Recently in Sports Category

It obviously makes for good news coverage as well.

I just don't know what to say. I guess we all know that the football world is filled with these types. I wouldn't read the comments. What further incenses me are the people looking on and laughing as if he's just won something.

They said there were children present.

This is my first post on Feministing, so I would like to say hello to everyone. I've been lurking around for a while, made a few comments, but nothing much due to my shy nature, even online, if you could believe that.

I just found this interesting, since my boyfriend watches a lot of football, and I constantly see women and cheerleaders very lightly clad all the time in the stadiums. So what was so special about this situation, that this woman was humiliated and embarrassed for her outfit, I really have to wonder. What are your thoughts?

Oh, and my apologies if this has already been posted.

I've watched hockey a loong time. I was one of those people who'd get excigted hearing the 'Hockey Night in Canada' theme song start up, in anticipation of a good game. I grew up in a town with a 'dynasty' team, who had a good run of Stanley Cup winning years. But as I grew into my feminism, I also became increasingly aware of just how fucked up the professional world of sports is - including hockey. Media would report on the 'dark' side of junior hockey (the road to the NHL, for many North American players), particularly the sensational, but undeniably sexually-themed hazing rituals, the sexual abuse of players by trusted members of coaching staff, and - recently - a court case involving allegations of forced 'group sex' between players and their girlfriends at the hands of a coach. In professional hockey, we know that the funding and optics of women's versus men's leagues are seriously skewed, with the greatest salaries, the rampant advertising, and professional respect reserved for the NHL. As in many other sports, a few 'exceptional' women have broken through the wall of testosterone to garner some acclaim, like Hayley Wickenheiser. As a younger woman, I was pretty excited to see Manon Rheaume was signed as a free agent to the Tampa Bay Lightening, and got the go-ahead to play goal them. Then I realized how it was: she would start in goal for an exhibition game, which had no competitive value, and was pulled early for no apparent reason. The coach later acknowledged it was pretty much a publicity stunt for the expansion team, and reports focused on that angle, as much as for her good looks.

Last night, though, something interesting happened that absolutely stunned me. Dallas Star player, the widely disliked "bad boy" Sean Avery, was suspended by the league for uttering "disparaging remarks" about former girlfriends, Rachel Hunter and Elisha Cuthbert (who are now dating other NHL hockey players). Long story short, he ensured all media cameras were on, then called the women his "sloppy seconds."  Which is a jaw-droppingly bonehead manouvre to begin with. But what really stunned me was the league's willingness to indefinitely suspend Avery for these comments, and THEN for the coach of his team to publicly support the censure, stating that, if the NHL hadn't of done it, he would have.

Clearly, there are other incidents that have led up to this moment - Avery has been known as a pot-stirrer in many ways, engaging in a lot of 'unsportsmanlike' behaviour on ice, on the bench and, obviously, away from the rink. As I said to my partner last night, this was just the last straw in a series of ill-will engendering actions. Now, he may have provided team management with a reason to get rid of a controversial, yet increasingly unpopular player. But, what the hell, NHL?  You surprised me.

Heard about this? Apparently she's known for her somewhat rare sidearm knuckleball. Don't just break that glass ceiling, break it with style!

I am a footie fan - a soccer fan, for my fellow Americans.  One of the things that I love so much about international football that we don't get for any sport here in the States is the off-field drama (and unabashed eye candy ).

So I was very excited to stumble across a news release for a new free soccer video game that lets you not just play the game itself but also engage in off-the-pitch shenanigans. 

The best part, the one that convinced me that I needed to find and download this - work and school be damned - is at the very end of that news release:

The player avatars can be female. So we could be seeing some top-flight co-ed teams. And best of all, the women don’t seem to be enhanced for male viewers. 

(I wonder how Natasha Kai would function on a co-ed team?)

Considering the relative dearth of non-sexualized women available in most video games, and the sexualization of even the male players in most countries, this is quite a step.

Now, all they need to add is the ability to live the life of a footballer's wife/girlfriend or an obsessed fan, and the video game would carry all of the complexities of the real thing.

(Cross-posted at What If )

This entry may end up being a rant more than anything.

Early this evening, UFC fights on prime time television featured the fights of female MMA fighter Gina Carano. I spent 8 years of my adolescent playing baseball and holding my own with a large number of very unwelcoming boys, so I applaud any woman trying to make her way into an male dominated arena. Gina Carano is a powerful talented fighter.

Yet, the assholes I live with thought it would be appropriate to sexualize everything she did in the fight. 30 seconds into the fight I was so fed up with their "yeah baby"s and "take your shirt off" I called them idiots and left the room.

Venting aside my point is this: even though female boxers are a powerful example of strong women, men still managed to reduce their training and preparation and work down to a cat fight between girls. One of the announcers said, the girl Gina was fighting pulled her hair and laughed.

I am crazy to think that most men's reaction to female boxing is similar to this, just some fucking sex scene in a bad porn for their entertainment. Why can't female athletes bodies be respected for their talent and not just their sexual capacity. Why are so many men so afraid of talented female athletes?

I found this article from Shredbetties. Apparently, Burton snowboards teamed up with Playboy. Great, there are people who will be riding these playboy models. I posted the link and some of the comments are downright misogynistic, no surprise. Of course, a lot of people are outraged and they should be. Another way for a corporate entity to make money off of women's bodies. I don't care what other people say, its degrading to women. Period.

If you've spent any time within the feminist movement, you know that misogyny and professional sports go together - almost like traffic and weather - I am sure you all rememer the Jets game last year in which women attendees were encouraged to "Show Us Your Tits."

Although I've heard of such before - I never really experienced it first hand up until last night when, with some free time, I decided to go to a local bar to catch the Cowboys-Eagles game on Monday Night Football.

I am not so sure the people who engage in misogyny and homophobic tendencies even realize they are engaging in such.

I've been watching the Olympics religiously for the past week and a half. I've been reading various posts on Feministing about women and the Olympics. But the subject I haven't seen is the women who are not on center stage, the women who seem to act as living props (Chinese women, I think it's important to note). These are the women who carried the country signs in the opening ceremony. The women (though, to be fair, there were also men) who acted as cheerleaders, stomping and clapping and smiling for the entire opening ceremony while acting as a human fence. The women who carried the signs around on the gymnastics floor. The women who carried the medals and flowers for the medal ceremonies, handing them to a man to give to the athletes. I'm sure there are plenty of other women in such positions who I haven't even noticed but who still deserve to have their position as scenery questioned.

I was a heavy kid. I hated running, but I loved soccer. To this day, though the sport has one of the smallest television audiences in American sports, youth enrollment, especially among young girls, is at its highest. We can give credit for that to two things. One is the inherent accessibility of the game. Soccer is a sport that nurtures all body types. The heavier girls muscled people off the ball, the smaller ones worked to speed past them, and everybody had to run. In a world where girls are told that they are too thin or too fat, too tall or too short, the only thing that matters on the soccer field is who runs and who gets the ball.

The second cause for the general excitement about the sport is the success of the US Womens Soccer team. What's ironic and very exciting is that the international superpowers in women's soccer often come from countries where cultural attitudes still nurture sexism  and laws condone it (Brazil, China, maybe even the United States). In the 1999 Women's World Cup Final, the United States and China fought hard for 2 hours and ended the game with penalty kicks. When Brandi Chastain, scored on the fifth kick, she ripped off her shirt to reveal her black sports bra and dropped to her knees. In that moment, millions of little girls cheered and took the field. The American women had acheived what the men had not. They had won a World Cup and would go on to medal at every subsequent Olympics.

Now we know it was not a fluke. Those young girls have played in their own Olympics. A very young American team, containing none of the members of the 1999 World Cup team has just defeated Brazil to win a Gold medal in Beijing. 

I no longer play soccer, but every time the United States wins a soccer game I remember the fourteen odd years I spent playing soccer and the strength, both physical and mental, that it brought me. It taught me that I could run with the boys and even outrun them. So I would like to say a public thank you to the American women who inspired my generation to run hard, no matter what the context.