Ethical Illusions

I’m not saying women’s sports have to be as big/well attended as men’s (especially because, frankly, I think men’s sports are way too big), but putting even minimal resources into them so that people would give them a chance would be nice. I get that there are physical differences. But if sports were all about physicality, there would be no place for smaller players with incredible skills. Female players may not be as big; but that in no way makes them less athletically talented or fun to watch. For one thing, most sports don’t really require a big stature. For another, those that do aren’t inferior when played by women; they are just played with different strategies. Women have to use more creative ball handling or passing to reach the same result as men who can rely on brute strength, and that extra creativity can be incredibly fun to watch. Look at the remarkable precision of the women’s soccer team; the longer volleys in women’s tennis and volleyball; the fact that women have actually developed different forms of hitting in softball. It pains me that there are only 4 professional softball teams in the US (most struggling to stay afloat), whose players get paid paltry amounts (far less than they get paid in Japan, for example), despite the fact that women’s college softball now generates huge crowds every year. Or that the US Women’s Soccer team (currently filing a lawsuit with the EEOC over the issue) gets paid a fraction of the men’s despite drawing far larger crowds and attention. Even in women’s sports where attention is admittedly low (like basketball), the argument that it’s because they are actually less fun to watch has no merit when they’ve never been given the resources – even just in terms of camera angles and commentators – to prove that wrong. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: men at ESPN or wherever say that no one wants to watch women, so they don’t advertise at all for women’s sports, so obviously no one watches women. You can’t watch a game you don’t know is happening; and you can’t have much fun when you do if the world is telling you no one cares.

Great synopsis of the sad state of mental health services in our country and why blaming mental illness for all of our shootings is both irresponsible on a policy level (unless of course you actually intend to make mental health services a priority, which no one seems willing to do despite their grand assertions that a lack of those services contributes so much more to these shootings than a lack of gun control), and detrimental to those with mental health issues (in that it promotes more fear and stigma against a generally non-violent and HUGE group of people that definitely do not need to endure more fear and stigma which may prevent them from getting the limited help now available to them).

“Prabhu is the inventor of ReThink, a software program that recognizes when users enter phrases often used to cyberbully into a computer—and displays a pop-up window asking the writer to reconsider. The Chicago high school student’s own studies find that a simple prompt (“Are you sure you want to send that message?”) is enough to discourage its teen users from sending nasty missives a whopping 93 percent of the time.”

It happens all the time in heaven,  And some day

It will begin to happen Again on earth-- 

That men and women who are married, And men and men who are Lovers,

And women and women  Who give each other Light,

Often will get down on their knees

And while so tenderly Holding their lover’s hand,

With tears in their eyes, Will sincerely speak, saying,

“My dear, How can I be more loving to you;

How can I be more  Kind?”