246 Comments

There's a term that was in the vernacular back in the early days of feminism: Male Chauvinist Pig. Seems to me as though that label applies pretty aptly to the decision makers for the VCA football team, never mind a few others I'm sure we all could think of, given a minute or two.

The girls on the opposing teams doubtless understand the nature of the game they have chosen to involve themselves in, and they have certainly trained themselves for it. In addition, their teammates work with and support them, even as they do the same, I am certain. Meanwhile, the VCA wants to live in the age of Father Knows Best and Ozzie and Harriet, and are either unable or unwilling to extricate themselves from those bygone sensibilities.

It might just be time for that particular conference to tell the VCA that, until their attitude changes, they will no longer be welcome to compete, FULL STOP. Might just wake 'em up.

Expand full comment

The school is training all their boys to be male chauvinist pigs. The whole part about training boys to rigorously admire (this phrasing is problematic) and value women as precious makes them separate and inferior to men, creating chauvinism.

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Oct 6, 2023
Comment removed
Expand full comment

I hear that, and what I think is: these are scared little children who 1) cannot deal appropriately with adult situations and resultingly 2) can't teach the children under their tutelage how to deal with them, either. As a result, the kids going to that school will wind up being hamstrung in social situations, once they're out in the real world.

And it seems to me as though we see a whole lot of that right now with them and those like them.

Expand full comment

I'd love to learn how these administrators can possibly think they're training boys to deal with the real world. Boys/men who are terrified that women (aka "weaker vessels") might outperform them in any given context aren't likely to flourish in any company this side of Chick-Fil-A or Hobby Lobby. There can't possibly be enough jobs with christian companies to accommodate all the christian males in the world. These kids in VCA (sounds like a video format, no?), whether male or female, are being set up to fail, and that isn't education, not by any definition I've ever heard.

Expand full comment

When have fundamentalists ever been interested in education?

Expand full comment

When it accidentally got on their children. They know it sometimes proves extremely difficult to scrub out.

Expand full comment

That's why they have to beat it out.

Expand full comment

He added that they train their boys to “rigorously to admire and value women as precious and worthy of respect.”

_________

No, you don't. You might intend to do that. But what you're really teaching your boys is that girls are the Other. That girls are objects to be feared and prized. They can't be touched in any way because doing so might make you impure, so you associate them in the minds of the boys with both sex and sin. You don't emphasize their individuality. You don't emphasize their qualities. You just emphasize that they are objects of forbidden lust to be avoided or feared or desired like the forbidden fruit.

You churn out generation after generation of young men who objectify women and never truly see them as equal persons deserving of respect for their personhood and abilities.

I know this because it's taken me several years of my life to try to deprogram myself from the toxic teachings people like you passed on to me to see women first as equal individuals and not as objects of desire to be "cherished", used, and put on a shelf by their male "owners".

Expand full comment

In their own way, they're objectifying women.

Expand full comment

IIRC, I first heard of that in a Piers Anthony novel.

Expand full comment

Ashamed to say I've never read one of his.

Expand full comment

The Incarnations of Immortality was pretty good. An archangel was trying to run the universe because God was too busy contemplating his own greatness. Lucifer was actually half-way decent person.

Xanth got repetitive after about the 10th book. (Seriously, some scenes seemed like he'd done search and replace on earlier scenes)

The first trilogy of the apprentice adept series was pretty good, but it went downhill from there and the seventh book just completely jumped the shark.

I'm fond of one of his few singletons and significantly older novels, 'Macroscope'

In short, he has some interesting ideas, but then gets greedy and tries to take them too far.

Expand full comment

I've (possibly too often) stated my opinions on him and his books. I picked up a few of his older ones at a sale over the summer, but haven't got to them yet. I did enjoy the first couple of the Geodyssey series, I don't know if they'd hold up. I don't think our library has anything of his other than Xanth.

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Oct 6, 2023
Comment removed
Expand full comment

Use an ad blocker.

Expand full comment

Sorry 'bout that.

Expand full comment

They're being taught to value and admire women, all right--and to be terrified that women might outperform them. I suppose it makes sense, given their weird, medieval world view: 'If we permit women to compete against us, we run the risk of shattering the hogwash about them being merely our "helpmates," the "weaker vessels," the "daughters of that foul temptress, Eve." We must never permit that possibility, no matter how slim the chance the silly females might best us at anything. By the same token, LGBT people must be denied education or jobs lest they do better than us. And the same goes for those inferior Negro types, too. No chance for any of them to compete.' In sort, gotta preserve the tribal myths at all costs.

""

Expand full comment

I can't believe that I'm going to write this sentence for the third time today, and I am only on my 1st cup of coffee

What delicate flowers both HETEROSEXUALITY and MASCULINITY are. so very, very delicate, that they must be preserved as in crystal but only the butchest kind of crystal. There are so many waving flags here, screaming LOOK AT ME!

Women can't play sports with the boys. The boys might be tempted, they might even get erections, or worse, if they are not kept strictly separated from the girls. Got to save those precious masculine bodily fluids. Women will drain them right out of you, leaving you, as a man, weak and, there we say it, feminized.

Women can't play sports with the boys. That's not respectful towards women. But that's not really what's going on, is it? The team with the women in it might win, and what does that say about the manhood of the boys? Not so manny and not so hoody after all, is it?

But then, there is all of the fuss that the Christian fright is making about the occasional transgender man playing on the women'steam. THEY HAVE AN UNFAIR ADVANTAGE, or so goes the whining. But wait, there's more! FOOTBALL IS A VIOLENT GAME! and we can't have our girls exposed to violence, though it is perfectly fine to expose the boys to it, especially boys that are fervent members of the church of God who is peace and love, the Lamb of God, meek and mild, blah blah blah blah blah. Why are these good boys engaged in violence? They're not defending the homestead against the barbarians, are they? They are playing a goddamn game.

Although I was an athlete in high school in college, and a coach for many years, of all the games we had to play, football was the least attractive to me. Pointless violence and posturing, and for the bulk of the players, no great skill set involved except to be either a hammer or to be a nail. I was a wrestler, and believe it or not, 50 years ago, we were having the same debate about whether the girls could wrestle, and whether it was OK for them to wrestle against the boys. As a gay man, I was often asked if wrestling was sexually stimulating to me. once in a great while, there was a boy I really wanted to wrestle for the obvious reasons. But I always answered that question with what was really the truth: if you have time to think about sex while you're wrestling, you have time to lose. I didn't like losing.

If the so-called Christians are so afraid of sex, women, and losing precious bodily fluids, then they should form their own league. The rest of the team should not have to bend to their misogyny, or their idiotic faith's rules

Expand full comment

"we can't have our girls exposed to violence,"

While demanding that women stay in abusive marriages.

Expand full comment

Yeah, they're fine with exposure. It's the successfully fighting back they can't have their girls doing. Thus, can't let them practice anything related to that.

Expand full comment

When I was into karate in the 70s, there weren't enough women to have their own category so we sparred with men. I have a whole box of trophies that suggest women can compete and win. Them boys, they don't like that.

Expand full comment

As I said, masculinity is a terribly delicate flower.

Expand full comment

Yeah, but those men you defeated weren't good christian men. Any bets that's what the christers would tell you?

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Oct 6, 2023
Comment removed
Expand full comment

Considering Paul's history, there's reasonably good odds he'd been rejected more than once; of course I can't really prove that, I'm just trying to point out that there's some question about his motivations when it comes to the subject of women. Even when I was a Christian, I had questions about how Paul's teachings didn't always seem to work with Jesus's. Paul's thinking in this case seems to be that marriage means always having someone to go to for intercourse, and that tells me he really wasn't up on the concept of consent.

People who are 'too weak to control themselves' probably should take the matter into their own hands, so to speak. Biblical advice on this subject always seems to go from bad to worse, so I can't recommend it to anyone.

Expand full comment

Was there any advice on the subject in the Bible? I don't think the story of Onan counts. He was having sex under false pretenses. I call that rape. And even in YHWH's twisted view of family he's dishonoring his family and his brother. I don't think the sin was 'spilling his seed' on the ground.

Expand full comment

They are obsessed with children’s genitalia. That’s it. And they don’t cherish women. They view them as broodmares who are meant to be ruled by men. They don’t know what “cherish” means.

Expand full comment

People obsessed with children's genitalia eventually wind up on police blotters.

Expand full comment

Well, at least they should. Several just get moved around without warning anyone and die before their victims are able to speak out.

Expand full comment

Or the go become priests, pastors, and counselors. Or Republican legislators.

Expand full comment

And THEN wind up on police blotters, as the record shows.

Expand full comment

Some do, yes. And frequently.

Expand full comment

Every issue of the FFRFs "Freethought Today" contains a section called 'Black Collar Crime.' A huge portion of it concerns the kiddie fiddlers of faith who get arrested, tried and convicted.

Expand full comment

It’s a constant. Youth pastors and priests are a reliable demographic for child abusers and pedophiles.

Expand full comment

Or in the GOP caucus in the House.

Expand full comment

I'm going to guess I'm not the only that hears 'separate but equal' when the superintendent says 'rigorously to admire and value women as precious and worthy of respect.'

Mr. Mikkelson: you can't respect women then say that the girls aren't allowed to play. That's not equal treatment, and it's obvious to most everyone else. Miss Reed and Miss Aguilar undoubtedly worked very hard to develop the skills to play, and now you're pretending they need protection from playing because they're female rather than honoring the work they put in to get there. That's not respect, it's condescension, and while it's exactly the sort of doublespeak I expect out of Christians these days, that does not make it acceptable on any level. It makes it clear that you expect women to be treated as some sort of more valuable property still rather than people who are perfectly capable of making their own decisions. In other phrasing, you're treating women as objects or pets to be controlled, not people who deserve respect; and no matter how you phrase it you deserve to be called out for that. You may not see it that way, but my response to that is that you have a blind spot your religion has been endorsing for at least two thousand years now, you don't get immunity from that. Respecting women means respecting their choices in life, not pretending to do what you think is best for them because you interpret it as 'respectful' in some way.

Expand full comment

...and every time I hear "𝘴𝘦𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘦𝘲𝘶𝘢𝘭," the next thought which immediately comes to mind goes: "𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘦𝘲𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘴."

Expand full comment

I think of Jim Crow laws: Always separate, never equal.

Expand full comment

I'd say they don't understand respect in any way. They think respect for a leader is automatic and unquestioned obedience.

Expand full comment

That's because, to them, 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘵 is not a mutual, conditional agreement based on 𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘥 trust and admiration, but rather a permanent, one-way 𝘰𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 imposed by one's unalterable place within a hierarchy.

Expand full comment

““In our handbook, one of our clearly defined boundaries is, ‘There is to be no physical contact between boys and girls at Valley Christian Academy.'””

Why? Is it because sex?

”He added that they train their boys to “rigorously to admire and value women as precious and worthy of respect.””

Things are precious, people are not. If you have to train boys to value women in ways that are different from how they value men, then you are not treating women with respect, or admiration, or value. This is not healthy and oceans of women’s blood have been spilled over this way of thinking.

““Football is a violent game, and we understand the value of such in training our young men within the boundaries of an organized sport,” [lead pastor and school superintendent for VCA Joel] Mikkelson wrote.”

What, pray tell, is the value of this violent training in men? What is it that is more valuable to young men that young women couldn’t gain from it? Why is a violent sport that has caused a great deal of harm to the players themselves and the community surrounding it so important? Surely we can find a more effective process to teach the values football supposedly imbues these children, like teamwork, determination, discipline, and responsibility. One that doesn’t cause brain damage.

““However, because of the nature of its contact, we will not play a team that has a female as part of its football team.”“

Is it that you equate violence with sex? I mean, Christians have always been prudish about sex but quite open and free with violence. The censors in our media rarely restrict violent imagery but have aneurisms over the slightest inference of anything that could be construed as sex. And if it is anything outside the cis-het bubble all bets are off.

I notice, and not for the first time, nor do I think I’m unique in noticing it, that Christians are far more focused on approving acts of violence (yesterday’s guest star is a prime example) than the love they claim their god embodies. To them sex is violence and violence is required.

FWIW not all Christians and blah blah blah. Sure some are focused on caring but when the religion condemns folks for who they love and celebrated folks who are violent, ya gotta wonder if the whole thing is rotten.

Expand full comment

"you have to train boys to value women in ways that are different from how they value men, then you are not treating women with respect, or admiration, or value."

Incredibly bang on. I wish I could give you a few more up votes.

Expand full comment

If women ever figure out they can kick male ass, those boys will never get it up again. So they try to keep women from competing with them, because there's a chance the player with a swinging dick might lose.

Expand full comment

Precisely my point above. The boys might lose.

Expand full comment

And that would emasculate the coaches.

Expand full comment

If it's swinging during football, you're doing something wrong.

Expand full comment

Though, admittedly, it would make the game more interesting to watch.

Expand full comment

Personally, I don't get it. I find athleticism and athletic capability sexy. Though now that I'm older and fatter, I'm really hoping women don't lol.

Expand full comment

Yeah the justified in 'practice for violence' thing is really odd. But it makes sexist sense: humans need practice in teamwork, getting along, and impulse control. Property doesn't.

Expand full comment

To quote Florence King: "Any job not specifically requiring a penis or a vagina should be open to anyone." That being said, I do not think girls or boys should be playing American Football at all until the game is dramatically revamped so that it becomes a non-contact sport! This is not because I don't want kids of either sex touching each other - nonviolently - but because of the risk of injury. Besides all the injuries below the neck, the risk of serious and lasting brain injury (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy) is unacceptable.

Expand full comment

That's the real argument. Should 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 be playing football as long as it's a contact sport?

Expand full comment

A friend of mine in high school - a star quarterback who could play any sport well - broke his femur in a game - a la Joe Theisman - and it ended his HS sports career. I don't want kids or anyone heading the ball in Soccer either!

Expand full comment

Theisman didn't break his femur.

Expand full comment

No, he broke Washington's fanbase's heart.

Expand full comment

At least Washington had Jay Schroeder. The Jets have ...um. Who do the Jets have???

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Oct 6, 2023
Comment removed
Expand full comment

Those are the cute little monkey-ish things from Madagascar, right?

Expand full comment

The males are hemurs and the females are shemurs. And let’s not tell the Christians about the zhimurs.

Expand full comment

You are right - I just remember the audible crack when it happened. But, the point was it ended his career.

Expand full comment

My grandson plays lacrosse. It's a contact sport, but with a fraction of the injuries of football. Especially head injuries.

Expand full comment

AIUI full body tackles, including lots of head-to-shoulder contact, are not part of lacrosse. Contact sports where crashing together is a 'necessary evil' rather than a glorified part of the game should generally be less injurious.

But it may also have some to do with 'where the big people go.' In the US, most of our 6'+,, hugely muscled, 280 pound+ athletes become football players. Those bodies crash together, we see many injuries. If those same bodies were crashing together in a different sport, we'd see more injuries in that sport instead.

Expand full comment

American Football is not a contact sport, its a collision sport.

Any sport can be dangerous. When I was a substitute teacher, I pushed a girl around in a wheelchair. She had been in a cheerleading accident.

Exercise is inherently dangerous. So is the lack of exercise. Not exercising takes longer to kill you. Its all in where you set the bar.

Expand full comment

Equestrian sports - equal opportunity for men and women to get killed or injured by a thousand pound plus animal falling on you or flinging you to the ground.

Expand full comment

There is one job I can think of that I don't think women should do. It's not that I think they can't do it; I just think they shouldn't.

Expand full comment

Pissing while standing?

Expand full comment

We can do that, I learned from using outhouses at the lake. It comes out the back, like mares which is where I learned it from.

Expand full comment

We can. Doesn’t mean we should.

Expand full comment

Um, if you've ever used a fishing lake outhouse, YOU BETTER! LOL, I pee normally at home. Like yanno, sitting down and stuff. But some of them outhouses, you sure the hell don't wanna sit down there. My friend got bit on her junk by a rooster that fell into the poop hole at a fishing lake outhouse. We hauled that nasty chicken out of the pit but I could not stop laughing.

Expand full comment

Outhouses, port-o-potties, busy women’s restrooms. Don’t touch the seats. I think of it as squatting rather than standing though.

Expand full comment

There is an accessory we can use to do that. It can be buy online.

Expand full comment

Have you been reanimated enough to get your own room or go home? 🤞

Expand full comment

People get paid to do that?

Expand full comment

Russian prostitutes?

Expand full comment

If you're feeling brave (and incognito) google it and I'm sure you'll find several people getting paid for it.

Expand full comment

I don't think men should be doing it either. I really don't understand the obsession with watching other people play a game. The point of any game is to play.

Expand full comment

I've always been baffled by that, too. In my mind, it's like watching other people eat--what the hell could you possibly get out of it?

Expand full comment

Over five hours, and not one of you took the bait. I am disappointed in all a y'all.

The job I think women shouldn't do is, *drum roll* 𝐦𝐞𝐧'𝐬 𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐦 𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐭.

https://youtu.be/9CdVTCDdEwI

I'll show myself out.

Expand full comment

That's a job? I think most guys over the age of three have figured out how to hold it themselves.

Expand full comment

Some of us prefer a woman's touch.

Expand full comment

I think that’s a job no one needs to do.

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Oct 6, 2023
Comment removed
Expand full comment

Then how would some guys get laid? Askin' for a friend.

Expand full comment

*prepares to take notes*

Expand full comment

Yet another group of adults uncertain of how to interact with a teenager without knowing what's between their legs.

If your religion mandates that, it might be a bad thing.

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Oct 6, 2023
Comment removed
Expand full comment

...and this from someone with that username, yet!

Expand full comment

Not only should every school VCA plays against roster girls on the football team, they should make sure every cheerleading squad has boys.

The fact that girls can demonstrably compete against boys in such a male dominated sport shows how ridiculous the arguments against trans girls in girls sports is. Why are we continuing to segregate most sports now anyway?

Expand full comment

I really think we should segregate sports by skill level. Most men would be hard pressed to compete against Rhonda Rousey.

Expand full comment

Strictly by skill level is hard, because to become the best you have to beat the best, which means you need to be able to compete against the best. But you can certainly have 'entry level' competitions or a couple broad tiers like that. Height and weight might be better. Many sports already use it, it's objective, and it cuts down on the 'big bodies injuring smaller bodies due to sheer mass differennce' issue.

Expand full comment

Height and weight were used for track and field when I was in middle school.

Expand full comment

Re-inventing the wheel?

https://www.flocheer.com/articles/5067734-4-us-presidents-you-didnt-know-were-cheerleaders

I only knew about one before finding this.

Expand full comment

"It’s so on-point for a conservative Christian school to act like a contact sport is equivalent to something sexual."

This is the same bunch of people who will excuse rape and likely think society went downhill the day rape within a marriage became illegal. They can't think in terms of anything except controlling the world through violence in all its forms.

Expand full comment

"This is the same bunch of people who will excuse rape"

Especially if committed by school athletes.

Expand full comment

If you're a good athlete, they won't hold you accountable for anything short of murder, and I'm not sure they would then.

Expand full comment

*cough*OJ*cough*

Expand full comment

🎵Well did you know when you were famous you could kill your wife

And there's no such thing as 25 to life

As long as you've got the cash, to pay for Cochran🎵

Expand full comment

In Norway, martial rape IS illegal and has been for some years. What surprised me then is that it wasn't already. It is possible Norway went downhill since then, but it hasn't been very well known. Unless that the fact that our former prime minister was female and her husband used her inside information while trading stocks. Same for our foreign minister. https://apnews.com/article/norway-solberg-prime-minister-foreign-huitfeldt-husband-6c4359db2bdd2a16f6f46bc7c49645b8

Expand full comment

Knowing conservative culture, high school football and sports in general are probably a big deal at CVA. Just look at Liberty University. They have been dumping millions into their football program to make it respectable. Academically, they will never compete with an actually university, but if they have a good football team they can feel like a good university without being a good university. The same is probably true for VCA. There is no way that they are good academically. So, I say for all boys team sports, every team playing CVA should have a least 1 girl. Let's see what the good book says after they go 0-5.

I would say do the same for the girls' sports, but what are the chances that VCA gives two shits about the girls sports. I am just picturing the girls basketball time playing in full length Victorian dresses behind a screen so that the men in the audience can't leer at their elbows. Also they wouldn't be allowed to touch the basketballs. Balls are for boys as the good lord intended.

Expand full comment

Back in my day, girl basketball players were limited to two dribbles. Boys could dribble as much as they wanted.

Expand full comment

They should get a urethral culture then, like we used to do back in the 70s

Expand full comment

Don't these girls know they're supposed to be modestly dressed cheerleaders, who open each game with a prayer? /S Conservative Christians do love their stereotypes, and do their best to hammer everyone into those molds whether they fit or not.

Expand full comment

It would be amusing to see cheerleaders in a burka.

Expand full comment

' “In our handbook, one of our clearly defined boundaries is, ‘There is to be no physical contact between boys and girls at Valley Christian Academy.'” '

-- Because girls are icky?!

'He added that they train their boys to “rigorously to admire and value women as precious and worthy of respect.” '

-- So long as they keep their place!

' “Football is a violent game, and we understand the value of such in training our young men within the boundaries of an organized sport,” ... Mikkelson wrote. “However, because of the nature of its contact, we will not play a team that has a female as part of its football team.” '

-- Because girls are all petite little things and don't know what they're doing!

Frankly, I know middle school students with better reasoning skills! - KC

Expand full comment

"Football is a violent game."

Why are they whining? The Christian book and religion love violence against women.

Expand full comment

So what happens if a boy and a girl accidentally make contact at that school? Let’s say papers are being passed forward to the front row for the teacher to collect and hands or fingers brush each other.

Expand full comment

Boys will be boys.

Girls will be sluts.

Expand full comment

But that doesn't work for me.

Girls will be girls. But I like slutty boys. Not that I was a slutty boy myself. And don't you dare say I was.

Expand full comment

The non-contact thing reminds me that I knew of a charity that sent swimming teachers to Bangladesh which is low-lying and prone to bad floods. Women swept away by the waters couldn't be rescued by any male who wasn't a family member so they drowned in higher numbers than men. In some way they trained women to deal with their voluminous clothes too whilst in the water. These stupid x-tians are nearly as bad as those islamists IMO. But I agree about head injuries, there's a few top soccer players, (yeah, I know that's different to american football) in the UK with early onset dementia now thought to be the result of heading the ball too much, and that's now banned for under 12s.

Expand full comment

Are there girls at the school? I didn't get the impression that there were, but I may be wrong.

Expand full comment

You could be correct.

Expand full comment

I finally had time to google the school. Think this it and it haz girlz.

https://www.vcalions.com/

Expand full comment

Isn't the first time I've been wrong and I doubt it'll be the last.

Expand full comment

That’s what I love about “us”. We regard being wrong as an opportunity to learn something.

Expand full comment

🤬 you! Speak for yourself.

Expand full comment

Punishing the woman, of course.

Or maybe they avoid that situation by putting the women in the back of the room. Or behind a screen. Or both. Honestly maybe it's just better if they don't go to school. There are so many modesty preserving options that Saudi and the Taliban have already come up with, the school doesn't need to reinvent the wheel!

In more seriousness, I worry less about unfair detentions and more about a girl student suffering a cardiac arrest, seizure, or other medical emergency and none of the male school employees bandaging the wound or administering CPR.

Expand full comment

Graduates of the Mike Pence School of Medicine?

Expand full comment