Positives and negatives of the Olympics.

[kickassangel]

Hopefully a fairly light hearted thread but thought we could keep a tally of the plus and minus sides of the Olympics.

Plus
Women from Saudi, and more women from other Middle Eastern States.
Women included in the military flag bearers
Future sports people fairly even m/f balance (and their sponsors)

Minus
Still more events for men than women
Still more men taking part, and given better status/accommodations etc
Women carrying the country names, and the bowl things during the parade.
Mainly women nurses with the children on beds.
Paul McCartney getting the 'men' to sing first and the 'girls' to have a go second.

I was hoping that I'd noticed some more positives, but apparently not.

What did other people notice?

Market blah blah blah aside, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect some serious positive discrimination in favour of women's sport (funding, coverage etc) seeing as in the past it was the victim of such intense negative discrimination for the dumbest of reasons.

Such overt discrimination might no longer exist (or has just renamed "market forces") but men's sport still benefits from that past discrimination just as women's sport suffers from it. Who knows where women's football would be now if it hadn't been banned by the FA all those years ago.

May I just go back to the fact that some were getting exercised about women being referred to as girls when men are called men?

I've just heard Hazel Irving refer to the Brownlee brothers (24 and 22 respectively) referred to as boys and Clare Balding has just referred to the members of the dressage team as "the boys". The particular boy in question who had just finished the dressage was aged 45.

It is not the first time this has happened.

Re football: as for women being prepared to watch men's football - personally I don't as I find them to be somewhat overpaid divas who roll around the ground if they get as much as a broken fingernail. Contrast that with the captain of the GB women's hockey team at the Olympics who was back on the field within a few days after having surgery on her broken jaw.

Positives... Team GB done really well
Negatives ... The team name is incorrect, why not Team U.K and why exclude N.I from the team title?

bureni this is a thread about women in the Olympics so I fail to see how that's relevant.

It's a good point though, I'd like to know why it's not team UK, does anyone know?

I have been really enjoying how much people are talking in a positve way about what's going on - my mum, who isn't typically into sport, or patriotic stuff, or especially into feminism, was gushing about it all yesterday and saying how lovely it was to see the country all get together behind these women.

From what I can make out from other threads - GB is the name we are registered under. It's a shortened form of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. NI athletes have the choice of competing for GB or Ireland.

Equestrian events are so non-sexist it makes me proud!

It is relevant since there are Irish women in the Olympic team as well. Had the team been called Team England or Team Scotland I feel sure people would have voiced their disapproval.

GB is inaccurate though isn't it. Strictly speaking, as I understand it, Great Britain just refers to the largest island in the group of islands that make up the UK. So, really, it excludes the Isle of Man (where Mark Cavendish is from), the Shetlands, the Orkneys, the Isle of Wight, Anglesey....... Team UK would make much more sense.

Team UK would make more sense, sure.

Re. The boy / girl thing. I think the commentators have been more or less even in referring to "boys" as often as "girls" and they have been gushing with praise for the skills of the "girls".

The only thing that is a bit is that when talking about individual women they do seem to credit the supporting coach or the team or the person that discovered their talent more so than the men. But I do realise that is hardly hard and fast statistical evidence as I've probably been watching more women than men.

Apparently UK excludes the Channel Islands so competitors from there would be homeless. Ours is not an easy country to name!

It's because the NI athletes can choose to compete for either GB or the Republic.

We have friends who live in the UK and were trying to work out how to mail something from the US. We spent ages googling this, and could not find a collective noun that included the Channel Islands along with the UK.

But yes, it should be team UK & Channel Islands. Although glad to hear that NI is tacked on, it never gets mentioned. Trinidad & Tobago doesn't seem to get abbreviated quite so much.

GB or GBR has long been our abbreviation for athletics meets etc. but it isnt an abbrebiation for Great Britain in this instance but for "the united kingdom of great Britain and northern Ireland". The channel islands thing is new to me!

UKR is the Ukraine so UK would be difficult.

The decision to promote "Team GB" is a PR one, however!!

I think that a lot of the non-participation of young/teen girls in sport at school is down to the atrocious way in which schools deal with girls starting periods.

I remember at secondary we were supposed to wear only gym knickers when doing indoor PE, which as one of the first girls to get my period in the class at just before 13 was horrendous. No privacy, no empathy from the teacher to have time to change a pad/check for leaks before lesson started, and certainly no allowance to wear even the PE skirt - never mind put shorts or tracksuit bottoms on.
It was easier to fake a note from my Mum saying that my asthma was bad so I didn't have to participate.

New British record from the female hammer thrower this morning :)

Have any parents ever taken a school/teacher to task for this attitude towards periods and sports? It is a re-occurring theme. Does anyone do anything about it? Or is it no longer the case? Because it is a terrible reason not to be able to do sports.

Is anyone else feeling a bit happy about all the support the women's boxing is getting from the crowd in ExCel? "3 times louder than a jumbo jet" apparently.

I hope that twat from the telegraph sees how popular it is.

namechangeguy - I don't suppose I ever discussed it with my parents, I don't remember doing.
It was easier once I was a bit older (14/15) and using tampons, but by then the focus was all on the people who were actually good at sport and playing inter-school or even county level. Those of us who were not naturally sporty were left to our own devices largely - which is ridiculous because we were the ones who could really have done with the exercise!

I have no idea what the current attitude is.

It would be a pity if those who were put off in their teens were letting their daughters go through the same problems now. There is a lot of awareness on here, so maybe this problem is fixed.

Nice piece here, with some links to some not-so-nice pieces...

www.newstatesman.com/blogs/lifestyle/2012/08/alan-whites-olympic-diary-can-olympics-put-end-our-terrible-treatment-female

Seeing a half-naked woman's body in a positive light - strength and power and achievement and ability and self-ownership - instead of metaphorically being draped over a car.

totally agree with OhGood - women's bodies being admired without being sexualised.

plus stories like this:
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2185361/Olympics-2012-U-S-gymnast-Aly-Raisman-reveals-gold-medal-winning-routine-tribute-1972-Munch-Games-massacre.html

an article about a woman being a high achiever and caring about something that doesn't fall within the "accepted" interests of women such as fashion...

Did anyone have mixed feelings as I did on seeing the Saudi and Palestinian women compete this morning in the heats of the 800 metres?

On the one had I thought hooray for them (and sod off to those silly old Saudi men who tried to stop Saudi females from competing and only relented in the face of having their team banned if they didn't). But on the other hand I saw them struggling round the track wrapped up like Egyptian mummies - hardly better than trying to run with a ball and chain round your ankle.

Yes, they were painfully slow because they did not have proper training facilities, partners or support (although the Saudi athlete had trained in the USA) but being swathed in the equivalent of bandages on a sunny hot morning certainly didn't help.

So, on the one hand, it was a glorious 'up yours sunshine' to misogyny, a showcase for their personal guts and an opportunity for the world to see the sheer stupidity and injustice of the restrictions placed on women in certain countries: on the other though it made me squirm at seeing them struggling in their medieval wrappings behind women free to celebrate the physical strength and endurance of healthy female bodies.