Women's Sports Blog

Philly Pool Denies Access To Black Children

No, really.  Elon James White tells the tale on a This Week in Blackness quickie.  It's going under 'The Body' but I'm thinking we need a 'WTF?' category. 

Your Body Is Yours

Revolutionary concept, ey, especially if you're a female athlete?  Marianne at the Rotund reminds us eloquently that no one has the right to judge another person's body: its size, its health, its suitability for any task. 

And over at the Fat Nutritionist comes this wonderful description of what I would call intuitive eating and she calls normal eating, which makes it even more clear.  It also doesn't hurt that she says almost the same thing I did about Monica Seles' conversion to body love ;) 

Bigots Hoist On Their Own Petards

First, the Nigerian national team, who spent a lot of time complaining that their opponents were using 'manly' players, are now fighting to clear a talented intersex player who identifies as female.

Then there's this piece about whether baseball players make better broadcasters, which should raise just as much ire as the totally unreasonable idea that it may be easier, as a judge, to understand certain things from a particular life perspective.  Wait, no one even questions that when we're talking about sports?  Hmmmm. 

A Friendly Reminder

[Edited; didn't intend to attribute viewpoints to other blogs  -FL]

WSB does not automatically endorse the content of the blogs to be found on our Google Reader or alongside us on Women Talk Sports.  Obviously any blog with blatantly offensive views will not be on the feed, but the women's sports blogsphere is a big place with plenty of room for disagreement.  In particular, as disability rights allies WSB supports self-determination and self-advocacy for the disabled community. 

Seles Makes Peace With Food

Lots of encouraging stuff here, as Monica Seles talks about accepting her love of food and eating what her body needs.  I have to say, though, that from this piece it doesn't sound like she had an actual eating disorder, at least no more so than most women in our society who are taught that eating is bad.  Simply 'eating for comfort' is not in itself a disorder, although if it's being used as the sole mode of dealing with issues that isn't going to be helpful in the long term.  But what most women see as binging is just the body trying to compensate for deprivation (go without sugar for a week and eat a box of doughnuts; stands to reason).  There is a binge eating disorder and it's serious but also relatively rare.  Of course I don't know all the details of Seles' history, just what the piece presents.  It also concerns me a bit that she emphasizes that the healing process led to losing weight, which certainly isn't always true and can fly in the face of the process.  In the end, sanity and self-love are the goals, and she seems to have found them.  Good for her. 

Special Olympics Calls On Us To Wipe Out 'R-Word'

Speaking of language, over 44,000 people at this site have pledged to stop using the word retard (I have trouble even typing it at this point) and its derivatives.  As Michael Berube shows in his brilliant book, Life As We Know It, whether we call someone a mongoloid or a person with Down's Syndrome actually makes a huge difference to whether that person ends up institutionalized for life or living happily with her family.  Think, also, of The Boys of Summer, an otherwise beautiful book that keeps saying things like "trying to make him as fully human as a mongoloid can be."  A lifetime of accumulating these kinds of messages led someone as smart and compassionate as our president to describe being incompetent at bowling as "like the Special Olympics or something."  Words matter. 

NBC Airs Paralympic Excerpts Over *Two Months* Late

Yesterday afternoon, in the weekend dead zone which often includes their token women's sports coverage, NBC showed an hour and a half of Paralympic highlights.  Considering that they clearly had some staff still over there during the games, you'd think they could have spared a couple of live or tape-delayed hours during the actual competition. 

Disabled Mom, Autistic Son To Take Part In The New York Marathon

This will be her fourth time through and his first.  The mother, Nadine McNeill, cannot use either her right arm or leg, so she duct-tapes her arm to her handcycle.  She will be keeping an eye on her 18-year-old autistic son, who is a sports prodigy and uses physical activities to stay calm. 

Paralympic Final Rundown

*China/Hong Kong dominated wheelchair fencing despite having not sent any women to Athens.  Evidence of what a sports machine can do or kind of creepy, you decide.  At least one American coach, Bela Karolyi, was openly lamenting the U.S. doesn't run its system like the former U.S.S.R.  Ew. 

*It is really disappointing that rugby and soccer don't have women's events.   

* Ukraine kicked ass, more so than Russia.  South Africa had a really strong (mostly white) contingent.  My favorite commentary on what has happened in that country since the end of apartheid: "We [blacks] got this nice flag, and they got all the money."   Brazil also did well, with 47 medals. 

*Building on that, my major question: why, aside from the successful Chinese, all the white people?  At least the Olympics get a nice cohort of Africans and people of African descent in track and basketball.  So-called developed nations certainly have more money to put into these programs, but the U.S. and Canada have a pretty large multiracial disability community which was all but invisible at these games. 

*The U.S. took gold in wheelchair basketball with a 50-38 win over Germany.  China and the U.S. contested both the volleyball and goalball finals, with China kicking our ass at volleyball and the U.S. taking what looks to have been a tight goalball match.  Goalball is played blindfolded, I might add, to level the playing field among the different levels of sight among the athletes.  The spectators must thus be completely quiet during play. 

*Esther Vergeer continued writing the record books with yet another gold in singles tennis.

*There are a lot more mixed events at the Paralympics.  They should really try to work at in at the Olympics. 

*The official concept of the games was "Transcendence, Integration, and Equality."  Doesn't transcendence conflit with the other two?  Could be a post in that. 

*The games closed with a huge ceremony complete with the formation of a 'letter to the future.'  I wonder what's inside. 

Un-Photo of the Day: Headless Disabled Person

This appears to be a new twist on the ubiquitous 'headless fatty' syndrome that afflicts photojournalists the world over, in which articles are illustrated by dehumanized, anonymous neck-down photos of fatness.  Sometimes it's made worse by the patronizing idea that you're somehow protecting these people from shame, as if owning your self is shameful.  Guang Niu, I know you wanted to show us the pretty stuff on the ground and yet somehow still symbolize that these are the Paralympics. But dude, not the way to go.  I saw this a bunch during the Paralympic coverage and I hope it's not becoming a new meme.