In 1896, California hosted the world’s first women’s intercollegiate basketball game, between Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. It was the same year that an effort to amend the state constitution and grant women the vote first appeared on the ballot; the effort failed.

Stanford won in 1896 even though, reporters noted at the time, Berkeley’s girls were “taller and [had] better hair.” Men were banned as spectators for “modesty’s sake.” Women fended off unwanted male viewers with sticks.

The publicity of such a politically charged event was eventually too much for Stanford. In 1899, the school disallowed women’s intercollegiate team sports. Feminist, former athlete, and 1978 Stanford graduate Mariah Burton Nelson wrote in her 1994 book The Stronger Women Get, the More Men Love Football that Stanford’s decision to curb women’s sports reflected growing apprehension about women’s sports in general: “an actual fear . . . that women’s growing athleticism somehow threatened not only men and men’s sports but the very nature of things: men on top.”

Of course it wasn’t until Title IX was passed, as part of the Education Amendments of 1972, that the federal government barred discrimination on the basis of sex, granting women legal protections to compete in sports. Last week, California set itself back a few decades when it refused to go along with President Donald Trump’s demand that California ban men from participating in women’s sports.

Trump applied federal pressure on California after a man was allowed to compete and place in a statewide female track-and-field championship. The state’s interscholastic federation that governs high school sports then enacted a new rule: Females who would have qualified for the state’s track-and-field championship if a male had not taken their place could compete. The association described its rule change as a way to expand participation opportunities. What it was, and what it remains, is a rule that fails to recognize biological differences between men and women, at the expense of women alone.

More than a century after that historic 1896 game, California has recommitted to keeping men on top.