A Dischordant Note on Title IX at Media Matters

The folks over at Media Matters are upset at John Stossel thanks to the segment he ran on Title IX as part of his prime time special on “The Top 10 Politicians’ Promises Gone Wrong.”

But as it turns out, not every reader at Media Matters sings from the same hymnal, so to speak. Here’s a comment from Media Matters that was left by one reader named BriCol:

Stossel may be a bonehead in my ways, but his final point is undoubedly true: Women are, on average, not as interested in sports as guys. Those are undisputed social statistics.

Even the Women’s Sports Foundation (referenced above) recognizes those statistics. Their theory, though, is that this differing interest is sports is a “problem” that needs to be “remedied” by creating additional opportunities for women to entice them to participate — even though those opportunities invariably require taking existing opportunities away from men. Do you agree?

Don’t let people like Stossel — who falsely state that there’s no such thing as sexism anymore — distract you as to the very real and serious question not at play in Title IX. It is this: Should government take the genders’ interest levels as it finds them, and just make sure that neither gender gets fewer opportunities relative to its interest level than the other gender? Or is there a legitimate government interest in convincing women to become equally as interested in sports as men, such that government should engage in a sort of social engineering, taking boy’s existing (and wanted) athletic slots and giving them to girls, even if currently unwanted, in the hope of manufacturing interest?

I’m a left-leaning, Fox-hating, Democrat-voting liberal, but I have to tell you, we’re on the wrong side of this debate. Title IX is an anti-discrimination law and I agree with it. But the way its currently being applied is consistent with the second of the two above approaches, in that it ignores differing interest levels altogether, and takes slots from men and gives them to women in hopes of forcing women to become equally as interested in sports as men. Respectfully, I don’t think that’s justified, and in fact I think it ends up discriminating against men. Better, I think, for Title IX to be applied in a way that takes interest levels as it finds them. Isn’t that more fair?

Every day, I become more and more convinced that we are winning this battle.