In brief a young man decided not to wrestle a young woman at a wrestling contest in Iowa due to his moral convictions. Now its been argued by many including Jonah Goldberg that political correctness is a form of fascism and reading the comments on the cnn religion blog its hard argue against this. The poor kid by living up to his convictions has encountered a modern day potifer’s wife situation, where this young man is encountering persecution. You can see the whole article and comments here
I’m not going to even try to address all the accusations that have been put against this young man, but I will say I highly doubt he is a bigot, chauvinist or a wimp. He’s a man of conviction, and had the roles been reversed then the big “deal” wouldn’t be a big deal.
Also I’m two ways about whether women should be allowed to wrestle and such, I’m all for Co-ed Sport e.g. football (soccer for you in America), volley ball etc. But if I had a daughter I really would struggle letting her do any major contact sport or wrestling. By struggle I mean “No daughter of mine while living under my roof and eating my food…” kind of struggle. However seeing little xiao wei roundhouse the crap out of a snotty brat in karate class would bring all sorts of joy to the evil in my heart. If I had a son I wouldn’t want him feeling its right to pin down, tackle or otherwise rough up a girl regardless of the context. I don’t want him to be a wilting flower but the kid has to understand where and how to express his aggression. But I respect people who feel like that’s ok, I’m just not one of them.
MY FAIR LADY
But this view has lead me to argue what I’ve always argued (big shout Wa) that equality hardly means sameness. Take for example the Heart and the Liver, We need both equally to live. One keeps the body alive by pumping blood, the other cleans up our bodies assists with metabolism etc. As human beings we do not have a choice to live one without the other. We would die if our livers became hearts. Similarly humanity is incapable of survival without men and women. That is to say men being men doing man things, and women being women doing woman things. Granted there is a history of inequality, and I’m not advocating a “separate but equal” jim crow approach to gender issues, but we really do discount the rights women should have when we try to push for sameness. My homegirl Kendra said it best: “Fair does not mean always equal” what we all are really hoping for is fairness. A fair chance for a man to achieve his full potential within society and the same for women, nobody wants the brain with the cure for cancer barefoot and preggers in the kitchen and nobody wants to watch the WNBA (don’t blame me blame the numbers). We have to be fair, and fair is agreeing that women and men aren’t the same and play different but critical roles in society in the same way the liver and the heart play an important role in the human body. Fairness might mean for men allowing women a few more rights (lol like the right to complain that chivalry is dead but getting mad when you try to open the door for her) because historically we’ve treated them unfairly. For women it may mean letting your pride down just a tad and allowing a man to be a man (y’all know what I mean!). Fair is respecting the young wrestler’s decision and exercising his right to forfeit without persecuting him for having a set of convictions. Surprisingly enough with all the assault and gender based drama I thought it would be refreshing to hear that a boy decided not to try to wrestle a girl.
THINKING OUT LOUD
I really wonder if this gender gap and the resultant fall out has a lot to do with lack of expectation. I can only speak from what I know, and generally speaking on some of the most equal cross gender relationships I know. I do notice is there’s a great deal of expectation that drives equality, since roles are clearly defined expectations are established and met and there’s effective fairness. Possibly as we erode the definitions of gender and make it fluid it becomes increasingly impossible to create expectation around a gender. (sorry to use this again) but when a liver stops doing what a liver does, what other organ will do it, none the body dies…lol maybe this is what will kill this civilization. For the Greeks it was the Romans that ultimately sealed their fate, the Romans the barbarians, Anglo-American civilization the suits of PC (political correctness) committee.
SPORTS AND GENDER
On sports and gender…Recently I was reading how there’s a proposition that professional football (sigh soccer...American need to standardize with the rest of the globe) teams should have a mandatory spot for women on the pitch. (Since women’s leagues aren’t getting the big support they hoped for) now I’ve always felt that if a woman is good enough then we’ll see her signed for a team, even if this is in the lower leagues. (and it has happened in Italy I believe) but legislating this sort of thing is pure nonsense, quality is quality and if you’re up to playing 50 plus games a season and taking tackles from Rino Gattusso then the “glass ceiling” will come down otherwise its absolutely fine for women to play against one another in leagues. And honestly other than the few outliers the rules would have to be amended to cater the inherent physical imbalance between the genders. Will we ever see superstars like Cristiano Ronaldo in the female game, well if you follow football you’ve already heard of names like Mia Hamm, Marta, and Birgit Prinz, so we’re getting there but we’re not hearing from the terraces songs of “sign her” for any of them at Arsenal matches. The women’s game probably needs a little marketing and hopefully better approach than the WNBA (lol fundamentals my foot I just want to watch Blake Griffin dunk) After all there’s women’s tennis which is the more entertaining version of the game and has been for a hot minute.
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