Shut all Cocks

[steepholm]

I'm glad to see that a plan to force female Olympic athletes to wear short skirts in order to "boost flagging penises audiences" has been shelved, but seriously - it's pretty unbelievable this was ever being considered.

Paisan Rangsikitpho, the American deputy president of the BFW – which has only two women on its 25-member board – denied changes were an attempt to use sex to promote the sport. "We just want them to look feminine and have a nice presentation so women will be more popular." he said. "Interest is declining. Some women compete in oversize shorts and long pants and appear baggy, almost like men."

Well, of course, looking feminine and having a nice presentation is what world-class sport is all about, isn't it? Mr Rangsikitpho can at least reflect that, even if badminton insists on remaining frumpy, bikinis are oblgatory for women in Olympic beach volleyball, with a maximum of 7cm of material at the hip. When it comes to Olympic standards, some sports are clearly more able to keep them up than others.

Meanwhile, away from the Olympics, women can still be fined for refusing to cheer the men who raped them.

Comments

[gold-alarm.livejournal.com]

penises

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

On a 180ly different note, that second link is horrifying. :(

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

Doesn't that make it a 23 member board?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

:)

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Women basketball and soccer players, at least in the US, have been wearing baggy oversize shorts as long as I've known about it. Women tennis players, on the other hand, have been flashing their underwear just as long, but there isn't anything remotely either sexually hotcha nor femininely alluring about it.

As far as the cheerleader goes, if you're required to do something you consider morally offensive on your job, you resign. That's the morally dignified course of action. Since, however unjustly, the rapist wasn't going to be dropped from the team, waiting for the school to fire you for noncompliance and then suing them over it seems like grandstanding.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I disagree about the cheerleader.

First, let's be clear, the main question isn't whether she did the right thing, but whether the school did. A lot of the commentary on this case has got derailed from that basic point. It seems to me that they let her down three times over. Strike one was allowing the guy to stay on the team - and especially when she was a cheerleader. That was obviously going to put her in an impossible situation, and why should she have to give up her sport as well as being raped, just so that her rapist can continue with his? Strike two - well, she did in fact continue to cheer the team, with him on it, and it was only when required to cheer him and him alone (when he had some free throws) that she refused. The human thing to do would have been take her aside, and say "In the circumstances it's entirely understandable - you can sit this one out." That's what any good coach and/or employer and/or human being would have done. Strike three - they then fired her.

So, the main story is the behaviour of the school. I don't know how it works in the States, but I assume schools are considered to have some kind of pastoral duty of care to their students? This one failed and got away with it - something of a pattern in the way this girl has been treated.

As for her own conduct - well, it might have been grandstanding if that refusal to cheer had been premeditated as a public exposure of her attacker, but I see no suggestion of that, and from what little I know of the psychology of rape it seems vanishingly unlikely. Suddenly, and out of the blue, she was being asked to take part in a special cheer lauding her attacker - and wouldn't, couldn't do it. And the school, which had already let her down, fired her. Of course she felt angry and humiliated and violated all over again.

If she had taken the advice of a good lawyer and thought calmly about it, she probably wouldn't have sued, because in law she had a bad case (and I don't blame the courts for reaching the conclusion they did). But I don't find it the least surprising that that was not her reaction.

[sheenaghpugh]

Personally I wouldn't at all have blamed her if she had indeed premeditated it (as she obviously did't); what better than to humiliate the bastard in public? Assuming you haven't the opportunity to maim him, that is.

But while I agree with all you say, my own sympathy is difficult to arouse for anyone who does cheerleading, because it strikes me as such a bloody demeaning thing to do in the first place.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

There is always the question of doing the right thing oneself, regardless of whether the other party has, and in fact particularly when they have not. The most important cases in manners and etiquette concern how to behave properly in response to someone else who has misbehaved, and that applies to her here.

If her error was one of etiquette, the problem she faced was of a different nature, and not, at least not directly, the school's fault. Why wasn't the basketball player prosecuted more severely than he was? Nothing I've read about this answers that. But given that he had served his legal punishment, light as it was, as the school had no policy of dismissing from the team anyone without a clean legal record, there were no grounds for kicking him off.

And as the occasion for cheering him individually was his shooting of a free throw, something that happens in basketball all the time, I cannot believe this cheer was unprecedented or unexpected. It's hard on the girl to say, "If she was that upset by cheering for him individually, she ought to have had at least a continuing twinge of concern about cheering for a team with him on it, and she'd have known he as an individual would be coming up," but even if the incident did strike her totally out of the blue, her dilemma is still the same. (And she certainly didn't sue the school in an immediate spontaneous reaction.)

Yes, it's tough on her to be evicted from the cheering she loved, but it is the job of the cheerleaders to perform the designated cheers, and if she finds she cannot do that, then her job is morally offensive to her and she should quit. That's a moral lesson that many people face, in one circumstance or another, at some point. She faced it here. It always hurts, even when the backstory is less dire.

I'm not sure what the school's pastoral duty to her would be. Counseling? Realizing beforehand, as she should also have done, that a problem was likely to arise at games, and discussing how to handle it? Yes, they should have done these things. But those were procedural, not moral, failures.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I don't see this as a matter of etiquette. It's a question of abuse, in which the school chose to be complicit.

Yes, there is something wrong with a system that allows a rapist to plea-bargain his way down to a minor crime with a light sentence. But that's a wider issue. The question for me is not whether he should have been further punished, but why she was left unprotected by those whom she should have been able to trust.

It seems obvious that the duty of care owed her by the school should have included refusing to re-admit her attacker while she was still a student. At the very least, he should have been prevented from taking part in activities that were likely to give rise to the situation that occurred (I bow to your expertise about how inevitable that was, having no interest in basketball). And if they didn't have a policy to protect vulnerable students in place, more shame them.

The course of action you say she should have taken - i.e. dignified resignation - also happens to be the one that leaves her without her role in the team, leaves her attacker secure in his, and lets the school totally off the hook. The only good thing to come out of this is that everyone now knows the school authorities are a bunch of shits who care more about basketball leagues than the welfare of their students.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Abuse?? Even leaving aside the question of whether the school could have been legally justified in refusing re-admittance (and not just denying the privilege of being on the team) of the boy who - whatever the reason for his soft punishment - had legally expiated his crime, if the girl was so traumatized by his mere presence on campus that the school owed it to her to banish him for her benefit, then she should have filed legal complaints over that first, and she definitely should have found herself morally unable to cheer for a team with him on it.

Whereas in fact it appears that she drew the distinction between cheering for the team and cheering for him personally, which suggests a much subtler and less vehement degree of pain on her part, and one definitely not needing to be solved by banishing him from campus. In that case, calling the school moral failures for failing to do that is completely disproportionate.

I'm baffled by your objection to dignified resignation. Moral acts against ordinary self-interest always involve sacrifices on the doer's part. That's what makes them noble and puts the doer on the moral high ground. Just to take one example, Robin Cook resigned because he could not support the war in Iraq. That left him without his government post, and it left the war going forward unimpeded. Not that Cook could have done anything to impede it by staying, which is why he resigned. Did he therefore do the wrong thing? No! He made a clear moral protest against the administration by doing the right thing and sacrificing his job to do it. This girl could have made her moral case against the school the same way by doing the same thing.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I don't know much about the legal framework within schools work in the States, but I'd be very surprised if they didn't have the discretion to expel a student who had sexually assaulted another student. That has nothing to do with legal expiation, and everything to do with providing a safe learning environment - which is one of their core duties.

Some of your comments about what she should have done and when she should have done it remind me of those readers who come away from Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak asking - "Why didn't Melinda just say what had happened from the get-go?" Trauma isn't like that - certainly not for everyone. You think you can cope with something, maybe, then you find you can't. Especially if you're triggered by, say, being ordered to cheer the guy who raped you. That doesn't make you a hypocrite, or a grandstander. And yes, the school should have known that much psychology - it's very basic stuff.

Even when she refused to cheer there's no reason they couldn't have shown her 0.01% the sympathy they showed him when they let him back in the school, by letting her sit out that cheer. Instead they chose to humiliate her. I call that shitty.

I don't object to dignified resignation, and if she'd taken that path I certainly wouldn't be saying she ought to have made a stand. But your comparison with Robin Cook is not a good one. The difference is one of power and access: Cook was able to make his resignation, with maximum publicity and to maximum effect, on the floor of the House of Commons. In doing so he gained himself a reputation as the conscience of the Labour Party and became a figure of huge respect. He resigned from a position of strength, and once he had done so Tony Blair had no more power over him. By contrast, if the girl had resigned from team it would have been a private matter between her and the school and the whole thing would have been hushed up. Unless, of course, she'd rung up the local TV and press and got her story splashed - but then she would likely have been vilified and booted out of school. That's the difference between being a cabinet minister and teenage rape victim.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

The school may have the discretion to expel, but it should be very cautious about exercising that discretion against a student convicted only of a misdemeanor. Once again, I do not know why he received such a light sentence.

There is nothing about this story to suggest that the girl suddenly realized she was unable to bear this boy's presence at all. What she found herself unable to do was to cheer for him personally by name. That's understandable. What I've read previously is that she had said she'd be willing to continue to cheer for the team, just not him. So I don't think the sudden increase of trauma storyline fits with the facts.

The Robin Cook comparison is still good, relatively. Cook made a national impact, but he was acting on a national stage. The girl's stage was the school, and a resignation perhaps could have made a school-wide impact by discussing her decision with her fellow cheerleaders and others. (Perhaps not: perhaps, though a cheerleader, she was unpopular and ignored; but then, principled political resignations are not always made from positions of strength either. When George Brown resigned in 1968, though he was a major figure nobody paid any attention. One takes that risk.) Once she resigned, the school would have had no more power to make her cheer this loathsome fellow. He would still have been there, yes, but Cook couldn't make the Iraq war go away either.

And if you still don't like the Cook comparison, what about Rosa Parks? She refused to move by moral principle, and was taken to jail for her trouble, something she probably knew would happen. She had no idea what would arise from her action, and she lived in a culture where racial discrimination was far more deeply embedded than rape is today even in Texas.

As for the school's lack of a previous understanding, I agree that was a failure, but it was a procedural, not a moral, failure, and if the girl was too traumatized to realize how traumatized she was, then those acting on her behalf - I presume she did not sue the school entirely on her own? and that she did not lack support or representation when facing her rapist in his legal proceedings? - should have realized this also.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

The school may have the discretion to expel, but it should be very cautious about exercising that discretion against a student convicted only of a misdemeanor.

Again, I am not suggestion expulsion as a form of extra punishment, but as a measure to ensure that his victim should not have to suffer any further unduly. His having to go to another nearby school might be an inconvenience, but compared to making his victim have to rub shoulders with him every day, I'd say it's obviously the lesser of the two evils the school had to choose between. (Whether the fact that he is a talented basketball player had any bearing on the choice they made, who knows?)

It's not to do with a sudden increase in trauma. The trauma is already there. It's to do with putting her unnecessarily in a position where she was exposed to that trauma in the rawest, most in-your-face way - and it's hard to imagine anything more "in your face" than being ordered to cheer your attacker.

For Robin Cook I have much admiration, but if he had been confined to complaining to his fellow MPs in the Commons bar I don't think he would be remembered in the way he is. That seems a fair comparison with your suggestion that the girl could have told her fellow cheer leaders. Also, although I believe his stand was principled, he was politician enough to know that it made him the potential centre of an anti-Blair faction when Iraq went wrong - a calculation that might well have paid off had he not died.

George Brown resigned for a number of reasons, including being drunk a good deal of the time. Even so, the minute he lost his seat at the subsequent election he was given a seat in the Lords, where he stayed with total job security until his death. I won't shed too many tears for George Brown.

I'm not sure how the Rosa Parks comparison works. Presumably the equivalent of resigning in her case would be to say - "I'll get off the bus, but you won't ever see me on your transit system again!" If she had done that, we wouldn't have heard of her. So I can only guess you're saying that her refusal to move, and the jail term that followed, were a bit like this rape victim's refusal to resign, and the $45,000 fine that's followed that. Well, I'm not sure I'd have presumed to make that comparison, knowing nothing of the latter's character being this case, but it does seem a more comparable analogy.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

"being this case" --> "beyond this case"

[calimac.livejournal.com]

I've gone back over your comments, and I may have missed it, but I don't see anywhere where you said that "expulsion" means "having to go to another nearby school." In the US we would call that an involuntary transfer. Here, expulsion means being prohibited from the school authorities' jurisdiction entirely. When expelled from a public school (US terminology), the only alternatives are a private school (if you can find one that'll take you, and you can afford it), moving (possibly, and again if they'll take you and you can afford the move), or nothing.

Yes, that might (depending on circumstances) might have been a wise course of action. But given that it wasn't done, what should the girl do? That is the question.

Your comparison to the Commons bar quite misunderstands the point of talking to the cheerleaders. The idea is to spread news of one's situation and attitude to influential people and to garner support among a wider circle. Schools are hotbeds of rumor and news. Done well, you could build up quite a basis of support that way. Obviously a politician has other resources than fellow MPs, but the situations are otherwise comparable.

George Brown still had a seat in parliament after his resignation, but so did Robin Cook. They didn't resign their seats in parliament, but their posts in the government. Their aim in both cases was to influence or at least shame the government. The difference is, one succeeded in having influence and power from his outside position, and the other did not.

You've tangled up the Rosa Parks comparison sufficiently that it's beyond any effort I want to try to make to untangle it. Essentially you've taken it backwards two different ways at once.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I didn't say that expulsion meant having to go to another school because in UK usage that's implied: expulsion is from an individual school. Divided by a common language there.

But given that it wasn't done, what should the girl do? That is the question.

It's a question, but it's not the question. As I said at the top, the issue is not about holding 16-year-old rape victims to account for their reactions to being raped. It's about how the adults around her dealt (or not) with that situation.

Yes, if our rape victim were gifted with the political skills of Machiavelli or Peter Mandelson she might have been able to start a campaign that would ultimately have been more effective than the more direct route she chose to take. But this is not a moral point: she is a schoolgirl, not a politician.

And yes, both Robin Cook and George Brown were to a large extent cushioned by their position as MPs. This rape victim was not. I don't see how this makes your point. (She wasn't seeking either power or influence, of course, merely not being obliged to cheer for the guy who raped her.)

As for Rosa Parks, I can only wait for you to explain how you think I've misunderstood you as and when you feel it's worth the effort.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

She doesn't need machiavellian political skills to have avoided getting herself into a situation where she was the necessary loser. Her mistake was not in not resigning: I suggested the resignation course as her best course of action, not as the one she obviously should have taken.

This is where the Rosa Parks comparison comes in. Rosa Parks being arrested is the equivalent of the cheerleader being fired. The question is, now what? Rosa Parks did not sue over the legality of her arrest. If she had, she'd have put herself at a disadvantage and lost the suit. Instead, her supporters organized a boycott. (Which makes your statement that if she'd said "You won't ever see me on your transit system again!" then we'd never have heard of her ironic, because she did make exactly that threat, with great success.)

The cheerleader's mistake was to do the opposite: to sue over the legality of her firing. She lost, and as you acknowledge, the law could do little else. And it put her at a disadvantage because it made the story about her wanting to be a cheerleader, not about the wrong that had been done her.

Better organization and thought could have prevented this. And again, machiavellianism is not necessary. Rosa Parks and E.D. Nixon weren't machiavellian either. And the suit was not a spontaneous immediate response to an unexpected cheerleading command in the middle of a basketball game. And it was not filed by her alone without assistance. There was time to think this through, and adults to help her do it.

With any of the same sense that you expect the school administrators to have shown, she could have built up support. Surely she didn't have no supporters to begin with. They could have organized protests and boycotts against the team, or something. It's a start. This would have been easier and clearer had she resigned, but even being fired she could have been presented better, avoided further humiliation in court and the fine.

The point of observing that Brown and Cook both remained MPs is to clarify that that's not part of the comparison. The question is, what did they attempt to accomplish by resigning? Cook achieved his goal. If the girl's goal was, as you say, "merely not being obliged to cheer for the guy who raped her," she achieved that by being fired from the cheerleading squad. Now she doesn't have to cheer him, or anybody else. But I don't think that was her goal. I think she wanted a little justice here. And she could possibly have achieved it by following either Cook's course of action or Rosa Parks' course of action. Instead, what has she got? Lost court cases, a large fine, and she's still not a cheerleader and the rapist is still on the team. That's not a winning situation for her. I think she could have done better, or at least had a chance of it.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

If you're arguing, as you now appear to be, that the girl's mistakes were tactical, and that with a bit more nous she could have achieved a better outcome, then of course I agree. But, at the risk of labouring the point, her choices aren't the issue here. The situation she was put in by the school is. For, observe:

The school administrators are trained education professionals.

Rosa Parks and E. D. Nixon were both experienced civil rights campaigners who went into the bus boycott with a premeditated plan, and an excellent grasp of the likely consequences.

Robin Cook and George Brown were professional politicians, and calculated the risks they were taking in that light.

The girl here is a teenage rape victim.

Not very amazingly, she played her hand less well than the others on that list. If the school had acted as it should she shouldn't have had to play it at all. That is the point.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

If I'm going to make an analogy using people who did the right thing, they're by necessity going to be pretty idealized examples. One looks up to good examples, and tries to do one's best to emulate them.

I think I need to back up here. Resignation, when you are required to do something for your job that you consider immoral, is the proper and principled course of action for anyone in any circumstances. Teenagers no less than anyone else, and teenagers are capable of understanding this. This is why we study principled heroes. I don't believe in belittling this girl's capacity because she's a rape victim.

The fact that, with some luck and some skill, you can turn a resignation to your strategic advantage is lagniappe, an extra, and not what makes the principled course of action the right one, regardless of whether you're a skilled politician or a teenaged girl. I brought Robin Cook up to show the principle in action despite his lack of success - he didn't stop the Iraq war - not to show his success at harnassing support for his position, though he did that and, though not experienced nor professional, she might have, too. Especially with more experienced help at her side which, before she filed her suit, she had.

So when the principal told the girl she could cheer for the boy or get canned, she should be outraged - it was an outrageous demand - and say "In that case, I quit." Only they might have fired her before she could quit. In which case she's more like Rosa Parks, who was in a different situation: she couldn't quit a job because the immoral act she faced was not part of her job. She now has time to think and consult about what to do next.

As far as the educators' actions are concerned, since the girl had shown continuing willingness to cheer for the team with her rapist on it, it would seem they'd be justified in thinking there wasn't a continuing problem with the boy's presence. And as I noted before, the girl's position after being fired is that she was still willing to cheer for the team, just not for the rapist as an individual. So I demur from your suggestion that she what she had previously been able to do she now found herself unable to do, whether you call that an increase in trauma or a realization of trauma or anything else.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I think we're in danger of retreading old ground here. I'm not going to go any further into the question of how the girl ought or ought not to have acted: as I've said several times before, the issue here is how the school acted - not the teenage rape victim, but the adults whose job it was to look after her welfare.

What you see as "willingness to cheer for the team with her rapist on it", I see as being put in an impossible position by the people who owed her a duty of care, and who then proceeded from there to let her down in several other ways too.

I do wonder whether their attitude would have been the same if he'd, say, murdered the girl's mother (and got off with manslaughter), rather than raped the girl herself (and got off with a misdemeanour). Would they have insisted she cheer him then? Presumably, if he was a good enough basketball player. To be honest, I find it hard to understand the way such people's minds work.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

And some women compete in tiny, clingy bikinis - most of the runners for example. What's that about?

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

This article says that cheerleading is a "harmless American pastime". I don't believe that. It is a way of sexualising young women's sport and teaching them that their athletic prowess is subservient to men's athletic prowess, and their adulation for men at the expense of their own development is both normal and admirable. It sucks.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I tend to agree.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

How about bikinis in dressage? Or three day eventing? That'd be, um.... Interesting!

Or how about the Olympics reverting back to the Ancient Greek style of wearing NOTHING!!

Escort Services

[(Anonymous)]

Wonderful stuff as for me. Keep it up!

Sussy Bodge
escorts london ebony (http://black-escort-london.com/)