Yesterday, I wrote about how all of us need to examine our own hypocrisy when we cheer for girls invading men’s groups and spaces, while acting surprised and horrified when males do the same.

So let’s talk for a moment about what really happens when women invade men’s sports. We’ll start with the example of Sophie Cunningham subbing as a kicker on the football team at her high school.

Imagine Sophie steps up for an extra-point attempt, and the defense sees (or knows) that she is a girl. How do we know they didn’t back off from their usual effort to block the kick because she was female? Maybe they could have blocked the kick more easily because she was weaker and less experienced than the usual kicker. Maybe they would have blocked the kick if a boy had been kicking but didn’t feel comfortable attempting to block a girl? Maybe they all played full strength and it didn’t matter that a girl was on the field?

But those maybes? The “maybes” are not fair to the young men on either team. They all had the right to know that they were playing a game with all males who were presumably going full strength for the good of their teammates. If even a single male felt impaired or obligated to play with less power because of Sophie’s presence, then the game was undermined for everyone.

And let’s share one more explicit example of how a female presence ruins a male sport: wrestling. In wrestling, opponents are matched by weight and go head-to-head. There is an individual winner, which contributes to an overall team score.

Women’s wrestling has grown in popularity over the past decade, and while some girls-only leagues are emerging now, many girls joined the sport by training and competing on boys’ wrestling teams. I have written about this before, so I’ll just remind you of the basic predicament young men face if they are forced to wrestle a female.

1. They must fight a girl. We typically teach boys not to fight with or physically dominate girls. Further, given the tight-fitting spandex apparel in wrestling and the specific holds used to subdue and pin an opponent, there is a subliminally sexual undertone when men wrestle women (or when women wrestle each other, for that matter).
2. They forfeit and jeopardize personal standings, the team score, and the chance at future titles and scholarship money. Many elite wrestling clubs no longer allow their male athletes to forfeit to a girl because females are so prevalent in the sport and forfeiting hurts the club’s ranking. Often, boys who refuse to wrestle girls get kicked off their team.

This is the perfect example of how boys lose when girls join their sport.

And the irony is further complicated by the fact that Title IX, on its face, gives young men the right to tackle, subdue, and pin a woman physically, while also opening a door for women to claim harassment toward men, sometimes flippantly or falsely.

So herein lies the tension. A man is allowed to pin a woman wearing spandex against the mat in a wrestling meet, but if he so much as looks in her direction after the match, he may get hit with a sexual harassment allegation that must be investigated by a Title IX coordinator.

I can’t imagine how confusing this must be for young men today. We established Title IX to help women win without regard for the ways it would make men lose.