Some parents out in Seattle are complaining that boys are having to forfeit wrestling matches rather than wrestle girls. But it’s not the parents you’d think who are complaining. The parents of the girls are upset.
The girls stepped onto the mat. Their opponents from Tacoma Baptist and Cascade Christian stayed in their seats. The referee then raised the girls’ hands to signal they’d won by forfeit.
But the easy victories didn’t sit well with the girls, including Meaghan Connors, a seventh-grader at McMurray Middle School on Vashon Island. Her father, Jerry, is prepared to go to court over what he considers a clear case of sex discrimination.
What’s wrong with this guy and the other parents? Do they actually want their girls grappling with boys on a wrestling mat? And why doesn’t anyone care about the potentially embarrassing effect wrestling with girls could have on the poor teenage boys? When you’re a teen boy a stiff wind can cause arousal. Rolling around on a mat with a girl while you’re both wearing the relatively skimpy wrestling uniform is a sight bit worse.
I’m flabbergasted at these parents who actually want their little girls to do this. What happened to little girls just being little girls? Is nothing sacred anymore? This is more of the drive to strip women of their last vestiges of femininity and just make them men with different plumbing.
I’m with you, Dom. I flummoxed and bumfuzzled over parents who *encourage* their girls to wrestle. I mean, are you kidding me??
It completely overrides the impulse that men/boys SHOULD have to be protectors of women. I applaud the boys who, by their very nature, sense something wrong in wrestling girls, and kudos for their parents for raising the boys in such a way.
I know, how “neanderthal” of me to think that men should respect women.
It’s the same thing with girl altar servers. Often the girls could care less – it’s their parents (or, their mothers) who want them to do it. Their parents are vicariously reliving their childhood, or something. But this is truly odd. Wrestling? In Junior High School? My high school had a wrestling team (it certainly wasn’t open to girls), but in junior high we were still playing things like dodge ball and volleyball. Next there’ll be a movement to return to the days of the Greek Gymnasia….who needs skimpy wrestling uniforms?
Hey, I *really* wanted to be an altar server when I was a girl – this would have been 1981, 1982 – but our parish priest wouldn’t hear of it. Officially, Dallas didn’t allow it until the early ‘90’s, and our parish priest was from Malta and it just wasn’t done. Now I know why, like I know why girls shouldn’t wrestle with boys (sheeeeeeesh!), but we weren’t catechized as to why boys only should be the altar servers, so it just seemed unfair to nice American girls. In the atmosphere people grow up in, with the language of utter equality, I’m sure many people think it must be taken to its logical conclusions – one of which is co-ed wrestling. And if the school says okay, why should the parents object, and who are these boys to presume to know better?
One of the local “Catholic” high schools has had girls on its wrestling team for years…
But at the time, our Archbishop, well, he was our Archbishop, and we all know about his dysfunction.
None of this gender-confusion is surprising when it starts at the top…
“It completely overrides the impulse that men/boys SHOULD have to be protectors of women.”
Hi, Paul:
Funny you should post that. That is how I feel about pornography and prostitution. Especially when such a big deal is often made of the girls being BARELY LEGAL!! (At least in some of the spam I’ve gotten or maybe stuff I’ve seen elsewhere, I’m not sure.) And often I think the girls are not actually legal. I guess guys are able to override that “protector” instinct if there is an instinct they find more compelling.
It’s disappointing that the Church also raises barely a peep about porn, though, esp since it comes into people’s lives in so many ways now.
Regards –
Dom, I’m afraid this has been going on for some time. Eight years ago, a colleague’s son had to forfeit a match because he wouldn’t wrestle a girl. What kind of parents would let their daughter wrestle a boy? It is SICK!
I’d pay good money to see one of those boys body slam one of the “I can do anything” girls, just to teach her moronic parents a lesson. There is an epidemic in this country – parents who can’t say NO to their children. It’s absolutely sickening.
Paul N: kudos on your generous and courageous statement that “wives tend to civilize us men.” Your ability to see that and willingness to admit it out loud is not something one sees every day, nor do I think it obvious or easy for men to say. Let me add that it’s not because we women are any “holier than thou”! It strikes me that a good woman’s influence comes not only from letting God work through her (which is true of men, too), but also from the fact of her feminine, i.e., receptive nature—the sort of disposition that more easily surrenders to grace. In discussing this udea with a Catholic philosophy prof recently, we also agreed that because men have a different disposition (one having its own advantages!) humble men are therefore the more admirable. Any rate, that thar’s a powerful truth you got yore hands on!
The kind of holds that wrestling requires would cause boys to be arrested in other circumstances.
No one realizes the psychological damage to junior high boys when they are overwhelmed by girls who may be in their weight class, but who may have more strength due to earlier puberty.