when you break a world record, but a man comes in second (x)
And it’s worth note that Ledecky didn’t just win the 800 freestyle- she obliterated it:
Thats her. And those specks in the distance are her competitors. The second place swimmer was 11 SECONDS behind her. 11 seconds is FOREVER in something like this. Most second place swimmers in most races finish fractions of a second behind the first place swimmer.
Her finishing with none of her competitors in sight. And that yellow line is the previous world record’s pace. Ledecky is more than a full body length ahead.
Which, btw, she did in the 400m freestyle earlier in the games. Seen here:
(The previous world record in this race was held by her, to begin with, btw. As well as the 3 world record times preceding that one.)
So to sum it up: Yeah, Phelps is one of the most decorated Olympic swimmers ever etc etc but him getting silver means jack in the face of the actual-human-avatar-of-Poseidon that is Katie Ledecky.
There’s this new TV show, Jamestown, about women who were shipped to America to marry the new colonists in 1619. Guardian critic Mark Lawson complained it was somehow ~unrealistic to depict 17th century women having “modern” thoughts like… objecting to rape? And making jokes?
This is so stupid, sexist, and shortsighted, FOR A NUMBER OF REASONS:
I think men like the Mythical Misogynistic Past for a couple of reasons. First, it lets them off the hook for present-day misogyny, because nothing in the present is ever quite as bad as the Mythical Misogynistic Past and so stop your complaining, woman (some tack on racism and Islamophobia and use the Mythical Misogynistic Middle East as their scapegoat instead: notice the use of terms like “backwards” or “medieval”).
Second, it gives them a sort of fantasy land where they’re important and powerful, and never have to compromise with or respect women, and can do whatever they want, whenever they want. Or, if they don’t take advantage of this unbridled power, then they’re a very special person who’s much nicer than everyone else, instead of someone practicing basic decency. Because in the Mythical Misogynistic Past it’s not basic decency, that’s going above and beyond!
And third, I find in a lot of male supremacist circles there’s this idea that feminism is an unnatural modern invention, imposed artificially on society (usually by some sort of shadowy female cabal). And even men who are just run-of-the-mill sexist might have inklings of that: that feminism this new thing that no one ever thought of before, and the natural state of humanity is men having absolute power over women. That’s why they’re so insistent on “historical accuracy,” not just in this but in stuff like not having any black people in period dramas – it’s not just how they think it was (it wasn’t), but how they think it’s supposed to be.
Open a bank account or get a credit card without signed permission from her father or hr husband.
Serve on a jury – because it might inconvenience the family not to have the woman at home being her husband’s helpmate.
Obtain any form of birth control without her husband’s permission. You had to be married, and your hub and had to agree to postpone having children.
Get an Ivy League education.
Ivy League schools were men’s colleges ntil the 70′s and 80′s. When they opened their doors to women it was agree that women went there for their MRS. Degee.
Experience equality in the workplace: Kennedy’s
Commission on the Status of Women produced a report in 1963 that revealed, among other things, that women earned 59 cents for every dollar that men earned and were kept out of the more lucrative professional positions.
Keep her job if she was pregnant.Until the Pregnancy Discrimination Act in 1978, women were regularly fired from their workplace for being pregnant.
Refuse to have sex with her husband.The mid 70s saw most states recognize marital rape and in 1993 it became criminalized in all 50 states. Nevertheless, marital rape is still often treated differently to other forms of rape in some states even today.
Get a divorce with some degree of ease.Before the No Fault Divorce law in 1969, spouses had to show the faults of the other party, such as adultery, and could easily be overturned by recrimination.
Have a legal abortion in most states.The Roe v. Wade case in 1973 protected a woman’s right to abortion until viability.
Play college sports
Title IX of the Education Amendments of protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive Federal financial assistanceIt was nt until this statute that colleges had teams for women’s sports
Apply for men’s Jobs
The EEOC rules that sex-segregated help wanted ads in newspapers are illegal. This ruling is upheld in 1973 by the Supreme Court, opening the way for women to
apply for higher-paying jobs hitherto open only to men.
This is why we needed feminism – this is why we know that feminism works
I just want to reiterate this stuff, because I legit get the feeling there are a lot of younger women for whom it hasn’t really sunk in what it is today’s GOP is actively trying to return to.
Did you go to a good college? Shame on you, you took a college placement that could have gone to a man who deserves and needs it to support or prepare for his wife & children. But if you really must attend college, well, some men like that, you can still get married if you focus on finding the right man.
Got a job? Why? A man could be doing that job. You should be at home caring for a family. You shouldn’t be taking that job away from a man who needs it (see college, above). You definitely don’t have a career – you’ll be pregnant and raising children soon, so no need to worry about promoting you.
This shit was within living memory.
I’M A MILLENIAL and my mother was in the second class that allowed women at an Ivy League school.
Men who are alive today either personally remember shit like this or have parents/family who have raised them into thinking this was the way America functioned back in the blissful Good Old Days. There are literally dudes in the GOP old enough to remember when it was like this and yearn for those days to return.
When people talk about resisting conservativism and the GOP, we’re not just talking about whether the wage gap is a myth or not. We’re talking about whether women even have the fundamental right to exist as individuals, to run their own households and compete for jobs and be considered on an equal footing with men in any arena at all in the first place.
I was a child in the 1960s, a teenager in the 1970s, a young adult in the 1980s.
This is what it was like:
When I was growing up, it was considered unfortunate if a girl was good at sports. Girls were not allowed in Little League. Girls’ teams didn’t exist in high school, except at all-girls’ high schools. Boys played sports, and girls were the cheerleaders.
People used to ask me as a child what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said I wanted to be a brain surgeon or the first woman justice on the Supreme Court. Everyone told me it was impossible–those just weren’t realistic goals for a girl–the latter, especially, because you couldn’t trust women to judge fairly and rationally, after all.
In the 1960s and 1970s, all women were identified by their marital status, even in arrest reports and obituaries. In elementary school, my science teacher referred to Pierre Curie as DOCTOR Curie and Marie Curie as MRS. Curie…because, as he put it, “she was just his wife.” (Both had doctorates and both were Nobel prize winners, so you would think that both would be accorded respect.)
Companies could and did require women to wear dresses and skirts. Failure to do could and did get women fired. And it was legal. It was also legal to fire women for getting married or getting pregnant. The rationale was that a woman who was married or who had a child had no business working; that was what her husband was for. Aetna Insurance, the biggest insurance company in America, fired women for all of the above.
A man could rape his wife. Legally. I can remember being twelve years old and reading about legal experts actually debating whether or not a man could actually be said to coerce his wife into having sex. This was a serious debate in 1974.
The debate about marital rape came up in my law school, too, in 1984. Could a woman be raped by her husband? The guys all said no–a woman got married, so she was consenting to sex at all times. So I turned it around. I asked them if, since a man had gotten married, that meant that his wife could shove a dildo or a stick or something up his ass any time she wanted to for HER sexual pleasure.
(Hey, I thought it was reasonable. If one gender was legally entitled to force sex on the other, then obviously the reverse should also be true.)
The male law students didn’t like the idea. Interestingly, they commented that being treated like that would make them feel like a woman.
My reaction was, “Thank you for proving my point…”
The concept of date rape, when first proposed, was considered laughable. If a woman went out on a date, the argument of legal experts ran, sexual consent was implied. Even more sickening was the fact that in some states–even in the early 1980s–a man could rape his daughter…and it was no worse than a misdemeanor.
Women taking self-defense classes in the 1970s and 1980s were frequently described in books and on TV as “cute.” The implication was that it was absurd for a woman to attempt to defend herself, but wasn’t it just adorable for her to try?
I was expressly forbidden to take computer classes in junior and senior years of high school–1978-79 and 1979-80–because, as the principal told me, “Only boys have to know that kind of thing. You girls are going to get married, and you won’t use it.”
When I was in college–from 1980 to 1984–there were no womens’ studies. The idea hadn’t occurred in many places because the presumption was that there was nothing TO study. My history professor–a man who had a doctorate in history–informed me quite seriously that women had never produced a noted painter, sculptor, composer, architect or scientist because…wait for it…womens’ brains were too small.
(He was very surprised when I came up with a list of fifty women gifted in the arts and science, most of whom he had never heard of before.)
When Walter Mondale picked Geraldine Ferraro as a running mate in 1984, the press hailed it as a disaster. What would happen, they asked fearfully, if Mondale died and Ferraro became president? What if an international crisis arose and she was menstruating? She could push the nuclear button in a fit of PMS! It would be the end of the WORLD!!
…No, they WEREN’T kidding.
On the surface, things are very different now than they were when I was a child, a teen and a young adult. But I’m afraid that people now do not realize what it was like then. I’ve read a lot of posts from young women who say that they are not feminists. If the only exposure to feminism they have is the work of extremists, I cannot blame them overmuch.
I wish that I could tell them what feminism was like when it was new–when the dream of legal equality was just a dream, and hadn’t even begun to come true. When “woman’s work” was a sneer–and an overt putdown. When people tut-tutted over bright and athletic girls with the words, “Really, it’s a shame she’s not a boy.” That lack of feminism wasn’t all men opening doors and picking up checks. A lot of it was an attitude of patronizing contempt that hasn’t entirely died out, but which has become less publicly acceptable.
I wish I could make them feel what it was like…when grown men were called “men” and grown women were “girls.”
Know your history.
So this, too, is what they mean saying “make America great again” and/or the good old days.
Emma Stone may be lauded as one of Hollywood’s most in-demand actresses, but she says her ideas have yet to be taken seriously. In a recent profile with Rolling Stone, the 28-year-old actress discussed her path to stardom, including her experiences as a woman in the entertainment industry.
I’ve heard about shit like this happening to women FAR less famous than Emma Stone, so good for her for speaking up. It’s fucking gross, and it contributes to the incredibly boring “women aren’t funny narrative” – which is put forth by guys who are definitely not funny.
After a pretty brutal week, Hillary Clinton gave an incredible speech at a Children’s Defense Fund ceremony that honored her lifelong child advocacy work.
She spoke about the inspiration she draws from her own mother (who overcame an abusive childhood) and the belief that we all need to work to make sure every child has an advocate. She spoke about the work that was done to expand Medicaid to cover more pregnant women and children, about criminal justice reform, about making schools more accessible to children with disabilities, about the children of immigrants who fear deportation, about making sure poor children receive the same shot as anyone else.
While male sports reporters are typically judged by their commentary and analysis, women in the same industry face far more superficial and sexist scrutiny. It can feel especially bad when seemingly “feminist” publications turn their back.
Jackie Mitchell…a bad ass lady I had never heard of.
From her Wikipedia page: “Seventeen-year-old Jackie Mitchell, brought in to pitch in the first inning after the starting pitcher had given up a double and a single, faced Babe Ruth. After taking a ball, Ruth swung and missed at the next two pitches. Mitchell’s fourth pitch to Ruth was a called third strike. Babe Ruth glared and verbally abused the umpire before being led away by his teammates to sit to wait for another batting turn. The crowd roared for Jackie. Babe Ruth was quoted in a Chattanooga newspaper as having said:
“I don’t know what’s going to happen if they begin to let women in baseball. Of course, they will never make good. Why? Because they are too delicate. It would kill them to play ball every day.”
Next up was the Iron Horse Lou Gehrig, who swung through the first three pitches to strike out. Jackie Mitchell became famous for striking out two of the greatest baseball players in history.
A few days after Mitchell struck out Ruth and Gehrig, baseball commissionerKenesaw Mountain Landis voided her contract and declared women unfit to play baseball as the game was “too strenuous.”[5][10] Mitchell continued to play professionally,barnstorming with the House of David, a men’s team famous for their very long hair and long beards.[11] While travelling with the House of David team, she would sometimes wear a fake beard for publicity.”
TL;DR: teenage girl strikes out two of the greatest baseball players ever, teenage girl gets her contract voided, teenage girl plays baseball wearing fake beard
These guys were so fucking injured by a teenage girl’s awesomeness that they literally threw a hissyfit and hung up a sign that said “NO GIRLS.”
They gave up.
They couldn’t handle it.
Losers.
Teenage girls are amazing.
Here’s a friendly reminder of why the big leagues of sports aren’t co-ed.
It’s not to “make it fair” on women. It’s because men are scared of being beaten by women.
