Wait a minute, I can hear you say, what on earth does the image today have to do with your title? I can see a beach, but where the heck is the volleyball? Well, sorry, I misled you a little bit. I’m not really here to talk about VOLLEYBALL per se, but instead it’s more about WHO is playing that sport and WHAT is being said about them.
I read an article today that once again showed just how shitty men can actually be when it comes to women, and especially men’s expectation that women exist solely for their visual pleasure. Olympics Beach Volleyball Women Choose Leggings, Draw Angst (dailydot.com) The US Women’s Volleyball team chose to wear leggings in their event(s), drawing an online backlash of the most insanely adolescent and scummy responses possible. “I’ve waited 4 years for fucking PANTS?!!?!” screamed one particularly sketchy fucktard. “You’ve lost millions of viewers” lamented another. Really? REALLY?
The article goes on to list plenty more. Turns out the women chose leggings because the weather was rather brisk and chilly. Perfectly understandable. I’ve been in sand in cooler weather while nude, and quite frankly, it’s not that fun. Yet these responses once again outline something I’ve been screaming into the void for quite some time now. The absolute lack of respect too many men have for women. “Edward,” I can hear some of you who have known me way too long say, “Aren’t you a bit hypocritical? I happen to know you have done and said some awful things in your past”. Yes, yes I have. However, there’s a little thing called learning, growth and change. Yet so many of these men are utterly opposed to this concept. To the point that even when called out on it, even from friends and family, they steadfastly and sometimes violently, stick to their horrific stances.
Even among nudists, these men exist in spades. I’ve had many an argument with people that are supposedly ‘enlightened’ when it comes to respecting the human body, still believe it’s perfectly ok to use women as an object of their gaze and desire. With social media feeds filled with ‘gorgeous, fit” bodies, inappropriate comments, and the like. They always seem to fall back on one particular argument too… “Humans are just sexual beings, live with it.”
No. I won’t live with it. We may be sexual beings, but we aren’t feral. We aren’t animals running around on instinct alone. We have the capability for self-control and for the love of ALL THE PETES IN THE WORLD… Can you fucking men start learning how to use it? Another thing I’m tired of whenever this sort of thing comes up are the people who are ostensibly defending the women being objectified by saying things like, “Think of your wife or daughter. Would you want that happening to them?” Guess what? Yes. Yes they would. We’ve established far too often the frightening propensity of men that ABSOLUTELY objectify, sexualize and obsess over their female loved one’s bodies. I’ve witnessed this first hand countless times while I was a nanny, watching fathers pushing their young daughters to eat better, be better in sports, wear prettier clothing, have prettier hair, comment on their weight, comment on their looks… it’s never ending. Then you have the countless men that begin cheating on their wives as they age and lose their ‘youthful beauty’, often with younger women… way younger women.
No, we can’t rely on trying to get men to empathize with the plight of their loved ones. What we need is to educate our young boys better, and stand up stronger to the men that are already almost lost. Women shouldn’t have to feel forced to dress in particular ways, or have a particular body type in order to simply exist or play a sport or compete or do what they wish to do. Which brings us to the drawing today. I used to play Volleyball in my young adulthood. It was a rec league, but it got very competitive for what it was, and you know what I found? I found a lot of women with bodies similar to the one in the drawing not only playing volleyball, but excelling in it. Certainly with much more skill, effort and energy than I ever had to put in it, or even some of the more fit men and women that were playing. The body didn’t stop them, and the idea that body size equals fitness level is some ableist fucking bullshit that also needs to end.
So can you imagine if Women’s Volleyball was full size women playing their hearts out while wearing next to nothing at all? Would men then ‘wait 4 years for fucking PANTS?!?!?” I imagine these scummy assholes would be relieved that they were….
… and that’s about as fucking messed up as it gets.