Fight Like a Girl

So I hear this news story about this high school kid who is a favorite for his state's wrestling championship. And I tried just now to find a link to it to show you, but Yahoo and Google hate me right now, I think. But the story goes that this kid turned down his shot at the championship because his opponent was to be a girl. His family said it went against his morals or how he was raised or some crap. Okay.
My first thought at this was to wonder if that girl would get the title by default now. And if so, poor girl. Because even if she won, her accomplishment would be dwarfed because it could always be said that the favorite backed down from the competition. Bastards. And then I thought about my boys and how I would like for them to handle the same situation. Would I want them to wrestle a girl? And fight to win? Hells yeah I would.
Because while I do believe there are biological differences between male and female that make us predisposed, as a gender, to excel in certain areas, I do not believe that those differences should bar us from working to excel in areas we desire to. With that being said, if this girl has worked and performed at a level that makes her eligible for a state title, and one of my sons were to be her opponent, that would tell me she wants a fair shot at it. And she is good enough to be there. And that her posession of a vajayjay should have no influence on the competition. And I would expect my kid to be in it to win it.
I guess since this is wrestling, it brings up the subject of men fighting women. As if the state high school champioship is the same as a knife fight in a back alley. It's not that type of fighting, y'all. It's a fricken sporting event. Like football or swimming or tennis. Giving this girl fair competition is not the same as beating the crap out of your wife later in life. It is not disrespectful to women. If anything, I see it as the ultimate in respect.
To win in an arena where there are separate standards for the sexes is not the same as equality. We can look to the idea of "separate but equal" philosophy of the civil rights movement. There is no such thing as separate but equal. There wasn't for race and there isn't for gender. And it has been a proven fact that boys' and girls' sports in schools operate on completely different budgets. The girls get slighted. I'm not saying this to sound like a whiny, bitchy feminist. I'm saying it because it's very true. On some levels, this is fair. Girls' softball, for example, just doesn't hold the same spectator appeal as boys' football on a Friday night, which generates revenue in ticket sales, concessions, blah blah blah. So be it. But if I am a serious female athlete, and I truly excel in my sport, I don't want to be hindered by confinement to the second-rate girls' teams. And if I want to venture into the realm of boys' athletics, I should expect for them to give everything they've got to beat me.
Of course I can competely extrapolate this into other areas. I hate and take offense when someone refers to my abilities in anything to be good in spite of my membership to certain groups. Just recently, I was renewing my ACLS (Advanced Cardiac Life Support for those not in the know) certification for work. I got perfect scores on everything, and when we were finished, the instuctor found out I am a respiratory therapist. "Oh, well you did extremely well for an RT", he said. Wha???? Of course there is no way he had any understanding of what it is exactly that I do in my 12-hour shifts. Most think we just hand out inhalers and breathing treatments all day and don't stop to think that we have to respond to every resuscitation in the hospital, manage life support, and have had extensive education in all things cardiopulmonary. So if I wasn't an RT, my perfect scores would mean less? No, I did extremely well for the whole damned group, thank you very much. It's the same concept with being a woman: I don't want to do anything well for a woman. I want to beat out every-damned-body. And if a man doesn't want to go toe-to-toe with me because I am a woman, than that is just retarded.

So anyhow, whoever this girl is, and wherever she is, I hope she goes to that competition and she cleans house. On level playing ground. So noone will tell her she did well....for a girl.