I am going to attempt the impossible. I am going to write a blog post on August 22, 2014 about gender issues in sports and culture without making more than this one mention of Mo’ne Davis and the Little League World Series. I’ve got no problem with Mo’ne, as you will see. I think she is fantastic.
Here’s the thing…we have a problem in our society.
Actually we have a lot of problems, but this is a big one. It’s simply this: We have raised generations of boys (and actually many girls) who believe that to do something “like a girl” is a tremendous insult. Even in the much adored movie “The Sandlot”, we see that the very worst put down a boy could receive was to be told that he plays ball like a girl.
Every time we see a man in trouble for beating up a woman, we think, “Wow, what a loser.” But do we think about the messages that man has received throughout his life about the place and value of women? Is it any wonder that there’s so much domestic violence when men are taught both implicitly and explicitly that women are inferior, or that they are objects for male amusement.
You might feel like I’m making too big a deal out of this, but think about it. Why do we call a boy a girl if he expresses emotion? Why did the boy in my math class think it was funny to say to another boy, “Ladies first”? Why do people say, “You’re screaming like a little girl”? It isn’t harmless — it’s hurtful.
If you coach or have children, please invest 3 minutes watching this video that could change the life of those kids and their future spouses, daughters and sons. Watch the little girl at the one minute mark and get ready to feel your heart melt.
As a male, I see this from a male perspective. But there’s another whole side the story. How do all these messages make girls feel? What do they learn about themselves as females from our society? The video does a pretty good job of addressing that, and it’s a huge deal.
Let’s teach our boys to honor women. Let’s teach our girls that they are not second-rate. Let’s eliminate the phrase “like a girl” from our vocabulary.