Can someone please tell me what the hell this quote is supposed to mean?
"You're having an argument with either side of your brain," O'Hare said. "This side is like, 'I'm tired. I want to stop.' And then this side is like, 'Look what you'd be giving up if you gave up right now, all the things you could achieve. Why are you thinking like that?' So in a split second, within about five strides, you've gone from, 'I'm really tired,' to, 'What the hell are you thinking? Get on it! Stop being a girl and go!' "
Yeah, read that and thought, "umm ... you probably want to rephrase that."
ReplyDeleteDefinitely! grrr
DeleteI can see saying something like that in your head, but admitting it to the press makes you look silly, and choosing it at the quote of the day is why LRC is still a sausagefest.
ReplyDeleteThe unfortunate issue here is that it's pretty prevalent in our culture. Compare "man up" and "grow some balls" with "stop being a p***y." Heck, even Lauren Fleshman isn't immune.
Well said, Becki.
DeleteI feel like statements like this discount the achievements of women, even when said without any ill intention. The guy who said it made a mistake, but the bigger mistake was posting his statement on the home page of a running website for all to see. Ridiculous.
Oh get the sand out of your -- err um -- why do you have your panties in a twist over such a minor -- well, I mean -- take a Midol -- no, no, that's not quite it . . .
ReplyDeleteI suppose I should be gratified to completely miss where you got the quoted reference, though seeing the allusion to RetsLun in above comments is no surprise at all. The fine folks behind that web entity are consistently lazy, sloppy, and unmistakably bigoted (jingoistic, racist, sexist, the list goes on). They come out of, as Becki points out, a white male-dominated society (actually, a more heavily white male-dominated subculture of said society) and neither strive to transcend it one iota nor apologize for it.
I find it sad that comments like that, which so completely discount all the achievements and hard work women have put into the sport of running, are accepted. The man who said it originally did apologize after some complaints, but it's a little bit like accidentally dropping a racial slur and then saying, "whoopsie. I didn't mean that." Comments like his are hard to forget, because of the long hard struggle women have had to endure to get any sense of equality. We still have a hell of a long way to go.
DeleteRight, it is like trying to excuse a racist tirade with "well, he/she/I was drunk at the time" or "he/she/I was only joking." It would not come out of you if it is not something that is inside you. And women certainly can have pro-male or misogynistic impulses (as cited by Becki above, re: Lauren Fleshman), they are just as conditioned by society as men are.
DeleteI don't think Lauren Fleshman comes off as misogynistic really. It was more just a commentary on how ingrained in our society it is, that someone who does generally seem to be a positive role model for young female athletes still refers to a gusty race as "all balls." And a commentary on how a race being "all balls" does mean running a gutsy race (I totally had "ballsy" typed out there before I realized what I wrote and changed it, so apparently I'm just as guilty as anyone), while referencing female genitalia instead (i.e. "I ran like a p***y") would mean the opposite.
DeleteWell, I did give two possibilities in the statement where I referenced her, the other being pro-male. Not bashing Fleshman, simply citing her because she is highly visible to us and had already been referenced here. Of course Fleshman is generally positive and has a clear intent to empower female identity yet serves an example of how even the best of us can still have impulses that are grounded in archaic attitudes that we would like to fight against. Unfortunately, repeating such idioms can serve to reinforce the misogyny, whether or not it was her intent. You seemingly indicate that her "all balls" comment is pro-male and a function of societal conditioning, no?
DeleteWhat makes Letsrun's selection of that verbal dungheap as its "Quote of the Day" is that it was succeeded within 24 hours by an anonymous quote from a tabloid Web site detailing alleged sexist treatment of collegiate women athletes by their own coach. Those clowns will stand in legitimate or even feigned opposition of such solecisms at roughly the same time I am chosen to preside over the Southern Baptist Convention.
ReplyDelete