On Friday, news broke that Iowa high school wrestler Joe Northup forfeited his match in the first round of the state championships to Cassy Herkelman because he refused to wrestle a girl. And all the women's rights supporters in the country, or at least the ones I know, cried FOUL! FOUL! Sure, the boy's father said that girls shouldn't be engaging in combative and violent sports like wrestling, and if that were it, I would say he was wrong. If a girl wants to be combative and violent ... well, anyone with a sister can imagine how that can happen.

Here's the real problem, though: If a boy wrestles a girl, they will have contact that if they had in any other venue, would have the boy up on charges of indecent assault. Yes, I know: wrestling doesn't count as assault, but what I'm talking about isn't the combat or the violence, just ... touching. The kind of inappropriate touching that has you showing "where the boy touched you" on a doll to a school counselor.

To help illustrate my point, I've gathered a few of the pictures I took at a couple of college wrestling matches last year. (I was too busy this year.) I've obscured the boys' identities as best I could, because I don't want them feeling like I misrepresented them by including them in this post. I absolutely have not asked their opinions on this issue. But I didn't make any effort to obscure the colleges they represented. Not that I asked the colleges their opinions, but it would just get too much. Next I'd have to change all the uniform colors and that's not going to happen --- even though I can do it.

This first picture is fairly innocuous. I'm mostly including it because I liked it.


Do you know that in Ancient Greece, the Olympians used to wrestle (and do all other sports) naked? They apparently did that because a girl tried to compete. Now, just take a moment to imagine if the people in these photos were naked ... then, when you un-thud, imagine that one is a 20-year-old boy and the other is a 20-year-old girl.









After the events in these pictures, in some states that couple would have to get married!

Hands! Hands in new places!





In some states, the girl's father would be haulin' out his shotgun.

And we're reaching...

And we're reaching...


And just where are we reaching...


Success! Ass grab!




And we have crotch-grab!




This is more of a grab through the crotch to get to the ass:


Oh, his hands are just all over the place.


This fellow doesn't even take time out from his crotch grab when he needs to have words with the ref ... not because he's getting any thrill out of it, but because in wrestling you can't surrender your advantage.


Where is your head, mister?!







So, now someone is probably going to ask why it's okay for boys to be touching other boys in those places, and while I hate to fuel the fire of the homophobes, there certainly are gay fans of wrestling and there "could" be gay participants, wrestling really isn't about that. Much as gay men may enjoy the wriggling and the grabbing, we know that wrestling isn't about getting sexual thrills. It's about competition, strategy, skill and physical ability.

And if girls want to wrestle, that's fine. It really is. In fact, I would love it because far too many colleges and universities have eliminated their wrestling programs because of Title IX and because they didn't have women's wrestling. Adding women's wrestling would have been a much better solution (for me). But please, for the sake of school counselors and fathers-with-shotguns everywhere, please keep the boys and girls separate.

By the way, the girl, Cassy Herkelman, who was allowed to compete in the Iowa state high school wrestling championships lost her second-round match. Now, before people start wondering whether she was hoping that all the boys she would have to face would forfeit, she did have to qualify for the meet, as did another girl.