In which gender essentialism can DIAF

[mephisto5]

Nine-Year-Old Girl Plays Football, Kicks Ass and Maybe Changes the World

Few 9-year-old girls are described as a “young-very young-Walter Payton.” But that’s what people are calling Sam Gordon of South Jordan, Utah. Gordon has become an Internet sensation after the spread of viral videos showing her shredding Pee Wee football defenses with a series

Comments

[hammersxstrings]

Girls continued to excel in the Americanized game of baseball deep into the nineteenth century. It wasn’t until the game was professionalized and commercialized at century’s end that girls were forcibly pushed off the diamond.

i was told at a young age (8,9) that the reason my mother didn't put as much time into my softball as my brothers hockey was because I was a girl and my softball would come of nothing. Loving to play, it upset me quite a bit and I honestly think, to this day, has fueled some of my more virulent feminist belief and some resentment.

i'm happy to see this girl succeeding. hopefully she continues to be badass and show up all of them.

[thrace_]

Shit like this infuriates me. There's no pro leagues for women's sports (minus the WNBA, and they have their problems too) because there's no audience, there's no audience because women's sports are othered and degraded and treated as less-than or an inferior version of men's sports, women's sports are treated this way because dudes can't be having women doing dude stuff and so they systematically eliminate women's participation from sports. Like women's football was absolutely flourishing in England in the early 20th century until the FA forbade anyone from letting women use their pitches or refs or anything and female players had to essentially go underground for 50 years until women started to organize informal tournaments in the 70s and FIFA realized they were going to have to get onboard with this whole women-can-do-stuff thing.

Okay, rant over.