After reading many of the blogs about the retaliation of the media and others from the blog last week about the Male high school wrestler forfeiting to a women competitor based on religion and proper etiquette, I found the most recent post on the Title IX topic very interesting. I not only was taken aback by the title of a major blog post, but the correction is what bothered me even more. Regardless of your thoughts on the issue, simply enough titling a blog “The unforeseen consequences of Title IX” was a legitimate form of reinforcing patriarchy. Not only does the title correction validate the point that the author was incorrect, but it also shows that his first notion was to assert that the reason behind this was because of Title IX. Patriarchy can be defined as “A structured an ideological system of relationships that legitimate male power over women and the labor they provide” as learned from our reading and notes. Patriarchy also relates “Directly to ideologies of superiority like sexism, heterosexism, and racism. “ When you combine the ideology of superiority of sexism in conjunction with the simple action a blogger took in titling his blog, it’s easy enough to make the correlation of subliminal patriarchy in the media. Even if this author didn’t intend to, he reinforced this social idea.
The author of the Title IX blog had a line that stuck out more than the rest: “no one seems to be writing pieces titled The Unforeseen Consequences of Equal Protection.” Not only is this author unintentionally supporting the symbolic annihilation and trivialization of women in sport, (as described by Dr. Birrell and in our texts) but these secondary source accounts like blogs skew our culture’s thoughts of women in sport: not only did he choose not to compete ‘because of title IX’, but he ‘must’ be inherently weak as a male athlete. In my mind, as far as we’ve come from patriarchy being pulled from the public eye via media, it’s still completely prevalent and the most viewable in sport.
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