Disclaimer: This comment got really long. I’m sorry–perhaps I should edit more, but your post made me think about and articulate some issues I’ve been having as a female athlete (or former athlete).

I have considerable experience in playing one co-ed sport, water polo.
As a tall, gangly kid (now a tall, filled-out woo-man) I played on
the boy’s team for two years in high school, until we got a girl’s
team. As the years that I played with the boys were my freshman and
sophmore years, the boys had not yet hit puberty in any meaningful
way, and there would have been no practical reason to separate us out.
The coach was not as much of an asshole as he could have been, and so
my friend and I got -some- playing time. Not a lot, maybe not as much
as we deserved, but some.

That experiece was both horrible and extremely empowering. It was
when I first realized that bodies can typically do a lot more than
they want to if you motivate them with fear. I was constantly
terrified of revealing myself as not as good as the boys, and I think
that the level of play I eventually reached was made possible by the
fear motivation from the early years of learning to play. My friend
and I were swimmers, and thus were faster than most of the JV team and
a good percentage of the varsity team.

Mostly the other players respected us, and treated us as equals. One fucknut on the team was a sexist jerk, who told me he didn’t think women should play sports ever, at all, period. However, he was the exception.

So, all in all, that two years was a good experience. Not a comfortable experience, not a relaxing experience, but a sort of Marine-Corps body-epiphany experience. Nevertheless, we were both very glad that the school created a girl’s team, because the next year the coach would have had to decide whether he would move us up to the varsity team or keep us with the jv squad.

I went on to be a very good player in college, and went to some
National Team practices before I decided that I’d constantly be
scrabbling to keep my place on the team, and that I’d utimately rather
go to grad school and work the thought-meats rather than the
body-meats.

I have played with co-ed teams often over the years since I’ve
graduated college, and while I definitely hang with them, I don’t
really like to do it. I’d still rather play co-ed than not play, but
playing with really good, experienced women players would be at the
top of my wish-list. I’m playing in a co-ed winter league right now,
and I’m actually nursing a fat lip at the moment from our last game. There’s a couple of things about playing with guys
that I don’t really like, as follows:

1) It brings up all my shyness and feelings of not fitting in and fear
from when I played on the boy’s high school team. In some ways, I
become that kid again, and it’s not comfortable. My college team was
fantastic–I love those women, and a lot of my strength and confidence
comes from having fucking awesome women around me all the time,
supporting each other. Regressing mentally does not feel good.

2) I worry about getting hurt. Not the fat lip, black eye variety of
injuries, although now that I’m teaching, I do worry that my students
will think I’m abused, or got in a bar fight, but the career-ending
type of injuries. I’ve dislocated my shoulder blocking a guy’s shot
before, and dislocated it when somebody grabbed me. I’ve dislocated
it playing with women as well, but the injuries from the guys were
worse, and now that I’m not in terrific shape anymore, I worry that
the next time will be the last. I’d agree with you that there’s no
difference between a laydee sports injury and a male sports injury,
but jeez, it’s my body, and I do worry about this particular body more
specifically than all the other laydee bodies out there!

3) Dudes are (by and large) stronger and faster than women. Natalie
Golda (google her if you’re curious) kicks ass and takes names, and I bet it does not matter whether it’s men or women, but the vast majority of female players I know, especially players who are not actively training for the next
Olympics, get pushed around, outmuscled, and outswum at the co-ed
games I’ve been to. Plus, the game is not as fun the way men play it.
It’s much more about who’s stronger or can throw the ball harder,
whereas the women’s game tends to be more tactical and *gasp*
cooperative. It’s a style of play I much prefer to the
cherry-picking, counter and stuff the ball down the goalie’s throat
guy’s game.

Corrollary to 3: I’m a 2-meter defender, which basically means I
mostly play defense on the big, strong player in the middle of the
pool. I’m well-suited to that with most women. Unfortunately, a big,
strong water polo guy is liable to be 6’8″ and 270 pounds, like the
guy who split my lip this week. At 5’11″ and probably around 170
(been a while since I last checked), I can’t hang with guys that size,
which means that if I play co-ed, I can’t do what I really love about
the game.

Second corrollary to 3 and the heart of what I’m trying to say about
co-ed sports: I was a good player. Many ex-Olympian women play at the
same club, and they are also good players. We have trouble hanging
with the guy’s game, because of strength and speed issues. Often, we
are technically better players, we understand the game better and have
better tactics. This does not particularly make us of equal
contributory value on the team. If all water polo were to become
co-ed, we would go from being good, valued players to being potential
liabilities. The Courtney Parises and Natalie Goldas can hang with
the men’s teams. But there’s not that many women of their size,
shape, and ability around. If sports teams are all integrated because
a few female players are equal and more than equal to their male
teammates and opponents, many of the smaller and weaker players will
no longer be able to play. All in all, it would be a disservice to
women athletes, at least water polo athletes, and would probably
result in far fewer numbers of women total playing the sport.

4) some guys can be jerks, including ones who are perfectly pleasant
outside the pool. I’d prefer not to have my face rubbed in how sexist
some people who I basically like can be.

Ok, that got quite a bit longer than I intended. Sorry for the
book-length comment.

Thanks for writing Shapely Prose–I love the community, the topics, and the fierceness around here.

Best,
Kris

Vintagefan: Absolutely agreed! This is the next generation of young men — and look at them acting like grownups! Huzzah.

Valerie:
Last year a young man at her school was picking on a female friend of my daughter’s. My daughter picked up the softball laying by her on the field and threw it at him. He was standing completely across the field…she broke his hand. Well gentlemen should act like gentlemen!!!

What an awesome anecdote. Bravo to your daughter.

Syntax. Syntax.

I hope they do and then I hope they lose because of it. Then MAYBE they’ll — and their dads’ll — learn something.

There’s this weird idea that females are people until they start their periods – which is just bullshit.

If she didn’t have the support of her team it would make her protest twice as hard. Good for those boys too.