What's Wrong with America: USA Women's Soccer Edition
- Thread starter Tuthmosis
- Start date
Tuthmosis said:Like this?
Had to save this .gif, I find it hilarious. I'm also nominating it to be a new emoticon.
speakeasy said:An an aside, the USA women's national team is the best women's soccer team in the world, ranked #1. Now WTF is up with the men's team, they didn't even qualify.
I think it's because in USA soccer is perceived as a safer and less masculine alternative to (American) football and thus very popular with school-age girls. As a spectator sport, soccer is simply not very popular in America at all, while in most of the world it's probably the most popular sport by a large margin (most of Europe, Asia, Central and South America). You might have more women playing soccer in USA than men. Plus women's sports in general, especially in 'masculine' sports, are simply on a much much lower level and thus you could have all kinds of surprises in competitions.
basilransom said:
If I had daughters I would definitely encourage (maybe even force) them to do feminine sports. Ballet, dancing, figure skating, gymnastics, yoga, etc... I don't see nothing but benefit in those. Everybody needs good regular exercise to be healthy, fit and toned. Some religious groups in USA discourage women sports as un-ladylike and their girls have even worse rates of obesity than general population. We rally against fatties but now we would want to discourage sports for women? WTF?
Timoteo
Crow
SVK said:speakeasy said:An an aside, the USA women's national team is the best women's soccer team in the world, ranked #1. Now WTF is up with the men's team, they didn't even qualify.
I think it's because in USA soccer is perceived as a safer and less masculine alternative to (American) football and thus very popular with school-age girls. As a spectator sport, soccer is simply not very popular in America at all, while in most of the world it's probably the most popular sport by a large margin (most of Europe, Asia, Central and South America). You might have more women playing soccer in USA than men. Plus women's sports in general, especially in 'masculine' sports, are simply on a much much lower level and thus you could have all kinds of surprises in competitions.
basilransom said:
If I had daughters I would definitely encourage (maybe even force) them to do feminine sports. Ballet, dancing, figure skating, gymnastics, yoga, etc... I don't see nothing but benefit in those. Everybody needs good regular exercise to be healthy, fit and toned. Some religious groups in USA discourage women sports as un-ladylike and their girls have even worse rates of obesity than general population. We rally against fatties but now we would want to discourage sports for women? WTF?
I agree. If I had a daughter, I wouldn't discourage her from engaging in any sport she chose. Volleyball is also one of those "girl" sports that tends to attract feminine girls. Of course, tennis has attractive women also, as does track and field. If only because it would keep her in shape, that's a good enough reason. And girls that were athletic tend to want to maintain that longer - they take a certain pride in their bodies.
Timoteo said:
With all due respect, no, it isn't. I lived in the beach volleyball capital of the world. It was far far far from an oasis of femininity. That said, if you like statuesque blonde girls, it's pretty good. Pretty much any team sport is masculinizing, because competition is masculinizing. The most feminine girls don't naturally enjoy sports, unless it has an element of the theatrical.
Better options are pursuits that are solitary or 'showy.' In the latter category, I'd put dancing and some gymnastics. In the former, I'd put things like rock climbing, weight lifting, running. The solitary ones might or might not bulk a girl up, but they wouldn't have the corrosive mental effect that team sports would. I haven't studied it, but they seem to have the same effect that any hard hobby would, like playing the violin. That said, any endeavor that isn't explicitly feminine could have an androgynizing effect. Ie, she should have at least some explicitly feminine hobbies.
Timoteo
Crow
basilransom said:
There is also indoor volleyball. In all my years in school, it's the sport that more girls were okay playing than any other. I don't mean that in practice that the sport is soft, but for some reason feminine girls chose it over many others. Even as an adult, there are corporate volleyball leagues that women like playing in. It's also one of the sports for women that doesn't carry stigma - namely, you won't be assumed a dyke for playing it.
You think this is bad..You should have the girls rugby team that won state championship back when I was in highschool
Yeah tennis and volleyball are good as well. I think a little competition is fine as long as it doesn't involve physical contact, beating up each other definitely isn't feminine. The theoretical question was about our daughters. You should think about that a little differently that about some fictional perfect docile feminine woman. I would hope you would want the best for her. A certain level of competition would be healthy for anybody, remember she would have to navigate a world full of masculine bitches and all kinds of assholes.
SVK said:
America is so inhospitable to femininity that anything one could do to cultivate it, whether in one's daughters or in one's wife, will look extreme, antiquated, even evil to the average American.
Frankly, I don't give a fuck.
I know some people think not putting your daughter in sports sounds incredibly retrograde or whatever... to modern Americans. But it's like say, gay marriage. Fifty years ago, you could not find anyone who would support it in polite company. So who's right, us or them? Now or then? This is one of my biggest beefs - that something with almost unanimous agreement 100 years ago is now dismissed without even discussion, because "clearly we know better." I'm not just talking about gay marriage, but a whole litany of issues. If you think objectively about many issues, and don't immediately kowtow to modern views, you'll start to question all sorts of modern orthodoxies.
godzilla
Pelican
You nailed it ^. Just because an event is watched by loads of people doesn't mean there is money outside of those events. Who even watches women's soccer besides a world cup final? And even then nobody really cares.
Also, I believe men aren't paid for national team appearances. Anyone confirm?
Also, I believe men aren't paid for national team appearances. Anyone confirm?
alexdagr81
Woodpecker
A squad that can't compete with a Junior Varsity team wants to be paid as much as professionals.
Bambi,
Acutally professional players DO get some kind of bonus for appearances with the national team, both directly and indirectly. Directly in terms of bonus and indirectly, in terms of international exposure and thus raising their market value.
Acutally professional players DO get some kind of bonus for appearances with the national team, both directly and indirectly. Directly in terms of bonus and indirectly, in terms of international exposure and thus raising their market value.
Our women are the most masculine in the world, YAY!
This is kind of a complicated issue actually, not quite as straight forward as NBA = WNBA. The men's World Cup started like a hundred years ago, and has involvement from practically every country in the world at this point and is the single largest sporting event in every country in the world every 4 years. The women's world cup only started in 1991, and the US has been the most dominant national team in women's soccer since then, along with Germany & Japan and a few other countries that usually do well like Sweden, or Australia. But only a handful of countries even have women's soccer teams worldwide, vs virtually every nation having a men's team. SO the pool of potential viewers is much smaller worldwide for women's soccer than for men's soccer. Basically women's soccer does much better with viewers in the US than anywhere else in the world, largely because we are the best at it. So there is also a much smaller pool of money worldwide to finance it, because of so much less competition, therefore the prize money is also smaller.
A lot of this shit has to do with Title IX laws here also, artificially boosting our women's sports productivity
http://www.voanews.com/content/us-womens-and-mens-soccer-a-world-cup-of-difference/2856121.html
"In terms of the women's game, Goff and Quraishi agree that the United States has made a commitment toward the success of women's sports, including soccer, that goes far beyond what many other countries have done.
A centerpiece of that commitment is Title IX, the U.S. federal law passed more than 40 years ago that prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender in any federally funded education program. Title IX forced universities to invest in women's sports, and soccer benefited tremendously from funding created under the law, according to Quraishi.
"And I think what we see with the women is the U.S. was one of the first countries to really establish a strong tradition of women playing soccer and to put the programs in place," Quraishi said. "I think college soccer had a lot to do with it. We had a feeder system from the very beginning. [College] teams like North Carolina, UCLA have been providing talented players to the national team for decades now.""
So yeah, the American Women are much better compared to the Men at their success on the field, but that's only because of a more limited field of competitors, a head start in historical experience , and a disproportionate amount of investment comparatively.
If American Women wanted to be paid as much as Men, they need to not lobby the US Soccer federation to pay them more...they should be looking to grow the Women's game worldwide and expand it into more countries so they could grow their financial base. They would need to try and start more women's leagues (once again, after failing multiple times) locally and internationally and see if that could show any sustained and permanent growth over long periods like the Men's leagues internationally, and not just be a seasonal viewing experience as it is now.
This is kind of a complicated issue actually, not quite as straight forward as NBA = WNBA. The men's World Cup started like a hundred years ago, and has involvement from practically every country in the world at this point and is the single largest sporting event in every country in the world every 4 years. The women's world cup only started in 1991, and the US has been the most dominant national team in women's soccer since then, along with Germany & Japan and a few other countries that usually do well like Sweden, or Australia. But only a handful of countries even have women's soccer teams worldwide, vs virtually every nation having a men's team. SO the pool of potential viewers is much smaller worldwide for women's soccer than for men's soccer. Basically women's soccer does much better with viewers in the US than anywhere else in the world, largely because we are the best at it. So there is also a much smaller pool of money worldwide to finance it, because of so much less competition, therefore the prize money is also smaller.
A lot of this shit has to do with Title IX laws here also, artificially boosting our women's sports productivity
http://www.voanews.com/content/us-womens-and-mens-soccer-a-world-cup-of-difference/2856121.html
"In terms of the women's game, Goff and Quraishi agree that the United States has made a commitment toward the success of women's sports, including soccer, that goes far beyond what many other countries have done.
A centerpiece of that commitment is Title IX, the U.S. federal law passed more than 40 years ago that prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender in any federally funded education program. Title IX forced universities to invest in women's sports, and soccer benefited tremendously from funding created under the law, according to Quraishi.
"And I think what we see with the women is the U.S. was one of the first countries to really establish a strong tradition of women playing soccer and to put the programs in place," Quraishi said. "I think college soccer had a lot to do with it. We had a feeder system from the very beginning. [College] teams like North Carolina, UCLA have been providing talented players to the national team for decades now.""
So yeah, the American Women are much better compared to the Men at their success on the field, but that's only because of a more limited field of competitors, a head start in historical experience , and a disproportionate amount of investment comparatively.
If American Women wanted to be paid as much as Men, they need to not lobby the US Soccer federation to pay them more...they should be looking to grow the Women's game worldwide and expand it into more countries so they could grow their financial base. They would need to try and start more women's leagues (once again, after failing multiple times) locally and internationally and see if that could show any sustained and permanent growth over long periods like the Men's leagues internationally, and not just be a seasonal viewing experience as it is now.
John Michael Kane
Crow
Looking at that second picture is painful. Nothing but messed up digit ratios and high - T lesbian horse faces. Yikes.
I really miss Tuthmosis
Here's a question to pose to people who believe the women's team is being discriminated against: How much money would these women be making if they were men, all else being equal?
Obviously they aren't good enough to play men's professional soccer, so the answer is whatever they'd make at some menial desk job, minus the rec soccer league fees they'd incur just to get out on an organized field.
I admire these women. They've worked hard and accomplished things most people couldn't dream of. A few of them are even pretty cute. But they need to learn the definition of the word "discrimination" and recognize how lucky they are, because their vaginas are the only thing enabling them to earn a single penny off of their soccer ability.
Obviously they aren't good enough to play men's professional soccer, so the answer is whatever they'd make at some menial desk job, minus the rec soccer league fees they'd incur just to get out on an organized field.
I admire these women. They've worked hard and accomplished things most people couldn't dream of. A few of them are even pretty cute. But they need to learn the definition of the word "discrimination" and recognize how lucky they are, because their vaginas are the only thing enabling them to earn a single penny off of their soccer ability.
