Just read a great article over at Bully Bloggers about Caster Semenya, the South African runner who recently underwent gender testing after she won a gold medal in Berlin. Incidentally, she also recently underwent a makeover, presumably with the purpose of quelling the panic that ensued around having a gender-ambiguous athletic hero. It’s disturbing on many levels, and the article’s author, Tavia Nyong’o, does a great job of tying in historical ideas of race and gender and how they play into what seems to be a good old-fashioned gender panic in the media, both for those who accuse and mock the runner and those who defend her. “If ever a case called for an intersectional analysis that included queer and trans perspectives, as well as anti-racist and anti-imperialist ones, this is it,” she writes.

Interestingly, many forums seem to agree that Semenya must feel “humiliated” (see link above), as much as at the gender testing as at the makeover, which makes her look like a “normal” teenage girl (whatever that means). Although I absolutely agree that no one should be subjected to gender oppression in the form of forced or coerced adoption of gender norms, it strikes me as odd that these media outlets tie “feminine” to “humiliating” so easily, while simultaneously continuing to push the same old agenda of representing attractive femininity as slim, delicate, long-haired and white. And preferably in a bikini. The cries of “she’s beautiful just the way she is!” seem a weeeee bit forced. In any case, I do recommend Nyong’o’s article for an interesting and challenging (if somewhat gender-studies-lingo-heavy) read.

Semenya in action

Did someone say “gender is fluid”?

The Rugged Riders, a female skateboard/snowboard crew, are holding their annual all-girl freestyle snowboarding clinic and contest in several cities over the next few weeks. It’s a great chance for women at all levels of skill in snowboarding to practice, learn, and meet fellow enthuiasts. For more details and to register, go to the Rugged Riders website.

I profiled a related group of female skateboarders, the Skirtboarders, in a past issue of Shameless, so if you want to read more about these groundbreaking ladies, check it out here.

You can also read a good article about the formation of Rugged Riders here, in this article in the Montreal Mirror. Here’s a choice quote to get you started:

“It’s absolutely ridiculous,” scoffs Butler, a quick-witted 23-year-old Concordia business student with a decade of boarding behind her. “Women make up for at least half the retail snowboard market but the major companies still aren’t investing back into the community through sponsorships for girls. But this is going to change. The woman’s snowboarding scene is about to explode and Rugged Riders is the bomb. We’re doing all we can to encourage girls to get involved and basically, to stand up for themselves. Girls deserve a place too.”

But yet she can! Eri Yoshida, 16-year-old pitching wunderkind, has been drafted into an independent Japanese baseball team, the Kobe 9 Cruise. Her recruitment makes it the first of its kind in Japan’s recent history (there was a professional league over 50 years ago).

As you can see in the video, not only is she excited (“Sugoi! Bikurishimashita!” = “This is awesome! I’m so surprised!”), she’s very thankful. And while the normalcy of her being a baseball star in chugakusei (junior high school, hence the uniform) isn’t really discussed in the media attention, her positioning in a professional baseball league is a big deal not only for Japan, but for Western perceptions of Japanese women in sport and other non-traditional roles.

I’m excited to watch Eri-chan take on the world of Japanese pro baseball and am curious to see how our perceptions of women’s rights and opportunities across the Pacific pond play out in the media. Not only is she the first woman to play in this league, but this will be the first time she actually gets to play competitively with men. It’s also the first time she’ll have to deal with scrutiny she probably never expected, because it seems that some people think she was recruited for publicity, rather than her skill.

I think Parkour is awesome. I loved watching it at the beginning of Casino Royale, thought Jump London and Jump Britain were great, and I’m looking forward to simu-playing it in Mirror’s Edge.

Maybe one of these days I’ll try running up a wall. Until then, I’ll be inspired by these women of parkour who talk plainly about what it’s like to be a woman in this sport — like the logistics of the kong vault, which reminded me of my own struggles with backwards breakfalls. Damned breakfalls.

The article is accompanied by a great video.

As part of the launch of my latest book, Eye Weekly is running a contest where you could win 20 free boxing lessons generously donated by our friends at the fantastic Toronto Newsgirls Boxing Club. Enter today at eyeweekly.com.

A League of Their Own is one of my all-time favourite movies. I relished every moment of it, from women kicking ass in baseball, to the sultry Madonna pushing the envelope in sports (something I could always personally relate to!), to the oh so strong and beautiful Geena Davis who just kept carrying it on her own way as the best damn player in the league.

On my way back from the United States this time around I couldn’t pull the all-nighter drive I usually do so I can have the next full day to work, so around 2:45am my sagging eyes looked for somewhere to pull over and came upon the exit off 49 South in Wisconsin for Racine.

Racine??!! As in, the Racine Belles from A League of Their Own?!

Yup, it was indeed, so if I was going to pick any random town in the good ole US of A to rest up for a few hours, it might as well be this one!

Racine was part of several midwest towns who formed the original All American Girls Baseball League, which also included the Kenosha Comets, the Rockford Peaches, and the South Bend Blue Sox. The organization formed in 1943 to keep the sport of baseball going when the men went away to war.

I always liked girls playing baseball better anyways.

Christie Blatchford has an interesting piece in today’s Globe and Mail about the tendency for female athletes to appear in magazines, and sometimes on the cover, nekked. Or at least, naked but for a carefully placed volleyball.

(more inside…)

My childhood hero weeping

A couple of British media sources have been running articles lately related to masculinity. One of them is from the BBC and is a list of 10 things that make men weep in public. I’ve been interested in this for years. I am so curious about how it is often the most macho of public figures that are unpunished for crying.

For example, professional athletes are often seen crying on or off the sports field. But when I do work with young men they almost always tell me it is not okay to cry in front of their peers. The only reason I can think of to explain this is that the athletes have already proven their manhood in other ways so the crying doesn’t damage their image in the same way it might for a struggling teenager.

What do people think of this and the BBC list?

I just want to give a quick shout out to the friendly people at The Bike Joint for getting my bike going again when my chain jumped ship yesterday. I was stranded at a stoplight with a mere 15 minutes to get to my appointment and low and behold, The Bike Joint was there to help. Thanks for the bonus of pumping up my tires and giving me the phone number for the Community Bicycle Network so I can learn how to do all of these things myself and not feel so helpless.

Last year Catherine wrote a piece on the Community Bicycle Network and most notably, Wenches with Wrenches - “an ongoing program of CBN volunteers who host bicycle repair workshops run by and for women in downtown Toronto. The idea has been to make basic bicycle repair skills accessible to women in the hope that participants will then share their knowledge and their confidence with others in the community.” Registration is now open for September 2008 classes.

The skill set that WWW offers would have come in handy yesterday, but at least I had the very friendly and helpful folks at The Bike Joint to save the day. If you need a tune-up, brake change or a gear adjust, I highly recommend them.