Girls Have Balls: An Ode to Female Chauvinism

May 12, 2008     Posted in Other Stories

I guess Boston commuters have never seen a female football player before.


By CC Staff

Okay. I know my bag’s big, and I know it smells, and I know when the T pulls into Park Street, the jersey-clad, half-crunked Red Sox fans are not going to part like the Red Sea. But every practice night, every game day, it’s the same ritual once they notice the insignia: Boston Militia Women’s Football. Stares. Whispers. Fingers pointing. Feet shuffling. General anxiety and confusion. And when there are two of us, well, that’s just too much to handle. Even small children cry.

Before the corpse-sized bag, I carried my helmet and shoulder pads in one hand, my cleats in the other. Somehow, that warranted less stares, whispers, pointing and shuffling. Mostly because those jersey-clad, half-crunked Red Sox fans seemed to think I played lacrosse. Without a stick. But a female lacrosse player, that’s believable. Female football players? They’re myths, like unicorns, and Bigfoot.

Women’s sports in general face a lot of adversity. Most have no future outside of college, and others, like women’s lacrosse and hockey, are neutered to the point of boredom. And for my team and me, the men on this forum make us feel like bobble-heads rather than football players. Mud? Sex? Victoria’s Secret lingerie? Stupid perverted fantasies that remind me of the time I snuck downstairs as a kid and found my father watching Jell-O wrestling on Pay-Per-View.

Personally, I doubt these guys have stepped foot on a field since Pop Warner. And I’d love to line them up on the 50-yard line during one of our practices and have them talk about our “quarterback making deep penetration when the tight end is wide open in the end zone.” They wouldn’t leave with balls, let alone footballs.

And I think our 6’0”, 200 pound tight end would be the first to score.

4 Comments on "Girls Have Balls: An Ode to Female Chauvinism"

  1. Darcy says:
    Mon, 12th May 20082:52 pm 

    Rock on!

  2. kurt says:
    Sun, 16th Nov 20081:51 pm 

    “Rocks off” is more like it.

    Did you write this after a particularly grueling women’s studies weekend? You drip with misandry, not sweat.

    People stare at any athelete hauling a “corpse-sized bag” onto a subway, but you reflexively drag out the tattered flag of sexism. You do more than that; you assault everything that is male. People see something unusual and naturally regard it as such, and you want to castrate men. You’re a female chauvinist pig, no less offensive than your male counterparts of the 1950s.

    Let’s reverse the genders here: A Billy Elliott-type dancer gets on the T with his ballet togs in tow — and, incensed by the stares and tittering of females on the train, fantasizes about getting these women up on stage where he can perform unanesthetized clitoridectomies on them. Sound a little deranged? So do you.

    Why are so many chronically angry women so blind to the double standards that bind men as well as women? Why do members of the most pampered, privileged class of humans ever to walk the face of the Earth continue to see themselves as victims?

    For the last 35 years, our culture has accommodated, elevated and celebrated females and everything feminine — and has with equal consistency subjugated, denigrated and ridiculed males and everything masculine. Open your eyes; it’s all around you. Men in their 20s, 30s and 40s are waking up to the deeply hypocritical nature of the propaganda we’ve been fed for all of our adult lives. You’ll be disappointed to know that increasingly, we’re not likely to be awed — or cowed — by the likes of you. We’re starting to see the light. It’s too bright to miss.

    Consider the broadest reflection we have of our culture: TV and movies — both the programming they carry and the ads that carry the programming. When was the last time you saw an ad featuring both genders and the woman was the moron? Consider the incidence of the reverse. And then there’s your knee-jerk, puerile desire to emasculate the curiously nondescript “these guys” who haven’t been on a field since Pop Warner Days. Typical female chauvinist fantasy, and it’s fed by mainstream media.

    It’s difficult to find a movie above a G rating these days that doesn’t feature at least one scene of attack on male genitals (such a laugh, yuck-yuck). OK, so when have you ever seen a movie or TV show in which a woman was brought to her knees by a paralyzing twist of the nipple? It just doesn’t happen. And the thought of it just isn’t very funny, it it? (The true equivalent would be even un-funnier: Women, wearing their ovaries outside their bodies, find them constantly the target of slapstick humor and demeaning jokes about their painful removal.) And what does that tell you about our culture’s regard for the essence of both genders? It speaks volumes.

    Maybe it’s an outgrowth of Title IX, or maybe it’s just your own brand of chauvinistic nastiness, but you’ve got a chip of thigh-pad proportions on your shoulder. Nobody really cares whether you play field hockey or lacrosse or football or ultimate fighting. You can carry your pads and cleats in the open or sheath them in the bag that you’ve taken up as your cross. Nobody really cares. Really. But you’ll find that people will notice and remember far longer something else you bring onto the train — angry, hormone-saturated arrogance. It’s as ugly on you as it ever was on a man.

  3. Jen says:
    Sun, 7th Dec 20083:28 pm 

    1) Using chauvinist that many times does not make your point clear, it just makes you a poor writer.

    2) Not much about that article is anti-men. It's as much targeted at women who do not believe they should be playing football (because yes, they do exist). However, since I was traveling during Red Sox games on the T, the majority of travelers were men, especially those who would speak up. Also, the quote at the end is direct from the Patriots' official forum about my football team. So if I'm wrong in questioning why men view female football players solely through a sexual lens, so be it. But between what I've read and heard, and with the debut of the Lingirie Football League less than a year away, I think I'm quite justified in finding it unjust that the sport is not taken seriously by ANYONE.

    3) I am not a feminist. I hate feminism. My senior thesis was an argument of why the NOW organization needs to fold. I am a lesbian and I hate pretty much all lesbians and get my "rocks off" predominately with confused straight girls because those are the only ones I can stand. Before you judge, get the facts. Maybe you need to look up the definitions of the big words you throw around, or do a little research before you attack an article.

    4) Or maybe you're just an angry single man.

  4. gufnoir says:
    Sun, 27th Sep 200912:27 am 

    Girls don't have balls!

    Once, during dancing i accidentally kicked girl between the legs, and she had no pain, i said "Sorry" – she said "That's ok" and we continued our dancing, so there can't be any balls or she will be laying on the ground after kick.

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