Inequities in Unsportsmanlike Conduct

Elizabeth Lambert, a 20 year-old UNM soccer player has been getting huge news coverage due to her unsportsmanlike, violent conduct during a conference tournament game against BYU. She elbowed a BYU player in the stomach, punched one in the back, kicked one in the stomach, slapped one in the face, kicked the soccer ball in another players face, and even yanked one to the ground by her hair. Lambert has apoligized and expressed deep regret for her actions. She also mentioned the idea that she has been targeted because she is a female athlete, which I believe to be true. It doesn't excuse anything she has done, but I think there is definitely merritt behind her statement. Take, for instance, the amount of fights and violence that take place in men's sports. They are not called monsters and nobody suggests that they should be taken off the team or even suspended like in the case of Elizabeth Lambert. What about the football players that deliberately try to injure opposing players in order to gain an advantage? I have known tons of ex-football players, high school and collegiate that have tried purposely to injure another player, or have started a fight on the field, yet it doesn't draw attention, at least not as much as the Lambert incident has. These football players elbow eachother in the face, step on eachother, and try deliberately to seriously injure one another. For example, Albert Haynesworth, a former Tenessee Titans defensive lineman turned Redskin was expelled from a game after an attempt to stomp on a Dallas players face, leaving him with a severely swollen eye and stitches. Did people call him a monster? No. Did people say that he should never be allowed to return to the game? No. There are countless incidents like this that occur in mens' sports on a daily basis, including soccer. Not only do american football players injure eachother deliberately, so do european football players, its just a little less obvious.





PS: if you compare the comments below the videos, they will tell you the way americans feel about male and female violence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1nCHVINrGU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC-pF3OHY1c

I know that there have been a few posts about video games from this class, and I like to keep the diversity, but I just feel compelled to write about the new game, Borderlands. In Borderlands, you can choose between 4 characters, 1 of which is a female. All the characters have their own unique superhuman abilities. Of course, I am always expecting the female characters to have at least strong characteristics, such as a more powerful appearance and less exaggerated female attributes. For instance, her alias is 'Siren,' and the other male characters are 'Brick,' 'Hunter,' and 'Soldier.' To get a better idea of what the characters look like, you can watch the intro trailer:


Her is a game description form the Borderlands Official Website and a list of some of their special abilities and character descriptions from the 'Borderlands Strategy Guide:'

Game Description
"Borderlands is an original first person role playing shooter game that combines the intuitive rewards system of action role playing games and the frantic paced shooting combat of first person shooters"

Roland "The Soldier"

Description:
Military trained killer
Prefers combat rifles and shotguns

Skills:
Impact
Defense
Fitness
Barrage
Metal Storm

Mordecai "The Hunter"

Description:
Master of long range combat
Prefers sniper rifles and revolvers

Skills:
Killer
Out for Blood
Lethal Strike
Predator
Aerial Impact

Lilith "The Siren"

Description:
Uses deception and trickery
Prefers incendiary, shock, and corrosive weapons

Skills:
Diva
Inner Glow
Hard to Get
Intuition
Mind Games

Brick "The Brick"

Description:
Ignores pain and hits hard
prefers explosive weapons and his fists

Skills:
Iron Fist
Short Fuse
Diehard
Safeguard
Unbreakable

I only took a sample of 5 skills out of each of the characters 21 skills. Lilith's skills represent witchery and favors deception as her description points out while the male characters represent physical strength and mental toughness. Even her favored weapon, the SMG (small machine gun) are smaller and less intimidating than her male counterparts. There is one good thing about this game that I must point out though, there is only one white male character, but he still is the most physically intimidating, towering over all other characters and resembling a roid-raging maniac. I'm not exactly sure what Mordecai is, but his name and facial features suggest something other than white. I'm thinking that he may be asian. Roland, the final male character is a black ex-soldier.

Lilith's female appearance is not as exaggerated as a lot of other video games, but she is still fragile and dainty looking. I would expect a veteran female mercenary to be extremely physically fit with a more 'salty' or hardened appearance. Especially if it is in a video game being as it is fantasy and the possibilities are endless.

I think game designers and developers are still sticking to the tried and true, trying to appeal to everyone without offending certain groups. It's good that they recognize that white males are not the only ones who use video games as entertainment. Don't get me wrong, I love it when a video game has a female main character, I eat it up, but lets try not to make them so hyper-femm. Not that there is anything wrong with being hyper-femm, its just not realistic for a mercenary to run around in heels. But then again, it is a video game. It needs some sort of sexual appeal, right?

ADHD and the Media

The amount of advertising to children since the 1984 deregulation of children's broadcasting by the FCC has increased exponentially. It has been proven that learning disabilities and inability to form stable emotional relationships in children is directly linked to amount of television watched. The cognitive and emotional development of American children is being stunted by big business' desire to profit off of a children s market. Not only are they profiting, they are causing ADHD to develop in children. The amount of children who have been diagnosed with ADHD since the 1980's has increased along with the increase in marketing towards kids. Much of the same symptoms known to accompany the increase in TV viewing are also symptoms of ADHD. Why can these media giants get away with this? They know perfectly well the harmful effects television can have on children, but they ignore it for the sake of acquiring a loyal customer for life.

Unbreakables

Rape is a terrorism invented by men to limit the freedom of their victims. It is no doubt a horrible crime meant to scare and scar, both physically and psychologically. Our society has come a long way from the typical 'rape myths' to viewing the perpetrator as the wrong doer. Women have told countless stories about their experiences on countless talk shows and as a result, have shown that rape brings suffering and you can't just chalk up rape as a kind of 'boys will be boys' behavior. Along with their stories, though, always comes psychological distress. It makes me feel hopeless, helpless, and breakable to think that if this ever happened to me or anyone I knew that they would have no hope of leading a normal life again. The rape victim is portrayed as the fallen angel who is in need of repairing. So what does this say about the raped, yet unbreakable woman? Do we view her as weird or sick? Are there even unbreakable women out there? I think yes, and there are probably a lot more than we think. I'm not in any way relinquishing the right to human emotion or the right to be distressed from experiencing such an evil crime. I think if we could see more of these rare, resilient women we could feel empowered by knowing that we are not all collapsible and that we don't have to succumb to the terrorism imposed by the thought or act of rape. I just wanted to know what you think about this. Could an unbreakable woman inspire women to live more freely or could this unbreakable woman undermine the severity and significance of rape?

Oh, Ms. Oprah...

Oprah has been a cultural icon for American women since before I can remember, addressing and resolving important female issues. To many, she is like chicken soup for the female soul. If I didn't know any better, I would think that she is the bearer of all gifts female after reading her articles about "how to attract anybody you want... and your looks have nothing to do with it" and "melt off the pounds, the fastest-working workout," and all in the same magazine! Am I the only one that sees the contradiction here? Are millions of women really reading this filth without seeing the major malfunction? Not only is Oprah telling women to be happy with themselves physically, she is telling them to be shameful of their looks by incorporating a plethora of Lord and Taylor ads, Estee Lauder ads, Clinique ads, Tiffany ads, Loreal ads, etc. (I could go on forever) into her magazine and talk show. How can such a misnomer be overlooked? Oprah is a walking, talking goddess of contradiction. Don't get me wrong, I commend her for making herself what she is, but she has created an empire based on cutting women down just to raise them up, then cutting them down further for the sake of the advertisers best intrests. It's just not right on any account. She is feeding the female population junk culture, telling us what our hair says about us, where to find the best handbags, that $230 is a great buy for a pair of jeans from Nordstrom, and sexy fall boots from Neimen Marcus. Women in this country look up to her and devour her preachings whole-heartedly with the beleif that she is ever-righteous. I think the reason she has been able to pull the wool over our eyes for so long is that she disguises shallow topics as serious issues that plague the female race, such as her own self-proclaimed complex with her fluctuating dress size.

Politics and Hypocrites

"Outrage" a new film directed by Kirby Dick is a documentary that is based on the work of Mike Rogers who examines prominent, closeted gay politicians and their very public, active campaigns, and appalling voting record against the LGBT community. Rogers actively works to expose these closeted gay politicians with research and true reporting through his blog website. The list of secretly gay politicians is overwhelming and surprisingly long, as is their poor voting record against gay rights. A popular argument against the film is that these men deserve their privacy. I have to disagree, much to the contrary of the Washington Posts article titled 'Outrage' Drags Politics' Conservative Wingtips Out of the Closet. The article basically argues that there is mostly no real substance behind the evidence. But who needs substance? There were numerous sources who told, in person, detailed accounts of their encounters with prominent government representatives with descriptions of intimate regions of their bodies, homes, decorations, etc. Although the bulk of the evidence is circumstantial, it doesn't mean that it is readily disposable. The fact of the matter is that these politicians, gay, closeted, or not, are making a huge (or lack thereof) contribution to LGBT rights in order to prove to themselves and the public that they are not gay. If they wanted, they could make serious, positive change for themselves and for the rest of the LGBT community that they covertly belong to. If all politicians who are closeted came out and openly admitted they were gay, the issue of gay rights would no longer be an issue. In order to keep the popular vote and reaffirm their straightness, they must keep their dirty little secrets locked away and promote traditional family values. The media also pushes a lot under the rug in order to protect their right wing allies, or to avoid legal confrontation (except in the case of Larry Craig). It's a vicious circle of deception, and the public deserves to know about the private lives of their representatives in order to decide who is trustworthy and who is not. Some will say that personal opinion or religious beliefs shouldn't or don't affect the way that representatives make policy, but it absolutely does, especially when there reality is scewed by the psychological effects of a double life. They are undeniably traitors to their own selves and traitors to their voters. We deserve to know if our lawmakers are hypocrites because it affects us directly through their policy making.

Madonna's Muscles

Many of you have probably seen the recent photo of Madonna's muscular arms or at least heard all the negative media coverage about how she is taking fitness 'way overboard.' Granted, yes, the photo is not very flattering and it does look a little like she has a dangerously low percentage of fat, but she is fifty years old. She doesn't need the amount of fat a twenty year old who is still menstruating needs. Much of the reason females need 1o-15% body fat is so that estrogens can be produced and function normally in the body. Being a personal trainer, it is so hard to get women to want to build muscle in order to achieve maximum health benefits. They are so deathly afraid that they will look like Madonna, a man, a freak, etc. What has been overlooked, though, is that many hollywood actors have around the same percentage of fat as Madonna, you just can't see their bulging muscles because they don't train with heavy weights like she does. So the argument that she is getting negative media because she is unhealthy is void. She is getting negative feedback only because she is a muscular female. Take Angelena Joli for instance. She is very, very thin. The only difference between her and Madonna is that Angelina doesn't weight train and Madonna does, yet Angelina gets praise for her figure. Based on her fitness ethics, Madonna can be a very positive roll model for the older population who are not active and are falling apart due to that inactivity. The amount of people who have life threatening health risks is overwhelming. Less than 30% of the time do I ever get a client who has no health risks who is over 40. What's sad is that they didn't even know it could have been prevented with fitness. They thought it was all just part of getting older, which is not the case at all. The media could have put a positive spin on Madonna's muscles by highlighting the epidemic of diabetes and heart disease in the older population and giving information about how to prevent disease through fitness. Muscular, strong women should be markers for a healthy lifestyle, not disease and eating disorders.

Gay Education...

The Gay Straight Alliance has recently launched a campaign called Youth in Motion which is designed to educate kids in school about gender and sexual diversity. Reportedly, 250 California schools have already signed up to receive a video about a young Native American boy and his quest to wear a bikini. I think this is a fabulous way to eliminate hate and discrimination before it is deep-rooted in the younger generation. Kids are extremely impressionable, they learn life lessons, morals, and values through experiencing the world, and more often than not, from their parents. Unfortunately a lot of parents are downright disturbed by this new found diversity education. Schools, by law, are required to let parents opt-out their kids from the viewing. What are these parents so afraid of? That their kid may become accepting and cultured? Or that, god help them, their kid becomes.... GAY! My point is that ignorance breeds ignorance. People need to see the world in full spectrum and stop being so fearful of the 'other.' Schools need to make diversity education a requirement (other than psychology and sociology) and show kids that there is more than one way of living, and that, a meaningful relationship can occur and does occur between same sex couples. And that being gay is not a disease or a problem that needs to be dealt with. Sometimes I cannot believe the hatred and fearfulness in the world and the lack of open-minded adults.

Masculine Advertising

What are ads saying to our society? What are they saying to men? Take this Jbs ad for men's underwear.

The first thing I thought when I saw this was, why does she look like she was just violated? And what are they selling? After a closer look, the text at the bottom of the page says "men don't want to look at naked men." Okay, so I get it. I still don't know exactly what they are trying to say with the interesting arrangement of the naked girl with her boxers down and crumpled paper towels by her side. What possibly could this be hinting at? I can't help but recognize the similarity between this ad and a girl that was date raped (i.e. why she is passed out and naked). Maybe its my own trained mind that has been conditioned to see women as victims, but hasn't everyone's mind been conditioned to see women in that same way? So, on that note, maybe this ad is counting on us to see her as a victim. The perpetrator would obviously be a man since the ad is selling a product designated for men hence, men don't want to look at other men naked.



The problem with violent ads is that they depict men as the violent perpetraitors and women as the victims. Violence and power over another female or weaker male is used to validate the mans masculinity. Violence is often paired with sex in order to make something more desireable. The entire goal of an ad is to make people want whatever product they are selling. What better way to sell something to a man than to show a masculine man using violence and getting sex at the same time? Men are stereotypically violent and want sex: thats what we have been conditioned to think since we were born. The media has normalized and justified violent masculinity by repeatedly using men and violence paired together. It's justified because we are constantly told that men are inherintly violent. In conclusion, men believe that in order to achieve full manhood, they must be violent, intimidating, and in power just like advertisements tell them to be. Unfortunately, ads make women the most inticing targets for violence.

Workplace Violence?

Annie le, who was recently found dead, stuffed in a wall at research facility that she worked in has been yet another female victim of male violence. The article from the associated press told a slightly different story. The news article didn't blame the act on gender, but on a 'new' growing concern of workplace violence. I say 'new' because there is nothing new about violence (including sexual harassment) perpetrated by men, directed at women in the workplace or anywhere else for that matter. The fact that the article called it workplace violence and nothing else struck a nerve in me. They failed to address the issue of male dominant violent behavior and its overwhelming presence in everyday life. The article completely dismisses the fact that male violence is at least partly to blame and dismisses it as a messed up kid from the suburbs. The issue of male violence is an epidemic and this girl, unfortunately is another victim.