Monday, May 14, 2012

What If, Like, A Key Moment In The Game, Her Shirt Pops Open And Her Bosoms Come Flyin' Out?

A high school baseball team in Phoenix, Our Lady Of Sorrows, has chosen to forfeit its championship baseball game because the opposing team has a female player.

Apparently the school, which is run by the conservative Catholic group Society of Saint Pius X, has a policy prohibiting co-ed sports. A written statement from the school said "the school teaches boys respect by not placing girls in athletic competition, where 'proper boundaries can only be respected with difficulty.'"

Or, as I like to call it, the school teaches boys that it's okay to create all-male spaces where boys don't have to compete with girls as equals, because girls are too dainty, inferior, and Other to be treated as equals.

Just as an anecdote here, I've played co-ed sports my entire life, including a close-contact combat sport. It's really not. that. difficult. for people to maintain "proper boundaries" so long as open communication, autonomy, and respect are truly valued. Someone tells you they don't like something you're doing to them? You don't do it. There.

Given the Catholic Church's problematic history living out those values, I can see why some leaders in some Catholic sects might have trouble believing it's possible for "proper boundaries" to be respected when people relate to one another not as equal human beings, but as "equal hierarchical" beings that are only capable of relating to one another in a sexually "complementary" manner.

Anyway, I liked the quote by Nancy Hogshead-Makar, from the Women's Sports Foundation:
"In real life, these boys are going to be competing against the girls for jobs, for positions in graduate programs or in trade schools. In every other area of their life, they are going to be competing side by side."
Yep.

Stick that inability to compete with women in your "boy crisis."




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