Reading this article gave me very mixed feelings. At first, I had incredible feelings of anger that a lawsuit could even be filed against the National Geography Bee for being sexist against women. Is there any aspect of geography that can be classified as “male” or “female”? The rational answer seems to be no. The trends and statistics of male to female wins in the competition can be attributed to gender preferences in subjects. I am not saying that women do not enjoy geography because that would be completely false, however, I am saying that geography seems to strike a male mind in a different way just as a fashion class would strike the female mind differently than my own. Like the activity we did in class, certain attributes or characteristics of sport are attributed to the different sexes due to their specific roles in sport. For example men who are dominant in contact sports were associated with strength whereas women were associated with balance and coordination which is needed in gymnastics. However, after thinking about the article post for a little bit I started to dig deeper. This lawsuit could be completely legitimate. Are women being considered for the event? Is the amount of women to men in the event equal? If the answer to these questions is no, then I believe that fails to meet the rules laid out by Title IX and a lawsuit is valid. This took me back to the Birrell and Theberge article we read a few weeks back. Is society keeping ideological control over women? Does the world want a woman to beat a man in a geography bee? Or does a man want to see the NBA be the shadow of the WNBA? In my mind, this comes down to our society conforming to dominant ideology as it has since its founding. In the end, this is something that needs to change. However, I do not believe it will happen all at once, it will take time just as the Civil Rights movement did.
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