The Times, August 1 – “England’s Pride”
I’m supposed to be on vacation, in fact I am on vacation, but I can’t resist sending a note to my loyal readers, some of whom have been with me for years.
On Sunday, the English Women’s Football Team—which we call soccer—won the European Cup in their match against Germany. The team is called the Lionesses and the news here has been full of them for days.
I can’t imagine a women’s sport team in the US being called the Lionesses, or being greeted with the outpouring of enthusiasm as the team is here. This included a full-size front page photograph on the London Times of two of the players, labeled “England’s Pride,” charging around the field to celebrate their triumph.
Were two of our splendid women athletes ever called “Pride of the United States”?
I don’t think so.
As Queen Elizabeth announced, the players had “set an example that will be an inspiration for girls and women today, and for future generations.” Already women’s soccer games garner a large audience, TV coverage, and offers of endorsement money. In the US, women’s sports barely merit a mention.
Why?
Well, we’ve never had a woman in the top seat of government, and it looks as though it will be a long time now till we do.
I think there many other reasons, some of them partly hidden. In London, I have yet to see a policeman—called a Bobby—and they have for years been unarmed. The gun laws here are strict, and surely that is the reason the country is not tormented by mass murders. And there is a spirit of cooperation that seems foreign to our national character; British Airways just canceled ten thousand flights for a least a week out of crowded Heathrow airport, a substantial financial loss incurred to help the public.
This seems important in view of the hard struggle women in the US have always had and continue to have to be heard, recognized and treated as equals to men—we have yet to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, in spite of years of effort. Whenever there is division in a culture, no matter what the cause, it impacts women, reinforcing a hierarchy that severely disadvantages us. Powerful women are still viewed by some people as witches; women continue to carp at each other; mothers have a hard time with their daughters; few now will call themselves feminists. All this is likely to increase our timidity.
I feel it myself. A few weeks ago, in Santa Fe, a man angry at a woman who parked next to him, slightly nicking his car door when she opened her door, shot her in the hand and in the throat. I find myself hesitant now to reproach men for rude behavior; it seems too risky. And men are behaving rudely, and worse, everywhere.
Or did this new backwardness begin when we all started calling groups of women “guys”? Can anyone imagine calling a group of men “gals”?
Meanwhile we can all glory in the Lionesses’ triumph and at least hope for the day when US women athletes are also treated with an outpouring of love.
The ugly treatment of women athletes is obvious. The scant showing of women’s events and commentaries about their events and careers, the shabby facilities, the contining selfish grabbing of the money pot by men, the continued sexualizing of women athletes, the same lack of respect for women we see so clearly in every aspect of life. Women athletes and supporters have done brave and fine work, getting what advances women have gotten, but it’s the men who hold the decision-making powers who must change before wholesale change will happen to improve women’s lot in any area. S.B. mentioned the big, front page picture in a London paper of the women’s soccer champions. Wonderful, yes, but hesitatingly I point out that they used a picture of a woman who’d torn off her shirt and had run, breasts flapping in her sports bra, to celebrate their win. No criticism of her here. Nope. But look at the picture they chose to use. Probably it was chosen, too, to hark back to Brandy Chastain (do I have the right person?) being castigated for having done what the men did after winning, tearing her shirt off and waving it around, to celebrate a big win. With a sports bra still in place. But of all the women running around, celebrating, that was centered on, on tv and in print regarding this most recent event.
We must keep pointing out, again and again, that some women are doing yeoman’s — yeowomen’s — work to make life better for us, but it’s the men who are dodging their responsibilities in making needed changes in their own minds and actions right now. Share instead of continuing to be selfish. One way women have been shafted in soccer is making them play on that cement-hard artificial turf while the men play on the ground, which does not damage bodies as much when players fall, the way artificial turf does. As far as I know, women are still being subjected to that.
Meanwhile, brava to the champions. And to our USA professional team.
I’ve been browsing S.B.’s prior blogs, avoiding things I need to be doing today on this dastardly Plastic Monster, and I’ve enjoyed the ones about the bears. I didn’t enjoy the one on Margaret Sanger because it gave the 2-yr-old news that Planned Parenthood had removed her name from the Manhattan Clinic. I didn’t love finding out, either, that she had liked the idea of euthenasia, but we can only understand what we CAN understand, given our day and time, and she was quite rightly worried about mindless reproduction among humans and the ignorance regarding all things body, sensual, sexual, reproductive and, yes, sexist. I will have to read up on that, in regard to her. I had not come across that. But Marg. Sanger should be, I think, one of America’s heroines for her work in trying to better the sexual/reproductive experiences of women, especially the desperately poor.
Sallie Bingham, you said, when you took on researching and writing about Doris Duke, that talking about women who had/have in some way ended up with big money, that that is a taboo subject. Definitely, it is, and challenging that taboo is a good thing. I was startled, years ago, to see the hot resentment of some working class and poor feminists against women who’d come from men who had/made big money, and I haven’t seen that change. Perhaps your blog will be a start that aspect of women wrongfully attacking other women.
In regard to Margaret Sanger, I didn’t know that she and Doris Duke were connected. I’m so glad to find that out.