Growing up you don't really get a say in what your default state of mind is. Too confusing? Let me try to explain..

Draw a stick figure. Just a plain, simple one with two arms, two legs, and one fat circle for a head.

What gender is it? Most people'll say it's a boy. I know my little brother did. "Can you make it a girl?", I asked him. He drew a big bow on its head and a skirt on it and said, "Here, it's a girl now."

Where did we get these ideas from? The fact that you need to add something to a man to make it a women and leave it as it is to make it a man isn't what we should be teaching kids. But apparently man is the default and we need add something to make it exclusively female.

This is where the NBA comes in.

When I flip on the tv, there's only men's sports on the sports channel. You need to go to a specific channel to get any women's sports, and half the time they're going over men's sports. I'm okay with this. I know that most sports fans are male and because of that they'll get more screen time, and I'm cool with that.

But whenever you're on the women's sports channel, they really make sure you know that this is WOMEN'S athletics. Most of the leagues are some variation of 'Women's National Basketball Association', 'All-American Girls Professional Baseball League', 'National Women's Football Association', or 'Ladies Professional Golf Association'. Note the keyword is defined with gender. As for their male counterparts, 'National Basketball Association', 'Major League Baseball', 'National Football League', and 'Professional Golfers Association'. Spot a difference?

THESE ASSOCIATIONS ARE NOT GENDERED!

Yes there are occasionally women, but over 90% of the time there isn't. So why wouldn't you gender one but not the other. It makes it seem like the term 'woman' is a handicap (which it is not).

The goal of this petition is just to start gendering the groups that solely cater to men and have no gendered name. Start addressing the aforementioned groups as 'Men's National Basketball Association', 'Major League Boys Baseball ', 'National Male Football League', and 'Professional Golfers Association for Gentlemen', respectively.

 If this petition doesn't go as planned, at least you now know why it is easier to explain to your son why he can't be in the WNBA than to explain to your daughter why she can't be in the NBA.