Unwomanly sports

Photo from Hilary Knight's July 19 tweet announcing her Reddit AMA ("Ask Me Anything")

While idly perusing twitter a couple of days ago, I saw that professional hockey player (Boston Pride) and U.S. National Team star Hilary Knight had taken part in a Reddit AMA. Someone I follow on twitter reported that, during the session, she'd been asked why she chose hockey over figure skating.

Implicit in the question, of course, is the assumption that, rather than hockey, figure skating is the skating sport that girls and women would/should naturally pursue. You'd have to be a strange woman indeed to choose hockey over figure skating. Not only strange, but also, quite possibly, difficult, contrary, subversive - even unwomanly (!!!).

The question also brings to my mind some of that Title IX-derived "separate but equal" rubbish. (I hate to bash Title IX, which has obviously been important and beneficial, but it does have its downsides.) For example, during the fall season in high school we have football for the boys, so we need a sport for the girls. Let's say ... volleyball? That works -- the boys won't need the gym because they'll be out on the football field. Okay, volleyball it is. But here's the thing, and it's nothing against volleyball, but let's face it: playing volleyball is unlikely to satisfy a girl who really wants to play football. Likewise, playing football isn't going to satisfy the boy who really wants to play volleyball. And figure skating, my friends -- as amazingly beautiful and athletic as it is -- is unlikely to satisfy the person of any gender who really wants to play hockey.

I often get the same question that Knight got. I'll be at the rink, lacing up my hockey skates, and someone will ask, out of the clear blue sky, "why aren't you doing figure skating?" Often it's one of the very first things someone will say to me.

I always answer nicely, but honestly, people! It's 2017! Can't we move past this ridiculous stereotyping, which only serves to keep people trapped in little boxes and make them feel bad or embarrassed for who they are?

(And in case you're wondering, when they asked Hilary Knight why she chose hockey over figure skating she said, "my choice was between skiing and hockey.")

When Girls Became Lions

I grew up female, a teenager in the late '70s and '80s. Now my daughter is as old as I was then. I'm always telling her how different things are for her than they were for me. I know it must get tiresome, maybe even burdensome, for her to hear, but I think it's important.

It's actually not that easy to wrap your head around. The deep, pervasive sexism that kept parents and teachers from encouraging girls to play sports seems so incredibly stupid in retrospect, that it's hard even for me, who lived through it, to believe. But that is the way it was.

When I was my daughter's age, there was a nominal acceptance of the fact that, theoretically, girls had the right to equal opportunities in sports. But the fact is, girls playing sports was not, at that time, a thing. Almost no girls played anything--not in my community and socio-economic category, anyhow. And no one seemed to think it was a problem. I loved watching Tatum O'Neal in the original Bad News Bears (1976)--if you haven't seen it, you should; it's a highly entertaining portrayal of how things were back in those Dark Ages--but it certainly did not precipitate a rush to get girls into Little League.

I resisted reading this novel, by Valerie J. Gin and Jo Kadlecek, because it had an "agenda." But it was interesting and far exceeded  my expectations. A good read and one that tells an important story.

When Girls Became Lions (2015) tells part of the story of how we got from there to here. Set in 1983-4, in a small Ohio town, the novel is a fictionalized account of what happens when, more than a decade after the passage of Title IX, a public high school is threatened with the withdrawal of athletic funding unless it forms a girls soccer team--something its athletic director has resisted for years. It's also the story of how, a generation later, the new coach of the girls soccer team uncovers that original team's story--one that had been purposely suppressed because, well, who cares? They're girls.

Aside from being a compelling read, When Girls Became Lions documents an important piece of women's history, the history of our struggle to get our fair share of our communities' financial and, equally important, its emotional resources.

Every once in a while it's necessary to stop and reflect on what ties us together, as female human beings, across generations. And in my case, to be grateful to those women and men who stepped up so that my daughter can enjoy opportunities that I couldn't.