My daughter has always enjoyed sports. Growing up, she’s gone through phases. There was a gymnastics phase which lasted for three or four years. When that phase ended, I breathed a sigh of relief (gymnastics parents are some of the most tightly wound creatures on the planet). Then there was the trampoline phase which lasted for another three or four years. That sport had its ups and downs too. Although other sports might wax and wane, one sport has been true: soccer (football, for the benefit of my European readers).
Below is a photo of my daughter which I took last year during a house league tournament. As you might have inferred, despite her gymnastics training and her natural beauty (yes, I know, I’m her father and I’m biased), she isn’t what I’d describe as a delicate, demure woman. She’s a scrappy player who does whatever it takes to make a good tackle or push the ball forward. You can hear her yelling from one end of the pitch to the other, usually motivating her team mates, but sometimes … well, nevermind.
In the past, she’s played house league and all star. But now she’s playing rep. They tell me that rep means she’s serious about her game. What it means is that she’s serious about giving her physiotherapist a steady income. It also means that when I want to wash some fruit for a snack, I have to drain and clean the kitchen sink where she’s been soaking her stinky shin pads in a vinegar solution. Wonderful for the appetite.
Soccer has been good for my daughter and her friends. It’s given them confidence. It’s taught them the value of effective communication. It’s given them a laboratory in which to experiment with group dynamics. And it’s also given them a chance to enjoy the many fruits of feminism. At least that’s what I thought until last night’s game.
There we were at the Moatfield pitch in the north end of Toronto (conveniently located just south of North York General Hospital). It was the last game of the evening, starting after dark and played under the bright lights while parents sat in the bleachers and watched distant lightening pass to the south. Our girls didn’t have a full roster. The other team had five subs which they kept rotating just to wear us down. Even before the game started, we knew we didn’t stand a chance, so we hoped the wind would shift and blow the lightening north so the ref would call the game.
They tossed the coin. The ref blew the whistle. And the game began. Our girls held them off for a little while, but the inevitable happened—a beautifully placed goal in the lower corner. They screened our keeper so she didn’t see the ball coming until the last second. She dove, but it was too late. A few minutes later there was a second goal, another well placed ball, a long lob that arced over the keeper’s head and into the back of the net. And there was a third. But something was happening, too. There were elbows, kicks across the shins, shoves, nasty comments. Oddly, it was the winning team that was playing the dirty game. This was needless. They out-numbered and out-gunned us, and they were winning the game.
The ref was visibly fed up with the other team’s conduct and started to take control of the game. He called interference against the other team and one of the players broke the cardinal rule of soccer: don’t mouth off at the ref. After that, he called them on everything. By the third quarter, our girls had tied the game thanks to all the penalty kicks and free kicks. Meanwhile, the other girls (and their coach and parents) were getting angry and yelling catcalls from the sidelines. From then on, the game just got dirtier and dirtier.
There was an instant where I found myself perversely proud of my daughter. Two girls charged our keeper, and as the ref blew the whistle, my daughter lunged at one of them with the full weight of her body and laid her out flat. I tried to pretend that I’m one of those serious parents who disapproves of such behaviour, but somewhere deep inside me there was a huge grin in the works. That’s my girl! The ref was staring at my daughter when she did the deed, but he simply turned around and walked away. If it weren’t that he was so disgusted with the other team, he probably would have carded my daughter. Instead, I think he secretly thanked her.
By the end of the game, two of the girls (one of them my daughter) were limping because of kicks to the shins. One of theirs had a popped knee and had to be taken to the hospital. In the end, we lost 4–3. There were too many of them and our girls were exhausted by the constant rotation of fresh bodies from their bench.
I found myself shaking my head as I walked off the pitch. What have we given to our children? I’m about to make an observation that’s well-worn by now, but there’s no better illustration of its truth than 16-year-old women playing soccer in 2008:
Those feminists who fought for equality were deluded if they thought it would be socially beneficial for women to gain the right to behave like men. What I witnessed last night was appalling: pushing, kicking, elbows, charging, verbal abuse, threats. The world already has too many people hepped up on testosterone. Do we really need more hormonally induced psychoses? What some have called ”strong” feminism is a race to the bottom: it’s a rallying cry for us to join hands and assert the worst we have to offer.
A more effective feminism has always played it from the other end: don’t encourage our daughters to be brutal; instead, encourage our sons to be human. More than ever now, I find myself thinking about feminism as a movement for men. It may have been women who initiated the movement more than forty years ago, but it’s men who have to complete the work. For one thing, it’s men who have to assume responsibility for internalizing a few simple notions about what it means to be a man. Real men don’t allow a sport to devolve into a “win at any cost” match. Real men care when someone on the other team gets hurt; they stop and ask if there’s anything they can do. And real men have fun just playing the game.
So, girls, the next time you play soccer, play like men. Real men.