Fuck You, FIFA

Feministing reports that the Iranian women's soccer uniform has been judged by FIFA to be in violation of its ban on religious displays, preventing the team from playing in the 2012 Olympics. Now, take a look at the above photo. Yeah, that's the uniform in question. Oh noes, headscarves.

First of all, I'm not entirely sure why religious symbols are banned. But it looks like the Iranian team was willing to accept that, so whatever. Lots of things can be religious symbols: fish, hammers, stars, pretty much any conceivable variant on two lines intersecting at a right angle. To be safe, you basically have to eschew symbols in general. Which the above uniform does. The supposed problem is not any symbol, but rather the featureless white wraps the women are wearing on their heads.

I'm not really going to get into whether head wraps are problematic or not. I mean, it does seem a leetle unfair that women have to wear them in Iran but men don't. But we in the US have an even more uneven approach to shirtlessness. So how is it that no one can understand that headscarves can potentially be a cultural, as well as religious, garment? Women in the US reportedly prefer running in comparatively concealing skorts instead of the traditional short shorts, yet we begrudge Muslim women their own version of modest sports clothes?

Any headscarf discussion is usually accompanied by hand-wringing and murmuring about Islam oppresses women. Well, the Iranian women's soccer team is certainly being oppressed here, but it's sure not by Islam.


*I so want to write "crucifices"

Roller Derby Is Better Than This

The roller derby community is supposed to be a place where people can be themselves, express who they are, and engage in a really fun contact sport. It's a subculture built on including those of us who often find ourselves outside the mainstream - that is why I was drawn to it in the first place. It looked like a place where I can be whoever I am, and for me, with my team, that has absolutely been the case. I have tested the bounds of my team's supportiveness and never once found it lacking.

Unfortunately, not every team is as great as mine. Last weekend, members from one team, along with their coach, security guard, and fans (including the parents of one of the skaters) ganged up on and humiliated an NSO from the other league. In brief, they were policing her gender identity, calling her a man and asking her to lift her skirt to prove that she is a woman. They harassed and harangued her, and humiliated her in front of the entire audience. The NSO in question is a woman and had therefore used the women's restroom. Apparently the people who harassed her felt it was there place to be sure she had peed in what they thought was the right place, "for the sake of the children." Both the NSO and I are wondering what children have to do with it.

The offending league issued a milquetoast statement on Facebook saying they are "sorry for any inconvenience" the events of the evening caused the derby community. Excuse me? Any inconvenience? This is not a question of convenience. It is a question of civil rights. She has the right to her identity, her humanity, and to not be violently harassed in public.

The statement also said they hope to host "safe" and "family-friendly" events. I cannot for the life of me imagine how raising a ruckus, harassing an innocent person, and behaving like bigoted asshole fucks is "safe" or "family-friendly." I know I'm not a parent, but I'm pretty sure that treating people as inhumanely as the harassers did is not setting a good example for the kiddies. It's just making the world a less safe place.

There is no excuse for this behavior. None at all. I hope the people in question are deeply ashamed of themselves and that they are no longer invited to be part of their league. I will certainly never participate in an event with them. I expect the larger community will have all kinds of things to say about this.

New Uniforms Are Not the Answer*

From The Washington Post today, we have a story about how a girls' track team performs better in clothing the young women feel more comfortable in.

This is one of those things that I feel really conflicted on. I want the girls to feel comfortable in their skin so that they can excel in their sports. I believe in the importance of athletic achievement for girls who are into sports, and if these skorts help, okay.

But... shouldn't we be working to change the environment they're in, instead of changing the clothes to suit the environment? The article notes that the girls are sometimes harassed by the boys. Instead of changing the clothing to decrease harassment - which smacks of victim-blaming - we should be educating the boys on how not to be sexist assholes. It sucks that girls are false-starting on purpose so that boys won't point and laugh. The problem here is not the girls, or the clothes. It's the boys. And, beyond that, it's the culture that thinks that the answer is to change the uniforms and not the attitudes.

* Shortest post ever? Well, it's Friday. And why use lots of words when I can get my point across in just a few?

Girls and Contact Sports: But Won't They Break?

Topics sometimes seem to come in clusters around here, so it's time for another roller derby post!

I'm behind on my podcasts, so I only recently got to the latest episode of Derby Deeds. (If you play/ref/enjoy watching roller derby and like podcasts, this is the show for you.) The fine folks who run this show discussed the fact that a high school in Texas has a roller derby program now. I think this is marvelous, for a number of reasons. I've heard so many people say that if they'd had roller derby when they were teenagers, their lives would have been much better. I've officiated in a junior derby bout, and it was one of the best things I've ever seen. These girls were not fucking around.

Anyway, the hosts of the podcast talked about why it is unlikely that roller derby will catch on in high schools around the country, and it's very simple: it is a full-contact sport for laydeez. We let boys run head-first into each other and increase their chances of having life-long health problems in football, so this isn't a kid thing, it's a girl thing.

We also let girls participate in cheerleading, which studies have shown is the most dangerous sport in the world - more dangerous than roller derby and football. So why is it okay for girls to cheerlead, but not play football or roller derby? I don't know about where you went to high school, but our women's basketball team didn't have cheerleaders, if I recall correctly. The mens' team did. So it's okay for women to risk their lives and health to boost the morale of men, but not to play a contact sport themselves? Is that what's going on here?

Roller Derby and Gender

Happy Thursday, folks. I'm doing my best to stay on top of life, so this is going to be a quick blog post. All about roller derby!

I'm about a month behind on this, but the Women's Flat Track Derby Association has adopted a new gender policy. On the whole, I think this is more of a good thing than not. They are considering that gender is not so simple as "man or woman," something easily determined by one's genitalia. Trans inclusivity is something I believe in and promote. I'm delighted that WFTDA is on board with that project.

Of course, even the WFTDA version is a bit oversimplified, and in some ways problematic. When talking about queer issues, this will almost always be the case. As Judith Butler says about feminism, how can we really define "woman"? Once we try to define it, we're excluding someone, and if we take all comers, then who are feminists advocating for? Or, in this context, who gets to play women's flat track derby? Identity politics is awfully complicated. So WFTDA says that they are considering anyone who considers herself a woman, lives as a woman, and has hormones consistent with medical definitions of woman. That's... tough. What if a trans person calls herself "femme" or something else instead of "woman"? Further, what does "lives as a woman" mean? All the time - at work, at home, with family? That's not an easy thing for very many people to do. What are the requirements here?

Finally: I'm skeptical of the medicalization aspect of this. Getting doctors involved seems unnecessary to me. I don't believe in "real" genders - that someone is "really" a woman or "really" a man "underneath" some exterior presentation. It seems to me that women probably have a pretty wide range of hormone levels, as do men, and that some cis women might have more testosterone than some cis men. WFTDA makes clear that they are not asking for preemptive proof of anything here - the captains don't have to show the papers of the trans players before the game can happen. But I'm not sure I like this idea of testing the hormone levels of only some players. What do we learn from that, exactly? There is such a wide range of sizes, athletic ability, aggressiveness, whatever, within any given gender that it, in my mind, renders arbitrary the differences between genders in contexts like these.

Look, I get that this is a sport, and therefore we will be looking at bodies. And I do appreciate that WFTDA is having this conversation. But the minute we get into trying to determine how someone else identifies and what they "really" are, we are in a lot of hot water.

Gender Equity in Sports: Apparently WAY More Complicated Than We Realized

The New York Times reports that college athletic programs are being manipulative in order to meet Title IX requirements.

Essentially, what is happening here is that big schools are listing male athletes as rostered on women's teams in order to boost the numbers, allowing more slots for male athletes on male teams. They are also listing women on the roster who are not actually team members, and may not be aware that they are rostered. Go read the article, I'll wait.

I suppose we shouldn't be surprised. Higher education can resemble big business in a lot of ways, and athletic programs - men's in particular - are a money-maker. That's not quite good enough for me, though.

I have a few problems with this. First, I really detest this underlying assumption that women aren't as good at sports as men are. I know a lot of very athletic women who would have problems with that assessment.

But I don't think it's really about whether men or women are better athletes. It's about who people would rather watch in a sporting event. And the answer to that appears to be men, clearly. People always forget that the US has a women's soccer team that has been extremely successful - more successful, frankly, than the US men's team. But they get much less attention. Why?

I don't have the answer to that, but I suspect it has something to do with gender. There is an expectation that men are rougher, tougher, and more physical. Women aren't meant to be out there beating each other up. Fuck that, I say. Women aren't less able to handle contact sports than men. Any attempt to justify the greater attention to male sports based on feminine weakness is grounded in sexism, full stop.

Second, this whole ordeal is about manipulating women's sports to help men's teams. It shows how marginalized women are even in women's athletic programs. There is no argument made that women's teams benefit from having men practice with them (I can't see how such an argument would hold water, but if someone wants to point me to such a study, go for it). In fact, this is explicitly about using the women's teams as an end-run around Title IX, if you'll pardon the pun.

There is no way to justify this that isn't sexist. Women are considered to exist primarily to benefit men in far too many ways, from taking on the majority of domestic responsibilities at the expense of their professional lives to being expected to accept lower pay and crappy treatment by corporate employers.

Finally, I think this listing of men on women's rosters is just really weird from a gender perspective. The article says that women who practice with men's teams are counted as female athletes. This could use some exploration. For one thing, it's certainly buying into the idea of gender binaries that I don't subscribe to. For the purposes of college athletics, which are gender-segregated according to these unrealistic binaries, though, why are we okay with counting men as women but not women as men? There are plenty of people worried about the crisis of masculinity right now - are they worried about labeling men as women? Of course, it's FOR SPORTS which MEN PLAY [better than women]. And, of course, it wouldn't help men's athletic programs to roster women as men, when the whole point of this shell game is to make more room for male athletes. I wonder what the men themselves have to say about it, given the context of anxious gender-policing our society is just soaking in.

Anyway. What do you think?

It's High Time for a Post About Roller Derby

First things first, you may be wondering WTF is Alsica? We (Jess and Kyrie) sometimes like to write posts collaboratively, but Blogger won't let us both be authors on a post. So we took parts of our names unused in our nicknames and created the blogging entity/silly beast called Alsica.

So, both of us play roller derby, a fact that we've alluded to in several previous posts. Friend/spouse/commenter Bill has suggested that we devote an entire post to derby, which we are all too willing to do. So, without any further ado, we present:

Reasons We Love the Shit Out of Roller Derby

1. It's all about the ladies. Women are far too often ignored and/or not taken seriously when it comes to sports. Roller derby, I think, is a good candidate for changing that. Though there are some men's and coed teams, derby is dominated by women. Most teams are amateur, so it's something that is truly created by women, for women.
2. This focus on women is particularly great if you work in a male-dominated field. Don't get us wrong, men are awesome. But it's important to have lady-friends, too, and derby provides them in spades. In fact, derby is responsible for bringing Jess and Kyrie together, and, by extension, for this blog's existence.
3. It's an opportunity to unleash your inner badass. There aren't a lot of socially acceptable ways to go around knocking people down.
4. On a related note, it's a great way to develop good sportsmanship. Women send each other flying across the track, and, unless it's a douchebag illegal move, there's no reason for anyone to get upset.
5. It builds positive body image. Constantly being around fit women of all shapes and sizes will rewire your brain regarding what's normal, healthy, and attractive. Finding out what you're physically capable of can boost your opinion of your own body, too.
6. It's something of an instant community. That is not to say that everyone is friends right away - that isn't the case. In any group of people, some will get along better than others. But you have a common set of goals within the team. And you can relate to other people who don't live near you on the basis of your shared love of roller derby.
7. It's kind of a queer subculture. That isn't to say that all derby players are queer - though many are. It also tends to be a queer-friendly crowd. But beyond that, it's a place where gender norms are shifted. There is no expectation that femininity means weakness or delicacy, or that they need men to tell them how to play their sport. Derby is queering athleticism in some ways.