Berman's thoughtful meditation is prompted by British writer Dominic Lawson's assertion that sports should be unsegregated, freed from the "apartheid" that leads to controversies like that surrounding Caster Semenya. And in a theoretical sense, you can see his points; the distinctions can become very tricky - and very fraught. (Although, on a social level, track is already one of the most integrated.) Says Berman:

What should a "woman" be, for the purposes of international sports? Should socially constructed gender and biological sex be part of the equation? Should believable-looking girl parts be enough to pass the test? (And, if so, what do we do about transwomen athletes?) Or is this extensive battery of medical and psychological testing necessary? And, perhaps most important of all, is enforcing whatever standard we choose worth publicly destroying the lives and identities of athletes who have only ever known themselves to be women?

But at the same time, says Berman, would such a proposal really achieve much? It could even, she suggests,

have a dramatically negative effect on women athletes, from the elementary-school level all the way up through Olympians. If female medalists become rare, and if only a few young women each year make their high school's co-ed soccer team, it's easy to imagine girls becoming alienated from sports. Why even try if you're so unlikely to achieve anything you can be proud of?

I agree with this point - and I'd add that there are a lot of social and communal benefits to single-sex sports, perhaps especially for young women. In addition to the obvious benefits of bonding, leadership and mutual inspiration - to say nothing of healthy competition - there's a lot to be said for creating an oasis from the highly-charged sexuality of adolescence - whatever the orientations of the folks involved (since I think the kind of public expressions or pressures I'm referring to tend to be pretty heteronormative at the high school level.) Of course, though, this point works a lot better in a post Title IX perfect world where women's sports are given respect and girls are given the same encouragement and equivalent opportunities. And frankly, I'd worry less about making adult sports co-ed than about encouraging a true equality; it's only "apartheid" if you consider one group inferior.

Women should obviously be given a chance to play football with men when there's no equivalent girl's team and not enough interest to found one - at any rate, they should have the chance to try out. But it's important to remember that it goes both ways. In my progressive high school, there was a boy who wanted to play field hockey and, since there was no equivalent boys' team, he won the right to do so. At 14, he was about the size of most of his teammates and opponents. Three years in, let's just say the team was dominant and there were grumblings from rival schools.

The issue's a lot less complicated at the child's level, where kids are still on an equal physical playing field - literally, too, since the 1974 lawsuit forcing Little League to admit girls. The fact that girls are still underrepresented is a good demonstration that Lawson's utopian suggestions wouldn't solve everything. As Bob Cook writes on TrueSlant, the fact that there are two girls ( Katie Reyes, and Bryn Stonehouseat) at this year's Little League World Series is notable. But, he adds, there's a "groundswell of support" for those girls who wish to play baseball rather than softball. Says he, "As it turns out, there are more female-only baseball organizations forming for the benefit of girls who would like to play the sport without having to put up with the male bullshit. Part of the ultimately unsuccessful bid to get baseball back for the 2016 Olympics was to have men's and women's baseball events." And that, at least, is equal-opportunity discrimination.

The End Of Sex-Segregated Sports [Salon]
No Sexing, Please – Let's All Race Together [TimesUK]
Girls Play Baseball, Too [TrueSlant]

Her first piece, about a middle school basketball team in Brooklyn, highlights a number of challenges facing the girls who are trying to play. Thomas writes:

The Cougars have few of the basics that suburban public school girls have come to expect, including free transportation, uniforms and full seasons of regularly scheduled games. At M.S. 61 in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, each road game is a logistical puzzle for Mr. Mariner, 46, who is dean of students and coach of the school's girls' and boys' basketball teams. Even when the Cougars arrive ready to play, games are sometimes canceled because the opponents - facing the same obstacles - cannot field a team. Parents rarely show up to watch.

Mariner, by the way, won't cut a girl from the team regardless of ability... and has to clean the gym after he's done, despite being the Dean of Students.

The other problem lies in how many girls can overcome the barriers to participation.

In the suburbs, girls play sports at rates roughly equal to boys. A 2007 survey by Harris Interactive of more than 2,000 schoolchildren nationwide showed that 54 percent of boys and 50 percent of girls in the suburbs described themselves as "moderately involved" athletes.

Urban areas revealed a much greater discrepancy. Only 36 percent of city girls in the survey described themselves as moderately involved athletes, compared with 56 percent of city boys.

This hints at the idea that issues of class and financial wherewithal weigh heavily on girls when it comes to sports.

But, as Marj Snyder, Chief Program Officer for the Women's Sports Foundation points out in the above clip, studies show that girls' participation in sports help them build career-critical team-building skills, help combat obesity and is strongly correlated with academic success.

In Boston, a number of non-profit groups are working to try to encourage girls to participate more in sports. One group is even helping adults learn to break down barriers in gender-specific play.

Employees at Sports4Kids, a nonprofit group that oversees recess at public schools, have been devising ways to shake up gender roles and increase options for girls. Tes Siarnacki, a recess coordinator at a school in East Boston, regularly encourages older girls to referee boy-dominated soccer games, and assigns older boys to monitor double Dutch jump rope, which is played mostly by girls.

One day this spring, Siarnacki zeroed in on a group of girls huddled in a corner, their heads bent in conversation. Siarnacki jogged over, spoke to them quietly for a few minutes and before long the girls hopped to their feet and began doing sit-ups and jumping jacks.

"They wanted to play ‘teacher,' so I told them to play ‘gym teacher,' " she said. "It was a pretty easy sell."

The groups hope that by encouraging boys and girls to consider various athletic options, they can keep girls playing sports longer.

Interesting, one thing Thomas highlights in both of her pieces is the difficulty faced by coaches and coordinators with girls assigned childcare duties by their families. In Brooklyn, Thomas tracked one immigrant girl who, while a star on the team, was assigned by her family to pick up a cousin each afternoon from kindergarten and another from daycare instead of going to practice or participating in games. In Boston, one sports program identified child care responsibilities of teenagers as such major obstacle to participation that they attempted to create an program to watch the charges of their participants. In most cases, boys in the family share no such responsibilities. So in more ways that one, traditional views of women's roles continue to shape girls' lives in ways that are unhealthy for them.

Less interesting (as one would figure) are the comments on the Times pieces, which turned the issue into a referendum on Title IX and whether high school athletics have any right to tax dollars. If one read the series, one would note that the point is that, in urban schools, basically no tax dollars are spent on sports programs and that, given historic interest in keeping boys off the streets and busy, girls athletics have been ignored by private groups despite the proven benefits for girls. Thomas goes back again and again to the idea that school athletics in suburban areas have come pretty close to gender parity and private leagues that require fees are common and parents take time off to attend games — but none of those structures or opportunities are available in urban areas, particularly to girls because of a mixture of time, sexist ideas about the role of girls in extended families and the view of sports as a male activity, and money. In other words, the whole series is becoming an analysis of the role that class and (albeit implicitly) race play in girls' participation in athletics, and why the girls with the least opportunity might need such activities the most.

A City Team's Struggle Shows Disparity in Girls' Sports [NY Times]
Using Teamwork to Bring Girls Into the Game [NY Times]
Struggling to Play [NY Times]
The Have-Nots [NY Times]
Playing Against The Odds [NY Times]

[Doha, Qatar; May 8. Image via Getty]

Blanka Vlasic of Croatia screams after clearing 2.05m to win the high jump competition at the Qatar Super Grand Prix in Doha on May 08, 2009. Vlasic clinched a new tournament record but failed to break her own personal best of 2.07m or set a new world record of 2.10m. AFP PHOTO/MARWAN NAAMANI (Photo credit should read MARWAN NAAMANI/AFP/Getty Images)

Women were not allowed to run the Boston Marathon until 1972, and female runners faced discrimination throughout the '70s. Nina Kuscsik, the first woman to run in the New York Marathon and the first woman to win the Boston Marathon, tells the Times, "If I went out to run and it rained, the police would stop me ... They thought I was running away from something." Over the years, women have gradually gained respect in the sport, and proven that often they can outrun the men. In 1964 the record for the world's best marathon time was set by a man at 3:27:45, but today Paula Radcliffe holds the world record for women's marathon, with a time of 2:15:25. Many older women running today didn't take up the sport until later in life, like Imme Dyson, who started running when she was 47. Today at 72, she is still runs every day and dominates her age group in races and marathons. [NY Times]

After lifting 210 lbs and taking home the gold at the Commonwealth Youth Games in Pune, India, Smith has been voted "Athlete of the Year" in her sport by the British Olympic Association, an award usually reserved for Olympians. Smith used to be a gymnast, but started weightlifting at the age of 12 when she was asked to make up the numbers for the weightlifting team for the London Youth Games. Since turning 13, she has set 98 British records and plans to compete in the 2012 Olympics in London, her home city. [Daily Mail, Telegraph]

(L to R) USA's Jason Kidd, USA's Dwyane Wade, USA's LeBron James and USA's Dwight Howard celebrate at the end of the men's semi-final basketball match Argentina against The US of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games on August 22, 2008 at the Olympic basketball Arena in Beijing. The US won 101-81. AFP PHOTO / FILIPPO MONTEFORTE (Photo credit should read FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images)

BEIJING - AUGUST 21: Heather Mitts of United States runs with the ball during the Women's Football Gold Medal match between Brazil and the United States on Day 13 of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games on August 21, 2008 at Worker's Stadium in Beijing, China. (Photo by Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)

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Spanish Andrea Fuentes and Gemma Mengual (R) perform in the synchronized swimming duet free routine final event at the National Aquatics Center during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games in Beijing on August 20, 2008. Russians Anastasia Davydova and Anastasia Ermakova won the Olympic synchronised swimming gold medal here ahead of Spain and Japan. AFP PHOTO / MARTIN BUREAU (Photo credit should read MARTIN BUREAU/AFP/Getty Images)

Fukuhara Ai of Japan serves during her 2008 Beijing Olympic Games women's table tennis single preliminary match against Melek Hu of Turkey in Beijing on August 20, 2008. AFP PHOTO / ISSOUF SANOGO (Photo credit should read ISSOUF SANOGO/AFP/Getty Images)

Players of Serbia celebrate after defeating Spain during their 2008 Beijing Olympic Games men's warter polo quarterfinal match in Beijing on August 20, 2008. Serbia won 9 to 5. AFP PHOTO / FRED DUFOUR (Photo credit should read FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images)

Zhao Yudiao (L) of China celebrates after scoring a goal as Janne Mueller-Weiland (R) of Germany reacts during a women's field hockey semifinal match of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games on August 20, 2008 in Beijing. AFP PHOTO/Indranil MUKHERJEE (Photo credit should read INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images)

BEIJING - AUGUST 20: Betty Heidler of Germany competes in the Women's Hammer Throw Final at the National Stadium during Day 12 of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games on August 20, 2008 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images)

Mariama Signate of France (L) grabs the shirt of Irina Bliznova of Russia (R) in their quarter-final match in the women's handball competition in the OSC Gymnasium at the Olympic Games in Beijing on August 19, 2008. Russia beat France 32-31. AFP PHOTO/Peter PARKS (Photo credit should read PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images)

USA's Lisa Leslie (R) tries to break away from Korea's Jungja Sin during their women's quarter-final basketball match USA vs. Korea c at the Olympic basketball gymnasium on August 19, 2008 in Beijing, as part of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. AFP PHOTO / FILIPPO MONTEFORTE (Photo credit should read FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images)