Can we up the value of X in a Y dominated market?

I don't really know what's typical for the post-college twenty-something versus what's typical for the graduate student when it comes to personal development, because these two periods of my life have been mostly concurrent. Beginning my fifth year of graduate school (Help me, God.), I am just now beginning to decide what pieces of my life are necessary to make me who I am. For my entire life through college, sports were how I spent a large part of my life. But with marriage followed swiftly by a long distance move and graduate school, I just did not know where athletics fit in.

I didn't really realize how much I had completely banished sports from my life until last summer. I attended a summer psychology week hosted by the grad department at the college's camp in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. In between classes there were lots of Ultimate Frisbee games, canoing, and wall climbing. My professors, who had known me for three years at that point said they saw a whole new side of me, the jock. Fiercely competitive, but having fun, and totally athletic. Not the assumption people make about me given my recent weight gain.

So, I have started to incorporate team sports back into my life. Having played somee form of base/soft ball since I was four years old and well until college, I can't believe that I have let this sport that I so love slip from my life. So, I joined a co-ed slow pitch team from my church.

Last night was our first game, and I learned that this isn't softball as I am used to it. See, it's a speed game. The count is already 1-1 when you step up to the plate. That's different, but okay, whatever.

But, then, I learned the hard way about another set of rules. These rules are to make it "fair" for the women who play on the team. First, there must be four women on the field at all times. Well, that rule I understand, because many men would lean toward playing more men and fewer women or play all men and no women, etc. So, okay, nearly half the team needs to be women, although I wish that I lived in a world where women were taught athletics more readily, held to the same high standards as their male counterparts, and were able to have circumstances support them in their continuation of playing sports into adulthood. I also wish that I lived in a world where I did not have to worry about a team not playing women based on an assumption that they were inherently less "good" at athletics simply because they have a uterus.

However, there are two sizes of balls. A smaller one used for women, a larger one for men. What the heck? I can accept that on average a woman has less upper body strength and might not be able to hit the homerun spans that the men can. However, that doesn't mean that we can't play the game. Our game looks different. We rely on strategy, base hits, great base running, and more than pure strength, a different set of skills rather than an inferior set. I played softball from the ages 9 through 12 with a regulation large slow-pitch softball. I did just fine then, and I can do just fine now. I just let it go, because, whatever.

But what upset me the most was when I was up to bat. I had gotten two solid hits at my two previous at-bats. There were two outs, and two on, because the guy in front of me had walked. Then the pitcher says, "You get to walk if you want to." I was confused..was he walking me because my hits were damaging before? Because I was batter 9 out of 10? what?

No, I quickly learned that if a male player walks (base on balls) with two outs, the batting team has the option of walking the female who bats after him. This is supposedly to "prevent" teams from walking male players to get to female players. Initially, I was insulted by the rules. Then I was insulted that the men on my team kept saying to take the walk. What?

I was upset by this rule, I verbally said that this was the most unacceptable rule that I had EVER heard of. Why? Because it inherently assumes that the male players are better than the female players at hitting. I was incredulous. I was even more incredulous that some of the guys on my team were placating me, saying things like, "It's not a big deal. Just let it go." I wasn't throwing a hissy fit or anything, I just kept muttering in incredulity and anger that this was the dumbest rule that I had ever heard of.

I finally told my third base coach, that sure, he could let it go because the rule didn't assume that he wasn't as good simply because he was who he was, and that he hadn't spent his whole life having every error he made on the field or every at bat that wasn't successful being judged as the result of his gender. I don't want special treatment, and I don't want the errors I make or the hits that I don't to be thought because I'm a woman.

Throughout our double header, everyone made errors, everyone had at bats that did not come to fruition. But when a man made a mistake, I never once heard that the team would be better off if they did not have to play at least 4 men, and never was it implied that the error was due to his being a man.

So often when I point things like this out, my male friends ask, "What the heck can I do?" How about supporting girls athletics? Enroll your daughters in the same sports that you enroll your sons in, even football, if that's what she wants. Attend as many women's professional sporting events as you do Cubs, White Sox, and Bears games. Go to a high school fast pitch softball game for every Friday night football game that you attend. Be just as concerned about your daughter's/sister's/mother's throwing form as your son's/brother's/dad's. Don't hold the women in your life to the standard of being "good enough for a girl," but to the standard of being good.

The same goes for the men in your life, expect them to be capable of cultivating expert seamstress skills,making an awesome casserole, or of manning the church nursery. Teach your daughters and sons about everything and anything, and then let their gifts and talents shine in whatever areas they appear. Your son may gravitate toward football, and your daughter toward cheerleading, or it may just happen the other way around. But either way, you need to be okay with it.

Oh, and don't make me stinking walk when I batted 3 out of 4 and had one walk, one of the best hitting performances on the team, male or female.