Two dunks double Parker's pleasure
Heard this on NPR earlier in the day. It was quite a big story - ABC even broke into their sports coverage of the NBA to show the dunks. Her team (#6 seeded Tennesee Lady Vol's) beat Army 102 to 54 in their first round game of the Women's NCAA tournament.
Army has a woman's basketball team. I have to pause and marvel at that for a bit. When I was in High School women couldn't go to West Point. And now there's not only women at West Point, (getting ready to celebrate 30 years since the first woman enrolled) but a woman playing basketball against them not only broke away and dunked the ball, but did it twice. Wow.
I've said this before, so forgive me as I say it again. Thank you Mary Wollstonecraft and Susan B. Anthony and Alice Paul and Lucy Burns and Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem and countless other women, who, although I may not agree entirely with their goals, broke the trail, widened it to a path, and countless other footsteps have continued to create a roadway that my daughter can more easily follow. There are a number of worthy articles to read collected at About.com if you care to read further. Wikipedia's article on "feminist" is a good read, too. While I'm not a big sports fan, this is a milestone on that road that is worthy of notice.
Then I think about the law in South Dakota, and I picture that road as still not safely paved in something solid and resistant like a true road -- it's vulnerable to people like Governor Mike Rounds who would scatter mines along it and see it become impassable and overgrown.
I'm not sure what to do, but I'm going to figure it out and do something. One thing we can do is stop by BitchPHD's blog and those of other bloggers on her blogroll. We should support each other. I'm not a liberal but I'm a feminist. Those two words are not mutually exclusive, whatever some idiots of the far right would have you believe. Feminism is the belief in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes. I'm not a true 'conservative' either, in the current climate around the meaning of that word, politically. Closest I come is Libertarian, I guess.
Anyway - I don't care what your political leanings are as long as you agree that we cannot allow the United States to become a place there is no women's Army Basketball team. We need to become a place where hearing about a woman making two dunks in a game is *not* news. We need to make this happen for my daughter and my granddaughter(s). I want them to look back and be proud of us as I am of the feminists of the 60s and 70s.
Dawno, Candace Parker, NPR, Women's NCAA Tournament, Women's Liberation, South Dakota, Mike Rounds
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3 comments:
I never quite understood the 'men are superior because they have a penis' mentality, much how I never understood the racial purity argument, or that of racial superiorority. We're all humans, people.
Congrats on the two dunks, but I agree we should live in a place where that is not news.
As far as woman rights go I think like the French. We are all the same, long live the sweet difference. By our very nature the man is the fighter and the woman the nurturer neither can exist without the other and neither should be subordinate to the other.
That would be the ideal world, but for as long as we have political "interest" groups whose political agenda is more important than the people they represent we will not get any closer to our dream.
Othmar Vohringer aka Huntwriter
Vive la difference?
I used to call myself a conservative, but when I looked around at the other people wearing the label and realized I didn't have anything in common with most of them I quit calling myself one.
I'm not sure what to call my political leanings anymore. I don't seem to agree with anyone. I guess I'm a contrarian.
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