Bend It Like Crumwell
I’m in love with Minnie Crumwell. She’s an 11-year-old girl who, told she was going to be cut from her soccer team upon turning 12 — because the club becomes all boys after that — went apeshit.
And now the ban on girls is going to be lifted. Uh, at least a little. They haven’t decided exactly what they’re going to do about it, and one of the proposed solutions is “a one-year dispensation for girls” (gee, thanks, guys), but Minnie will be playing next year for sure.
Here she is:
It doesn’t matter if you are a boy or a girl, it’s your ability to play that matters. I was upset and angry that the FA [Football Association] didn’t think that girls are as good as boys. I enjoy playing because you have to be skilful and it makes you feel good. My friends think it’s normal that I play football. I train twice a week after school. I am the only girl on my team but the boys treat me the same as everybody else. A lot of my friends play for the team.
I was just discussing girls’ sports with Al the other day, and saying it finally dawned on me how ridiculous it is to keep most sports segregated. The issue wasn’t on my radar for a long time, because I’m not at all sporty, and I’m really self-absorbed. But once I thought about it for five minutes, it occurred to me that except for (American) football, where a massive upper body is practically a requirement, I can’t think of a single popular team sport in which men and women couldn’t (at least theoretically) play together at roughly the same skill levels. (And I’m sure there are women who could kick some pro football players’ asses; I just suspect they’re probably fewer and farther between.) We already know there are female basketball players who are better than most of their male peers, and I can’t see any reason why the same wouldn’t be true of baseball, soccer, and hockey*. So why the hell are women playing these sports in separate leagues or not at all?
I can think of a few reasons:
- People assume that women aren’t as good, so allowing them to play with men would dilute the experience of watching the best players in the world. To which I say: let’s fucking find out. If it’s true, then fine, go back to separate teams and nasty WNBA jokes. (Although I’d like to see the experiment last a couple generations, at least, since we all know women would have to play three times as well as men to make a team in the current climate, and then would undoubtedly spend a lot of time benched, so it would be a good long while before we had any accurate data.) But right now we don’t know, because men and women can’t compete against each other at the professional level. We’re just guessing.
- People are worried about the laydees getting hurt. To which I say: screw that. There is nothing inherently more troubling about a woman getting a sports injury than a man. And the only reason why the presence of women might make a sport less rough than it’s traditionally been is sexism. If male players can’t bring themselves to knock a woman over, that’s their problem; the women know what they signed up to play.
- Let’s take a look at Minnie Crumwell again, shall we? First, she was getting booted because she was turning 12. What do we suppose that suggests? And how about the only reason mentioned in the article for the FA’s reluctance to allow girls to play beyond that age: “concerns about the lack of changing facilities for teenage girls”? ‘Cause lord knows figuring out how to fix that problem is a stumper.
As far as I can tell, the problem is boobies. That’s all. Allowing teenaged girls or grown women to play sports with their male counterparts would mean the guys would have to quit looking at them as sex objects long enough to figure out which one of them has the ball. And either everyone depressingly assumes that boobies on the field would be an insurmountable distraction for the guys, or they assume that spectators wouldn’t want to watch women being fierce and strong and graceful but not traditionally sexy. Probably both. But it’s the only real reason I can see for separating male and female players — especially on the basis of their hitting puberty. And it’s bullshit.
And Minnie Crumwell had the courage at 11 years old to point out that it’s bullshit. Rock on, tiny feminist. I hope you keep playing forever.
*My instinct was to place hockey in the same category as football, until I thought about the fact that my Dad, who’s about 5′7″ and was rather wiry when he was young, was a pretty good hockey player. And there are plenty of women bigger than him, much to his dismay.
I stopped sports of any kind because of the gawking, but it was self imposed because I was embarassed about the boobies.
Boobies shouldn’t stop you from running around.
SWISH! Three pointer! I think that’s exactly it, Kate. I’m a hugehugehuge baseball fan and I think it’s absolutely criminal that no females over the age of maybe 12 are allowed to play. Instead, they get herded into softball — and of course there are some real athletes playing that game, don’t get me wrong. But shouldn’t girls and women who do want to play hardball get an opportunity to do so?
Last year, when the San Diego Padres and the Padres were playing the Mets, Mets announcer (and former first baseman) Keith Hernandez got his antlers all bent by the sight of a female member of the Padres’ training staff sitting in the dugout next to Padres catcher Mike Piazza. Hernandez went off on this rant of how women didn’t belong in the dugout, and when it was pointed out to him by another announcer that she was there in uniform just like any other trainer, he just would not STFU about it, until team officials got wind of it and made him apologize (under duress, I’m sure). And this is just a trainer we’re talking about. Boobies. Gets ‘em every time.
Minnie should indeed rock on!! There is a huge, long law, called Title 19, all about discrimination against females in sports. Many schools “don’t know about it”, as an excuse not to treat female sports teams equally. My daughter is 16, plays fast pitch softball in a small school. The only real discrimination we see is that the boys get the uniforms first and the boys get the better locker room. Several years ago there was a school in Oklahoma that was sued by the a girls team because of discrimination…and they won!
My daughter, of course, is considered unladylike by one family in our small town, because they don’t know how to treat a girl “that doesn’t act like a lady”!!!??? I’m sorry, when is she not acting like a lady? Oh, yeah…when the boys basketball AND baseball teams ask her to play for them instead of for the girl’s basketball and softball teams:)!! Everyone says girls fast pitch softball is not really a hard sport…stand in front of my daughter’s throw and watch it break what it hits!!! Last year a young man at her school was picking on a female friend of my daughter’s. My daughter picked up the softball laying by her on the field and threw it at him. He was standing completely across the field…she broke his hand. Well gentlemen should act like gentlemen!!!
I had to giggle at the hockey comment at the end. Hockey players are not bigger…they just wear a lot of pads.
“I am the only girl on my team but the boys treat me the same as everybody else..”
If she didn’t have the support of her team it would make her protest twice as hard. Good for those boys too.
“…the guys would have to quit looking at them as sex objects long enough to figure out which one of them has the ball. ” Love that. I’m totally going to keep that in my brain for my next argument with my brother-in-law. And “Rock on, tiny feminist” made me giggle out loud.
It’s the boobies, but let us not the forget the period. The onset of menses is just too much for many MANLY BOYS to deal with and, heaven forbid, they have to interact on the playing field with someone who bleeds from THERE.
There’s this weird idea that females are people until they start their periods – which is just bullshit.
I take karate in a school with only one other female student and getting the guys to hit you never mind in the area below your neck and above your stomach is nearly impossible. And the school is run by a woman! I use to feel bad that when they worked with me they couldn’t maximize their training time because they felt compelled to pull their punches. Now I say screw it and them. The problem is in their heads. They have to get over it.
i read Mariah Burt Nelson’s “The Stronger Women Get, the More Men Love Football: Sexism and the American Culture of Sport (http://www.mariahburtonnelson.com/Books/Sale/StrongerWomen2005.html) a few years ago and was blown away. Until then I too, as a non-sporty person, hadn’t really thought about it. I highly recommend this book…the analysis is phenomenal!
“That’s all. Allowing teenaged girls or grown women to play sports with their male counterparts would mean the guys would have to quit looking at them as sex objects long enough to figure out which one of them has the ball.”
I hope they do and then I hope they lose because of it. Then MAYBE they’ll — and their dads’ll — learn something.
OK, that might not have made sense. What I meant was, if they DON’T stop looking at girls as sex objects long enough to figure out who has the ball, I hope they lose as a result and learn something from it.
Syntax. Syntax.
Man, I wish I had been as decisive and confident as Minnie when I was eleven. Go her! I was shy as hell and couldn’t defend myself (verbally or physically) at all.
Vintagefan: Absolutely agreed! This is the next generation of young men — and look at them acting like grownups! Huzzah.
Valerie:
Last year a young man at her school was picking on a female friend of my daughter’s. My daughter picked up the softball laying by her on the field and threw it at him. He was standing completely across the field…she broke his hand. Well gentlemen should act like gentlemen!!!
What an awesome anecdote. Bravo to your daughter.
Ok, I’m de-lurking. I love this blog, and this particular topic is one I have more experience with.
Disclaimer: This comment got really long. I’m sorry–perhaps I should edit more, but your post made me think about and articulate some issues I’ve been having as a female athlete (or former athlete).
I have considerable experience in playing one co-ed sport, water polo.
As a tall, gangly kid (now a tall, filled-out woo-man) I played on
the boy’s team for two years in high school, until we got a girl’s
team. As the years that I played with the boys were my freshman and
sophmore years, the boys had not yet hit puberty in any meaningful
way, and there would have been no practical reason to separate us out.
The coach was not as much of an asshole as he could have been, and so
my friend and I got -some- playing time. Not a lot, maybe not as much
as we deserved, but some.
That experiece was both horrible and extremely empowering. It was
when I first realized that bodies can typically do a lot more than
they want to if you motivate them with fear. I was constantly
terrified of revealing myself as not as good as the boys, and I think
that the level of play I eventually reached was made possible by the
fear motivation from the early years of learning to play. My friend
and I were swimmers, and thus were faster than most of the JV team and
a good percentage of the varsity team.
Mostly the other players respected us, and treated us as equals. One fucknut on the team was a sexist jerk, who told me he didn’t think women should play sports ever, at all, period. However, he was the exception.
So, all in all, that two years was a good experience. Not a comfortable experience, not a relaxing experience, but a sort of Marine-Corps body-epiphany experience. Nevertheless, we were both very glad that the school created a girl’s team, because the next year the coach would have had to decide whether he would move us up to the varsity team or keep us with the jv squad.
I went on to be a very good player in college, and went to some
National Team practices before I decided that I’d constantly be
scrabbling to keep my place on the team, and that I’d utimately rather
go to grad school and work the thought-meats rather than the
body-meats.
I have played with co-ed teams often over the years since I’ve
graduated college, and while I definitely hang with them, I don’t
really like to do it. I’d still rather play co-ed than not play, but
playing with really good, experienced women players would be at the
top of my wish-list. I’m playing in a co-ed winter league right now,
and I’m actually nursing a fat lip at the moment from our last game. There’s a couple of things about playing with guys
that I don’t really like, as follows:
1) It brings up all my shyness and feelings of not fitting in and fear
from when I played on the boy’s high school team. In some ways, I
become that kid again, and it’s not comfortable. My college team was
fantastic–I love those women, and a lot of my strength and confidence
comes from having fucking awesome women around me all the time,
supporting each other. Regressing mentally does not feel good.
2) I worry about getting hurt. Not the fat lip, black eye variety of
injuries, although now that I’m teaching, I do worry that my students
will think I’m abused, or got in a bar fight, but the career-ending
type of injuries. I’ve dislocated my shoulder blocking a guy’s shot
before, and dislocated it when somebody grabbed me. I’ve dislocated
it playing with women as well, but the injuries from the guys were
worse, and now that I’m not in terrific shape anymore, I worry that
the next time will be the last. I’d agree with you that there’s no
difference between a laydee sports injury and a male sports injury,
but jeez, it’s my body, and I do worry about this particular body more
specifically than all the other laydee bodies out there!
3) Dudes are (by and large) stronger and faster than women. Natalie
Golda (google her if you’re curious) kicks ass and takes names, and I bet it does not matter whether it’s men or women, but the vast majority of female players I know, especially players who are not actively training for the next
Olympics, get pushed around, outmuscled, and outswum at the co-ed
games I’ve been to. Plus, the game is not as fun the way men play it.
It’s much more about who’s stronger or can throw the ball harder,
whereas the women’s game tends to be more tactical and *gasp*
cooperative. It’s a style of play I much prefer to the
cherry-picking, counter and stuff the ball down the goalie’s throat
guy’s game.
Corrollary to 3: I’m a 2-meter defender, which basically means I
mostly play defense on the big, strong player in the middle of the
pool. I’m well-suited to that with most women. Unfortunately, a big,
strong water polo guy is liable to be 6′8″ and 270 pounds, like the
guy who split my lip this week. At 5′11″ and probably around 170
(been a while since I last checked), I can’t hang with guys that size,
which means that if I play co-ed, I can’t do what I really love about
the game.
Second corrollary to 3 and the heart of what I’m trying to say about
co-ed sports: I was a good player. Many ex-Olympian women play at the
same club, and they are also good players. We have trouble hanging
with the guy’s game, because of strength and speed issues. Often, we
are technically better players, we understand the game better and have
better tactics. This does not particularly make us of equal
contributory value on the team. If all water polo were to become
co-ed, we would go from being good, valued players to being potential
liabilities. The Courtney Parises and Natalie Goldas can hang with
the men’s teams. But there’s not that many women of their size,
shape, and ability around. If sports teams are all integrated because
a few female players are equal and more than equal to their male
teammates and opponents, many of the smaller and weaker players will
no longer be able to play. All in all, it would be a disservice to
women athletes, at least water polo athletes, and would probably
result in far fewer numbers of women total playing the sport.
4) some guys can be jerks, including ones who are perfectly pleasant
outside the pool. I’d prefer not to have my face rubbed in how sexist
some people who I basically like can be.
Ok, that got quite a bit longer than I intended. Sorry for the
book-length comment.
Thanks for writing Shapely Prose–I love the community, the topics, and the fierceness around here.
Best,
Kris