Do We Really Have Equality?

Before taking a class last semester, I really didn't know what Title IX was all about. I had heard of it in high school and briefly in other classes, but I never understood what it was besides knowing that it helped females play sports. The real reason for the Title IX law was to create equality between men and women in all aspects of school, not just sports, although it did have the greatest impact in that area. After reading "Changing the Title IX narrative: a prescription for change," from the Sports, Media & Society blog, I immediately related it to when we talked about sport as a male preserve when Erin Whiteside said that sports are framed "in a popular discourse as a space for the celebration of masculinity." We talked in class about how sport preserves male privilege by (ideologically) confirming that men are superior to women and valuing and validating male values. One of my friends on facebook posted the other day about have women's basketball highlights on ESPN and how it was a disgrace, this really irritated me. Maybe because I'm probably one of those crazy feminists that think women can be and are just as great as men in the sporting world. This also could have something to do with my extreme competitiveness, but whatever. It is stuff and thoughts like that that are keeping us from really getting the equality that women deserve. Yeah, Title IX gave us a huge step up in actually being able to play sports but in the media, men still have the upper hand because of our society and the way people think about women's sports. I think that things like having women's basketball highlights on ESPN will help people notice that women's sports aren't a joke, they're for real and need to be taken seriously. So what if women don't have things like the Superbowl and World Series, but they do still exist and deserve some coverage because there are many great women athletes out there, for example, Babe Didrickson, who we also read about this week.

Babe Didrickson is probably the greatest female athlete ever and most of us had never even heard of her until the past year. She accomplished so much as a female athlete in multiple sports, more than any male athlete will in his career, yet we still never learned about her. I'd like to think that this isn't because she is a female, but part of me knows it is. Babe still got the "equality" of Title IX by being able to take part in sport but she got a lot of scrutiny for being so good. The female apologetic was pretty much forced onto her because she had so many allegations of being male or homosexual. She got married, a "make-over" to make her look more feminine and switched sports. It kills me that woman had to go through so much and still do in today's society. I know our society has made leaps and bounds when it comes to female athletes and still have a ways to go, but I'd hope that if there was a female athlete at this time that was as great as Babe Didrickson she would get the media coverage that she deserves, and not about her being a homosexual athlete.