Thanks to the usually entertaining
Jezebel.com I came across
an article from the
Daily Telegraph saying how disturbing Andrew M. Brown found the Olympic Judo. He wondered two things:
- Is the sheer aggression they display wholesome - contrasting it 'pretend wrestling'
- How their 'soft limbs' would appear when covered with bruises.
If he'd been open about it - "I like watching mud-wrestling and other contests designed to show off women's bodies for my gratification and I find bruises on a woman unattractive" - would he actually have dared write the piece I wonder? He's certainly entitled to such an opinion but even the Torygraph might think twice before publishing it. Although Cosmo might have run the article the other way "Ladies, if you want to keep your patronising, rich, right-wing, sexist fella, no bruises, and only grapple with cute friends in a pretend way to show off your bodies, not your skills!"
I find I'm slightly inclined to give him a pass on not liking bruises on his sexual objects - it means he's probably not inclined to physically abuse them first - but I still wonder just why he thinks it's OK to share that with everyone.
I'm not going to pretend I'm a prude. Most adults roll up some element of how sexually attractive they find others appropriate to their orientation in how they view the world. It's a fairly powerful imperative for most of us and straight women do it to men just as readily as straight men do it to women - although perhaps less openly and with less cultural support around it. It seems vanishingly unlikely it will ever go away, at least while we remain recognisably a human species. The issue, for me, comes when idiots like this guy seem to think that's the entire raison d'être of the females of the species. Has he missed one of the major ways the world has changed since the suffragettes? Doesn't he know women have brains, careers, compete in all kinds of sports to a very high level? They're allowed, but law and custom (outside of his house) to pursue their own dreams, ideals and chart their own course through life. I'm not saying it's a perfectly fair world out there, it manifestly isn't but it's still true to a reasonable extent. And if they choose to spend their time making themselves sexually attractive to him, that's their choice too. But for crying out loud, it's not his call, it's
theirs just like trying to win Olympic gold in judo is their choice. Is that so hard to understand?
And, as a sideline to the tirade, he'd presumably like to outlaw tennis, hockey, equestrian events and more - even at the local level where most competitors won't show "raw, naked aggression and competitive instincts" - or perhaps he never seen the bruises when a tennis ball hits you, the bruises all over your body from a school game of hockey (and never seen St. Trinian's either), never seen broken bones after a spill from a horse. But they're obviously all not properly womanly and should be banned, at least in his world by his logic.
