gender justice?
I told you not long ago about the basketball league I play in. Great thing about this league is that when one season ends, another starts right back up. So I'm playing, yet again, with the same guys I've been playing with for the past couple of seasons.
Last night, the team we played had two women on it. Because most of the guys I play with are in business where their co-workers, if not bosses, are women and because we live in an incredibly diverse city, not much was said before tip-off about the prospect of playing against women.
The first points scored were off a nice jumper from the baseline...from one of the women. Our team settled down and quickly rattled off twenty points before they scored another bucket. At one point in that stretch, one of our big men blocked the shot of one of the women. I overheard one of their guys moan, "I can't believe he just blocked her shot. That's poor."
So what was my teammate supposed to do? What was more appropriate - Treat her like the player she was (by the end of the game, the two girls had at least eight of their 16 points) or allow her a little room because of her gender?
Thoughts?
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Last night, the team we played had two women on it. Because most of the guys I play with are in business where their co-workers, if not bosses, are women and because we live in an incredibly diverse city, not much was said before tip-off about the prospect of playing against women.
The first points scored were off a nice jumper from the baseline...from one of the women. Our team settled down and quickly rattled off twenty points before they scored another bucket. At one point in that stretch, one of our big men blocked the shot of one of the women. I overheard one of their guys moan, "I can't believe he just blocked her shot. That's poor."
So what was my teammate supposed to do? What was more appropriate - Treat her like the player she was (by the end of the game, the two girls had at least eight of their 16 points) or allow her a little room because of her gender?
Thoughts?
-
posted by jch at
6:50 AM
10 Comments:
Treat everyone the same on the court. The women knew it was a predominately men's team. I am sure the women's basketball, wnba, get in each others faces.
If the girls are gonna play with the boys, then they need be able to take the blocked shots. Coming from a girl who loves to play basketball, if you can't play tough then get off of the court.
Chivalry is a polite way of disrespecting a woman. On the basketball court, just like anywhere else.
What jtb said. I always hated when our church youth group played sports and they wouldn't really play well because they wanted to be easy on me. They were assuming that I would suck just because I was a woman and I never got a chance to prove myself. They aren't afraid of being too rough on a woman. They are afraid of being beat by a woman.
LOL Indie! I think you've hit the nail on the head with your last statement!
The first time I played my husband in Scrabble (he's GeniusBoy and I'm...not.), he played easy on me. It totally pissed me off. What fun is THAT? (And he never did it again!) I don't play basketball, but I imagine I'd be just as pissed if a guy played soft with me out there.
You all will be glad to know that we played hard and ended up beating the team by 40 points.
I agree with how your team played because these women clearly understood the environment. Too bad for the sweet, but misguided, guy muttering under his breath at your team. I'm really glad you won.
I want to mention that I don't think chivalry is a polite way to disrespect women, though. I think it can be misused in that's way, but I strongly feel it's a dying art of courtship in some parts of life. It does not belong on a basketball court where the stakes are about equal, competitive play. . .but it's nice to see a guy pay attention to little things in order to show he cares in other arenas of life.
You did the right thing to play hard. There is not much worse than having men go easy on you, because you're a woman and they think you can't take the heat. (Of course it can be a nice advantage to be underestimated too.)
If the women are playing in the men's league, they know what they're up against.
while i don't think that chivalry is polite disrespect (my wife is as independent a woman as i know, but she still likes me to open the car door for her), but i do agree that anyone who enters into a group event wants to be treated like one of the group. i know that if i eased up on rachel in a game because she is a woman, she'd eat my lunch. the fact is, i get regularly schooled by women in sporting events as well as life in general. the last thing i need to do is ease up.
Okay, so I said it that way because I wanted some reactions. But it's not that far from my true opinion, which I will now try to state in a more thoughtful way. Chivalry is a way of placing women on a pedestal. Sometimes we like being there, because we feel cherished and all that. But it also sets us apart, and that leads very quickly to rigid views of gender roles with distinct disdvantages for women. Being on a pedestal is limiting. On the level of holding doors and that sort of thing, I don't object to a man holding a door for me. But I routinely hold doors for pretty much anyone following me into a building, as long as I'm not juggling the diaper bag and my incredibly heavy 6-month-old, as a matter of basic courtesy to everyone regardless of gender. Once, at ACU walking into the Bible building, where the entrance has a double set of doors, a man held the door for me, and so I naturally held the next door for him in return, as I got there first. He refused to walk through it. I've never understood that, and still feel that it was rude. Instead of feeling like he had held the door for me out of courtesy, it seemed to me that he had held it as a way of establishing the difference between us, and that did not make me feel cherished. It made me feel categorized.
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