Why Am I Not Surprised? Further Evidence of Sexism in the Olympics

According to the Guardian, both Japan and Australia have gone with old-school sexism and sent some of their male teams in Business class whilst the women flew economy. Japan sent its women's football team in economy despite them being considered a better team internationally [I know nothing about sport in general so I couldn't comment]. Australia did the same with it's basketball teams. I'd like to say I'm shocked but that would be a lie. This is same level of sexist nincompoopery that women athletes have to put up with all the time. They are paid less, they get less sponsorship and they very rarely get similar media coverage. Gymnastics and figure skating are possibly the two sports where women get more television coverage; at least that's my impression but they are the only two sports I actually watch so it's kind of a skewed survey.

I don't tend to watch sports in general but we need to start making an effort to support women athletes. And, this means watching only sports played by women [although I do plan on boycotting the Olympics on principle]. It means writing to the BBC and Sky to complain about the lack of coverage of women's sports and boycotting televised coverage of men's sports.

And, since I can't resist, this is my favourite piece of ice dancing and not just because Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz are Canadian:

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So Saudi Arabia is Sending 1 Female Athlete to the Olympics

Clearly, Feminism is no longer needed if intense international pressure and lots of media speculation are all that's needed to convince a misogynistic government that, yes, in fact, they do have to have women on their team. Since, the freaking Olympic guidelines require all teams to field male AND female players. Yep, we can all hang up our banners, put down our tambourines and stop singing "I'm a Feminist. A Mighty, Mighty Feminist" because Saudi Arabia is sending a woman to the Olympics. This is clearly the heralding of The Dawn of Post-Feminism.

Course, they're only sending ONE woman. In the entire wealthy nation of Saudi Arabia, they could only find ONE woman capable of competing in an athletics competition at the international level and they weren't even going to send her. But, still, we are supposed to celebrate this one, pathetic little attempt at not being banned for being misogynistic. Frankly, the IOC should have acted as an organisation of adults and banned them at the beginning of this farcical debate. After all, South Africa only started taking anti-apartheid protests seriously when their rugby and cricket teams were banned from playing internationally. And, its not the first time the Olympics have been used for political purposes.

Hitler was embarrassed by the African-American athlete Jesse Owens destroying his team of "Aryan" athletes after other nations threatened to boycott if Germany didn't allow Black or Jewish players. Germany fielded one Jewish woman. Just the one Jewish woman. Erm, can anyone else see the irony in that? Threatened ban, so they send one token player? Maybe the IOC might want to review its own history. And, perhaps the media can stop pretending this is some great victory because it isn't. It's just another piss-poor attempt at pretending women are human too.

UPDATE: Apparently, Saudi Arabia aren't fielding any women athletes because the only women who could compete at the international level can't because her horse is injured. Dalma Rushdi Malhas trains in Italy. For obvious reasons. Even if her horse weren't injured, Malhas would have been a controversial choice because she hasn't actually competed at a high enough international level and the IOC would have had to make a special case for her. So, we're back to the original position. Saudi Arabia is apparently fielding an Olympic team with no women athletes in direct contravention of IOC regulations. And, no one gives a shit. We should be boycotting any sport with countries which don't allow women to compete [and those committing human rights abuses like Sri Lanka].

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