Title IX Promotes Sexual Apartheid

“Separate but Equal” is no more justified in school sports than it is in school admissions. In Brown V. Board of Education, the Supreme Court found that separate is NOT equal:

Segregation of white and Negro children in the public schools of a State solely on the basis of race, pursuant to state laws permitting or requiring such segregation, denies to Negro children the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment -- even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors of white and Negro schools may be equal.

Note that it is not enough to provide equal “physical facilities and other ‘tangible’ factors.”  Therefore, Title IX’s attempt to provide for equality in athletic programs seperated by sex, no matter how finely balanced, fails to afford the equal protection guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.  The very separation of “male” from “female” school athletic programs runs afoul of the decision in Brown V. Board of Education.  Title IX perpetuates a system of sexual apartheid.

But this is for the benefit of women! it will be argued.  Well, such arguments were also made at the time of Plessy v. Ferguson, which enshrined the doctrine of “separate but equal” as a rebuttal to the daunting challenge to the system implied by the Fourteenth Amendment, before it was overturned by Brown.  At the time of the Plessy decision, it was argued that competition in school would be detrimental to blacks, that it was better for both races to remain separated.

Furthermore, even if it is conceded that separate “female” athletic programs provide a benefit to women, and thus that a two tiered athletic system should be maintained, there is an even bigger problem with this system of sexual apartheid.  It assumes that gender is binary.  While hetero-normative females may be disadvantaged by such an athletic program, the transgendered may finally achieve the guarantee of equal protection under the law, promised by the Fourteenth Amendment.

As it stands now, female-identifying transgenders are forced to choose between competing in athletics in a gender pool they do not identify with, or competing in their own gender pool, while facing discrimination for doing so.  Consider the recent backlash against female identifying transgenders who crush their hetero-normative female competition in wrestling, track, weightlifting, etc.  Forcing such a choice, by perpetuating this binary system, is unacceptable and unsupported by the decision in Brown V. Board of Education.  Only an inclusive sports program, not one built on an antiquated binary sexual apartheid system, can overcome this challenge.

The problem is not that a transgender female excels in wrestling or track or weight lifting. The problem is that we discriminate on the basis of sex at all.

Title IX promotes a system of sexual apartheid, and it has to go...