Is the adjective “lady” demeaning to members of a woman’s basketball team?

Christine Brennan wrote a piece for USA Today that I saw in The Advertiser taking the University of Tennessee to task for failing to quit calling its women’s basketball team the Lady Volunteers, instead of simply Volunteers.

Brennan wrote how the woman head of the then Woman’s Sports Foundation discussed such things several years ago, saying, “It demeans the seriousness of the women’s program to use the term “lady.”

That woman’s foundation wasn’t just called the Sports Foundation, but the Woman’s Sports Foundation, so is that really that different from calling it the Lady’s Sports Foundation?

Is the use of the term lady no longer a compliment and now considered derogatory?

Apparently, the University of Tennessee eliminated “lady” from other women’s sports programs, but thought the brand and recognition of the Lady Volunteers was too special to do away with.

Is it discriminatory or sexist or somehow otherwise inappropriate to call these women’s teams by some name that includes a reference to their sex or is the problem just with lady instead of women?

It’s an interesting question.

When we recently had a story in this paper about a female place kicker on the Westgate football team, she was clearly a member of the Westgate Tiger football team, no matter her sex.

If Westgate started a football team just for women, would it really be discriminatory or inappropriate to distinguish between it and the one we have now that have both men and women?

Tennessee’s men’s basketball players are indeed just called the Volunteers, not the Gentlemen Volunteers.

Is there not really a difference in the approach of the Volunteers and the Lady Volunteers, or Volunteers women’s basketball?

The Volunteers are presumably open to anyone of any sex who can make the team, but are not the Lady Volunteers only open to women players?

I read a couple of news reports quoting current and former Lady Vols from other sports who were unhappy with the loss of lady for their team’s name. They liked the idea that their sport’s team had a different identity from the men’s team, and said all the women in all the sports were Lady Volunteers, not just the basketball players.

You know in news reports and announcements and schedules and such, the university is going to make it clear when it’s a women’s Volunteer game or match as opposed to a men’s game or match, so are they all really just Volunteers?

Is not calling the women’s soccer team or women’s track team at Tennessee the Lady Volunteers really designating anything untrue or unflattering?

Share your thoughts in a Letter to the Editor or post a comment on our Facebook page, or add a comment after this column when it’s posted on our Website at iberianet.com, or email me your thoughts at will.chapman@daily-iberian.com.

Is it OK to have a women’s team, just don’t call them ladies?

What do you think?

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Wikipedia on the Web had nine women listed as having played on a college football team. Several were placekickers, including one who was listed as the “current scoring leader among women in the NCAA.”

That’s not going to be a very long list.

WILL CHAPMAN is publisher of The Daily Iberian.