Why I refuse to explain my love of baseball to the obnoxious fan at this week's World Series game

Perhaps you've grown used to Gender Lens' intelligent analysis of those important political or media-related issues that influence women and men today. Perhaps you look forward to my twice-monthly posts and their well-considered approaches to gender.

Well, this is not one of those posts. This, my friends, is a rant. Plain and simple.

It began this Christmas, when my dad purchased a pack of partial season tickets for our family to share. This meant that several times this year, my brother and his partner and me and my partner were able to cheer on our favorite team -- the Philadelphia Phillies.

I'd like to note that my dad did not simply buy tickets for himself, my brother, and my husband. This is because my dad understands, and has always understood, that baseball is a sport loved by both men and women. Dad coaches high school ball, and ever since I was in the crib, I had a baseball in my hand.

Until I was 13, I played baseball on a team with all boys. I spent a lot of my time trying to prove myself worthy. One of my fondest memories was during a particular game when the entire infield and outfield moved in about ten steps as soon as they saw that I was a girl up to bat. I got my favorite type of pitch -- low and across the plate -- and I wailed it over all of their heads. Vindication was mine.

Unfortunately, these moments were few and far between, and I found myself constantly trying to be more like the boys and prove myself as such instead of just enjoying the game. I switched to softball in high school, but I remain an avid baseball fan.

So as you can imagine, when my dad told my partner and I that we had tickets to Game 3 of this year's World Series, we were beside ourselves with excitement. Not only was this a World Series game; this was MY TEAM in the World Series. I'm not exaggerating when I say that for this lifelong baseball fan, it was a dream come true.

It would have been even more of a dream come true if it were not for two things:
1. We lost.
2. I sat next to this most obnoxious and intolerant fan in the history of baseball.

The guy sitting next to me not only claimed the armrest for the duration of the game, sticking his pointy elbow in my face every other second, but he also managed to offend Native Americans, Japanese people, and Mexicans in a very short amount of time. He'd shout completely offensive things over and over again, including chides to the Phillies pitcher to "Hit the batter right in the face! Just smash his entire face up!"

Finally, one of the women sitting in front of us turned around and said, "Wow, you have quite a bellowing voice!"

I thought this was a rather polite way of telling the fool to shut his intolerant mouth, but he obviously disagreed.

He said, "Listen, lady. I'm not going to apologize for cheering at a baseball game. That's what I came here to do. Some of us have actually been here all season. We didn't just buy a World Series ticket."

The woman turned to him and said, "I've been here all season too."

What disgusted me about this exchange was the fact that the guy assumed that because the individual was female, she certainly couldn't be a REAL Phillies fan.

When I whispered a summary of this exchange to my partner, he said, "I don't think he meant anything gender-related by his comment."

I responded that he (my partner) had never been to a sporting event as a woman. Meanwhile, I've spent the better part of my life trying to justify my interest in sports to men and trying to prove to them that I am a real fan.

Just last week in one of my classes, the students were talking about a great football play from the week before. Interested, I asked them what had happened, and one of the male students responded, "You wouldn't understand. It's a guy thing."

I took him to task for that comment and gave a short lecture on sexist language. I'm not sure it did very much though.

The effect that this kind of attitude has on women, particularly young girls, is that it encourages them to get involved in only certain gender-approved realms of life -- cooking, talking on the phone, shopping. Thankfully, I believe that the current generation of girls is beginning to change this paradigm. With the passage of Title IX, more and more girls are participating in sports than ever before.

Still, our culture needs to change its overall attitude towards girls and sports. We need to take down the "No Girls Allowed" signs when we consider who is and who isn't a real fan.

I don't have an inspirational remark with which to end this rant. All I have to say is this: Tonight, oh blogosphere, as I root on my dear Phillies, I will not be explaining to ANYONE why I love baseball and why I deserve to be counted as a real Phillies fan.

Go Phils.

Halloween makes it too easy for us gender bloggers

If we were ever uncertain about the prevalence of strict gender roles in our country, Halloween is always there to remind us. Last year, I explored the ridiculously limited array of costumes for boys and girls. Visit any costume website, and you'll likely see princesses and ballerinas for girls, ninjas and superheroes for boys.

These stereotypes affect us all because they condition us to embrace certain characteristics and resist others, depending on our gender.

A friend posted this video on Facebook today. It's from the Onion, and is obviously meant to be a spoof on shows like Good Morning America. The topic is how to come up with masculine costumes for decidedly effeminate boys.



It's a funny video, but with any humorous spoof, there's an ounce of truth in its depiction. It has a sense of speaking the unspoken, of revealing a perspective that many parents subconsciously ascribe to, but are afraid to admit to out loud -- the desire to keep boys from becoming effeminate.

It's interesting because in this era of girls' soccer and girls' rising performance in traditionally masculine subjects like math, we don't seem to be as afraid of girls becoming more like boys.

I think that this is because our culture is afraid of the feminine. Unlike masculinity, femininity indicates weakness and emotionality. I have seen countless parents do everything possible to keep their sons from being interested in dolls. Just watch any rerun of Jon and Kate Plus Eight, particularly in the early years, and you'll see tiny and not-so-tiny gestures that remind the boys that they are not interested in anything pink or frilly or motherly.

Again, we're right back to where Simone de Beauvoir was in The Second Sex -- everything masculine is elevated and praised; everything feminine is deemed second rate. This is largely because the feminine is only defined in relation to the "normal" male sex. Femininity is an aberration.

If only we lived in a world where boys and girls were encouraged to choose from the smorgasbord of human characteristics at will. Maybe we would see effeminate vampires and prancing robots. Maybe we'd also see female superheroes or peace-loving ninjas. The possibilities for Halloween and otherwise are endless.

Lashing out against inadequate lashes

Of course, advertisements on beauty are inescapable, and for the most part, I've grown rather numb to the inundating barrage of critiques on my appearance by the media.

But I've watched this Latisse commercial a few times now, and what disturbs me more than anything is that phrase, "for inadequate or not enough lashes." Here it is:



I want to know who determined that someone's eyelashes are "inadequate" or "not enough." What length or thickness qualifies as "adequate"? When is my facial hair "enough" but not excessive?

What further intrigues me about this commercial is that the product is FDA approved for the treatment of hypotrichosis. This is an actual medical term used to describe lack of hair growth.

I think there's a fine line between growing hair where there is none and using beauty products to create fuller lashes. The television commercial for Latisse seems incredibly misleading on this point. Is it a product to create lashes where none have grown, or is this a cosmetic product with similar effects to that of mascara? The ad is disturbingly unclear.

What is clear is that we, as a culture, are obsessed with proper hair growth. It has to grow in the right places at the right rate and with the right thickness. Any variation is aberrant. This is certainly an issue for both genders -- men struggle to conceal and reverse baldness, while women wax those unsightly hairs. Both genders shave.

I can't claim to be exempt from these practices myself. I care about how my hair (all of it) appears. I spend time every day making sure that my facial hair meets my culture's beauty standards.

But I worry when these beauty standards become defined as medical deficiencies that need to be "cured." The plastic surgery industry began this trend, asking women to fix everything from their noses to their lady parts. (Yes, I said "lady parts." Perhaps unbelievably, designer vaginas are the new trend.)

Products and practices like these continue to blur the line between aesthetic appearance and medical treatment. It's unsettling at best. At worst, it's dangerous, painful, and just another method for "fixing" women's inadequate bodies.

Defining gender

I ended my last post by talking about the gray areas of life, particularly when we realize that the clear black and white categories that we've set up do not always work.

Several news stories within the last week have brought to light the very gray area of gender itself.

First, a brief review of definitions:

Sex= The physical make-up of a person that generally gets "male" or "female" stamped on their birth certificate. Sex characteristics include genitalia, one's ability to bear children, and the presence of hormones like testosterone or estrogen.

Gender= A person's sense of themselves as male or female.

As I mentioned in my previous post about tennis star Sarah Gronert, many individuals feel that their gender is different from their sex. (A great explanation of the resulting "transgender" label can be found here.)

Well, last week, another athlete's genitals were subjected to scrutiny, but this time with allegations that the athlete herself was not fully informed about the test's intent. 18-year-old Caster Semenya has spent much of her life fending off comments about her masculine nature. Now, the media has outed her as a hermaphrodite, someone carrying both male and female physical traits. In this case, her sex does not fit into our tidy categories, despite the fact that in her mind, her gender was always pretty clear. For a beautiful explanation of the term "hermaphrodite" and "intersexed," I highly recommend Hida Viloria's first person reflection on this story.

Also in last week's news, a 12-year-old boy in England returned to his school as a girl after summer vacation. The school held an emergency assembly to inform students of the change but were criticized for offering "too little too late" in terms of preparation. As a result of not adequately readying teachers, peer groups, and family members to accept this change more fluidly, bullying and intolerance occurred.

These two examples seem so parallel in that both reflect our insistence on neat, mutually-exclusive categories when it comes to gender. When people don't fit these tidy classifications, we criticize them as being "other" instead of rethinking our categories.

Apparently feminism is evil.

Their motto is "extolling femininity, blasting feminism," and this group of conservative Christians is pretty angry at women, such as Hillary Rodham Clinton, who serve in leadership roles. Their also angry at women who work outside the home, choose to have no children (or maybe only just one), and serve in the military. Check out the trailer for their recent documentary on the subject. It will make your toes curl.

Here's just a clip about women in politics:



Of course, the documentary was directed and produced by two men, although there was one female writer on staff. She wrote with her husband, though, which means she was likely under his creative dominion.

I understand the draw of this perspective. It is comforting to organize the world in categories, easy to say that everything is black and white. If you are male, you have one set of characteristics. If you are female, you have another set entirely. If you stick to the script, you've got it made.

The problem is that a lot of us can't stick to the script and don't want to. I know many women with the gift of leadership, courage, boldness, and self-sufficiency, all attributes that are typically ascribed to men. I also know plenty of men who are emotional, humble, empathetic, and relational, all attributes that are typically ascribed to women.

When we deny ourselves half of the characteristics available to us, we deny ourselves a fuller humanity. So while I understand where this worldview comes from, I have to opt for a more uncomfortable perspective of humanity, one that says that men and women are quite complex beings, created with incredible potential but without a clear prescription of roles or behaviors.

Of course, this means that I don't always have the quick, easy, black and white answer. That's why I keep a blog...to write my way into meaning, to explore the paradox of our lives, to embrace the gray.

Ciao, Bella.

Today is Women's Equality Day, established by former Congresswoman Bella Savitsky Abzug, who was perhaps most known for saying: This woman's place is in the house -- The House of Representatives.

Unfortunatley, Abzug passed away in 1998, nine years before Nancy Pelosi would become the first female Speaker of the House. I bet she would have been thrilled at how far women have come.

But we have a long way to go. Check out the Center for American Women and Politics maps, illustrating how often women have served on the State Legislature, in Congress, or as Governor.

We may think that we are the model nation in terms of gender equality, but new research shows the following:

One important way to measure gender equality is to see the proportion of women in a country’s legislature or parliament, according to the authors. By that measure, as of 2005 the United States ranked 61st of 128 countries, with 15.2 percent women in Congress. Rwanda leads the world with 48.8 percent women in its parliament.

Overall, the International Women's Day site states that "Although women make up 51 percent of the world’s population, they hold only 16 percent of parliamentary and congressional seats worldwide."

Bella Savitsky Abzug challenges us with a legacy of female empowerment in regard to the political representation of women. But often, we find ourselves asking, "Where do we begin?"

I find it particularly interesting (and perhaps comforting) that Abzug's feminist journey began with a small local act of resistance. In fact, it took root when Abzug was only 12 years old in the questioning of patriarchal religious tradition. When her father died, she wanted to say Kaddish at his funeral, an honor only reserved for sons in her Orthodox Jewish community. She resisted, and continued to practice these daily mourning prayers. Later she said this:

No one could have stopped me from performing the duty traditionally reserved for a son, from honoring the man who had taught me to love peace, who had educated me in Jewish values. So it was lucky that no one ever tried.

On this Women's Equality Day, may we be open to creating moments of small resistance. Maybe one day, our struggles within our individual "house" of residence or worship might become, as Abzug's did, our struggles within the national "House."

Just in case you thought the media was entirely anti-feminist...

Check out Jezebel's list of the Top 20 Feminist TV Characters of All Time.

A little on their commonalities (that reflect mainstream American feminism's ongoing race and class biases):

In doing research for this, we noticed that a lot of these women had characteristics in common. Almost all of them are middle class. Many of them are educated and somewhat socially awkward. A lot of them are either nerdy, or have nerdy pasts, and can be annoying. But unfortunately, all of them — including the animated ones — are Caucasian. Worse still, only three of the females listed below are characters on shows currently on air. It's sad that in the past 30 years, feminism hasn't even managed to get two dozen recurring characters on television to admit to being part of the movement.

It's also important to note that their criteria for this list is that the characters "openly flew their feminist flags," i.e. they're not just looking for strong women here. They're looking for women who "spoke openly about being feminists or feminism."

Who do you think should or shouldn't have made the list? I'm a little shaky on the choice of Jessie from Saved by the Bell...