Women can’t jump?
I’ve always wondered why there is no women’s ski jump event in the Winter Olympics. And literally, I have always wondered that, ever since I was a little kid, because it’s obvious women have been doing every other winter sport in the games–luge, downhill skiing, ice hockey, etc. So women’s ski jumping has always been notable for its absence.
It makes no sense: we can fly through the air on snowboards, do back flips on the moguls, yet we can’t ski jump? What’s up with that? Especially since men’s ski jumping has been an Olympic event since the 1920s.
It seems the issue is a hot topic this year and via this MSNBC.com video I finally have my answer. Although some very thin and lame excuses have been floated around, what it seems to boil down to is that the European men don’t want to be shown up by a bunch of girls, one of whom holds the record on the actual ski jump used at the Vancouver games.
Yes that’s right, Lindsey Van beat the men’s record on the exact same ski jump the men will be sliding down to claim their Olympic medals this week. I ask you: how fucked up is that?
This quote cracked me up:
In 2005, Gian Franco Kasper, FIS president and a member of the IOC, said that he didn’t think women should ski jump because the sport “seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view.”
Oh my God are we still having that same argument? Seriously? In this day and age? What does Gian Franco Kasper think is going to happen? Vaginas scattered all over the hill? Menstrual blood on the start bar? Boobies flying through the air?
If you think about it, it seems like men with all that stuff dangling around down there would be less “medically” suited to a whole bunch of sports, not just ski jumping. Imagine if one of y’all’s testicles just flew off in mid-air. Someone could get hurt. An eye could get poked out.
Even worse is IOC member Dick Pound, who withdrew his head from his ass long enough to utter this asinine warning to the women ski jumpers: …
When I was director of admissions at St. John’s College, I attended a conference of independent schools for women, and the issue of women in sports came up. One coach (a man, as it happened) said that he was used to getting complaints that women should not participate in vigorous sports “because of danger to their reproductive organs.” As he pointed out, men’s reproductive organs are much more exposed to danger than women’s, yet men somehow are able to play vigorous sports.
The fact is that women are discriminated against worldwide, and though the discrimination in the US is more subtle, it’s there. I recall a woman firefighter in Iowa City who had to quite because of discrimination (her uniform gloves were covertly cut, for example).
