Glenn Sacks
Girls Playing Sports Against Boys

April 3, 2008 at 3:52 pm · Filed under Vox Populi

Holly Bowne's story Feminism may go too far in girls vs. boys (Detroit Free Press, 3/28/08) and my blog post Holly Bowne: 'I saw a female player punch one of our boys in the back of his head...my son's face was smashed into the boards by another' reminded me of an incident that took place with my son at a skateboard park several years ago.

I used to take my son Saturday mornings to go skateboarding, but one time when we went they were filming a children's show there. My son and the others were encouraged to be the audience/extras for the show.

It turned out that it was one of those Saturday kids' shows, and it was about this great girl skateboarder who was the victim of boy skateboarders' sexism. The sexism was that the boys didn't believe that a girl could or would really do dangerous skateboard stunts. The boys were, of course, made to look like fools for this belief.

I watched as they filmed the dangerous skateboard stunts that the girl would do to show what sexist idiots the boys are. A teenage girl went up to the top of a tremendously tall ramp, got on her skateboard, and bent down to begin. Then she stopped, and her stunt double came on, similarly dressed.

The stunt double did a bunch of amazing stunts, and I said to my son, "Wow, that girl can really skate!" Then I looked a little closer and saw that it wasn't a girl at all--it was a boy dressed to look like a girl.

In other words, the point of the show was to make fun of the boys for thinking that a girl couldn't or wouldn't do dangerous skateboard stunts, and in order to film it, they had a boy do all the dangerous skateboard stunts for the girl. Nice, huh?

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