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The Riot: sexism over young girls in kickboxing

gratitudeva:

maytagmaytag:

theriotmag:

nestpasdemoi submitted:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/257606/nbc-today-show-bam-father-puts-daughter-8-in-kickboxing-duel

Here’s the link where the Today show criticized one father for allowing his “little girl” into the kickboxing ring. This clip was specifically focused on the fact that she…

Ugh this pisses me off. I know a girl who is on an all boys wrestling team and kicks so much ass. She is the teams mvp.

i’m just gonna leave this here…..

because…yeah….

hahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahaa

I like this a lot.  Mostly because of how reasons get thrown all over the place, and everyone gets to have a point without anything sticking.  Classic interwebs.

The riots point is probably the best, up until they turned “targeting the child because she was a girl” into “let her do whatever she wants.” It seems that little girls (or children of any gender, traditional english speaking western binary or otherwise) shouldn’t be stopped from doing an activity for reasons based on their gender, but the passing remark on children with concussions indicates that there might be good reasons not to let children do some activities based on their status as children (to their credit, the riot pick this up—they just seem to forget it again towards the end).  Concussions and healthy neurological development don’t necessarily go together in adults, much less in children.  Swelling inside the skull can go even more pear shaped as children grow and so forth.  The significant difference between boxing disciplines and other dangerous activities (e.g. hockey) is that presumably in hockey the chance of a head injury is a chance, whereas punching someone in the head (face/eyes/nose/temple/jaw hinge/slapping them in the ear/eye gouges/pick your favourite) is pretty much par for the course—the fight in the video (Aussies go here because Hulu hates your freedom) shows that the girls were well aware of this, and trained well considering they are eight and seven years old.

As a quick aside “but they are wearing gloves and headgear” is really not a great counter—anyone who knows about the history of gloves should understand how head injuries went up in MMA with the mandate of gloves.  Midrange (10-14 oz.) gloves are the worst for this from what I understand—i.e. bareknuckle (swelling to fists makes people less eager to turn each other’s brains to mush) or heavy gloves (which cushion), but I reckon most people can get behind the idea that while making their kid effective at boxing early through sparring sounds like a good idea, they probably want them to be able to do something other than drool by the time they reach puberty.

That said, the majority of the video displayed otherwise completely fine activities—bag and mittwork, fitness, and so on.  The real danger we might think is getting kids into sparring too early.  

The sexism in the video is fucked.  As usual, my countrypeople managing to take what could be a legitimate topic of discussion and mangling it.

1. vero9413 reblogged this from theriotmag
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7. charlottetheharlot reblogged this from theriotmag and added:

   wish I could high-five my 10-year-old self for being all, Fuck...Girl Guides shit, I wanna

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14. alexand-rra reblogged this from theriotmag and added:

    Girls are tough. Learn that.

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    Megan’s (tumblr user official-which ) post...this. It’s amazing

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21. official-which reblogged this from theriotmag and added:

    I know that there are many parents who would like/choose to keep their children out of contact sports because of

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23. cailinarthine reblogged this from thelion-themouse and added:

    I actually kickbox… and one of my close female friends is a nationally ranked boxer.

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26. thelion-themouse reblogged this from theriotmag and added:

    Ugh this pisses me off....girl who is on an...boys wrestling...

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    If people stopped treating...were weaker than little boys,

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