, ability and disability, skill level, sex, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, religion, political views, or gender (which is really just a shorthand word for the set of sexist sex stereotypes and appearance standards associated with "femininity" and "masculinity" that prevail in any given culture at a particular time).
Sports divisions have always been based on objective differences in the bodies and physical capacities of the participants. Those differences are determined by verifiable facts such as the participant's sex, age, developmental stage, ability/disability status, skill level, and, in some sports, weight.
Girls and boys have traditionally had separate sports because of the physical differences between human males and females, physical differences that exist prior to puberty of adolescence. Girls and boys have not traditionally had separate sports because "children before puberty have an identity that is also based on sex/gender" like you say.
The idea that sports traditionally have been divided, and should be divided, based on the internal sense of self and personal "gender identity" that individual participants might possess, desire, claim and/or assert rather than on the reality of what sex they are is new. It first emerged in the 1980s as an argument made by believers in gender identity theory who were intent on changing the eligibility criteria for the female category of sport to allow XY athletes with disorders of male sex development to compete in women's events. But the questionable, historically inaccurate idea that sports have always been divided by athletes' own internal perceptions of their own sex or "gender" rather than on the objective reality of their actual sex has only become widespread in the current century as gender identity ideology has spread to the general populace and been taught to kids growing up as though it's sound science and incontrovertible fact.
This post was edited 12 minutes after it was posted.
I agree with you that "puberty matters." But I disagree with the view that you and some others on this thread seem to hold, which is that puberty of adolescence only matters in sports once kids reach HS, college and beyond.
[...]
I also agree with you that "participation in sport at these levels [imiddle school and younger] is... driven by socialization with friends and peers." But I'd point out that for girls and boys even in kindergarten and the early primary grades, socialization is different. Moreover, throughout school, but especially in middle school, interaction with peers for girls and boys is typically very different too.
We might be on the same page with this. Or maybe not? My argument for inclusive running at MS level is that ultimately those athletes that are trans or non-binary don't fit the boy/girl mold. We can be supportive and understanding by finding creative ways to help them fit in. If that means a combined race, then that's an easy thing to help a kid that is struggling with bigger issues of identity, sex, gender, etc.
My statement that puberty matters is with respect to how trans/non-binary issues are handled at higher levels of competition. I don't know what the answer is at the college and professional levels, but I do know that it doesn't have to be the same for young athletes because the goals of sport are different and the stakes are different.
My daughter just entered sixth grade and is excited to get the cross country season started. As an fellow ms-hs runner so am I. I just found out that our town did away with gendered races in an attempt to be more inclusive they have done away with gendered races. There is just two a Varsity and JV split down the middle regardless of gender. The races are still scored by gender, plus an “open” category to please certain virtue signalers. The fast girls will almost certainly never get a chance to win a race. Mine is just starting out but it’s a bummer that she might not have that opportunity. Is this common anywhere else? Is this, dare I say, a title nine violation?
It's just middle school, who gives a crap?
Every single girl does in my experience. MS kids run sub 4:30 for 1500, 2:0x for 800 and 15:xx for 5k, I have had one of all those kids in the last 2 years. So dont treat them like they are elementary school kids. They love to race and should expect professionalism among directors to not diminish the experience. Every travel sport has a team for kids who want to take it seriously. For the 100th time, why does JUST running treat all competition for MS age kids as abuse? Only running. You can run for fun and slow or fun and fast. There is nothing wrong with that.
I think racing against the boys just helped push her faster, tbh.
+1
A lot of the time, elite middle school girl runners are so much better than the other girls that the spend the entire race by themselves, running against the clock. When these girls get to race with the boys, they can tuck in behind or race with some of the good boys runners and it results in much quicker times. Plus, actively racing others is essentially because most times these elite MS runners don't know what it's like to be in an actual competitive race so when they see it at a youth national meet they struggle.
we used to be split up in coed teams in elementary and have field day. part of field day was a distance run which my guess would be it was like 600 yds. we all ran it as a group and they awarded points towards which team won. i can even see now where for a girl it was a little tough, but it was a team competition so the boys on their team scored for them. anyhow, we would have done this through 5th grade, and no one complained.
junior high we had intramurals after school, this time by class, coed, no one complained. and we won softball because we had a guy off a literal LLWS team.
PE all the way up through college is usually coed. anyone want to freak out about that?
maybe i need to use the term "gender" to get people angry?
Your view that it was perfectly fine to make school sports "a little tough" for the girls you went to school with because "the boys scored" seems based on the premise that insuring that boys get a chance to score is all that really matters in school, or at least it's what's matters most. Girls being treated like they're second-class and being put at a disadvantage is no skin off your nose.
Unfortnately the sexist disregard you've shown you have for female students is typical of the male supremacist attitude that's at the heart of, but hidden behind, so much of the talk about supposed "inclusivity" in school sports today.
As for your view about PE: actually PE is not usually mixed-sex all the way through college. It wasn't when I went to school, and it wasn't when my kids went to school, either. Many schools still have sex-specific PE at least for some ages and some activities.
Plus, there's plenty of evidence that many girls and women do not fare as well in mixed-sex PE classes as in female-only PE. Some girls and women who are exceptionaly good at sports might perform and fare better in mixed-sex PE than in female-only. Similarly, some girls and women might prefer mixed-sex PE to female-only PE for a whole host of social reasons. But girls and women with normal sports aptitude do not perform as well, and a majority of girls and women do not feel as comfortable, in mixed-sex PE as in female-only PE.
This post was edited 16 minutes after it was posted.
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