After Atalanta

It is with great sadness that I read about the death of LA Times sports writer Mike Penner who dies Friday at the age of 52. It is suspected Penner took his own life. Penner had been a sport writer since the 80s, covering multiple sports and events, but gained national notoriety when he came out as transsexual in the spring of 2007. He changed his name to Christine Daniels and continued to cover sports for the Times as well as keep a blog about his transition. The very public transition was quite brave. But some time in late 2008 Penner went back to writing as Mike and rumors abounded that he was experiencing transition regret, though he never confirmed. If it was indeed a suicide, it would seem that Penner never found a comfortable place along the gender spectrum and perhaps that is because too often it seems there is no continuum, but rather a binary. And thus the pressure to pick one or another and conform is huge, especially for those who have not had the privilege of being comfort...

An ESPN columnist has a profile on Brendan Burke, a college student who stopped playing hockey in high school because he was gay and worried about people finding out his secret. His father, Brian ( apologies, Patrick is Brendan's brother ) Burke, is a bigwig NHL guy and former player himself. The column tells Brandon's history in the sport, his current position as a team manager at Miami Ohio, and his coming out to all the people in his life. Brandon would like a career in the NHL and plans on going to law school. Good message overall but it was a little on the long side and unless one is Italo Calvino, one should not use the second person the way the columnist did. (In other words, he tried a little too hard.) And PS all the "no one cared, everyone was really supportive" lines are tiresome, ring a little false, and are problematic in that they erase a lot of the subtle homophobia that continues in athletics. I mean I am glad he isn't being targeted, but this do...

It's the day after American Thanksgiving and you know what that means... Time to talk luge. (What? Did you think I was really going to go the mall on Black Friday?) When I was in Canada a few weeks ago commercials for the Olympics were everywhere. Not so much here, but we should be getting excited at this point, especially if you are into luge. Because according to this piece , American women's luge could be an up-and-coming spoiler for all those veteran European teams like Germany where school children allegedly have easy access to the country's luge tracks. But to all my friends in their 30s who still harbor luge dreams, forget it. It's a youngsters' sport, at least here in the US. Apparently the average age of the US National Team is 21. Which makes sense; you have to have a certain teenage immortality attitude to shoot down a sloped ice track on your back, on a sled with sharp blades using only your feet to steer. More power to them! Hope they make a showing in...

...and yes it appears that her mother still has her on one of those leashes that we usually see (problematically) on toddlers in the mall. A link posted by Diane at Women Who Serve , tells us about the strange mother-daughter relationship (more implied) and that ever-so-lovely sport parent behavior by Samantha Stevenson. Never a fan of Ms. Stevenson myself for her "eeks my daughter is going to be accosted by lesbians in the locker room" statements in the late 90s when it looked like Alexandra was going to be something something, it seems she hasn't really changed--it's just that her daughter's profile has thus Samantha Stevenson doesn't quite have the same platform. [She was right about racism on the tour, but she discredited herself by coupling that with her homophobia thus burying any possible real discussion of subtle and overt acts of racism in the WTA.] It seems that even as Alexandra, ranked in the 200s now, perseveres at small tournaments, her mother pe...

Not too long ago I wrote briefly about Rusty Kanokogi who was dubbed the "mother of judo" for her lifelong dedication to promoting the sport in the United States including getting girls and women involved. It was largely due to her efforts that women's judo made it to the Olympics. Rusty made news then when the YMCA awarded her a gold medal for her participation in a the state championship match she took part in in 1959. When the officials found out she was a girl, they took her medal away. The YMCA rectified that mistake this year. Kanokogi was battling leukemia at that time, a disease she had been fighting for three years. She died of the disease this week. She will be inducted into the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame this April. Her accomplishments are many and some can be found in the above-linked article. She sounds like one of the unsung heroines of women's sports, the martial arts, and sport in general.

I have had many moments of frustration playing USTA league tennis over the years, from head case partners who enjoy hitting opponents as an intimidation technique to snippy opponents who don't remember the score and so you have to go all the way back and replay the third set to dealing with stacked line-ups. But today was a refreshing change--and not just because I won and not just because I won by one point! Though that did feel nice. But my doubles partner and I played against a very nice team. Not overly sweet nice where they try to talk to you all the time--'cause that's annoying too. But fair. They never questioned any call and there were some close ones. (We were playing fair too, though; but that's not the way it always happens.) It was a really close match and no one lost it or got snippy or slammed a racket (not even me!). And we ended up having to play a tie break to decide the third and final set (we had ten minutes left). At 5-5 in the breaker (first to 7 b...

Thankfully it appears that South African runner Caster Semenya is not mired in depression or confusion over the recent questioning and testing of her gender and sex and biology. Last weekend The Guardian ran a lengthy essay on what Semenya is up to these days: training. And included many photos of the athlete with her teammates and coaches. There was controversy over whether Semenya's conversations with the writer were on-the-record and if she knew that her talks with him would be included in the article. I have only glanced at the article myself so I cannot comment on its accuracy or fairness or sensitivity in covering all the attendant issues. This week the IAAF ruled that Semenya could keep her medal and her prize money, but discussions are stil underway about whether she will be allowed to compete in the future. The IAAF has allegedly said they will not reveal the results of all the tests they conducted. (Not an especially reassuring statement given how information has been l...

I hesitated to write this post because I did not want to be part of the continuing media coverage of the BYU/UNM soccer game in which rough play all around and particularly that of defender Elizabeth Lambert has gotten a lot of negative and other suspect attention. But this article, not a big one in the grand scheme of media coverage, set me off and lead to the above mentioned ponytail epiphany. It's not what was in it, as it was not adding anything particularly new; it was the title: "On the Lambert scandal." Scandal? It's a scandal now? Christian politicians living in communal environments in DC and sleeping with mistresses on the side engender scandals. Hiding information about alleged threats of terrorism from elected officials and the general public is a scandal. A collegiate soccer player engaged in on-field acts of violent behavior is not a scandal. So once again I was forced to ask myself, "What the heck is up with this story?" Seriously, when I was ...

NCAA basketball has begun. Now admittedly basketball is a sport that I have never truly embraced. It is probably the American sport I know least about. But I follow the women's collegiate game out of a sense of loyalty to female athletes. And, of course, I find it interesting from a sociological and cultural studies perspective. So here it is the first week of play and I am trying to jump in and be supportive right from the start this year. (This also serves a more solipsistic end: I know a little more when I fill out my bracket in March!) So last night, knowing the Tennessee/Texas Tech game was on, I kindly asked the bartender to put it on the big screen tv. And other people at the bar appeared to be watching. I was ready to have to fend of complaining whiners, but I didn't have to. Of course they may have changed the channel when I left at halftime but I did what I could. And this morning on my very early drive to the gym I caught the score of the UConn game on my local NPR a...

The IOC has stated that , in the wake of the Canadian appeal's court decision to uphold the lower court decision, it is pleased that it can now move on and focus on the forthcoming games. Yes, it must be nice when a legal entity says it cannot hold you responsible for discrimination. The IOC sure knows how to spin things. I was a little surprised by this statement from the organization: "As the lower court noted, the IOC has continued to demonstrate by its actions its support for women athletes and their participation in the Olympic Games." Hmmm....I didn't read the lower court decision, but the message I got out of it from all the coverage was not that the IOC was a great supporter of women's sports, but that it was a great discriminator and the judge regretted that it was beyond her power to hold them accountable.

The appeal, filed by a group of female ski jumpers attempting to get their sport into the Vancouver Games, was dismissed after two days of hearings in a Canadian court of appeals this week. The court agreed with the lower court ruling that it was the IOC that was at fault and the IOC can not be held to Canadian law. [I am not a legal scholar, and certainly not a Canadian legal scholar, but this decision would seem to set a bad precedent. They do have precedent in Canada right? I mean who knows what kind of outside entity can come in and shirk Canadian law.] The lawsuit, according to VANOC, which seems a little resentful for being involved in this at all, cost the organization "six figures." First, if they were so resentful, they should have put more pressure on the IOC to do the right thing, to take responsibility, etc. But it seems the IOC gets to be immune to all these things. They must believe that because they are in Switzerland, they are neutral. Second, how much exactly...

I have to say that I, despite my deeply entrenched cynicism, am surprised at just how viral this whole Elizabeth Lambert thing went. It's everywhere I turn. I feel--and this is just a feeling not backed up at all by evidence--that this situation has gotten more attention than Serena Williams's outburst at the Open. I could be wrong. I haven't sat down to chart the You Tube hits or count the articles, editorials, or blog posts but there just seems to be something about this story that makes it keep going and going and going. I don't think I have anything else to say about it myself but here's some of what others have been saying: From Christine Brennan, a column on how coaching factors into this situation. Coaching--or lack thereof--has been listed as one of the incredulities in this case. Brennan got the interview with Kit Vela, the UNM head coach who was questioned for her decision to keep Lambert on the field despite her actions. But Vela hadn't seen any of i...

In my ongoing effort to offer some support for the women (and men) who continue to fight for women's ski jumping in the Vancouver Olympics (less than 100 days away now) I direct you to this article from the Christian Science Monitor . It is quite thorough and lays out all the issues to date and going forward.

So I am forgoing a third post in three days about the Lambert-goes-viral situation to recount a recent moment of irk I had when reading Tennis magazine. It's been a while since I complained about Tennis so I was due. Said complaint comes from the US Open round-up which highlighted the top 5 stories of the 2009 tournament. And no, this post is not going to be about Serena Williams--directly anyway. Number 4 on the list is titled "The men can serve. The women? Not so much." Immediate grrr moment but I read on to discover that the theory behind this fact is that the women have more power due to improvements in equipment (like the men) and so they can achieve unprecedented pace (also like the men) but for some reason cannot generate the same amount of spin. No attempt at an explanation for this alleged fact. Also the new power racquets help the returner--again an effect experienced by both men and women. But apparently this switch makes has a greater psychological effect on t...

I was going to add a postscript to "10 lesbians walk into a bar" (I have to say I am just dying to see how that phrase affects my hits) based on the recent Graham Hays (of ESPN online) column about Elizabeth Lambert's actions last weekend. But I thought it was a good enough piece to stand alone as a post. (And possibly because I am feeling a little lazy this morning.) Hays is right on when he writes: This is how it so often goes for women's sports....Roll tape, ignore the context and let the criticism and mocking commence. And he is soooo right--unfortunately--that this conference playoff game will get far more attention from the likes of ESPN and other sports networks than the actual NCAA championship game. And he is right that the outrage reflects the belief that women's sports remain an inferior and less physical version of men's sports. [Please don't take away my feminist blogger's license for all this agreeing with a mainstream source.] But what w...

...and naturally frivolity ensues. (You thought I was going to make a joke, right? Nope; just getting your attention.) And then when we see the sports network covering women's soccer on the plasma televisions scattered around the bar, our heads snap up eagerly. Because we like women's soccer and we like it when sports shows cover it. And then we see the coverage is of University of New Mexico player Elizabeth Lambert and the egregious fouls she committed in a recent game against BYU. And we sigh because this is, after all, a group of critical, feminist sport scholars at a conference on sport and sociology. But because we have been thinking and critiquing for days, and because the segment ends quickly, we go back to our fun and games. Alas here I am back in the real world and these are things I think about. Said conference was in Canada, but I imagine American media covered this story as well complete with the repeated shots of Lambert's actions in which she 1) elbowed a pla...

I so appreciate the growing number of voices in the blogosphere talking about sport and gender. It means that when I just cannot muster enough snark to address the latest issue, there are others who will. So I have indeed read about the latest investigation by the US Civil Rights Commission into discrimination against female applicants to liberal arts colleges which are trying to prevent an even larger skewing of the proportion of female and male undergraduates. That some colleges are trying to increase their male students is not news. It has been known for a little while now. The Civil Rights Commission is investigating. But as some of my colleagues have pointed out, one of the strategies for male recruitment entails adding sports teams for men. But adding men's teams would likely result in adding women's teams in order to retain or achieve Title IX compliance. So now we have to talk about--as if we ever really stop!--whether Title IX should be altered. All in order to get mor...