Standards of journalism and the Title IX blame game

Ebuz and I often discuss the need for greater awareness of the intricacies of Title IX--or even just the basic facts--that are free from common misconceptions. We wish, for example, that Title IX training for athletic department administrators happened before violations occurred.
We also wish, somewhat in vain, that the media would become better informed on Title IX issues before reporters and columnists printed stories about the law.
But headlines like "How Title IX Hurts Female Athletes" fail to surprise us anymore. What is somewhat surprising is when such a headline--actually this exact headline--is found on The Atlantic's web site.
And I am sure--based on the numerous angry comments--that The Atlantic is regretting running this piece by two women: a journalist and a cross-country coach. The logic is faulty throughout. Most egregious is when the authors say that Title IX has exposed more girls to sexual assault by male coaches.
There are the old arguments about ACL injuries and concussions. An argument based in--thank you Michael Messner--soft essentialism. (There's a decent amount of hard essentialism in here, too.) Because there is no mention about the general danger of competitive athletics and the injuries suffered by boys--like all those undiagnosed concussions. Or the way boys experience pressure to compete despite injury.
Attempts by the writers to get facts by experts to back up their points fail:

For female players, the gravest consequence of having male coaches has been an increased risk of sexual abuse. Pediatrician Ken Feldman, the recently retired medical director of the Children's Protection Program at Seattle Children's Hospital, says that although there is no formal tracking of sexual abuse by coaches per se, "girls will be more victimized than boys."

No studies. No data. But girls will be victimized more. Based on what evidence?
Yes, please, let's interrogate things like injury rates and types, the decline of female coaches and the absence of female coaches in men's sports, and the secrecy around sexual abuse of both boys and girls by coaches. But saying "Title IX did this" is not an interrogation. And it is not helpful in understanding the complexities behind such situations.

You know what hurts female athletes?
Misconceptions about them, their experiences, and how they came to be.
Misinformed coverage by media outlets.

I am disappointed in The Atlantic. I hope they more carefully vet what gets published under their moniker in the future.

A cheerleading PS

A recently released study from University of North Carolina says, not surprisingly, that cheerleading is the most injury-laden women's sport.
So while the status of cheerleading may be somewhat contested these days, the fact that it is dangerous is not.
This is not to say that because cheerleading is dangerous, it should not be given status as a sport. After all how would we defend football and ice hockey? One might even argue that because cheerleading has not been a sport, it has produced more injuries. The cheerleading governing system is a little different than, for example, the NCAA. It is possible that a more authoritative governing body could reduce injuries by regulating things like throws, tosses, etc. or mandating certain safety measures.
So I mention it here not as a condemnation of making cheerleading a sport, but rather a reminder to those who seek to elevate it varsity status at their respective institutions. Cheerleading requires the same attention as other sports. And based on the injury rates, it is going to require a lot of access to medical personnel; trainers and doctors who travel with the team to competitions, etc. In other words, you cannot just add it and think it is going to take care of itself or be a team you can pay minimal attention to. Because if you elevated it to help with some Title IX inequities in the participation numbers, you're just creating more by not providing equitable treatment.

Wisconsin Court Says Cheerleading Is a Contact Sport

File the Wisconsin Supreme Court's recent decision in Noffke v. Bakke under examples of cheerleading's increasing acceptance as an athletic activity.

Brittney Noffke was a high school varsity cheerleader who was injured while practicing a sideline stunt. (Cheerleading, we've noted, has a higher rate of injury than all (other) women's sports combined.) She sued, among others, a fellow cheerleader named Kevin Bakke, whose role in this particular stunt involved spotting her while she stood on the shoulders of another cheerleader. Bakke was out of position, and thus unable to catch Noffke when she fell. In his defense, Bakke argued that under a Wisconsin statute, an athlete who injures another athlete through negligence is immune from liability and cannot be sued. But for this immunity to apply to Bakke, the courts had to find that Naffke and Bakke were participants in a "recreational activity that includes physical contact between persons in a sport involving amateur teams, including...high school." In other words, Bakke was immune from suit only if cheerleading is a contact sport. The lower court agreed with Bakee that it is, but the decision was reversed on appeal. Bakke appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which reinstated cheerleading's status as a contact sport and dismissed the case against Bakke.

The court concluded that cheerleading is a sport because it involves physical exertion and skill, it is governed by a set of rules or customs, and its participants are organized and work together as a team to compete and to generate fan participation on the sidelines. Moreover, cheerleading incorporates the requisite physical contact as stunts require cheerleaders to toss and lift and have other manners of "forceful interaction" with each other. For purposes of the immunity statute, it did not matter that the accident occurred while practicing for a sideline routine rather than a competition, since the immunity rule by its terms does not turn on whether participants are in, or training for, competition.

The court's conclusion that cheerleading is a sport--and a contact sport at that--is of course limited to the immunity statute at stake in the case. It does not directly bear on whether the activity is sufficiently sporty to count as an athletic opportunity under Title IX or a contact sport that can, under the regulations, exclude a particular sex. While OCR endorses the practice of counting cheerleading for Title IX purposes if the team is treated like, and is as focused on competition, as any other athletic team, courts have not weighed in on this question or whether the contact sport exception applies to cheerleading. But for a court to recognize that cheerleading is not only a sport, but a contact sport warranting application of the same immunity rules that were written for sports like hockey and football, is not only evidence of the evolving, athletic nature of cheerleading but judicial acceptance of that fact as well -- acceptance that we could see spill over into the Title IX context.

You knew it was coming

The recent spate of studies and articles on injury rates--most of which focus on ACL tears--in female athletes could be part of a trend of inferiorizing the female body, which of course has ramifications for women's sports and female athletes and future female athletes. Maybe I am sounding the alarm a little early here, but this article in Science News that is reporting on a study of amenorrhea in young (teenage or early 20s) female athletes makes me nervous. If you have read Patricia Vertinsky's excellent book The Eternally Wounded Woman you will know why.
As much as research like Michael Sokolove's on ACL tears and even other studies on injuries like concussions provide often good evidence of the cultural factors that influence injury rates, we cannot control or predict how such work will be received. The media that reports on these studies serves as receptor and purveyor of this information and the coverage of this research never fails to mention Title IX. The suggestion is out there for those who want to take it (and do very bad things with it): equality has hurt--literally--women. No one is saying that outright. Most of the work and press mentions the benefits of sport and exercise. But in a culture that already largely believes that women's bodies are weaker such seemingly extreme interpretations of these studies are not out of the realm of possibility.
And as problematic as I find some of the coverage of ACL injuries to be, I am more concerned about this Harvard/Mass General study about amenorrhea. Because knees can be fixed or even replaced if need be. But start talking about a woman's reproductive system and people get a little panicky. The article reports that a quarter of high school and college athletes stop having their period "at some point" which results in "temporary infertility."
The article does point out that this is easily reversible, could be a result of evolutionary tactics that prevent pregnancy in bodies that cannot sustain them, and is not as severe as the other consequence: loss of bone density.
But it's already out there: interruptions in the reproductive system. Never mind that most of these women aren't really all that keen on getting pregnant anyway or that many of them could be on birth control--also something that results in temporary infertility.
And of course, at the end of the article, we get the Title IX mention:
With the 1972 law change called Title IX that ensures girls get equal treatment to boys in educational and athletic programs, more girls have become involved in sports during adolescence. While that has been good in general, [Misra, study's co-author] says, it might also explain why amenorrhea has become more prevalent in recent decades.
Or it could be the rise in eating disorders, which certainly as afflicted female athletes. Or it could be environmental factors. Or it could be specialization. Or it could be a combination of these things. But I am pretty sure that passing a law that mandates equity didn't result in girls' periods stopping.

NYT on Girls and Sports Injuries

The New York Times magazine devoted its main story this week to the rate of injuries for girls playing sports such as soccer, and how the injury rate is startlingly higher than that of boys. It's a long and interesting article that offers a lot to discuss, and this blog post is just a starting point for discussion of the piece and the issues that it raises.

The article focused largely on high school girls playing soccer, and how the rate of serious knee injuries is about five times than of boys. The article explains some of this differential through the biological changes that occur when girls go through puberty, such as ligaments becoming looser in order to afford the body more flexibility, which in turn leads to knee and ankle injuries at higher rates than for boys, whose ligaments are more rigid, which helps keep muscles and bones in place. There also seems to be a growing concern over these injuries as the number of girls and women playing high school and college sports has increased dramatically in the last 35 years since Title IX has been in effect.

Overall, I thought the message of the article was a good one -- if girls are engaged in sports that boys have traditionally played, and the play of those sports requires movements and motions that are perhaps geared toward the way boys' bodies often develop, then we should be aware of the potential for higher injury risk to girls and take preventative measures, such as specific warm-up exercises that have been helpful to strengthen the knees and improve form, to try to reduce risk of injury.

My concerns about the article relate to its premise that people are either blindly pushing for girls to play sports to "even the playing field" with boys, without regard to potential injury risks (described in the article as "hard-liners"), or they are concerned about girls' health and want attention drawn to the disparity in injury rates. What about having it both ways? There are many of us who would like to see more encouragement, support and opportunity for girls and women to play sports, AND who would like to see more health research regarding injury rates and better ideas to prevent those injuries.

The second concern is related to the tone of the piece. The cover art, of a girl with a bandaged head being bonked on the head with a soccer ball, with the words "Hurt Girls" above it, seems to diminish the female athletes, and at the same time not give a second thought to boys who suffer serious injuries in sports. I am a firm believer that health research ought to take gender into account, when appropriate, to analyze problems and develop potential solutions, and we shouldn't just lump knee injuries for boys and girls into the same category when there's evidence that the problem ought to be treated differently. However, the article seemed to be editorializing as to whether it was appropriate for girls to play "rough" sports where they might get hurt, whereas we accept the idea that boys "play rough" and that their injuries are just part of the game (another NYT article discusses the knee injuries of professional football players, and how it's just the price that athletes pay for being able to play the game they love).