i've listened to 'so it goes...' like 1000000 times these past few days bc of this edit. she's just so gorgeous and i NEED TO WATCH HER PLAY AGAIN PLEAAASSEE
women's sports is one of the loudest and most successful anti-patriarchy campaigns in human history. what women's sports did and does is prove, over and over again, the excellence, the raw power and strength of the human woman. it completely disrupts ideas on gender.
you have big, powerful women in rugby. fast, endurable women runners. impeccably strong gymnasts. women with strong, large bodies that take up space. that are HEALTHY. they are not RESTRICTED or ladylike. they are free of the stillness/deadness that femininity demands. no corsets. no (aesthetic) thinness. no hourglass bodies for gawking. women's sports screams to society "we are fully human, not objects, not small men. we are not domestic dolls. we are hunters and foragers. fighters."
why do you think men are so vitriolic about it? why don't they want women in football? why don't they want it televized? why do they keep harassing female basketball players? why do they insist on dressing women in sexualized uniforms? why do they now make it taboo to exculde men from women's sports?
i firmly believe it's because women's sports tears patriarchal gender ideology apart so effortlessly. it completely spits in the face of patriarchal political propaganda and shows how null it is. it forces all of us to view women as full, as the beginning of human excellence, as central to human history. not as decorative sexual objects, no matter how men want us to be.
that's why there's so much aggression and derision when it comes to women's sports from men. because women's sports destroys the idea of femininity and depicts women as non-derivative. women must be monsters and cannot afford to play into the childlikeness that femininity demands. the arena of sports forces us to focus on women's physical performance rather than appearance. their strength rather than how attractive they are. their skill and strategy. their humanity. it is a form of entertainment where all female roles are agentive and active rather than passive.
women's sports events are also hotbeds for female and lgb solidarity like you have no idea!
y'all need to start watching women's sports. not only because it is exciting, but it deprograms the patriarchal bullshit out of you so fast. you realize how much is possible. how much we can all achieve right now.
"Lia Thomas is not banned from swimming. Lia Thomas is banned from a category Lia Thomas doesn't qualify for. I'm banned from swimming in the under 12's, because I'm not under 12. You know, we have heavyweight boxers that are banned from the bantamweight category. We have numerous categories in the Paralympics to create fair opportunity across society. That is the whole point of categories. Nobody is banned [from competing], you're just banned from a category you don't qualify for." - Sharron Davies
We are not advocating for female-only sports because we "believe women are inherently not as capable as men based on biological differences of the sexes". We are advocating for female-only sports because we understand that there are neutral, biological differences between male and female people and yet sports and everything else are tailored to men's biological differences and treat the male sex as the default measurement. We are advocating for female-only sports because we've often been historically expected to prove ourselves by competing against men within the systems they create.
We are not being "transphobic", "sexist", or "anti-feminist" for acknowledging there are neutral, biological differences between the sexes. You are being sexist for treating male as the default and expecting us to meet male standards.
she just won her fifth wold championship gold medal in a row in 50m butterfly and 15 minutes later set a world record in the semi-finals for 50m freestyle.
she now has 20 individual medals from long course world championships, which is only matched by michael phelps. if she takes the 50m freestyle gold tomorrow, she will beat him.
she is the only woman to ever swim 50m butterfly in less than 25 seconds, a feat she has accomplished 17 times. her world record, 24.43, is therefore more than half a second faster than any other woman has ever swam this distance. she currently holds four long course world records: 100m and 50m butterfly and freestyle. she managed her first world record (and second, the next day) when she was just 15 (100m butterfly).
Male powerlifter enters women's event by temporarily identifying as one in order to protest the current record being easily held by a transwoman; casually breaks the record by over 100lbs and walks off without a word as said transwoman watches. He has made no statement of any kind about it: he simply turned up, silently demonstrated the absurdity of self-ID in sports, and left the stage. King.
My first time playing Kamilla was at one of the biggest stages in my life when she played for Hamilton Heights and I played for St. Frances in high school and we battled. And now being able to be teammates is amazing.
ANGEL REESE and KAMILLA CARDOSO on joining forces on the Chicago Sky
Women remain significantly underrepresented within sport and exercise science research. This, leading experts warn, means women often do not get the treatment or aftercare they need following a head injury.