This Girl Can

Sorry i meant 'alot' of girls give up.

I woukd explain to your son why focussing on jeeping girls in sport is important.

Its not just about getting people active. Its about tackling the reasons girls give up.

I like their campaigns and I find it very motivating. Perhaps woman could be used, but 18yr old females don't tend to think of themselves as women, in my experience.

I agree with a lot of that whoputthecatout and also admire such an attitude. I like to think my friends and I are similar when it comes to boys generally - the comments about us from many we've known due to our challenging their misogyny also show that - but was thinking here in terms of sport and sexist comments aimed at girls over their bodies when they play (and following playing). This isn't something I can say how I'd react to as I go to a girls' school, so have only ever played around girls save for sometimes in the park when younger. I'd like to say I'd play anyway and not care less what they were saying but know it's easy to say that and not so easy in practice. Though it was never acceptable I do wonder if social media makes it more difficult - the comments not only being at the time but then aimed at girls afterwards. It wouldn't be nice at all for girls to read - I know myself that though I've learnt to treat them with disdain (and just unfriend many of those aiming the comments) that it's unpleasant to read misogynist comments about yourself from boys and when it's there in front of you it's difficult not to take it in and have it imprinted on your mind for some time.

My friends and I are definitely all confident and try to challenge misogyny from boys as much as we can. As with you, we also all have good friends who are boys who are also excellent feminist allies!

I'd love all girls to be in a position to mock misogyny and see the boys and men who spout it as the risible people they are but I'd even more love them not to face it in the first place.

NoLoveofMine: I take your point entirely and agree, which is why we need to educate girls "to empower" them as you say. Yes, objectification and misogyny should be challenged - I took that as a given, which is why I didn't even mention it - but until we turn our adolescent boys and men into fully thinking human beings who treat girls as fully thinking human beings like them - bugger off works quite well as plan B.

I should add this wasn't just me being confident. I wasn't an anomaly. All my girl friends were the same. Maybe it's a generational thing - I am from a second wave feminism era where we just did our thing and boys could go whistle.

As we famously said "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle", though actually we never seemed short of boyfriends. Wonder why?

Some people were even more aghast because I said I couldn't give a flying wotsit whether any boy or man commented or stared or made sexist remarks. Not my problem if boys are immature. No way would I let my life be dictated by a bunch of eternal adolescents.

It's great you felt confident enough to ignore this kind of sexist nonsense and see them as risible but not all women or girls can. It's far harder for girls at school who are already subject to sexist comments, objectification and suggestions their worth is their appearance to ignore comments made not only whilst they're taken part in sport but continuing on social media afterwards. We need to empower girls to do what they want but challenge the objectification and misogyny they face, in all forms. It shouldn't be something girls and women have to learn to just put up with.

Anyway just want to say he appreciated female and male athletes so I got loads of awesome women role models - anyhow really good for my confidence and to appreciate the ridiculous barriers in place.

Also discus throwers - the rubbish they got for not being a female form - well my father wouldn't have any of that either.

My father was an athletics coach as well as a teacher - he used to get frustrated with the crap women got for competing in the 70s and hated how confident girls could become less confident and drop out. He didn't like wonderful athletes being somehow pressured not to continue competing after puberty as often happens at my school.

I remember him pointing out to me the awful negative comments of the Williams sisters and martina N - they were so often spoken of negatively and got abuse rather that seeing them for the awesome sports women. And he hated how school girls could get the same type of rubbish.

Anyhow I don't want to out me or him but he trained women to national level. We received letters from women athletes after his death about how he helped instil confidence in them.

I completely agree YetAnotherSparacus. It is also extremely annoying to be told that no matter how loudly you say you had no interest in competitive sport it is really because you are conforming to gendered pressures.

I wonder if it is any more annoying that being accused of not conforming to gendered stereotypes because I loved sports .

Some people were even more aghast because I said I couldn't give a flying wotsit whether any boy or man commented or stared or made sexist remarks. Not my problem if boys are immature. No way would I let my life be dictated by a bunch of eternal adolescents.

The best education we can give girls, whether it is about sports or sex or anything, is do what you want and tell the boys to bugger off if they don't like it.

What a ridiculous comment.

I wasn't addressing your comments or hers. I was replying to YetAnotherSpartacus and agreeing with her and her experiences. Or are experiences only valid if they meet your set criteria that life is crap if you are female?

Which was in reply to mine, replying to hers. I don't know why you're always so keen to dismiss misogyny and sexism girls face, never actually make any comments about it except to try to reduce it such as there.

It wasn't. It was in reply to YetAnotherSpartacus posts.

It is also extremely annoying to be told that no matter how loudly you say you had no interest in competitive sport it is really because you are conforming to gendered pressures.

I don't see what relevance this has to acornsandnuts explaining the girls at her daughter's school felt so uncomfortable with the comments boys were making about their bodies both at the time and on social media afterwards that they had to take part in their "sports day" in lesson time instead? These girls and countless others like them are being put off sport because of the comments and judgement of their bodies they're facing and having to read on social media afterwards.

I completely agree YetAnotherSparacus. It is also extremely annoying to be told that no matter how loudly you say you had no interest in competitive sport it is really because you are conforming to gendered pressures.

I had a huge argument with a poster about that once. Oddly she couldn't explain why my husband was capable of making his own mind up about loathing sport but I had just succumbed to social pressure.

Good opportunity to teach DS about the privileges he enjoys and that the plural of anecdotes ("I know loads of sporty girls and inactive boys") is not data.

I appreciate a number of children don't enjoy sport Spartacus but I don't think that's the issue here as even if that is the case for some it's still only happened because the boys have made sexist comments about girls playing sport during and afterwards, posting on social media about their bodies, so the girls have been made to feel uncomfortable and had to adapt because of how boys view them.

That's a very good point. Yet again despite the fact the girls have been made to feel that way due to sexist comments from boys, it's them who were forced to adapt by it, with their sports day being turned into just competing within lessons whilst the boys still had the day itself

Although if the girls got a nice outing somewhere (for me, that would have been somewhere in the countryside, a gallery or museum) on the boys' sports day then I'd have seen that as a win (especially since I'd have made sure I wasn't competing in anything so got out of PE too). :)

BayLeaves "the emphasis on competitive sports made me hate PE and it took me a decade after leaving school to realise it's not exercise I hate but competitive sports"

THIS! I finally found the sport I love and excel in in my late 40s: weightlifting. I am now 50 and lift more than any other woman in my gym, on a level with half the men (according to my trainer). And yet at school, I bunked off pretty much every PE lesson from the age of 13 onwards. I can handle exercise classes (namely yoga) but any sort of team sport STILL makes my blood curdle.

And I love the new This Girl Can advert: it's much better than the last one which seemed to be all about women worrying about what they looked like. This one is more about enjoying what your body can do. And that young woman putting in her shield and sniffing to the line "I'm not cute" - awesome, I could watch her do that all day :-)

acornandnuts I don't think it's too late to make that point at all. I think it's a really powerful point to make about how boys and girls are treated.

That's a very good point. Yet again despite the fact the girls have been made to feel that way due to sexist comments from boys, it's them who were forced to adapt by it, with their sports day being turned into just competing within lessons whilst the boys still had the day itself. Which also has the knock on effect of reinforcing that sport is primarily the preserve of boys and men, for them to have a specific day whilst girls have to do it in their sports lesson time to avoid being ogled and commented on.

I agree NoLove infact had I had known this was happening earlier I may of suggested the boys do their Sports day during PE and let the girls crack on with a bloody good sports day without feeling judged.

That's infuriating acornsandnuts. Girls are being made to feel uncomfortable, put off sport and having their events moved and not put on as they should be as part of the sports day due to the effects of boys sexualising them and viewing them as being there for their bodies to be judged and commented on. The objectification of women and girls has not only put girls off sport there but lead to them not being able to compete on an equal footing as part of the day. It's galling the girls at your daughters school are having to put up with that and it's having such an effect.

DDs sports day was last week, she's 15 and was chosen to do the discus. What I hadn't realized was that all girls events were to take place within their sports lessons over the week as over the years less and less girls were happy or wanting to take part due to the jibes and under radar comments that were being made by the boys both during but mostly after sports day as in social media comments about the girls bodies.

So bloody sad.

Sittinginthesun maybe you should venture onto the feminism threads a bit more often as it may open your eyes to the need for campaigns like This Girl Can.

When boys and men have female allies like yourself standing up for them and saying (I hate this phrase but it's a thing!) "what about the menz" or NAMALT (not ALL men are like that) it shows just how ingrained it is for us to worry about the few tiny areas in which men feel hard done by, rather than the many larger arenas in which they have the upper hand.

Sometimes singling out women and girls for special treatment is necessary to help level the playing field.