Oh, just shut up

I wasn’t going to write about this woman, because I didn’t want to give people who say idiotic things in print, any more attention that they already get. (Also, I am finding it hard to get my rage on just now.) Then, I remembered two things.

1. 4 people are reading this
2. It really annoyed me.

So, dear Susie O’Brien. Shut up. Here’s the thing. You don’t know anything about Tiger Woods’ marriage. Are you a member of it? No? Then seriously, shut the hell up.

It would be bad enough that you feel free to comment on the conventionality or otherwise of their marriage, but to blame Elin? To say:

…And if you do know, and remain married to the man, you are just as dumb all the same. Either way, you and your husband are clearly living such separate lives that you really don’t have a marriage worth saving anyway. Or it could be that you have the type of marriage where you don’t look too hard for evidence of spousal failure because perhaps you don’t want to see an end to spousal financing. If that’s the case, that’s what I’d call a gold-digger.

So not only is her marriage not worth saving, or even fighting for, she’s a stupid gold-digger? (Which is interesting, because I’d have thought landing a major star like Tiger, would have taken a fair amount of smarts, if you were only doing it to get at his money.)

You say:

Call me romantic, but to me a marriage is about sharing love and sharing lives. And this means knowing enough about the other person to be aware roughly how they spend their time – day and night.

Well, call me naive, but I also think marriage has something to do with trust. And being married to a professional sportsman must stretch that to its limit, but nonetheless trusting your husband not to cheat on you is not the mark of a stupid woman.

So then, what right have we got to pass judgment on her marriage? Well, whether you like it or not, you become public property when you are married to a famous man such as Woods.

You know, that is actually not true. Tiger has courted the media, sure, and that might give you the right to pass judgement on him. But really only if you yourself are as pure as the driven snow. It doesn’t mean you get to call her stupid, or a gold digger, or assume anything about her and her marriage. We often seem to think that public figures are public property. God knows I’ve done it. But this isn’t a funny story, or someone getting their comeuppance. It’s a sordid little tale, and it’s not entertainment.

And there’s also this:

I am pretty sure my opinion of the situation will have other feminists fuming, but here I go anyway.

1. Paying lip service to the concept of feminism doesn’t excuse the misogyny of what you are saying.
2. Don’t assume you know what ‘the feminists’ are thinking. (We’re a diverse group, for a start, but also, you don’t appear to be one yourself.)

How about this? You don’t know anything about them. You don’t know them as people, and yes, the media has been saturated with images of them for more than a week now. But that doesn’t give you any particular insight into their relationship. So how about you stay out of it? Oh, and shut the hell up.

Word

It’s not the job of feminism to figure out “how men and women are different” — or to assert that they are not. Feminism should be about making sure men and women have the same opportunities, and combating the institutional sexism that sometimes keeps women from taking advantage of these opportunities. It may be interesting to debate whether women are hardwired to pick up socks (I’m skeptical), but the real task of feminism is to make sure we’re not forced to pick them up. The confusion comes because a lot of the rhetoric of sex difference is aimed at convincing us we’re meant for sock duty. But the enemy of feminism is that rhetoric — not sex difference itself. That’s for science to figure out.

Featuring one of my favourite writers.

Wondering

OH WAIT! I’m not wondering anymore.

I have learned all my lessons.  As well as not leaving the house looking like a slut, I shouldn’t act like one, or I’ll never get to get married and have loads of babies.

I was all ready to work myself up into a rant about this, but I can’t really be bothered.  (Emma’s thread – and Hadyn’s too – have sucked all the feminist anger out of me.) So instead, a Wanda Harlandesque bullet point list.

“Women, he says, spend too many years being “hurt” and “used” by men and should try to settle into marriage earlier.”

• Yes.  Because women NEVER make any decisions of their own.  They are always being used by men, and are, in fact, never active participants in relationships.

“He recommends couples should rather get married earlier – between 20 and 28 – so they confront hurdles together.”

• Because at twenty, people are soooo mature, and ready to make decisions that will affect the rest of their lives.  They are like that at 28 too (just in time for a second marriage!).

“the present trend of couples working on their careers and buying a house before finally getting hitched may not be the best plan.”

• Yep.  Because all anyone cares about is getting married and having babies. That’s it.  Not careers, financial security, travelling, having a life, nothing.  Just getting hitched and then knocked up.

“He advises women not to let themselves be played; not do too much for blokes; make them “work to get them”; and not to take them to the bedroom too quickly – “if you’re easy you will pay a big price”.”

• Ah, this is a doozy.  Don’t be a slut or ‘you’ll pay a big price’.  God forbid women have desires or act on them, or NO ONE WILL WANT YOU.  Be a good girl, sit down and shut up and someone, somewhere will love you enough to want to marry you.  Meanwhile, men should feel free to go on “playing” women.  Presumably men can sleep around?  That’s still ok, right?

Once Again, OH FFS.

Dear the Southland Times,

Oh Hai.  Is it 1930 in Southland?  Cos that is about the only excuse I can find for this headline.

Meet Charlotte Harrison, NZ’s latest hockey hottie

Nice alliteration, I’ll give you that.  It’s just a shame you had to be horribly sexist to use it.  Oh, but it doesn’t end there, does it?

“Charlotte Harrison has all the ingredients to be New Zealand hockey’s next Mandy Smith.

She’s a quick, agile, blonde bombshell with a thunderous strike that sends shivers up the spine of opposition goalies.”

What does the colour of her hair have to do with anything? She’s an athlete, she’s fucking talented by the looks of it, she’s generally pretty awesome.  Could we stick to reporting that please? You’re profiling her, and you have that she made the national side at 16 and the fact that she has, at 19, 62 international caps, after the blond bombshell line?  Not to mention the fact she’s been playing in Belgium for the past year?

And then there’s the photo.  I know she’s in the middle of a trap, but your photographer didn’t have one photo of her without her legs spread and her skirt riding up?

How about this?  Here’s this young woman in our national hockey side. She’s a supremely talented athlete. She’s awesome.  People who care about sport will still read that article.  Anyone who is reading it because of the headline is just a perve.

Thanks,

Wegan

(Thanks to @wellyjulz for pointing out the article)

Yeah.

There is a useful discussion over on In a Strange Land about this post on Shakesville. While I agree with what some of the commenters have said, about how Melissa has kind of painted herself into a corner, to steal Giovanni’s words:

But what she’s done I think is package misogyny as a set of behaviours that is hardly exclusively practiced by men – so where’s the justification to trust other women, other people in general? And secondly, there’s nothing that is emancipatory about it, no useful rage, no stepping out of the place of business, the writer’s niche that McEwan has created for herself.

It’s true, and he’s right. However, there’s this:

There are the jokes about women, about wives, about mothers, about raising daughters, about female bosses. They are told in my presence by men who are meant to care about me, just to get a rise out of me, as though I am meant to find funny a reminder of my second-class status. I am meant to ignore that this is a bullying tactic, that the men telling these jokes derive their amusement specifically from knowing they upset me, piss me off, hurt me. They tell them and I can laugh, and they can thus feel superior, or I can not laugh, and they can thus feel superior. Heads they win, tails I lose. I am used as a prop in an ongoing game of patriarchal posturing, and then I am meant to believe it is true when some of the men who enjoy this sport, in which I am their pawn, tell me, “I love you.” I love you, my daughter. I love you, my niece. I love you, my friend. I am meant to trust these words.

This, is my life.  And the people in it, not all of them obviously, aren’t exactly only doing it about women, they’re making the jokes about brown people, and poor people, and fat people, and people who don’t eat meat, or whatever.  These friends of mine, these relatives of mine, these lovers of mine, they tell these jokes to get a reaction from me, not realising that they are telling a joke about me.  There are days when I can be bothered, when I’ll fix them with the death stare (over the glasses, under the fringe, and right between the eyes) and explain to them exactly why they are everything that is wrong with the world.  And there are days when I want to carry around a sign saying “My silence is not tacit approval of what you are saying.  Also, shut up.” that I can just sigh and point to.  Actually, I think that was Julie’s idea.

All of which is by way of saying I see both sides of the article. But it is very nice to see a discussion like this without name calling and finger pointing.

Feeling stabby.

I’ve written about advertising, and how it seems to be becoming increasingly misogynist recently, but there are two more I’d like to add to the list of things that make me scream at the TV.

I’m not going to spend half my day hunting down videos – if you’ve seen them, you’ll know what I am talking about, if you haven’t I am not going to give them any more publicity that I have to.

The first is a Burger King ad, in which a man encourages people to buy a big burger for “your man” but look after yourself, and buy a “lighter option” or some such bullshit.  The implication being your man deserves the best of everything, and if you ‘let yourself go’, he won’t love you any more.  Cos no one likes fat chicks (or gay men). Oh, and also you should wait on him hand and foot. Cos he won’t love you then, either.

The other is an ad for Marmite.  (Eeeew, Marmite.) Basically a girl is irritatingly discussing a soap opera in a ridiculous voice until her boyfriend feeds her marmite on toast.  Then she’s all, ‘proper’ kiwi accent, why aren’t we watching the rugby?  With the tagline, ‘what makes kiwis, kiwis,’ or something equally stupid. Subtext?  Girls are annoying, and if you don’t like rugby, you’re not a real New Zealander.   Shit, sorry to those guys I talk about rugby with all the time. I’d no idea I’m so irritating. But at least I’m patriotic.

Come on ad companies?  Why the hate for teh wimmin?

#@$#ing ##$#$er @#$#$$@ing

When I was a kid, I played basketball against the boys.  Big, mean boys who were mean.  Who never passed me the ball, and who would elbow me in the breast every chance they got, cos that was funny.

I also spent my primary and intermediate years playing Bullrush.  (also known as Scrag, and I believe, ‘mush’) Which, really was rugby without the rules.  And I never got particularly injured (My brother did, and still has the egg sized lump of scar tissue on his forehead to prove it). 

Now once a week, I front up to play indoor netball against men.  Men who are bigger, faster and stronger than me.  When I was playing in Christchurch a few years ago, one of them hit me so hard I would have flown out of court had there not been a net.  I’ve had a broken finger, dislocations, a black eye and numerous bruises.  And you know what?  Those boys don’t scare me. Playing against them doesn’t scare me.  Them hurting me doesn’t scare me, because if it did, I would to bastardise a quote, be playing tiddlywinks.

They apparently scare Christchurch high school principals though.  I know indoor netball is not rugby, in that no one is being tackled and thrown to the ground. There’s not a particularly high risk of neck or spine injuries.  But have you seen an international netball match recently? Have you seen a WNBA game?  Do you want to tell Candace Parker (at right)  she can’t play?

Because that’s what they are doing to Chantelle Garbutt.  She wants to play in a inter-house rugby tournament but has been told she’s not allowed because it is too dangerous.

And you know, what?  The school is just covering its own ass, I get that.  There would be a national uproar if she plays, gets crunched in a tackle, and is permanently injured.  But that could happen to any player in any game ever.  If she is capable of playing, and good enough to, and her parents consent, she should have the choice.  That’s what it is about.  Not protecting the little women from themselves, as if they don’t know the risks, and are perfectly capable of judging them. Equality is about people having the same opportunities, even if they use them to make stupid decisions.

But what annoys me more is the commenters on that post:

“Let Chantelle play, and then let the boys do a Jerry Collins on her. And then ask her then if she thinks it’s still sexist.”

Charming.  Yes, because if a player deliberately goes out to hurt another players, that’s the girl’s fault for playing.

“Apart from the fact that girls/women playing rugby is just nonsense, mixed games at schools is irresponsible and potentially dangerous not just because of the obvious strength issues but it’s an opportunity for covert abuse by way of a grope in a ruck or maul etc.”

See above.  That’s the girl’s fault for ending up at the bottom of a ruck, right?  God forbid we expect boys to behave appropriately on the rugby field.

“Let the girls play, they get groped or munted and who’s in the gun? The principal of course for letting it happenn Not the parents or kids for insisting on it going ahead.”

Right, no, not the groper, or the munter. Or the kid who played the game knowing the risks. Who is probably also a munter.

But hey, at least some people support women’s rights to end up at the bottom of the ruck. Or maybe they are just looking forward to watching a New Zealand rugby team win?

Amazing Ladies

Indeed.

I always thought that there was nothing an antifeminist would want more than to have women only in women’s organizations, in their own little corner empathizing with each other and not touching a man’s world. If you’re going to change things, you have to be with the people who hold the levers.

Actually not much has changed.

From 1963:

Hypocrisy

I’ve been aware, for a while, that I probably appear to be a bit of a hypocrite.

After banging on over and over again about taking women’s sport seriously and not sexualising players like Maria Sharapova, I’ve gotten stuck in a bit of a thing.

Over at Public Address, Emma and I have been discussing Richard Kahui.  And let’s face it, he’s an attractive man.

Credit for this beautiful photo goes to: Photo by Ross Land/Getty Images

But I thought I should explain myself.

I know some people think it is OK to admire sportspeople based on their looks, because at least it is a healthy version of beauty, and I sympathise with that view.

Where my frustration lies is when their beauty (and in some cases, lack of) eclipses their talent as sportspeople.  I know that athletes, to some degree, bring this on themselves with their endorsements and fashion ranges.  But when half the headlines about Maria Sharapova are about the length of her skirt, and sports’ administrations teach women how to apply make up, it’s not about the sport anymore.

I like Kahui (and Captain Tackles Richie McCaw) because they are amazing at what they do. It helps that I like to look at them.  But first and foremost, they are rugby players.  Great rugby players.  Players whose games I like and who can always astound me with what they can do.  Reggie Miller used to be the same.  So did Phill Jones.  So is Julie Seymour, and Hadyn’s new crush, Casey Williams.  Shane Bond, Dan vettori.  That list is as long, and as exhaustive as the sports I like to watch.  And it’s not limited to people whi have really good arms.  (For example, Dwight Howard is on the list, and his arms freak me out.  His shoulders are as big as his head! Although, I suppose, Julie Syemour does have impressive guns.)

I often get in trouble watching sports, especially when I’m at the ground, because I will watch one person, off the ball, for ages, and completely miss what’s going on.  But I think that’s because, in large part, I like sport for the people involved.  I am constantly astounded by what these people can do.  By what they can force their bodies to do, and the talent, skill, and dedication it takes to be really great at a sport.

And that, my friends, is hotter then even Richard Kahui’s chiselled cheekbones.