Lisa Bliss posted what follows on the UltraList. With her permission, I've posted her UltraList post here.
Lisa is an inspiration and fantastic athlete. Take a look at her TED talk entitled, "No Failure in Trying". Here's a link to Lisa's Blog, Secret Recipes.
If you're wondering why I'm posting this, it's because I'm a woman, I like to run, I like to compete (with myself and with the 70 year olds that kick my ass). I will NEVER win because I don't have it in me, I don't try to win and I don't train to win. Despite all of this, I do think these words are tremendously inspiring! By the way, my uterus is right where it should be. It has not burst nor has it fallen out.
Enjoy!
A level playing field for women? (A long and untimely response)
I’ve been busy these days. Starting a new practice has taken too much of
free time. I just now got around to reading this thread that Cherie started
about a level playing field for women. Thanks, Cherie! And the responses have
been great. I really, really liked everybody’s input. I am passionate about
this topic, and have given presentations on the subject of the history of women
in athletics. I have a very long response below. I was going to put it on my
blog and just post a link here, but decided, what the heck, you will read it if
you want and delete it if you wish.
I have my own opinions on the topic that Cherie brought up, and they are
just that, opinions. What is below is a long and perhaps boring-to-some stream
of thought as well as list of events that have influenced women in sport in
recent years. As others have mentioned, it is so important to remember that
women have been allowed to participate in sports on a very limited level for
such a short time compared to men. I strongly believe that the gender culture
significantly impacts the level playing field between the sexes.
Of course, I cannot deny (can anyone?) the physical differences between
the sexes. Yes, of course men are stronger, faster, and more muscular. That is
our biology, period. And that is the reason for the difference in sport
performance for sure. BUT… women have only been competing in sport for such a
relatively short time, so much shorter than we may even care to realize. So,
how do we know how much that gap will close in time? There is so much more that
influences competition than just biology. For now, we usually have a women's
winner and a men's winner. I think that is good (though in recent years I have
not gone to races with the goal of being the first woman; I have gone to races
to be first. I have only succeeded a couple of times, but that is not the
point.)
I am 44. I was raised in a time when there was no question that girls
could participate in sports. I was in sports in high school, mostly solo sports
like gymnastics, but it never occurred to me that I couldn’t do something
because I was a girl. But funny thing is, somehow from somewhere or someone, I
picked up this “feminine” influence that I didn’t even know I had. I didn’t
know it until 2007, 8 years after running my first ultra. I learned I had it
DURING the Badwater 2007 race. It was my friend Dori who was pacing me, who was
also a high school girls’ running coach, who pointed it out to me. She said
during the race that I had to stop feeling bad when passing people, that
passing people was the whole point of my being there in the first place. And
she told me I had to stop giving the other runners hugs when I did pass, no
matter what I felt. Ha! She called me out, spot on, and it was my first
“coaching” experience in how to compete. It was also my first insight into my
own experiences and thoughts about competition. The story is a long and funny
one and I’ll spare you the details. But I gotta say, it was darn hard for me to
learn to pass people without feeling a twinge of guilt, or maybe even a lot of
guilt. How strange. That feeling of guilt just doesn’t belong on the race
track, right? Where the heck did that come from? Maybe it’s not a girl thing,
and maybe there are guys that have felt that way, but the women (usually around
my age or older) with whom I have discussed this seem to really get it; they
know what I mean. The guys, not so much.
I *believe* there are still cultural influences that keep women, in
general, from being bad-ass competitors. Now, I know every one of us knows a
bad-ass chick who can kick his or her ass at the opportunity, but I’m talking
about in general. I *believe* the stereotypes and misinformation of the dark
ages still lurks in sports.
I think we think we are longer over it, but I strongly believe we are not.
And I wonder how narrow the gap between the sexes will become when and if
we finally are.
Enough of my thoughts and opinions. Here are some facts about the past.
All jokes aside, girls were not allowed to run or participate in sports
because she had one of these - a damn uterus. It wasn’t a good thing to have
“back then.” Even the source of the word is a curse.
“The word uterus ultimately comes from the Indo-Europena udero, meaning
womb or abdomen. This Indo=European word also developed into the Greek hustera,
meaning womb, from whence English gets the word hysteria. This supposed
psychoneurotic disorder was once through to be a woman’s disease, somehow
caused by a disturbed uterus, and thus the adjective hysterical, meaning
deranged by a faulty womb, was invented in the early seventeenth century. The
Greek root of these words is also evident in hysterectomy, denoting the
surgical removal of the uterus, a procedure that was employed in the late
nineteenth century to treat women suffering from hysterical neuroses.” (From
The Lover's Tongue: A Merry Romp Through the Language of Love and Sex, By Mark
Morton)
Oh boy. Uterus = Hysteria. We're not off to a good start from birth. Like
I said, all jokes aside.... :)
In the early 1900s:
When six women collapsed after the 800-meter race at the 1928 Amsterdam
Olympics, an alarmist account in The New York Times said that "even this
distance makes too great a call on feminine strength." The London Daily
Mail carried admonitions from doctors that women who participated in such
"feats of endurance" would "become old too soon." The
800-meter race was discontinued. For 32 years, until the 1960 Rome Olympics,
women would run no race longer than 200 meters.
32 years!
Ok, so 30+ years go by….
Does anybody know or remember the name Julia Chase? She was born in the
40’s when women weren't allowed to compete in events with men. These are
Julia's words: “You rarely heard about women runners in those days. Women
weren't allowed to compete in events with men. And they weren't allowed to
enter races longer than 880 yards. If a woman ran too much her uterus would
fall out. That was the thinking. You never heard of an actual case, but it was
just in the air.”
But Julia wanted to compete in a 4 ½ mile race in MA in 1961. It was a long
haul for her to even get to the start line, but she ran the race and she
finished in 33:40, ahead of 12 men. Her time was not considered official because
she was a woman.
Everybody knows Bobbi Gibb. She is recognized as the first woman to run
the entire Boston Marathon in 1966, of course without a number because women
were not allowed to run marathons. I wonder why not. You’d think by the 60s that
we would have extinguished the fable of the uterus falling out. But that is not
the reality. Women were still held back.
Of course, Kathrine Switzer was the first woman to run Boston [1967] with a race
number, and she was allowed into the race only because she used her initials
instead of name to enter, so it was presumed that she was a man. We all have
seen the famous picture of the attempt by the official to physically remove her
from the course.
And all that discriminatory nonsense was EONS ago many of the younger
people here must imagine, but it wasn’t. Kathrine at the Boston Marathon was
1967. Not so long ago for us 40+ year olds!
And just when you think that the notion of falling uteri were a thing of
the “dark ages” of the 60s and 70s for women athletes ...
It was in 2008 that Gian-Franco Kasper, head of the International Ski
Federation said, "Ski jumping is just too dangerous for women. Don't
forget, [the landing] it's like jumping down from, let's say, about two meters
to the ground about a thousand times a year, which seems not to be appropriate
for ladies from a medical point of view" A few years earlier, he told
reporters that a woman's uterus might burst during landing.
Huh? 2008? Surely this can’t be for real….
Or how about, what year was the first year in Olympic history that all 205
participating countries sent at least one female competitor? Yes, this should
be a crisp memory in all our minds.
http://todayinlondonblog.today.com/_news/2012/07/24/12926129-for-first-time-women-from-every-nation-ready-to-rock-olympics?lite
Why? Why did it take until *last year* for all countries to have
representation of the female sex?
The answer lies in the Olympic Committee allowing the athlete’s “uniform”
to be altered, that is, allowing women to cover their arms in clothing if that
is what their religion requires of them. 2012!
Who cares what they wear? Let them compete! Let them be athletes. Let them
run their hearts out and sweat and puke and stumble and fail. Maybe one of them
will win. But we will never know until we give them the same opportunities that
men have been granted seemingly forever and without question.
So, my point is, and of course it could have been said in just one
sentence: We have a loooong way to go culturally before we declare that women
will always be the lesser (slower, weaker, etc.) athlete in a competition, all
things being equal.
I believe women have a competitive strength that is yet untapped because
maybe many (most?) of us don’t even know it’s there. I so hope we can draw on
the inspiration of the women who paved this path for us. I believe the best way
to honor them is to keep the momentum rolling. I hope that more and more women
will start their races with the intent of being the first person to cross the
finish line. Who cares what happens in the end; it’s the intent that is super
cool.
Lisa Bliss (okay, back to work now)
Spokane, WA