You can't play football, you're a girl

Kacy Stuart practiced for two months as a kicker with the New Creation Center Crusaders until the board for the Georgia Football League, the association for the private school clubs in the state, heard about it. Then she was told she was not allowed to play football anymore. It seems no one had a problem with it, not the coaches, players or parents on the team Kacy was going to play for and not the teams she was going to play against. But then Hank St. Denis, the executive board president, heard about her playing and he stepped in, telling Kacy she was not allowed to play football. This is obviously a good ole boy thing, girls are not supposed to play football. They can be cheerleaders for football, but they should not be on the field. They might get hurt. This is such bullshit. The mother has said that she will fight it and I am sure the ACLU among many other lawyers would love this case, it seems to be so easy and obviously about the fact that she is a she and not a he. Hell, there does not even seem to be anything in the by-laws that would forbid her from playing, not that even if there were something in the by-laws it would be anymore right, but at least then they could say that they had rules against it. They don't, this is just some bloated, windbag asshat telling her that she is not allowed to play football because she is a girl. Hell, I am surprised that the school is not fighting this too, they apparently granted her a spot and she is apparently a really good kicker. Even if they just let her have the spot because they knew it would be a lawsuit waiting to happen if they didn't, it does not seem to be in your best interest if an outside individual can tell you what you can and cannot do on your own school team. I hope St. Denis gets his ass kicked and is personally sued by Kacy's mother and school and he has to leave the state of Georgia.

Nice guys finish last?!?

GG and I went out for lunch today to a nice Indian buffet restaurant. There were only a few people there, but at the table next to us was occupied by three people, two men and one women. I wasn't really paying attention to them and their conversation, but the one male was at times a bit louder and so I could hear bits and pieces of what he was saying. At one point, he said "Men want only attractive women. There is nothing you or I can do about that." GG leaned over to me and said, "the Fat Princess controversy is taking over." Later on, the one guy continued about his dating life, how he is a nice guy and yet he can't find a date. He also commented that he was 37 and still looking. I couldn't hear all of what he was saying, but based upon what I could hear and the body language of the women at the table he obviously was being a misogynistic asshole. Just FYI the other guy was seemed to be quiet the whole time and really didn't seem to want to get anywhere near the conversation. I think I even heard him try to steer the conversation in other ways, but to no avail the "nice guy" really wanted to talk about how he was a nice guy and that women just didn't seem to get this. Now I want to go back to the first statement I heard him say about men wanting attractive women, he is absolutely 100% correct about this. The issue is that what I find attractive is not necessarily what you find attractive and what you find attractive is not necessarily what I find attractive. All humans, male and female, are trying to find mates that they find attractive, I mean no one goes out thinking wow that person is really unattractive, I want to be in a relationship with them. We try to find what we find attractive in people and for those of us who are not asshats, it is more than just their physical appearance. So, yes, he is right, we do want to find partners who are attractive to us, but the issue is when someone tries to define what should be attractive to everyone.

The other issue I have with this guy and any man who has to argue that he is a "nice guy" is if you are a nice guy, why are you arguing about this? I know plenty of men who are nice, who are not asshats, who are sensitive and caring and you know what, not one of them has to argue with someone else about being a nice guy. Hell most of them do not brag about being a "nice guy". So if you have to proclaim your niceness to others to convince them of it, than you are not a nice guy.

Women: They can fix their cars, but they can't save the world

I first started to think about this post a few days ago when I was watching ESPN. They had an advertisement for Advance Auto Care (I am pointing them out by name, the reasons will become obvious later, hopefully) in which there is a person working on their car. You never see their head, all you see is their hands and torso. The hood of the car is open and they are doing whatever, I have no idea what they are doing and it really does not matter. So here is the kicker, this person is obviously a women, she has boobs. But she is wearing what I would call usual clothes, just jeans and a shirt,and not some shirt that shows her stomach or is totally impractical when doing manual labor, she is not supposed to be there as a sex symbol or as a way to really make working on the car sexy, hell I am not sure that you would really notice the gender. I have seen the ad several times and this last time, I was like hey, that person has boobs, it must be a she. The final tag line is something to the effect of Wrench Up. I cannot find this ad on youtube or anywhere on the Internet so I cannot show it to you, so hopefully I have done the ad justice in trying to describe it. Here was an commercial for an auto repair store that had a female in it that was not dressed provocatively, that was not used as a mere prop, hell there was not another person in the commercial let alone a male figure and there is no voice other than the announcer toward the end which names the place that they are advertising. This was great to see that women can and do work on cars and that we do not need to make a big point about it in the commercial, but that it can and is as normal as seeing a man working their car. Now maybe I am happy about something that is not that big of a deal, maybe I am trying to read too much into the non-gender stereotypical commercial, maybe I am even falling into their trap of seeing this women working on her car and I am supposed to think that is sexy. Well, I didn't really think about it in terms of sex, it felt more like an observation and it was about damn time that we see women working on their cars and doing manual labor that is supposed to be the domain of men. There is no such thing as men's work or women's work, it is all just work, things that need to be done.

Now on the other end of the spectrum, Peter Sagal, host of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me on NPR, has a commentary about the misogyny of the new movie Horton Hears a Who. I have not seen the movie, but according to him the movie changes the book significantly in not so good ways. The mayor of Whoville now has 96 daughters and 1 son and guess which one of his children has to save the world? Yep, you guessed it, the son. As Sagal asks and I would agree, why can't any of these 96 girls save the world? Why does the hero in movies have to be just that, a hero, why can we not have a heroine? As Sagal puts it, "And while we're at it, how come a girl doesn't get to blow up the Death Star! Or send ET home? Or defeat Captain Hook! Or Destroy the Ring of Power!" Yeah, why? And furthermore when there is a heroine and the only one I can think of is Lara Croft, why does she have to be so scantily clad, now I have nothing against seeing Angelina Jolie scantily clad, but really it is not necessary for the movie. She is a fucking adventurer and explorer, and she wears nothing, this makes no sense. The new Indiana Jones movie is coming out soon and yet Harrison Ford is always dressed in these films. You do not see him running around with no shirt on and in a thong, as much as I am sure there are members of the population that would enjoy that, we do not subject our male action heroes to such stupidity. As I think about this further, the only female action character that I can think of that is tough and is not totally undressed the whole time is, Tank Girl. How many people have seen this movie? (Heather, put your hand down, I know you have.) But it is such a great movie based upon a British underground feminist comic book that starts Lori Petty and Naomi Watts and yet no one has seen it. So we need more female action stars that can dress the part, that do not need to be scantily clothed just for us to watch them and we need more commercials that show that this whole dividing work along gender lines is stupid and not beneficial to either women or men.

Women are flowers?

This commercial bothers me. It should take absolutely no explaining why it bothers me, but I will indulge myself anyway. Here is a women at a pizza place getting a salad because she is a flower. SHE IS A MOTHERFUCKING FLOWER!!!! That is stupid and wrong. So then of course she breaks down and gets some pizza and some kind of dessert-y type thing. Oh yeah, but she still gets the salad and of course it is only two slices of pizza. The worst part is that after all of this, she is still a flower, but now the very deep voiced commentator says, this is a flower that he likes.

So what I am getting here is that A) women are flowers, B) these flowers only eat salad and "healthy" stuff, and C) but when they get pizza or other non-flower type foods, we as non-flowers (males) like this. Now personally I don't care what you eat and yes I do like when the friends I am around including women eat what they like which can include pizza or whatever non-healthy food they want. So, if you want to eat a salad well then good, but then you are still not a fucking flower. You are a goddamn human being who wants to eat a salad and if you want a salad why are we going to a pizza place? This chain doesn't even have the saving grace of good pizza, it is shitty pizza, so why the fuck would anyone go to a shitty pizza place to get a shitty salad and then be called a flower?

Damn commercials and their hidden and in this case blatant misogyny.