{"id":3120,"date":"2016-11-08T09:00:34","date_gmt":"2016-11-08T17:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/opinion-womens-soccer-team-has-perfect-response-to-sexist-rankings\/"},"modified":"2016-11-08T09:00:34","modified_gmt":"2016-11-08T17:00:34","slug":"opinion-womens-soccer-team-has-perfect-response-to-sexist-rankings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/opinion\/opinion-womens-soccer-team-has-perfect-response-to-sexist-rankings\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Women’s soccer team has perfect response to sexist rankings"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t want to talk about the Harvard men\u2019s soccer team.<\/p>\n

They showed us what they\u2019re made of \u2014 ranking the women\u2019s soccer team by appearance and ideal sexual position in annual \u201cscouting reports\u201d and then trying to cover their tracks, causing the remainder of their season to be canceled.<\/p>\n

I want to talk about the women\u2019s soccer team\u2019s response.<\/p>\n

After The Harvard Crimson wrote about the 2012 report \u2014 which was, until recently, publicly available through Google Groups \u2014 six members of the 2012 women\u2019s team joined together to write a response.<\/p>\n

Reading some of the male players\u2019 comments, you start to wonder whether we\u2019ve made any progress since Title IX \u2014 the law prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded education programs and activities, i.e. sports \u2014 was passed in 1972.<\/p>\n

Reading the female players\u2019 response, you see: Yes. We absolutely have.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not anonymous,\u201d Kelsey Clayman, Brooke Dickens, Alika Keene, Emily Mosbacher, Lauren Varela and Haley Washburn began. \u201cAnd rather than having our comments taken, spun and published behind the guise of a fake anonymity offered to us by numerous news outlets, we have decided to speak for ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

(It\u2019s worth noting that their response was published before the school canceled the remainder of the men\u2019s season, so the women had little indication that the scouting report would be taken seriously by the school or would result in any action. They spoke out anyway.)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not pity ourselves,\u201d they write, \u201cnor do we ache most because of the personal nature of this attack. More than anything, we are frustrated that this is a reality that all women have faced in the past and will continue to face throughout their lives. … We are appalled that female athletes who are told to feel empowered and proud of their abilities are so regularly reduced to a physical appearance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, the Harvard Crimson published a story Sunday detailing a similar report produced by the Harvard men\u2019s cross-country team, ranking the women\u2019s team.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis document attempts to pit us against one another, as if the judgment of a few men is sufficient to determine our worth,\u201d the women soccer players write. \u201cBut, men, we know better than that. Eighteen years of soccer taught us that. Eighteen years \u2014 as successful, powerful, and undeniably brilliant female athletes \u2014 taught us that.\u201d<\/p>\n

They continue:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know what it\u2019s like to get knocked down. To lose a few battles. To sweat, to cry, to bleed. To fight so hard, yet no matter what we do, the game is still out of our hands. And, even still, we keep fighting; for ourselves, yes, but above all for our teammates. This document might have stung any other group of women you chose to target, but not us. We know as teammates that we rise to the occasion, that we are stronger together, and that we will not tolerate anything less than respect for women that we care for more than ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

They mention the many men they know and love who would never participate in such behavior. They encourage all women and men \u2014 \u201cbecause ultimately we are all members of the same team\u201d \u2014 to speak up when they encounter behavior that degrades women.<\/p>\n

And they express hope that news of the report will usher in a more humane culture \u2014 at Harvard and beyond.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot change the past,\u201d they write, \u201cbut we are asking you to help us now and in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFinally,\u201d they offer in closing, \u201cto the men of Harvard Soccer and any future men who may lay claim to our bodies and choose to objectify us as sexual objects, in the words of one of us, we say together: \u2018I can offer you my forgiveness, which is \u2014 and forever will be \u2014 the only part of me that you can ever claim as yours.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Progress, indeed. Perfection, in fact.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Heidi Stevens is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t want to talk about the Harvard men\u2019s soccer team. They showed us what they\u2019re made of \u2014 ranking the women\u2019s soccer team by appearance and ideal sexual position in annual \u201cscouting reports\u201d and then trying to cover their tracks, causing the remainder of their season to be canceled. I want to talk about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":8,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-3120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3120"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=3120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}