23 June 2012
Title IX
Today was the 40th anniversary of Title IX. I feel kind of bad, because my mom would have really benefited (and enjoyed) growing up in post-Title IX sports world, but sports didn't really interest me. I feel like I squandered my opportunity! But even if I didn't play sports, I'm glad the opportunity was there. It's like the 2nd amendment.... I don't own a gun, but I'm glad I have the right to do so.
There's been lots of coverage for this annivsary.
I like this commercial:
[h/t Sunbursts & Raindrops]
Mechelle Voepel of ESPN has a nice article: "I understand that everything is not for everybody. It's never indifference toward women's sports that bothers me. It's the torrent of negativity that some direct toward them, the bile that comes from those implausibly worried about having to share a little turf. Sometimes I say to them, 'The relatively little attention that women's sports still gets -- compared to the understandable avalanche for men's sports -- really bothers you that much? If so, how do you endure anything that actually is difficult in your life?'"
The Seattle Times is doing a whole series of articles.
Rebecca Lobo wrote about the impact it made on her life: "In the fifth grade, I was a tomboy who dressed in jeans and sneakers so I could play sports with the boys at recess. I was the only girl to do so. One day my teacher told me she was 'very concerned' about me. She said I needed to 'act more like a girl' and 'dress more like a girl.' My mother flipped her lid. After hearing what my teacher had said, my mom immediately drove me to the school. I was terrified — for the teacher." (I fully believe that if that were me, my mom would have done the same thing!)
As a nice counterpoint, Rebecca Lobo's husband Steve Rushin (who is a sports writer), wrote an article entitled, "Rebecca Lobo schools writer Steve Rushin on women in sports": "The first words Rebecca Lobo ever spoke to me when we met in a Manhattan bar in 2001 were: 'Aren't you the guy who just mocked women's basketball in Sports Illustrated?' I blushed, broke out in a flop sweat and said, 'Yes.' A few weeks earlier, I had written that although Wilt Chamberlain claimed to have slept with 20,000 women in his lifetime, I had once slept with 7,138 women in a single night: We were all snoring in the stands at a WNBA game. It was an appalling line, and I was eager to change the subject, but Lobo wouldn't let it go. 'We get 15,000 fans at Madison Square Garden,' she said. 'How many women's games have you ever been to, anyway?' Hanging my head in shame, I admitted that I had never attended a women's basketball game before ridiculing it in a national magazine. So she invited me to one of her New York Liberty games, I accepted, and 23 months later we were married."
There's been lots of coverage for this annivsary.
I like this commercial:
[h/t Sunbursts & Raindrops]
Mechelle Voepel of ESPN has a nice article: "I understand that everything is not for everybody. It's never indifference toward women's sports that bothers me. It's the torrent of negativity that some direct toward them, the bile that comes from those implausibly worried about having to share a little turf. Sometimes I say to them, 'The relatively little attention that women's sports still gets -- compared to the understandable avalanche for men's sports -- really bothers you that much? If so, how do you endure anything that actually is difficult in your life?'"
The Seattle Times is doing a whole series of articles.
Rebecca Lobo wrote about the impact it made on her life: "In the fifth grade, I was a tomboy who dressed in jeans and sneakers so I could play sports with the boys at recess. I was the only girl to do so. One day my teacher told me she was 'very concerned' about me. She said I needed to 'act more like a girl' and 'dress more like a girl.' My mother flipped her lid. After hearing what my teacher had said, my mom immediately drove me to the school. I was terrified — for the teacher." (I fully believe that if that were me, my mom would have done the same thing!)
As a nice counterpoint, Rebecca Lobo's husband Steve Rushin (who is a sports writer), wrote an article entitled, "Rebecca Lobo schools writer Steve Rushin on women in sports": "The first words Rebecca Lobo ever spoke to me when we met in a Manhattan bar in 2001 were: 'Aren't you the guy who just mocked women's basketball in Sports Illustrated?' I blushed, broke out in a flop sweat and said, 'Yes.' A few weeks earlier, I had written that although Wilt Chamberlain claimed to have slept with 20,000 women in his lifetime, I had once slept with 7,138 women in a single night: We were all snoring in the stands at a WNBA game. It was an appalling line, and I was eager to change the subject, but Lobo wouldn't let it go. 'We get 15,000 fans at Madison Square Garden,' she said. 'How many women's games have you ever been to, anyway?' Hanging my head in shame, I admitted that I had never attended a women's basketball game before ridiculing it in a national magazine. So she invited me to one of her New York Liberty games, I accepted, and 23 months later we were married."
Labels: sports
# posted by mamurd @ 11:13 PM 
