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This forum seems to be missing the biggest actual culture war battleground of the week: The US Hockey Gold Medal team.
For those who haven't heard, the US Men's Hockey Team won the gold medal over Canada, on an overtime goal by Jack Hughes. The team celebrated, the country celebrated, and everything was great, until it wasn't.
Kash Patel was part of the celebration, for some reason. Apparently he's a hockey fan, as I've read he was attending games when Ovechkin was nearing Gretzky's goal record. And then there was a call from Donald Trump to congratulate the team, where he made a joke ("I'll have to invite the women's team, too, or they'll impeach me.")
Of course, the usual suspects have come out of the woodwork to scold then men for being bros.
Jodi Walker called them losers.
The New York Times decided to praise the defector while shaming the victorious Americans.
Mary Clarke says that they failed to meet the cultural moment, and boy is she waging the culture war. Some highlights include reminding us that a black woman won a gold medal in hockey, bemoaning that the NHL is 44% Republican, decrying the hiring of someone accused of and found not guilty of sexual assault, implying his guilt.
Then, finally, she has the gall to say this:
Well, Mary, you are responsible for writing the message of this team, and you are participating in making sure the message you dislike is the one that's getting spread.
For a reasonable take, I always go back to the characteristic machine:
And a quoted response
This really does cut to the core of it. There is a civic ritual, which we can all participate in. Civic in a way that crosses race and sex and religion, or should, at least. But not anymore. We are not allowed to have civic rituals unless they pay obeisance to the cult of multiculturalism, unless they celebrate black women and foreigners and anyone but straight white men.
ETA: Two more posts, more from the fans with substacks and less from the professional pundits:
Don't Let Them Fucking Take It From You
The Sports Exile
This second one really pissed me off, and this quote in particular. Patriotism was abandoned by the left, not weaponized by the right. You left (pun intended). As evidenced by a later paragraph:
"I'm proud to be an American" "Wow, why do you only care about yourself, why don't you care about me?"
They reveal themselves as unamerican at every opportunity.
Wait, that was the misogynistic joke? That’s it? I’m not sure how that’s supposed to be offensive or sexist to anyone.
To quote the video (in the video Trump says this in a joking way, breaking into a chuckle as he mentions the women's team):
To steelman:
I get that you see nothing wrong with it (and I think it is fine too), but that is why some people (like Clarke) find it offensive - and there is an actual conflict between worldviews here, the feminists aren't just mistaken.
is a ridiculous idea. It's like pretending that children's sports is equal to young adults', or that local leagues are equal to world championships. Obviously false, and everyone knows it. Is it really necessary to pretend otherwise?
What are you actually trying to claim here? "Children's sports are not literally the same as young adults'" is a very different claim than "women's sports matter, and should matter, as little as children's sports compared to men's".
Personally, I believe that humans reaching the height of what their bodies can perform does deserve celebration. In that, women's sports are equal to men's sports because exceptional women are still exceptional. Local leagues and children's leagues are transitional, at least in theory, and that's why they are not the same as women's leagues.
Should I have a daughter, my fatherly advice to her will not include "even if you become the best of all women in X, this won't matter in the slightest because male boys are still going to be better than you" or whatever argument against female sports is common those days. You're welcome to tell your daughters otherwise, of course.
I'm claiming that men's sports and women's sports are not "equal". Not that the latter "doesn't matter in the slightest".
I tell my daughter to to as many sports as she likes, to any level she can achieve, and the more she does the better. I don't tell her that regardless of her actual abilities, her performance and/or the interest of spectators will be in any sense "equal" to that of any given others.
When your constitution says "all people shall be equal before the law", do you feel compelled to say "but they're not, why must we pretend otherwise"?
The Constitution says "all people are equal before the law." Everyone knows that this is an aspiration, and that in reality, rich people, people with good lawyers, people who are in favor, have an easier time in any interaction with the law than people who are not.
You seem to be objecting to the idea that we should just make that tacit understanding explicit, and fair enough - poor people are supposed to be equal to rich people before the law, and it would be wrong to say "C'mon, we all know that's not how it works" and just accept the legal system dropping all pretense of fairness. We should at least try to uphold a sense of fairness.
On the other hand, it would be doing someone who's at a severe disadvantage a grave injustice to let them walk into a legal battle thinking that they actually are not at a disadvantage just because in some ideal world, they shouldn't be.
This is where it seems your argument regarding women's sports lies. You are, as other people are wont to say, trying to substitute a should for an is. People (feminists and female sports defenders, anyway) would really, really like for women to be physically equal to men, as athletically impressive as men, and for women's sports to be as exciting and admirable as men's sports.
But they're not. They're just not. And this isn't even society failing to living up to an ideal: it's biology! (I have actually met people--men and women--who die on the hill of "male-female differences are actually minimal if not nonexistent" and those people have never done martial arts or full contact sports with girls, or with boys if they are girls.) Women cannot compete with men. No, I don't care about your niche ultra-marathons or long-distance swimming or winter shooting events or whatever (where it usually turns out men actually outperform there too if you actually look at the numbers, just not by as large a margin).
Of course that doesn't mean you should tell your daughter that her athletic accomplishments are meaningless because "men will always be stronger and faster"! Of course that doesn't mean women shouldn't do sports and be celebrated for excelling in them! But- you are doing them a disservice to let them believe that because they are really good at women's sports, they can compete with men. Or that any disparity in results (and in accolades and awards) is because of sexism and not, well, biology. And that's where a lot of folks are now-- they somehow convince themselves that because women and men are morally equal, that women's and men's sports should be physically (and thus, monetarily) equal. And that if WNBA players don't make as much money as NBA players it's because of sexism, and if people cheer more for the men's hockey team than the women's hockey team it's because of sexism. And not because, well, sorry, but unless you're the father of a girl athlete (or a lesbian), you probably just don't find female sports all that interesting to watch compared to the peak performance male version.
Now, a more gracious president would have invited both the men's and women's USA hockey teams to the White House and done a nice coed photo-op and celebrated them together, and we'd all have pretended that yes, they are totally equally deserving and we celebrate them equally. Trump is not a gracious president. But then, the response from the same people who've been insisting we pretend that men and women are equal has also been exceedingly ungracious. The men's hockey team are "losers" because... the wrong people are cheering for them. And because (if we're being real) that iconic picture of a guy with a bloody mouth and a tooth knocked out, smiling in victory, is a big in-your-face reminder of the difference between male and female athleticism and what we valorize. Which makes certain people Very Uncomfortable.
Going back to your point, this whole pretense that men and women can (should) be physically equal is actively dangerous in the realm of self-defense, where too many women have been raised on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Black Widow in the MCU and the like, and really believe their tae kwon do black belts mean they could take on a grown man who seriously means to do them harm.
In that context, yes, you should absolutely tell your daughters: "I love your enthusiasm, I celebrate your victories, I encourage your efforts- but you should never believe you are equal to a man."
I did not claim women could be physically on par with men (though I wouldn't mind if they were in the future, through transhumanust efforts). If I thought they were, I would be advocating for them to enter the free-for-all league, not for the dignity of their own league.
I even used an analogy where the leagues are even more different in peak ability than men and women are to drive my point.
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