Jezebel 
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New York, 3:57 PM
Mon Nov 9
40 posts in the last 24 hours
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Well, maybe not in this specific case.
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But, this makes me proud to be a Jew.
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Most of CCD is blocked from memory, to be honest.
09/01/09
Surprisingly, I didn't get the "God is a man" bullshit until my (all-girls) Catholic school, when a dropped-out seminarian teaching senior Religion blustered on about how offensive the "God doesn't have a gender" stuff was to him. Between that and his misinterpretations on the Church position on the death penalty, I snapped one day and brought him in thirty pages of excerpts from canon and papal encyclicals. Thereafter, we just watched movies every day in religion class.
Larger point: maybe since most of human history has been determined by who has the bigger gun/stick/rock/fist, and people thought of gods as physical/active powers, men decided god = masculine force?
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The notion of sin is silly anyway. Ethics must come from within, not an outside source.
07/29/09
This isn't nearly as easy as you're implying. ESPN has been trying to train more men to watch soccer for years, and with very little success, and training, for that matter, isn't the word. They'll need to be around for a lot longer than a decade to be part of the larger culture, but the truth is that they'll need to be salient while they wait, and I don't know who's going to make such a long term investment.
07/29/09
Also, the whole family went to see my sister play soccer in large part because we were really, really hoping she'd stick with it.
My neighbor boys all played soccer for so long it was a community--parents could trade off attending games and out-of-town events, knowing the other chaperons were people they trusted and that they wouldn't miss anything life changing.
Anecdotal explanation.
07/29/09
(I feel like there's an inappropriate women sweeping joke in there somewhere, but I'll leave that to the deadspin boys)
Seriously though, I love watching women's curling more than the men's. Maybe because I know the players better? Which may be the root of why men's professional sports are watched more often - player recognition?
07/29/09
Humans love narratives, and we love feeling connected to the story. Make women's sports just as much a narrative as men's are--give them the build-up, and the close examination of each player, and the montage about their background.
07/29/09
As a Canadian, even I think it's weird that you know the name of a single curler, male or female.
07/29/09
Sports are kind of like a soap opera, in that half the fun is in the drama: picking a favorite team, picking favorite players, finding somebody to root for, following along with the highs and lows of a close game or an entire season. Without regular television coverage, it's really tough to get into it. And the irony in women's sports is that they get more coverage on the college end than the professional end (at least in their local markets). The NBA wasn't drawing huge crowds in its early years, either--it took the television era to do that. Once people could watch games on TV and get regular coverage on their daily news, they got drawn in. A lot of times, people will get into one sport, follow it on Sportscenter, and then get drawn into another sport that's also being covered on Sportscenter, so they decide to check out a game on their TV, which converts them into a fan. Until women's sports are widely covered on programs like that, and widely available to watch, they don't really stand a chance of being as popular as the men's sports. (And obviously, until they're as popular as the men's sports, it's unlikely they'll get covered on those programs, so . . .)
But the other half of it is that most people don't get into watching sports on their own--and this is doubly true of girls and women, whom it's not expected of. They get into it because of a dad or a brother, or later, male friends or a boyfriend. (I'm not saying that they never get it from a mom or a sister or female friends--just that it's comparatively rare.) And because those men are often prejudiced against the idea of women's sports (either legitimately prejudiced, in that they prefer a different style of play, or illegitimately prejudiced, in that "they just don't like watching women's sports"), often the girls/women go along with it, at least for a while. But even women who do want to watch women's sports have a hard time finding somebody to go with them.
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07/29/09
I hate to admit it, but I can believe this kind of thinking kind of fuels the issue with people not supporting women's sports. And I can attest to people wondering "what's wrong" - I play rugby - despite my team being 50/50 straight/gay-other. We virtually have no fans and it's hard as hell to get people to come to the games - even my own FRIENDS. But the men's games? Fans galore. And we were undefeated this spring season.
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Let me recommend a grad-school thesis documentary I came across: Paradox on the Pitch. It tells a lot about women's rugby from a rookie's viewpoint. There are 3 parts to it.
07/29/09
I think that your acquaintance's comment is interesting for two reasons though:
1) I know a lot of folks (men and women) who play in social leagues after college. I mean, it's kickball, and it's partly an excuse to mingle and drink (not unlike casual collegiate rugby clubs!) but no one seems to give women the side eye for participating. I have friends who have dealt or seen some sexism in their teams or other teams but no one is thinking that there is something flawed with these women.
2) On the other hand, I have known some players who are interested in post-college women's rugby teams who have gotten a lot more flack about it from the people in their lives then the players who want to join a men's team. WTF?
Finally, congrats on being undefeated! (My college team, despite my and a few other teammates best efforts, weren't very successful in our local area.) Which part of the country do you play in?
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I play on a competitive team in the south (which makes rugby that much more obscure). Not exactly kickball but we like to think we're pretty hardcore and have had a reputation for being that.
What I love about our team is we've got a little bit of every kind of person. One of our players joined after having three kids, some (like myself) had never played an organized sport ever in life, we've got some with 20+ years of experience, we've got girls who also bring in experience from soccer, footy, Aussie rules rugby, and Gaelic football.
It's my goal to get a sideline full of fans for the fall season.
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Wouldn't it then logically follow that since the girls' group isn't "diluted" with lower income peers, a higher proportion of families would choose to attend the girls' games simply because they could afford to compared with the boys who would reflect various high and low income levels, so a smaller proportion of parents would attend due to the smaller proportion of middle and upper class athletes?
07/29/09