Archive for the 'Sports' Category

On “Warrior Girls”, knee injuries, and the tangible costs of adolescent perfectionism: some thoughts on Michael Sokolove’s article

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 8, 2008
in Athletics and Fitness, Body, Favorite Posts 2008, Mentoring, Sports, The Martha Complex: perfectionism in adolescent girls and Youth
. 13 Comments

The New York Times has a preview up today of a long article coming out on Sunday in their magazine: The Uneven Playing Field. It’s by Michael Sokolove, and based on his forthcoming book Warrior Girls: Protecting our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women’s Sports. (I’ve pre-ordered the book, and will review it this summer when it comes out.)

In this lengthy adaptation on the Times website, Sokolove writes about what he sees as the extraordinary number of knee (ACL) injuries that are being sustained by female athletes, soccer players in particular. His thesis:

(the epidemic is) part of a national trend in the wake of Title IX and the explosion of sports participation among girls and young women. From travel teams up through some of the signature programs in women’s college sports, women are suffering injuries that take them off the field for weeks or seasons at a time, or sometimes forever.

Girls and boys diverge in their physical abilities as they enter puberty and move through adolescence. Higher levels of testosterone allow boys to add muscle and, even without much effort on their part, get stronger. In turn, they become less flexible. Girls, as their estrogen levels increase, tend to add fat rather than muscle. They must train rigorously to get significantly stronger. The influence of estrogen makes girls’ ligaments lax, and they outperform boys in tests of overall body flexibility — a performance advantage in many sports, but also an injury risk when not accompanied by sufficient muscle to keep joints in stable, safe positions. Girls tend to run differently than boys — in a less-flexed, more-upright posture — which may put them at greater risk when changing directions and landing from jumps. Because of their wider hips, they are more likely to be knock-kneed — yet another suspected risk factor.

The rate (of ACL injury) for women’s soccer is 0.25 per 1,000, or 1 in 4,000, compared with 0.10 for male soccer players. The rate for women’s basketball is 0.24, more than three times the rate of 0.07 for the men. The A.C.L. injury rate for girls may be higher — perhaps much higher — than it is for college-age women because of a spike that seems to occur as girls hit puberty.

At this point, my heart was sinking. Was this going to be anti-feminist ideology dressed up as professed concern for the health of young women? Was Sokolove trying to scare parents into pulling their daughters out of competitive sports? I even wondered if Sokolove was some sort of shill for the anti-Title IX crowd, trying a new tactic in their never-ending crusade to roll back a policy of equal funding for women’s sports. As a passionate sports fan, married to a former club soccer star, I have a deep and abiding commitment to women’s athletics — particularly the “beautiful game” of what the rest of the world calls football.

Happily, reading the article to the end (it is ten pages long) makes it at least fairly apparent that Sokolove is committed to women’s sports. Rather than imploring parents to pull their daughters off soccer teams, he writes sensibly and knowledgeably about the causes of what is undeniably a common problem: catastrophic ACL injuries among young female soccer players. The chief culprits have nothing to do with inherent feminine weakness. Rather, they are two-fold: poor bio-mechanics and the exhausting “club” system in high school and college that leaves many talented girls playing a demanding sport literally year-round. Continue reading ‘On “Warrior Girls”, knee injuries, and the tangible costs of adolescent perfectionism: some thoughts on Michael Sokolove’s article’

The sheer delight of injustice

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 1, 2008
in Sports
. 4 Comments

I like many sports, but if forced to watch but one for the rest of my life, it would be what the rest of the world knows as football. I follow several teams in England as best I can, rooting in particular for Newcastle in the Premiership and Exeter City in a much-lower division.

I also enjoy good sportswriting, and reading this tonight, I gave a shout of recognition. Writing in the Times of London, the splendid Rod Liddle notes:

Chronic and preferably cruel injustice is a much underestimated attraction in football.

Yup.

The gloomy Golden Bear redux: celebrating mediocrity

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 21, 2007
in Sports
. 0 Comments

My wife, a loyal USC alumna, always accompanies me to Cal-UCLA football games. She’s happy to make my Golden Bears her second favorite team each autumn, and I try and return the favor. (We avoid each other entirely on the day of the California-USC game.) We enjoyed each other’s company yesterday (celebrating five years since we started dating) at the debacle in the Rose Bowl.

Two quick notes: far too many of the Cal students in our section left the stadium before our band could play the alma mater. Today’s Cal students are spoiled; they’ve never known a losing season, and they take bowl games and wins over Stanford for granted. As they walked away disconsolately after a painful loss, I gently berated a few for bailing out on the band and the traditional post-game “Hail to Califonia.”

As we left, some UCLA fans chanted “Over-rated” at us; I yelled back, cheerfully and in the same sing-song voice, “you’re soooo right!” As an Old Blue, there’s something familiar, even soothing, about a slide back into the mediocrity from which we seemed on the verge of finally emerging.

I love my Golden Bears, win or lose. And you know, I think I love them more when they’re losing.

The gloomy Golden Bear

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 9, 2007
in Sports
. 7 Comments

Those of you who read me regularly or know me well are aware that I’m a devoted Cal football fan. If you’re wondering why I’m not blogging about their recent rise to #2 in the national polls, it’s because I have every expectation that in some way yet to be revealed, my beloved Golden Bears will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory at the very last possible moment. The only chance we have at genuinely going undefeated this season is if as many fans and alumni as possible glumly predict disaster before each and every game. And that is what I intend to do.

In that spirit of carefully manufactured pessimism, I anticipate that Oregon State will nip my dear Bears this weekend, 23-21.

Cal-Tennessee, masculinity, and another post in praise of Joe Ehrmann

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 3, 2007
in Men and Masculinity and Sports
. 12 Comments

Like many a loyal Old Blue, I eagerly anticipated the Cal-Tennessee football game that was played on Saturday. Though I have little use for the NFL (and in many ways, would rather watch “soccer” than American football), I am a long-standing Golden Bear fan. After a disappointing and painful loss to Tennessee at the start of the 2006 campaign, Cal supporters were eager for redemption. We got it in splendid fashion two days ago, and to my wife’s great amusement, I offered several renditions of the happy dance over the course of the game.

Yesterday, I read half-a-dozen news accounts of the game. This one by Olin Buchanan, from the respected Rivals.com site, annoyed me immensely:

Last year Cal was branded soft and overrated after a 35-18 season-opening ambush in Knoxville, which wasn’t nearly that close. Then, before kickoff on Saturday night a propeller-powered plane circled high above the stadium towing a banner that read: SEC RULES, PAC-10 DROOLS.

Apparently, that perceived drooling was actually the 12th-ranked Bears’ mouths watering for a chance to prove they were more talented, more competitive and more masculine than they showed a year ago.

Thirty-five years after the advent of Title IX, and we’ve still got neanderthals like Buchanan associating toughness with masculinity? What’s the implication, Olin? That “soft and overrated” is somehow a particularly feminine quality?

For decades, sociologists of sport have had fun with the language of American football. The language of “scoring”, “penetrating the defense”, “getting in the end zone”, and even — Lord help us — the “tight end” is certainly suggestive. And a great many “old school” coaches (I’ve known one or fifty) played on the sexual anxieties of their young athletes by associating defeat with allowing oneself to be feminized by the opposing team.

When I was a student at Cal in the mid-80’s (the fun but mediocre Joe Kapp era), practices at Memorial Stadium were open to the public. I often went and sat in the bleachers, did my homework, and watched. I remember an assistant coach yelling at a group of linemen doing drills: “tighten it up or you’re gonna get fucked like a bunch of bitches come Saturday.” I was aghast. (Let me be clear, I never heard that language from dear Coach Kapp.) I hadn’t even started taking women’s studies classes yet, but I was still disheartened by the brutally sexist language I heard from this coach (and from many of the players.)

Some say that the violent game of American football is inherently misogynistic; the sport, for some, is beyond redemption. The cynics say that young men will only play with maximum passion and intensity when this language of sexual warfare is employed. But as a fan of this most popular of American games, I’m convinced otherwise. And fortunately, I can look to the likes of Joe Ehrmann, about whom I’ve written a couple of times — at greatest length here.

Ehrmann, a former star defensive lineman for the Baltimore Colts, now coaches the enormously successful Gilman (Maryland) high school football team. This is how he preps his team for a game:

“What is our job as coaches?” Ehrmann asks.

“To love us!” the Gilman boys yell back in unison.

“What is your job?” Ehrmann shouts back.

“To love each other!” the boys respond.

The words are spoken with the commitment of an oath, the enthusiasm of a pep rally.

This is football?

It is with Ehrmann. It is when the whole purpose of being here is to totally redefine what it means to be a man.

Joe Ehrmann knows what authentic masculinity is, and it has nothing, nothing to do with athletic prowess. His teams win state titles regularly (while he enforces his “no cut rule”, meaning everyone plays). For those of us who love competitive sports but who are often dismayed by the ugly cultural rules around those sports, men like Ehrmann are vital role models. (His biography is compelling.)

From the first day of practice through the last day of the season, Ehrmann and his best friend, Head Coach Biff Poggi, bombard their players with stories and lessons about being a man built for others.

They stress that Gilman football is all about living in a community. It is about fostering relationships. It is about learning the importance of serving others. While coaches elsewhere scream endlessly about being tough, Ehrmann and Poggi teach concepts such as empathy, inclusion and integrity. They emphasize Ehrmann’s code of conduct for manhood: accepting responsibility, leading courageously, enacting justice on behalf of others…

Olin Buchanan, take note. Go Bears.

My hero…

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 26, 2007
in Athletics and Fitness and Sports
. 0 Comments

… this morning is Haile (Heila) Satayin of Israel. At age 52, he finished 19th in the marathon at the World Track and Field Championships this weekend, in a blistering 2:22 — run in high humidity. Satayin, a Jewish native of Ethiopia who made his aliyah in 1991, has qualified for the Beijing Olympics, where he’ll be by far the oldest marathoner in the field and almost certainly the oldest Olympian. Mazel Tov, Haile!

The older I get, the fewer still-competitive athletic heroes I have. And though I can admire men and women younger than myself, I’ll admit I can only truly look up to those who have a few years on me. And no, this doesn’t mean I am an exuberant Barry Bonds fan.

Justice is not a zero-sum game: some thoughts on Michael Vick, feminism, and animal rights

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 23, 2007
in Aggression and violence, Animal Rights, Feminism and Sports
. 32 Comments

I haven’t blogged about the Michael Vick case yet, largely because I haven’t been sure I had anything I wanted to add to the conversation. I get e-mail updates from just about every animal rights organization you can think of, so I’m following the story both in the mainstream media and through those charities.

On Tuesday, Sandra Kobrin wrote an interesting piece at Women’s E-news: Beat a Woman? Play On; Beat a Dog? You’re Gone. (Hat tip: Feministing.) Excerpt:

…just wish the NFL had the same outrage toward spousal abuse and other forms of domestic violence. But they don’t. Not by a long shot.

Scores of NFL players as well as players from the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball have been convicted of domestic abuse, yet they play on with no fear of losing their careers. Most pay small fines, if that, and are back on the field immediately.

The message is clear. Beat a woman? Play on. Beat a dog? You’re gone.

Well, to be fair, Vick did more than beat dogs. He tortured many of them to death. That’s more than physical abuse. For those of us who care profoundly about animals, Michael Vick’s case is more like O.J. Simpson’s than, say, Jason Kidd’s. And O.J., despite his acquittal, has been justly ostracised.

But I understand Kobrin’s frustration. The double standard is real. Our cultural tolerance for violence against women — especially when committed by male athletes –is much too high. Much of that is rooted, I think, in the reality that the majority of sports fans and sports writers in this country are heterosexual males. And though most heterosexual men in this country don’t physically abuse their girlfriends and wives, a great many of them are frequently very, very angry at women. On a visceral level, far too many men may empathize with a celebrity athlete who strikes his female partner, assuming that she “made him do it”. Most men don’t condone domestic violence (or won’t do so publicly, particularly in mixed company), but many, I suspect, “understand” how a “normal guy” might “just happen to strike his wife” in the course of a heated argument.

On the other hand, very few men or women in this country regularly murder dogs. Dogs are thought of as members of the family, and rightly so. And because so few men can (thank Goodness!) imagine themselves electrocuting or drowning Spot and Rover, they have no empathy for Michael Vick and the appalling crimes to which he has apparently agreed to plead guilty. It’s this cognitive gap that lies at the heart of the different response to Vick than to those athletes convicted of domestic violence: most men can’t “get” what the Falcons quarterback did in the way that they “get” hitting a spouse when one is exasperated.

Kobrin:

Vick has already lost most of his sponsorship deals worth millions of dollars and he deserves to lose a whole lot more.

But the disproportionate punishment of Vick–while athletes who commit violence against women are let off the hook–has to be wondered at.

Might it be that domestic violence and spousal abuse is so pervasive in sports that it’s simply too costly for leagues to suspend so many men? What would happen after all if those poor dear teams couldn’t fill their rosters?

I wince at Kobrin’s use of “disproportionate.” As an animal rights activist, there’s nothing excessive about Vick’s suspension and loss of endorsements. Indeed, if his jail sentence is in the range of a year or two, it’s woefully inadequate in light of what he did to so many precious, sentient animals. (I’m assuming Koprin meant Vick’s punishment was disproportionately harsh in the light of what is meted out to those who abuse women, and that she didn’t intend to minimize cruelty to animals. At least, that’s my sincere hope.)

It would be very sad if the historically strong alliance between the animal rights community and the feminist movement were to be weakened by the Michael Vick case. I understand completely feminist outrage at the “slap on the wrist” that most male athletes who abuse women receive. But the answer doesn’t lie in minimizing the horror of dog-fighting. Calling Vick’s punishment “disproportionate” and mentioning only that he “beat” dogs (rather than drowning and slaughtering them) minimizes his crimes — which, of course, is exactly what far too many people do in cases of domestic violence. Saying Vick only “beat” dogs is comparable to saying that breaking your wife’s jaw is just “keeping her in line.”

We live in a culture that teaches many men that women are still property. We live in a society where many young men — particularly privileged athletes — are allowed unfettered access to women’s bodies. Sexual assaults and acts of domestic violence are excused or punished very lightly. (I wrote about this a long time ago.)

We live in a culture where the horrific abuse of animals is also tolerated. Michael Vick killed animals that most folks identify as pets; plenty of other equally intelligent animals are slaughtered in barbaric conditions every day for our food. We raise our children to believe that animals exist for their pleasure (just as we raise many men to believe women exist for theirs) and when our kids ask how the Easter ham came to the table, we tell them “don’t think too much about it.”

Justice is not a zero-sum game. Taking animal abuse more seriously does not mean ignoring violence against women. We need stiffer penalties for these crimes, and we need to hold our celebrities equally accountable. As the Michael Vick case dominates the news cycle this steamy August, feminists are right to demand an end to the pattern of excusing the violence that male athletes commit against women. But we can demand more substantial penalties for those who hit their wives and girlfriends without minimizing the horror of Michael Vick’s crimes.

Those who struggle for animal rights and for women’s equality ought to be natural allies, partners in a great coalition seeking justice and demanding protection for the vulnerable and the exploited. It would be very sad indeed if this case were to widen a rift between these two vitally important movements.

Notes on Bergman, Walsh, sexual decision-making and homosociality

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 31, 2007
in Men and Masculinity, Movies, People, Sexual ethics and transformation, Sports and Youth
. 9 Comments

I’m in my office with a big stack of summer grading to do, and thus little time to post. I’m scatterbrained more than usual, perhaps knowing that once I’m done grading, my real vacation begins!

I’m reflecting this morning on several things, including the deaths of Ingmar Bergman and Bill Walsh. When I was in college, I watched (at my mother’s insistence) a tape of the former’s “The Seventh Seal”. I was transfixed and moved and stunned, and more than two decades later, it remains one of my favorite films ever made. I’m not a movie buff, and most of the rest of the Bergman oeuvre leaves me cold, but I watch “The Seventh Seal” at least once a year.

Bill Walsh coached the 49ers throughout my adolescence; I was raised a loyal Niner fan and followed them obsessively throughout the 1980s. My interest in professional football began to diminish just as Walsh retired in 1989. I don’t think I can name more than three current players on the 49er roster; I can still recall — without prompting — the names of each player in the marvelous 1984 secondary (Wright, Lott, Williamson, Hicks.) Walsh was my coaching hero, and though he was a head coach at Stanford, my fellow Cal alums know that long before he served in Palo Alto, he was an assistant coach at Berkeley in the early 1960s.

But in addition to thinking kind thoughts about these two very different influences on my adolescence, I’m also struck by this New York Times article on The Whys of Mating.

…thanks to psychologists at the University of Texas at Austin, we can at last count the whys. After asking nearly 2,000 people why they’d had sex, the researchers have assembled and categorized a total of 237 reasons — everything from “I wanted to feel closer to God” to “I was drunk.” They even found a few people who claimed to have been motivated by the desire to have a child.

Here’s the good part:

The results contradicted another stereotype about women: their supposed tendency to use sex to gain status or resources.

“Our findings suggest that men do these things more than women,” Dr. Buss said, alluding to the respondents who said they’d had sex to get things, like a promotion, a raise or a favor. Men were much more likely than women to say they’d had sex to “boost my social status” or because the partner was famous or “usually ‘out of my league.’ ”

Dr. Buss said, “Although I knew that having sex has consequences for reputation, it surprised me that people, notably men, would be motivated to have sex solely for social status and reputation enhancement.”

Well, it may have surprised the good doctor, but it isn’t a surprise to any of us who do gender studies. I’ve often praised Michael Kimmel’s use of the term “homosociality”. Homosociality is the notion that many heterosexual men engage in sexual activity as much to earn status with other men as for sexual pleasure itself. Having sex with women (particularly those who are perceived as “high-status” in the eyes of male peers) is as much about increasing the measure of one’s own manhood as it is about private satisfaction or erotic and emotional connection with another human being.

The study cited in the Times was done on students at the University of Texas, Austin. The men surveyed were generally of college-age, a time in men’s lives when they are particularly susceptible to homosocial pressures to win status. This study is a helpful reminder of the ubiquity of those pressures — and of the damage that homosociality inflicts on men and women alike. For those of us committed to working with teens and young adults, it’s still more incentive to focus our efforts on deconstructing young men’s desperate, heart-breaking, soul-destroying desire to win favor in the eyes of their male peers.

Challenging homosociality is near the top of the priority list for me in my men’s work. For those of us who want to be genuine egalitarians, what matters is not merely what we profess. Men who want to be real change agents need to treat women (and speak about women) the same way when they are “alone with the guys” as when they are in “mixed company.” Many women know what it’s like to have a boyfriend who is sweet and charming when she’s alone with him, but a jerk when he is surrounded by his friends (this is usually her bitter introduction to homosociality.) The great challenge is to be radically consistent, to be the same man always — with the brothers of Delta Kappa Epsilon, with one’s grandmother, with one’s girlfriend, with one’s teachers. I’ve seen young men achieve this time and time again, but rarely without colossal effort, and rarely without earning scorn from their peers. But there’s tremendous value in matching one’s language and one’s life. The damage that not doing so creates is equally tremendous, and the fact that women often bear the brunt of that failure is difficult to deny.

Cheryl Cannon smoked me yesterday: a note on marathoning and sexist marketing

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 30, 2007
in Athletics and Fitness, Feminism and Sports
. 9 Comments

On Saturday afternoon, my wife went on a shopping excursion along Maiden Lane and Post Street while I relaxed in the hotel room, resting and snacking and preparing for Sunday morning’s run. A front-page article in the Chronicle naturally caught my eye: For a relaxing girls’ getaway, try a marathon. Written by long-time Bay Area sportswriter C.W. Nevius, it’s a frustrating but still interesting exploration of the boom in women’s running in the past decade. Excerpt:

“It’s a tidal wave,” says Amby Burfoot, executive editor of Runner’s World magazine and former winner of the Boston Marathon. “Thirty years ago, less than 5 percent of marathon participants were women. Now it is 40 percent.”

And higher. Race officials say the San Francisco Marathon is split almost exactly in half — 50 percent women, 50 percent men.

A group of five women from Fort Collins, Colo., represent the demographic perfectly. Tiffany Green, Connie Le, Kris Baugh, Erin Thomas and Stephanie Rogers are all in their 30s, married with children, and here on a running vacation.

“It’s girl time,” says Green. “We’re using this race as a reason to get away.”

This is not news, and it’s something I blogged about after I ran a marathon in June 2005. Nevius explains one reason for the change:

The new marathoners make it on a much lighter workload. Cheryl Cannon, down from Sacramento to run the marathon, says she rarely logs more than 40 miles in a week. Cannon, 42, started running only five years ago, but this will be her sixth marathon. Like many women, she runs with a regular group, which meets three times a week to jog 6 miles.

“We go out there and chat,” she says, “and the trees don’t repeat the gossip. We’re all in our 40s, have kids, and in much better shape than our husbands.”

That’s a good point. While big running events are booming, participation by men has actually gone down. What’s the reason for that?

“First,” says Burfoot, “it’s not a strength or skill sport. And second, success is measured in discipline, determination and consistency. Those are traits that women are all good at.”

Okay, so I looked up Cheryl Cannon’s results online — and two years my senior, she smoked me by fourteen minutes, running a 3:38 and finishing 11th overall among women in her age group. Nevius’ article suggests she runs only for fun and companionship. But her outstanding time, which puts her in the top 5% of her age group, is the result of hard work as well. Reading the whole article, one might have expected ol’ Cheryl to barely squeeze in under the six-hour cutoff. Continue reading ‘Cheryl Cannon smoked me yesterday: a note on marathoning and sexist marketing’

Home, and an initial marathon report

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 30, 2007
in Athletics and Fitness, Sports and Traveling
. 1 Comment

We’re home from a happy weekend in the Bay Area.

I ran the San Francisco Marathon yesterday morning, finishing in a pedestrian 3:52:44. I’d had a good season of training, but despite the pleas of my good running buddies, I hadn’t done a lick of “speed work” all spring or early summer. And yesterday’s run result reflected both the good and the bad of the last few months of work: I ran at a remarkably steady pace, hitting nearly perfectly even splits for the entire race. I ran the first half in 1:56:16, the second 13.1 miles in 1:56:28. In my thirteen previous marathons, I’d always run my second half at least two minutes slower than my first, so it was nice to show some consistency. (And I can account for those twelve second-half seconds: Hugo had to duck into a bush in Golden Gate park just past the half-way point. I know, far too much information…)

My last three road marathons have all seen me finish in the 3:50s, though I was faster yesterday than I was in my previous two (3:54 and 3:57). And I felt very strong at the finish, crossing the line with a sense that if I had had to do a few more miles, it would have been okay. The walk back to the hotel — a good mile and a half — was relatively easy, which was a relief. So, bottom line: I had a great time, particularly while running across the Golden Gate Bridge, and finished in a time that was consistent with my “heavy on long, slow distance; short on speed work” training regimen. My now eight-year old personal best of 3:13 is safe, assuredly forever.

I can highly recommend Millenium, the superb vegan restaurant we went to on Saturday night. A fine place to fuel up for a marathon; my wife and I shared a delicious tasting menu of plant-based foods that were all locally and organically produced. Millenium is worth a trip to the City.

Perhaps some more marathon reflections later.

A note on Title IX, proportionality, and why some girls aren’t playing… yet

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 22, 2007
in Athletics and Fitness, Feminism, Sports and Youth
. 13 Comments

I try to stay out of the ongoing arguments over Title IX, proportionality, and women’s sports. (I’ve mentioned Title IX once or twice) but I’d rather leave the defense of Title IX to those who are best equipped to do that — the good folks at the Women’s Sports Foundation.

But sometimes, the issues raised in the ongoing debate over proportionality (the principle that spending on men’s and women’s athletics by colleges should match the percentage of the respective genders in the student body) get me really interested. On Wednesday, the National Review published this piece by Jessica Gavora, who is associated with the nemesis of women’s sports, the College Sports Council.

Gavora is worried that having had great success in defending the proportionality rule in colleges (which has led many schools to cut certain men’s sports, like wrestling, in order to meet quotas), the advocates for Title IX are going to push for similar measures in high school. Gavora, like most conservatives, is a fierce believer in gender essentialism; she is convinced that girls “just don’t like sports” as much as boys do. Thus mandating equal funding for both sexes unfairly punishes boys for their “natural” competitive nature. After all, many conservatives seem to believe that most real women would rather be at the quilting bee (or shopping at the mall, or writing sonnets in imitation of Millay) than running, leaping, or striking at balls with their bats or their cleats.

Okay, so maybe that’s not fair. Here’s what Gavora says that I did find interesting:

The reason high schools are having trouble finding as many girls to play sports as there are boys clamoring to take the field is apparent to anyone who takes the time to look: Girls have more varied extracurricular interests than boys. Girls out-participate boys in every extracurricular activity — band, drama, debate, student government — every one, that is, except for sports. The extracurricular gender gap so favors girls that the Independent Women’s Forum calculated that if the government were suddenly to require the same gender quota for participation in other extracurricular activities that it does in sports, 36 percent of female choir members, 25 percent of female orchestra members, and 33 percent of female debaters would have to be eliminated.

The implication of this is clear: If high schools follow colleges and universities in instituting gender quotas in athletics, boys will be forced to pay the price in limited or eliminated opportunities. Girls are too busy doing other things after school to turn out at the same rate for sports.

Bold emphases mine. There’s a grain of truth in what Gavora says, though it’s hardly an argument against proportionality. I’m convinced that the primary reason some schools have a hard time getting enough girls to come out for sports is not because of a lack of interest, but because of a perception on the part of these over-scheduled, over-pressured young women that sports isn’t the best use of their time. I’ve written before about the colossal pressure we put on this generation of young women to be successful; all things being equal, it does seem clear that our daughters are more anxious to please and to achieve tangible signs of success than many of their brothers.

It’s not that girls are any less competitive, any less interested in getting sweaty and dirty, any less interested in victory than boys. But as they think about college applications, as they look to their parents and adults for cues as to how to succeed, they are more likely to be pushed towards student government, the debate team, the French Club, or massive amounts of community volunteering. That’s not a function of nature — that’s a calculation about what will look good. When applying to a selective university, these girls imagine that being president of the student body will look more impressive than being an all-league mid-fielder on the soccer team.

Not everyone wants to play sports, of course. There are plenty of boys (I was one in high school) who have no interest in being athletic, and I know perfectly well that there are lots of girls who find the idea of playing on a team to be a dreary one. But I know full well that those boys who are interested in playing are more likely to be encouraged to do so, while their sisters are more likely to be pressured to choose other, seemingly more “prestigious” extra-curricular activities.

Applying proportionality to the high schools will force a necessary cultural shift. We’re going to need to do more than demand that dollars spent reflect the percentage of girls and boys in the entire school. We’re going to have to challenge the “culture of perfection” in which so many young women labor, a culture which often discourages girls from putting their hearts, bodies, and souls into sports. (Courtney Martin writes very well about that culture, I reviewed her book here).

And we’re going to need to get some boys up off the damn couch, away from the video games, and into not only sports, but those activities now so often dominated by girls: debate, band, student government.

Bring on proportionality.

Loving the look, ignoring the sport: some thoughts on Allison Stokke: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 4, 2007
in Athletics and Fitness, Feminism, Sexual harassment, Sports and Youth
. 22 Comments

It was a busy weekend. My wife and I were able to spend some excellent time together, and on Saturday night — before heading out for some vegan Nepalese — I got some of the live coverage of the California high school track and field championships. I got to see the future Golden Bear running back, Jahvid Best, show some awesome speed in the 200; I got to see the remarkable Jordan Hasay (whose career I’ve been tracking since she was an eighth grader) lap most of the field on her way to another easy victory in the two-mile. Hasay is only a sophomore, and if she keeps her composure and stays injury free, she’s going to be a household name outside of the track world very soon.

Track doesn’t get much coverage in the mainstream press, even in the sports section. But Friday’s LA Times featured a front-page piece on Allison Stokke, a high school pole-vaulter from Orange County. Allison’s a fine vaulter (though she finished fourth at state on Saturday), and I’m happy to say she’s a future Cal athlete. But the article was about the attention Allison has drawn for her looks:

…intelligence and athletic ability aren’t what made her the most-watched athlete at the state high school track and field championships in Sacramento on Friday.

It was the Internet.

Stokke happens to be physically attractive, with shiny dark hair; flawless olive-colored skin; a wide, bright smile; and the toned 5-foot-7 frame of a well-trained athlete — and that’s why her name has become among the most searched on the Internet, making her a flashpoint for debate about 1st Amendment rights and who can post what about whom in cyberspace.

One day she was just another accomplished high school athlete. The next, she was the topic of media reports from London, Spain and Italy; her YouTube video got nearly 200,000 views; and photos of her were posted on college message boards around the country and linked to by bloggers around the world.

Keith Richmond, chief executive of Break.com, has a term he uses for the instantly famous: “e-lebrities.” His site bills itself as an “entertainment channel for guys fueled by user-created media.”

The Times, helpfully for those who don’t follow the sport, offers two pictures of Stokke, one vaulting, one just smiling for the camera. The latter is captioned “head-turner.”

On so many levels, this is so infuriating. For starters, it’s one thing for the Times to report on the unseemly obsession that many men (who probably know damn all about field events, and couldn’t name one of Stokke’s competitors) have with a high-school aged female athlete. It’s another thing for the Times article (written by Diane Pucin) to label Allison a “head-turner” and rhapsodize about her “flawless” skin. A whole lot of folks who didn’t know about Stokke before surely did internet searches for her after reading the paper last Friday. And how the heck can Pucin be sure that Stokke was the one all the fans were focused on? Can she not draw a distinction between drooling middle-aged men on the Internet surfing for T&A and serious aficionados of T&F?

I’m angry about the way in which the attention paid to Stokke marginalizes the many other athletes in the sport. Stokke is a great vaulter, but as any T&F fan will tell you, the best in the country right now is Palo Alto’s marvelous Tori Anthony, who this past weekend became the first high school girl in the United States to clear 14 feet in outdoor competition. Anthony has been consistently ahead of Stokke all year — except in camera attention. (To be fair, Stokke is no Anna Kournikova, the Russian tennis player who never won a significant tournament but made a fortune off her looks; a better comparison might be to Maria Sharapova, another Russian player who gets tremendous camera attention for her physical features but who also has two grand slam championships to give heft to her credentials.) Thirty-five years after Title IX, and women’s sports still get far less media attention and financial support than do boys’ athletics. Paying attention to one bright and talented athlete among many, merely because she is judged beautiful, isn’t healthy for women’s sports. And it certainly doesn’t leave many of the women who are competing in track and field feeling good.

I’m also angry about the way in which we legitimize the eroticising of adolescents. I’ve spent a fair amount of time at track and field events over the years, and I’ve noted not insignificant number of creepy lookin’ guys with cameras who seem unduly interested in taking pictures of just one or two female athletes. A few years ago, I was at the big Arcadia Invitational meet, watching the high jumpers. One girl was wearing a particularly tight outfit, and as she flopped over the bar, a man a few rows behind me frantically clicked his camera with its long lens. “Ve-ee–ee–ry ni-ii-ii-ce” he muttered excitedly at one point, studying the digital images he had just taken. Like the guys at football games more interested in snapping a photo of a cheerleader’s kick pants than the action on the field, there’s a small cadre of these characters who make the circuit at track events. They aren’t generally asked to leave unless they make trouble, and most of them don’t. (I’ve gotten into it with one of them, and nearly got myself thrown out of the meet for my trouble). The pictures they take do end up all over the internet, and they are usually much the same. (You can imagine what body parts they like to focus on.)

All things being equal, there are more white girls than young women of color doing vaulting and high jumping. While events like the long jump and the triple jump tend to be dominated by young African-American women, pole vaulters and high jumpers are largely drawn from the ranks of former gymnasts. Gymnastics lessons are priced for the middle and upper-middle classes, of course, and thus there ends up being an economic and even ethnic component to women’s track and field competition. We live in a culture that tends to erotically fixate on tall, slender, pretty white girls — and in track and field, they are disproportionately found in the pole vault and the high jump. Thus, there’s a classist, racist, and sexist element in this focus on Allison Stokke.

I like Allison Stokke. I’m a fan (especially since the smart gal has chosen to go to Berkeley). But I’m also a fan of Tori Anthony. I’m an even bigger fan of Hasay, and of Jamesha Youngblood, who brought home two state titles this past weekend. The latter is probably the most dominant female athlete in the West right now. But her pictures aren’t plastered all over the internet.

Straight men don’t love their male athletic heroes because they’re sexy. Teenage boys are quite capable of idolizing LeBron James or Peyton Manning without fantasizing about them. They fantasize about being them, which is very different. But we live in a culture where a great many men can only identify “hot” female athletes. As a sports fan, a teacher, and a mentor, I find that exasperating, disappointing, and even enraging. I can idolize a female athlete as easily as a male one. Growing up, Martina Navratilova and Bjorn Borg were my tennis heroes. I wanted to emulate both of them, and I was sensible enough to see that I had no reason to identify with Borg more merely because he was male. I had no more chance of being as good a tennis player as Borg than I did of waking up one day as a woman; even as a child, I knew that much. And so I could look up to, be inspired by, and want to emulate athletes of both sexes equally. And though as a lad I certainly had my athletic crushes (even a few with a sexual component), I never picked who to root for — of either sex — based on looks. Surely, I’m not that unusual a bear.

So google Allison Stokke. But then google Jordan Hasay, and Jamesha Youngblood. And remember that whatever they look like, they are simply young women of extraordinary ability and talent who deserve to be recognized on the basis of what they achieve alone.

UPDATE: Twisty at I blame the patriarchy has a long post on this subject with over 100 comments; she posted on Saturday, and I ought to have done a search to see who else had touched on the issue first. As usual at IBTP, the language is raw and eloquent. Twisty and I have, in the end, much the same view. Read it.

Men, masculinity, and sports talk: a reflection on the ESPN News ads

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 31, 2007
in Memories, Men and Masculinity, Relationships and Sports
. 14 Comments

I’ve been getting a number of queries from folks who want to know my response to the recent spate of “death by veganism” stories in the national press. I will get there, I promise — I’m just a bit burned out from writing about food and animal rights issues. Soon.

I’m not burned out writing about men.

If you watch sports, you may have seen the ESPN News ads (here’s one at Google Video). The premise of the commercial is that without the help of ESPN News, a fella may find himself “talking out of his ass” when discussing sports. The ads feature groups of men gathered together playing cards, or at a barbecue; one makes a demonstrably false assertion about sports (such as “They finally got the college football rankings right.”) The other men look at him with a mixture of pity and harsh judgment, and the camera closes in on the buttocks of the poor lad who made the horrible error of speaking in ignorance. ESPN News — with its 24/7 coverage of American sports — is offered as the best prophylaxis against what I suppose we ought to call “homosocial humiliation.”

As a sports fan and a gender studies prof, I appreciate the candor of the ESPN ads. They knowingly and honestly point to the way in which a great many men use their knowledge of sports as currency with their male peers. Being able to discuss football, baseball, NASCAR, basketball knowledgeably is surely one of the most ubiquitous markers of masculinity in contemporary society. Men who don’t know each other well often use “sports talk” as a way of maintaining conversation and avoiding awkward silence. Sports talk becomes a social lubricant for an extraordinary variety of men; it has the happy ancillary benefit of uniting men of different social backgrounds and ethnic groups. In contemporary American culture, is there any topic that so quickly binds and unites men (who might otherwise be divided by class status, race, and so forth) than an enthusiastic discussion of sports?

I love sports. But before I loved them for their own sake, I loved them for the way in which they brought me closer to the men I admired. When I was growing up, I had no greater hero than my cousin Scott, eight years my senior. When he was in his teens and I was a child, I tried to follow him everywhere, no doubt much to his annoyance. In June 1975, I had just turned eight and Scott was not quite sixteen. We were at my family ranch in Northern California to begin a long vacation, and Scott showed up one day clutching a small black and white television. (We had no permanent TV at the ranch in those days; now we’ve got the satellite dish and accompanying gadgets.)

As any Bay Area basketball fan will tell you, 1975 was the year the Golden State Warriors won their only NBA title to date. And Scott wanted to watch the final match at the Ranch. We huddled in one corner of the old house, watching the tiny, fuzzy images on the screen. I remember hearing names I had never heard before — Al Attles, Rick Barry. I remember Golden State won, beating the Washington Bullets (now Wizards). But mostly, I remember that I got to sit next to my hero Scott. I remember that Scott, normally taciturn, was quite vocal. I realized quickly that in order to get Scott to talk to me, I had to ask him questions about something that meant something to him. So I asked him about the Warriors, about basketball, about the game we were watching. Patiently and at far greater length than on any subject, Scott explained the NBA to me. And I was hooked.

For years and years in my childhood, sports were the way in which I connected with my male cousins (and my dear late Uncle Peter, whom I wrote about a few weeks ago.) I learned the rules of every major American sport by sitting next to them on the couch. And I learned that I could have a much better conversation with them if I read the sports page in the newspaper or listened to the sports report on the radio before a family gathering. I grasped quickly that being able to talk about sports was the admission price to the masculine community I craved.

As an adolescent and an adult, I discovered that I cared about sports in their own right. I learned that there were some sports I didn’t care for (baseball), and some about which I was downright passionate (college football). I discovered I had an interest in sports that weren’t particularly popular with other men (I folllow women’s college softball, and I keep very close tabs on high school and collegiate cross-country). I became a soccer fan, and find that when I am in England (or among soccer aficionados in the States), that knowledge serves me well. And I’m not afraid to admit that I don’t know much of anything at all about hockey or NASCAR, and don’t have any desire to learn. In other words, slowly but surely, what I enjoy watching and talking about has become increasingly my own and correspondingly less about connecting with other men.

But in my relationships with men today, I still use sports as a way to build up a connection with fellas who might otherwise be guarded and unapproachable. And believe me, I’ve used this in many places. When my wife and I were honeymooning in South Africa a couple of years ago, we had a rather truculent tour guide for one portion of the trip. I discovered he was a cricket fan, and the next morning, I frantically scoured the newspapers for the latest cricket news. I didn’t want to impress him with my very limited understanding of that bizarre game, but I did want to be able to ask him intelligent questions. Once I started asking him about the Proteas (the South African national team), he lit up with pleasure. For the remainder of our time with him, he was especially warm and friendly towards me and my wife. I didn’t think of what I was doing as manipulative, because I wasn’t trying to “get” anything from him. I just wanted to build a bond with another man, and in this case, cricket was the way to do it.

It saddens me, of course, that so many men find it difficult to connect with each other over anything other than sports. It saddens me that those men who aren’t interested in sport are either forced to fake it (in which case, they risk being “revealed as an ass-talker”, the fate of which the ESPN ads warn), or they are simply frozen out of these vital male-bonding rituals. And of course, many women experience exactly the same thing. I know a great many women who love sports, and for some, their love of sports began as a way to grow closer to their fathers or older brothers. That’s not to say that many women don’t love sports in their own right, but it’s surely true that an exceptional number of girls realize early on in life that sitting on the couch with their dads watching baseball, hoops, or footy is an excellent way to connect with a man who is otherwise emotionally unavailable.

Though I use sports talk to connect with men (often in the hopes of subtly moving the conversation to deeper topics), I am also careful, when I’m in groups of guys, not to let sports talk become a yardstick for measuring masculinity. I try and be very good about sensing which men are and which men aren’t interested in talking about whether Barry Bonds belongs in the Hall of Fame, or the relative merits of Peyton Manning and Tom Brady, or whether Tottenham’s acquisition of Gareth Bale can finally lift them to the Champions League. Too often, men use sports knowledge as a way of establishing a hierarchy, a rigid social structure in which those whose opinions that are grounded in “fact” and expressed most loudly trump those whose views seem less certain, whose insights are less clear.

I love sport. I like talking about sports — some of the time. And I very much want to help my brothers move beyond the use of sports talk as the primary way of forming bonds with each other. I’m saddened by how limiting that reliance on sports is; it’s ultimately a pretty thin glue to bond men together. I’ll still use sports talk as a way to disarm men (before I subtly foist my radical pro-feminist, evangelical Protestant, vegan animal rights agenda upon them), but I always remember that sport is a starting topic, not a finishing one. Sports talk can serve as a promising trailhead into much deeper, and much richer conversation. But it will only be that trailhead if we’re willing to push.

Update:

Here’s the confession (you know how much my Puritanical soul loves to wax eloquent on my myriad shortcomings). There are times, especially when I’m coming somewhere to speak to a group of anti-feminist men about feminism, that I enjoy surprising them with my enthusiastic willingness to talk sport. People who only know me by reputation — or from my blog — often expect someone who fulfills a stereotype, and the stereotype of pro-feminist men as effeminate (and hence not interested in sports) is fairly entrenched. To the extent that it’s fun to break stereotypes, that’s cool, but I must be very careful to not reinforce the notion that those men who are “sports-literate” are thus more deserving of being taken seriously by their peers.

Killing Kangaroos and rejecting Beckham

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 30, 2007
in Animal Rights and Sports
. 10 Comments

I’m saddened to learn that shoe manufacturer Adidas has successfully lobbied the California State Senate to permit the importation of kangaroo skin for use in the production of soccer (football) boots. Here’s the Los Angeles Times story

After years of assertive lobbying by Adidas, the California Senate voted Tuesday to legalize the import and sale of kangaroo skins so that soccer players can buy shoes made from the marsupials’ coveted leather.

Of the 55 species of kangaroos in Australia, six are commercially harvested and exported, and would be allowed if the bill is approved by the Assembly and signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Those species include red and eastern and western gray kangaroos.

Animal activists are fighting the proposal, which they say will lead to the deaths of endangered kangaroos because hunting is done at night and the species are difficult to differentiate. They also object to the rules of kangaroo hunting, which dictate that if a mother is killed the baby must be killed as well.

PETA’s press release is here, and it notes that David Beckham chooses to wear synthetic leather rather than anything made from animals. After being contacted by animal rights organizations, Beckham (who had not realized his Adidas Predator boots were made from kangaroo hide) chose a different shoe to wear.

The Times article notes that Beckham’s new team, the Los Angeles Galaxy, joined Adidas in lobbying the state Senate for passage of the kangaroo skin bill. Given that their future star has rejected kangaroo hide, and has gone on record explicitly against other footballers wearing kangaroo kit, this seems a poor choice on the part of the Galaxy.

The bill, SB 880, now goes to the state assembly. Californians, please contact your assembly member. (Contact info, and info on how to figure out who represents you, is on the left hand side of the page.)

A note on language, misogyny, and Don Imus

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 11, 2007
in Feminism, Race and Sports
. 13 Comments

I have very little to add to the discussion of the Don Imus controversy. I’ve been reading what everyone else has to say, and though many wise and good points are being made by many wise and good people, a couple of posts I’ve seen jump out at me.

From last Friday, here’s dNA’s piece at Halfrican Revolution: White Supremacy Outsources its Vocabulary. (H/T Pam at Pandagon).

It is impossible to understand our current ease with sexism in the public sphere, especially towards black women, especially over the issue of hair, without discussing the spread of Hip-hop… Hip-hop has granted black men greater access to white women. It has also granted white men greater access to black women; make no mistake, your teenage son, little brother, or husband is tuning into the “booty channel” (also known as Black Entertainment Television) when you’re not home. The attitude towards women in mainstream Hip-hop is that women are commodities, an attitude that mimics attitudes towards gender in greater American society, a fact made obvious by any beer commercial.

What has happened here is a subtle, unspoken agreement between black and white men that black women and their minds and bodies are owed as little respect as the minds and bodies of white women. This happens even as overt racism towards black men in the public sphere becomes more and more accessible. This happens because on some level, black men know we cannot be seen as men unless we effectively subjigate, commodify, and exploit black women.

A black man like dNa can say that in a way that I can’t.

Listening to right-wing talk radio yesterday, I heard a few folks doing their best to deflect attention from Imus by attacking the degrading portrayal of women in hip-hop culture. I winced as I heard that, largely because the hosts (John and Ken here in Los Angeles) seemed less interested in defending the dignity of black women, and more in absolving a fellow white male talk-show personality. But dNa’s words carry more weight, as do Pam Spaulding’s at Pandagon. This isn’t merely because dNa and Pam are African-American, though of course their heritage does give their words a special and undeniable legitimacy. It’s also because in the end, the most effective critiques of any cultural movement must come from within. When progressive black bloggers are willing to draw a connection between Imus’ “nappy-headed hos” remark and the larger issue of the degradation of black women in both hip-hop and mainstream culture, then we’re arriving at a teachable moment.

Audre Lorde, surely one of the great feminist writers of the last half-century, famously remarked that “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Words like “bitch”, “ho”, and yes, “nigger” (in any of its myriad spellings) are words first uttered by the masters; they are words that cannot be redeemed. It is a terrible illusion to imagine that authentic empowerment can ever come by appropriating the language of the oppressor. The attempt by some feminists to use words like “bitch” and “cunt” in a positive light only ends up giving misogynists a sense of entitlement to keep on using them. The ubiquitous use of racial slurs by hip-hop artists gives the Don Imuses of the world cover. It gives them permission. It makes the utterly indefensible seem less egregious, largely because hip-hop has done such a good job of deadening our sense of outrage. (This of course, is antithetical to what hip-hop was supposed to do: I may know more about the history of bluegrass than of rap, but wasn’t hip-hop supposed to arouse righteous indignation? Wasn’t it supposed to be a soundtrack of liberation?)

Unlike most folks weighing in on this controversy, I was a fan of Rutgers basketball long before their wonderful Final Four run. I’ve been a C. Vivian Stringer fan for years. From a basketball standpoint, I consider her one of the five greatest coaches in the history of the women’s game (my other four: Summitt, Auriemma, Barmore, Conradt. Goestenkors needs a few more years). She’s certainly the greatest coach currently working who hasn’t yet won a national title. I loved her team’s improbable run through the tournament; the defensive job they did on LSU in the semi-final was a thing of beauty.

I watched the tape of the Rutgers press conference yesterday. I saw and heard the pain in these young women’s voices. And I saw and heard that this multi-racial team was hurt far more by the “ho” word than by “nappy-headed.” Two quotes that stuck out for me:

One player, Kia Vaughn, said that unless a “ho” is defined as someone who has achieved a lot, Imus misspoke.

“I’m not a ho,” the sophomore said. “I’m a woman and someone’s child. It hurts. It hurts a lot.”

..(Essence) Carson, like her teammates, also talked about good that could come from the controversy.

“We can finally speak up for women. Not just African-American women, but all women,” the junior said.

Not just African-American women, but all women. Good on you, Essence Carson. Good on you for your dignity and your athletic prowess, and good on you for seeing that at its core, the real evil in Imus’ words lay in their misogyny.

I don’t much care whether Imus is fired or not. But during his two-week suspension (which certainly seems minimally appropriate), let me suggest we all go through a similar period of self-reflection. Let’s think about the words we use, the music we listen to, the casual insults we allow our friends to slip out unrebuked. Let’s suspend — for the length of the Imus suspension — the use of any media that uses degrading, hostile, soul-crushing language towards women.* Let’s not allow the skin color or the sex of the artist who uses the language to act as a shield from our criticism. What goes into our ears, what we sing along to in the car — it helps define who we are. We cannot compartmentalize; we cannot claim to live lives of justice and kindness while listening to a soundtrack of objectification and exploitation. We are what we eat, we are what we wear, we are what we listen to and watch.

And if you’ve never done it, consider going to support your local college women’s basketball team next year. At most levels, it’s more entertaining than the men’s game (and I’ve watched a hell of a lot of hoops in my day).

*NOTE: I’m making this commitment with my own musical choices. I just took the Guns n’ Roses song One in a Million off my Itunes shuffle. I have no love for hip-hop, but I love me some Axl Rose. Still, if we’re gonna lead by example…