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I Am A Feminist Because I Believe In Equality

Celebrating Equality And Turning A Blind Eye To Inequality, What Is This?

By: shannonymous
Written on January 19th, 2013
“And yes, incremental change is taking place, but the fact that it’s a change in one location doesn’t make the lack of change in another location more acceptable.” -Kathleen Lahey

exactly.

http://sports.nationalpost.com/2012/07/29/london-2012-steps-toward-gender-equality-steps-backward-at-olympics/
By: shannonymous
Age: 18-21 , Female
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2 responses
  • Scarcollection
    Scarcollection

    Women in sports is a complicated issue, because it suffers from multiple problems, mainly:
    1. The sexualization of women even in sports (seen the Michelle Jenneke warm-up dance video? would NEVER happen in men's sports), also the short skirts of women's field hockey... my dad watched it solely for that reason. Oh and the moaning of female tennis players, even other pro's admit it's annoying and only gets done for publicity reasons!
    2. The looking down on women's sports because the money and attention is all at men's sports for their "greater performance" (nope... just a physiological birth adventage).
    3. The ironic opposite of number 1: robbing women of their womanhood when they display being strong, athletic or physically being very fit ("they look like a dude with a vagina", "that female swimmer doesn't have ****, yuck", "I want my women to look womanly, not that muscular like a sporter").

    I want to say something about it, but I find it difficult, because number 1 and number 3 are so contradicting to each other.
    Personally I think it's not fair that women's sports only get attention when skin gets showed or when curves jiggle (nothing against jiggling curves, I'm in favour, but just not on or in the track/field/ring), but on the other hand: I might hate the male privilege of being able to simply rob women of their womanhood when not in compliance with "the female genderrole" even more.
    It almost seems like we can't change this at all... how can women's sports get the attention it deserves, while keeping sexual lust out of it and still giving women good credit when they're strong, fit, achieving and well, women in all their feminine glory?

    Jan 20
    2 likes
    • shannonymous
      shannonymous

      thank you for this well-thought out reply! Like a cool drink of water. I think you are right about all of this stuff. I also think the questions most worth asking often don't have an obvious answer, and the best ones may never be answered, but the act of asking them and thinking about them, rather than going along with one's previous illusions about a world that is completely comprehensible and understandable and logical is what is most important. Life isn't fair or always easy to understand. Why inequality exists is an age old question VERY MUCH worth thinking about even when there is no simple answer, even when the reasons are many and from many different directions. I applaud you on thinking about it and on sharing your thoughts here :) thank you.

      Jan 20
      1 like