I’ve been sort of watching the Olympics, more Women’s Football (Soccer) and the running events than most of the others.
I’m thrilled by the performance of women athletes. We have come a long way, baby, in the years since Title IX leveled the playing field.
We are still having to fight racism, as witness by the racist right wing Republi-Nazi attacks on President Obama and his family.
The gender fascism on the part of the über Reich wing Christo-Fascists is still with us.
They still live in a world of manly macho men and ultra dainty submissive girls who grow up to provide quiver fulls of white Christian baby warriors.
All the bullshit about who is a real woman or how some women Olympians aren’t feminine enough. Enough for what?
The sexist pigs made all sorts of disparaging dickish comments about British Olympic weightlifter Zoe Smith. See (Olympic Weightlifter Responds To Sexist Tweets: ‘We Don’t Lift Weights…For The Likes Of Men Like That’)
Zoe Smith responded on her own blog with: Thanks (but no thanks…)
“The obvious choice of slander when talking about female weightlifting is “how unfeminine, girls shouldn’t be strong or have muscles, this is wrong”. And maybe they’re right… in the Victorian era. To think people still think like this is laughable, we’re in 2012! This may sound like a sweeping generalisation, but most of the people that do think like this seem to be chauvinistic, pigheaded blokes who feel emasculated by the fact that we, three small, fairly feminine girls, are stronger than them. Simple as that. I confronted one guy that said “we’re probably all lesbians and look like blokes”, purely to explain the fact that his opinion is invalid cause he’s a moron. And wrong. He came up with the original comeback that I should get back in the kitchen. I laughed.
As Hannah pointed out earlier, we don’t lift weights in order to look hot, especially for the likes of men like that. What makes them think that we even WANT them to find us attractive? If you do, thanks very much, we’re flattered. But if you don’t, why do you really need to voice this opinion in the first place, and what makes you think we actually give a toss that you, personally, do not find us attractive? What do you want us to do? Shall we stop weightlifting, amend our diet in order to completely get rid of our ‘manly’ muscles, and become housewives in the sheer hope that one day you will look more favourably upon us and we might actually have a shot with you?! Cause you are clearly the kindest, most attractive type of man to grace the earth with your presence.
Oh but wait, you aren’t. This may be shocking to you, but we actually would rather be attractive to people who aren’t closed-minded and ignorant. Crazy, eh?! We, as any women with an ounce of self-confidence would, prefer our men to be confident enough in themselves to not feel emasculated by the fact that we aren’t weak and feeble.
And here’s some food for thought – maybe you should broaden your criteria for what you consider ‘attractive’ anyway, because these perfect, feminine women you speak of probably have no interest in you either.”
Then Think Progress had an article: NBC’s Bizarre Attempt to Turn Female Olympians Into Eye Candy
Forget the tape delay. Forget the weird cutting of certain events. Forget the obsessive focus on American athletes at the expense of covering the whole games. Forget the substanceless pool- and track-side interviews. From a sheer editorial judgement perspective, the biggest question about NBC’s coverage of the 2012 London Olympics has got to be how this video, “Bodies in Motion,” (NBC has, perhaps wisely, declined to make it embeddable), which features slow-motion shots of female athletes’ bodies set to music so cheesily porn-like it’s hard to believe that this isn’t a video someone made to parody the focus on female Olympians’ bodies.
The cluelessness of it even extends to the written description for the video: “Check out these bodies in motion during the Olympic Games,” as if the women it’s portraying, none of whom are identified by name, or country, which might have been a petty distraction from ogling, are inanimate objects rather than people. This utterly contentless video, which communicates nothing about the events these women are participating in or what it takes to perform them, might meet the editorial standards at Maxim, though the video quality isn’t even particularly impressive. There is no way it should pass the editorial standards for a news organization.
But sexist dickwaddery isn’t the only coin of the realm for the misogynists of the insane world of Conservatism, oh no they also love to deal in naked as well as coded racism.
First the right wing trolls attacked Serena Williams, calling her a disgrace to the US because of her impromptu victory celebration after defeating Maria Sharapova for the gold medal. Serena Williams is one of the most awesome women tennis players ever, definitely has to be one of the top ten women tennis players of all time and these right wing racist assholes describe her little victory celebration as the “Crip Walk” reducing her to the level of a Los Angeles black gang member.
Even more shamefully it is as though no one dares call this naked racism for what it is.
Then there is sweet little Gabby Douglas. She’s only a child and yet she is also an extremely talented athlete, an African American in a sport where one sees very few African Americans and it seems like some people have nothing better to do than criticize her hair.
“Nappy hair” has a nasty history as a racist slur, one that many African American women have internalized to the point of using as an insult against each other.
So we were treated to people making nasty comments, bullying almost about Gabby’s hair instead of what an incredible performance this sweet young athlete was giving the world. See (Gabby Douglas Hair Comments Confuse The Olympic Gymnast)
Then we have Faux News, propaganda arm of the racist right wing loony Republican Party weighing in: Fox Complains Gabby Douglas And Other American Olympians Not Showing Enough Patriotism
The duty of calling out the racists and misogynists should be one accepted by all progressive people of every race. Progressive people should also call out the misogynists on their sexism
The duty should never fall just on the shoulders of the oppressed. People of good will should unite and raise their voices saying, “This is wrong and we do not want this sort of bigotry in our world.”
From The Root see: Gabby Douglas: Impact Far Beyond Sports
