Sexism, Alive And Well in Georgia

Samuel HooperLeave a comment
One ball more than Patrick Stuart - CEO of Strong Rock Christian Academy - possesses.
One ball more than Patrick Stuart – CEO of Strong Rock Christian Academy – possesses.

 

Some depressing but thoroughly unsurprising news from the land of segregated school proms, this time concerning sports and religion today, centering on a private Christian school in Atlanta where apparently the teachers and administrative staff are every bit as immature as some of the students.

ThinkProgress reports that a twelve year old girl was kicked off her school’s football team for a reason so jaw-droppingly moronic that it took me several minutes to come to terms with the knowledge that something of this nature could take place in the twenty-first century:

A private school outside Atlanta recently informed 12-year-old Madison Baxter that she would not be welcome at tryouts for the 7th-grade football team, even though she started on the sixth-grade team and has been playing football since second grade. The reason she won’t be allowed on the field? Because her male teammates are beginning to have “impure thoughts” about her, Strong Rock Christian Academy school administrator Patrick Stuart told Baxter’s mother.

“In the meeting with the CEO of the school [Patrick Stuart], I was told that the reasons behind it were one, that the boys were going to start lusting after her and have impure thoughts about her and that the locker-room talk was not appropriate for a female to hear even though she had a separate locker room from the boys,” Baxter’s mother, Cassy Blythe, told Atlanta’s WXIA-TV.

So the school’s reaction to finding out that the boys on the team were lusting after the one girl (which is pretty much what twelve year old boys do), was not to tackle the problem with any sense of proportionality, or direct their action at the people doing the “lusting” (which goes mysteriously undefined throughout the article and the school’s statements), but rather to penalise the innocent girl and remove her from the team.

The article caustically concludes:

There are more than 1,500 girls playing football at American high schools, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations, and that number has increased more than 17 percent in just four years. It’s not just a boys’ sport anymore. And more than that, playing football with a girl could have been a valuable experience for Baxter’s teammates about how to appropriately interact with women and girls, about how a person’s sex doesn’t make her inherently inferior athletically or in any other way, and about how having “impure thoughts” doesn’t mean you have license to act on them. They won’t get that lesson, though, because the adults in charge of Strong Rock Christian Academy’s athletics program apparently have yet to learn it themselves.

Absolutely. This poor girl is being denied the opportunity to continue to represent her school on the football team because the “adults” supposedly in charge of the Strong Rock Christian Academy (with a name like that, you can already be quite sure that they harbour and teach some fairly wacky views) are too prudish or squeamish to sit down with the boys on the team and have a serious – and yes, mildly uncomfortable and awkward – discussion about acceptable behaviour toward people of the opposite sex. If, given this gold-plated opportunity to impart some useful information to the boys on the team, the adults choose to duck the challenge, how much does this diminish the chances of those boys to grow and develop healthy attitudes to their female peers?

My shock at reading this story, not in 1953 but 2013, was tempered, however, when I realised that the unfortunate events took place in the great state of Georgia. Georgia is, of course, famous for being the last state in the union to have a school district that continues to hold racially segregated proms.

Way to go.

David Gregory Is What’s Wrong With Washington

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Real journalism vs. kiss-ass sycophancy. Glenn Greenwald vs. David Gregory. There’s no contest as to whose opinion and reporting I would generally trust, and it ain’t the guy from Meet The Press. Sullivan collates some of the fallout from the weekend’s explosive MTP interview with journalist Glenn Greenwald, who of course was first to break Edward Snowden’s allegations of illegal NSA snooping.

Andrew Sullivan's avatarThe Dish

There has been an understandable collective wince at David Gregory’s asking a fellow-journalist whether he should go to jail (I speak of Glenn Greenwald) for helping a whistle-blower. Now, as readers know, I’m somewhat skeptical about the large claims made by Glenn and Snowden as to PRISM but, equally, I emphatically do believe that these revelations were clearly released to further what Snowden felt in good faith was the public interest. In a piece that would be close to perfect if it had any acknowledgment of the other side of the equation – that plenty of fanatical Jihadist extremists are trying to kill us every day – Glenn explains:

In what conceivable sense are Snowden’s actions “espionage”? He could have – but chose not – sold the information he had to a foreign intelligence service for vast sums of money, or covertly passed it to one of America’s…

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Brazil Is Still Broiling

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

More comprehensive coverage on the grassroots uprising in Brazil, courtesy of Andrew Sullivan and his readers at The Dish.

Andrew Sullivan's avatarThe Dish

Another update to the stellar coverage provided by Dish readers, this one from São Paulo:

Fortunately, even though the initial demands by the protesters have been met (the transit fare has returned to its previous level), the protests have continued. In fact, they are showing this amazing level of self-organization. Groups will march together and decide which route to follow, where to stop and chant, where to sit and block the street, etc. There will be announcements about when and where the next protest will happen, and once the end time is reached, the protest will end.

There have been protests for various things, the largest being against PEC 37, which if passed, will make it much harder to catch and convict wrong doers within the government (involved in corruption, the horrors of the military government, etc).

Among the other protests, there was a protest against the Cura Gay (Gay…

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Brazil Explodes

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Another day passes, and is followed by another night of rioting in cities across Brazil, in scenes that are becoming increasingly familiar.

Protesters in Sao Paolo - Credit: AP
Protesters in Sao Paolo – Credit: AP

The Guardian reports on the latest night of unrest and police heavy-handedness:

A vast crowd – estimated by the authorities at 300,000 and more than a million by participants – filled Rio’s streets, one of a wave of huge nationwide marches against corruption, police brutality, poor public services and excessive spending on the World Cup.

A minority of protesters threw stones, torched cars and pulled down lamp-posts. Police responded by firing volleys of pepper spray and rubber bullets into the crowd and up onto overpasses where car drivers and bus passengers were stuck in traffic jams. At least 40 people were injured in the city and many more elsewhere.

Simultaneous demonstrations were reported in at least 80 cities, with a total turnout that may have been close to 2 million. An estimated 110,000 marched in São Paulo, 80,000 in Manaus, 50,000 in Recife and 20,000 in Belo Horizonte and Salvador.

This isn’t going away any time soon – as President Dilma Rousseff seems finally to realise, as she has now cancelled her upcoming overseas visit to Japan. But what is becoming increasingly clear is the fact that the protests – ostensibly about nominal increases in public transport fares – have now taken on a life of their own, tapping into a lingering and deep-seated resentment of the Brazilian political and business establishment, and that the relatively minor affront of an increase in travel fares was merely the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Indeed, the article continues:

Matheus Bizarria, who works for the NGO Action Aid, said people had reached the limit of their tolerance about longstanding problems that the Confederations Cup and World Cup have brought into focus because of the billions of reals spent on new stadiums rather than public services. Rio is also due to host a papal visit to World Youth Day next month, and the Olympics in 2016.

“It’s totally connected to the mega-events,” Bizarria said. “People have had enough, but last year only 100 people marched against a bus price rise. There were 1,000 last week and 100,000 on Monday. Now we hope for a million.”

I must admit that I am only now starting to familiarise myself with the political situation in Brazil and the huge, until-recently untapped reserves of anger and contempt that the population has for the incompetence of their political leaders – as manifested by a creaking infrastructure, inadequate education and healthcare outcomes, and the mismanagement of large projects such as the preparations for the 2014 World Cup.

Andrew Sullivan (and his knowledgeable readers) has a couple of excellent primers on the situation over on his blog at The Dish.

Certainly there are some very acute problems specific to Brazil which are providing much of the fuel to this particular fire. But step back and look at the causes rather than the symptoms and we realise that they are exactly the same motives that drove people onto the streets and to protest in many other countries (most notably Turkey in recent days) – an arrogant, disengaged government that wears its contempt for the people on its sleeve.

Watch Brazil closely – when public anger can explode like this in the sixth largest economy in the world, all those other countries in the top ten should be getting nervous.

More Encouragement From The Vatican

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Another story from the Vatican, reported by The Telegraph, which is certainly very welcome in the wake of the recent back-slapping self congratulation fests that we have had to endure lately, including the Bilderberg 2013 Meeting and the G8 summit in Loch Earne.

Pope Francis has apparently summoned and met with the Vatican’s ambassadors around the world en masse, and warned them to live humbly and unostentatiously when going about their ambassadorial duties.

He also urges them, when making recommendations to the Vatican for future potential promotees to Bishop, to consider the pastoral abilities of the candidates above all.

The Telegraph reports some details of the Pope’s address:

“There is always a risk … of giving in to that sort of ‘bourgeoisie of the spirit and life’ which drives one to recline, to seek out a comfortable and tranquil life,” he told ambassadors gathered at the Vatican from all over the world.

“Giving in to such a worldly spirit exposes us pastors in particular to ridicule. We would perhaps be applauded by some, but those who seem to approve of us would criticise us behind our backs,” he added.

The Pope said he was keen to meet the ambassadors as a group so he could speak to them about the key role they play in advising the Vatican on local candidates they believe would make good bishops.

“Be careful that the candidates are pastors who are close to the people … are mild-mannered, patient and merciful; that they love poverty … (and lead) simple and austere lives,” he said.

Beware of those who have a “princely psychology” and above all “be careful that they are not ambitious, that they do not seek the episcopate,” he added.

The new Pope is certainly leading from the front on this particular issue. Another day, another sign from Pope Francis that real, lasting, positive change is on the way.