Be careful what you wish for, girls.

last updated 8 January 2015

Canada

Jose Rodriguez

Girls do not belong on boys’ sports teams, said Jose Rodriguez in The Calgary Sun. This became glaringly obvious back in 1992, when Canadian Manon Rheaume became the first woman to play in the National Hockey League. In a single preseason game as goalie for the Tampa Bay Lightning, Rheaume gave up two goals on nine shots—“hardly a giant leap for womankind.” That was the end of gender integration in professional hockey. But “sadly, the sport-meets-gender debate has reared its ugly head” again, this time in high school sports. The Manitoba Human Rights Commission has ruled that a pair of twin girls who wanted to try out for the boys’ hockey team should be allowed to do so—even though their high school has a girls’ team. The girls duly tried out and failed to make the cut, but they still claimed that the court ruling was a win for women’s rights. They were wrong. Armed with that same ruling, boys in Manitoba are now petitioning for the right to try out for girls’ teams. And “simple biology would dictate many of the boys trying out for the girls’ teams won’t be cut. It’s not sexist to say so; it’s a fact.” By pushing for the right to play with the boys, the girls may end up killing their own sports leagues altogether. Wouldn’t it have been better to just “let boys be boys”?