David Spates "Therefore I Am" Published June 7, 2005

It's time for patriarchal sports names to hit the showers

If I'm treading on sacred tradition, forgive me. That being said, can anyone explain why we differentiate between men's and women's sports teams? Why do we have the Volunteers and Lady Volunteers? Jets and Lady Jets? Radiers and Lady Raiders?

Let's take the University of Tennessee. Why are the male athletes Volunteers and the female athletes Lady Volunteers? Is there something intrinsically masculine about volunteering that we need to make a distinction between males who volunteer and females who volunteer? Tennessee is the Volunteer State, so named because of the record number of volunteers the state provided during the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American War. Most certainly the vast majority of those brave volunteers were men, but what does that have to do with anything? We're talking sports, not war.

I think it can all be traced back to a game of Three Card Monte that white people tried to pacify black people with decades ago. There was a notion of "equal but different" which suggested that there were fundamental differences between blacks and whites, yet despite these acknowledged differences the laws of the land must be equally applied to everyone. It's OK to be different, but everyone's still equal.

Yeah. Nice try. Let's take a moment to hold hands and sing "Kum Ba Ya."

The fundamental flaw in the "equal but different" approach is the "but different" part. It's clear that some folks simply cannot handle "but different." They can't help themselves. It's their nature to compare and contrast. It's not enough for them that the women play on one team and the men play on another team, so we have further divisions in the names -- Vols, Lady Vols; Jets, Lady Jets. Besides, how dare a woman want to compete at the highest level? She should know her place.

I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I'm quite certain I can look at a group of 12 guys and determine they're the men's basketball team. I'm even more certain I can look at a group of 12 gals and determine they're the women's team. I don't need the "Lady" prefix to help me.

Why can't Cumberland County High School's girls basketball team be the Jets? Why do the boys get the distinction of a singular, definitive name? If the girls are the Lady Jets, doesn't it stand to reason the boys should be the Gentleman Jets? Let's not have a double-standard. One standard will do just fine.

It's time for some of this patriarchal nonsense to go away. If you want patriarchal nonsense, read Jim Butler's "All In The Game" column each Friday. Girls are athletes. Boys are athletes. They all practice, they all compete, they all get injured. They're all Jets.

Truth be told, I was inspired to address this issue for two reasons. The first is that I recently read a Chronicle sports story which described how the Lady Jets softball team (there is no boys' softball team) lost to Red Bank. The teams from Red Bank are the Lions except, of course, for the girls' teams. Anyone have a guess what they're called? Lady Lions? Good thought, but wrong. How about Lionesses? That would be my guess. After all, a female lion is a lioness. It's not a made-up nonsensical phrase like Lady Volunteers. It's an actual word. So they're the Lionesses? Ooops. Wrong again. Red Bank High School's girls' teams are called the Lionettes. Yes, the Lionettes. School officials bypassed a real live English word and shoehorned a heaping dose of femininity into the word "lion." Lionette sounds so mangled. It's awful. It grates the ear. Lionette? It sounds like something your grandma would knit.

The second reason for today's column is I noticed that my alma mater, Virginia Tech, doesn't make name distinctions between the men's and women's teams. They're all Hokies, and it's not as though I'm propping up my school as the standard-bearer for how gender equity should be. Plenty of other schools do it the same way -- Maryland, North Carolina, Southern California, Nebraska, and the list goes on and on.

I know that in the grand scheme of things, a little thing like dropping the "lady" from women's sports teams isn't that big of a deal. However, lots of little steps can add up to a long, meaningful journey. I have a little girl, and I think she might, in a few years, appreciate the destination.

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David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@chartertn.net.