the never ending fight for women's sports

SOURCES/RESSOURCES 📚

Most of the ressources I used for this video are in french 😭 but I'll recommend you watch the Battle of the Sexes movie, it was an fun watch (I really enjoyed how the casual misogyny of Riggs is contrasted with the proper misogyny of the sports commentator, namely how while Riggs was being a clown, he's spent his career making sure that women wouldn't be paid equally, that women didn't belong to sports, etc.)

Other sources can be found throughout the video :)

SOCIALS 👩‍💻
Storygraph: @alicecappelle
Instagram: @alicecappelle_
Twitter: @cappelle_alice

[uncertainscientist]

It would be a shame not to discuss Kathrine Switzer who was the first woman to finish an official marathon, despite being attacked by a race official for attempting to do so. Her story is incredible and still fairly recent

[barbaramesquita]

As a Brazilian woman I always hated football/soccer because it was a "man" thing. In Brazil it's surrounded by sexism, misogynist jokes and violence. People literally get killed because of football and that's why my mom wouldn't let me go out when some specific matches were happening. I never had the opportunity to enjoy football as a girl, because they would say I was dumb for these things.
I have been living in Australia since last year and for the first time in my life I went to a stadium and also I watched a whole football match, because of the women's world cup. And I loved it. I'm so glad that I had the chance to see Marta - the best - playing her last game. That was an amazing experience, even for me, because for the first time it was about women.

[pendragon]

One thing I've noticed in male sports is the growing interest of women in playing and/or coaching is being greeted with such ridiculous hostility. Girls flag football is growing by leaps and bounds here in the states and the NFL is openly encouraging it. We're seeing more women playing competitive football (American style) and also getting jobs in coaching and scouting and sharing their knowledge of the sport. But fans still ridicule. I don't get it. As a lover of the NFL, father of daughters, and teacher of female students, anything that gets more people, male or female, involved is a good thing I think. Hard to root out the Philistines though. Great video, Alice!

[Crazy-rcot]

I remember being actively discouraged from lifting and carrying weights as a girl so often, every time due to my supposed weakness. One time I helped with chairs after a school concert and a teacher *yelled* at me to drop the chairs and let a boy carry them. I was 15-16, the boy was 11 and quite small for his age. Now, I may not have been the sporty type but... surely I was stronger than a much younger and much smaller boy?? The people who deem girls weak are often the same people to not let us be strong in the first place

[faustovieira]

I hope that the Rubiales case makes it into part 2. It is impossible to talk about women in sports without talking about why so many drop out of the sport because of abuse by coaches and managers.

[keziahserto]

As a women who have played a lot of sports myself, I felt so emotional watching this video it was so relatable and validated the the struggles I have faced. Thank you

[evildoesnotsleep-xb]

I also had a person who helped me realize my potential, my male kickboxing coach. He had no agenda, he trained everyone to the limit and celebrated all our successes. he made us play mixed from day one and focused on us learning from each other that boys and girls competing. he paired us with an opponent of similar skill regardless of sex and developed a climate where viewing women as less than was unthinkable. I didn't become professional, but my love for the sport and how good i am is attributed to his lessons

[mimio]

"we do that to lose weight" sums up my whole experience. I like sport hopping, anytime I join a new club or gym, my coworkers start giving me weightloss advice (I get changed at work). At first I'd say I wasn't trying to lose weight, I just enjoyed exercising and muscle building, but then I just learned to stay quiet and thank them for the advice 😅

[iyxon]

9:18
If the topic of women internalizing "not using too much space" piqued your interest, PLEASE read "Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment, Motility, and Spatiality" by Iris Marion Young. It's a short paper, only around 15~20 pages, and it is FANTASTIC and gets to the heart of the issue of gender and comportment philosophically.

[LarsaXL]

Did women exist before the 60:s? Because so many of those old rules and "Women can't do that!"s reads like the guy who came up with them has never actually met a woman.

Women: Runs an 800m race.
Pigs: "They can't do the thing they just did, that'd be impossible! Everyone knows you run with your penis and not with your legs."

[sarahginga]

Alice! Your words brought me to tears today! So much of what you said resonates so loudly in my mind. As a child I was always playing and rough housing with the boys and I absolutely hated the concept of "like a girl" when it came to sports, so much so that I began to hate my femininity. Today, I'm a varsity athlete and have been working really hard on unlearning the internalized mysogyny I grew up in, I'm radically embracing my feminity and girliness without sacrificing (or even thinking that I need to sacrifice) my strenth and athleticism. Thank you for creating the content you do, your words are always so thought-provoking and encouraging.

[victorsrandomvideos]

As a guy (im only 25) I’m disgusted with so many comments that people (mostly men I’m guessing) have left in reaction to the Spain kiss/SA incident. So many people were constantly victim blaming and classic misogyny.

I’m so proud of all the women performing in sports at their highest levels despite their existence being viewed by many as a joke.

I felt proud to see Spain players such as Casillas, De Gea, Bellerin and Borja Iglesias rightfully calling it out

[teutelbiermkg]

I find it also interesting what kind of movement gets counted as "sport". I used to be a synchronized swimmer/artistic swimmer, and here women are extremely dominant. Paris 2024 will be the first olympic event where men are even allowed to compete (a team can now include up to two men), and only recently men have been allowed to compete in World Championships and European Championships. (This is a huge change, and the mood is generally really positive and welcoming).
And since our sport does require elegance and flexibility, and women are traditionally "better" at it (similar to rhythmic gymnastics), many people do not consider it a "real" sport, even though it is super hard to do well.
So maybe one of the reasons why women are "generally worse at sports", is that most of the popular sports are put more emphasis on strenght and speed, and other aspects like flexibility or coordination are less important.

Anyway, I love the video, these are really important conversations to have!

[alis.b.]

I'm from Turkey, our women's volleyball team has been especially successful and in the spotlight recently and i've been seeing so many misogynistic people online just MALDING over the simple fact that women are being successful. An openly queer player of the team has also been at the receiving end of a lot of homophobia from the media, the internet, etc. Misogyny and LGBTQphobia disgust me but I'm also just incredibly happy as a queer guy that women are achieving great things despite all. Fuck the patriarchy.

[claudiabcarvalho]

I was a very competitive girl, and I'll tell you, boys didn't tolerance losing to me since I was a preteen. The first time I noticed that was more than when my church held a trivia competition where we had to run and hit the hand of the "teacher" to get the right to answer the question first - when the guy who was my main competitor won, he smashed the pie in my face, and that was the rule, but the did that in such sudden, agressive way that some of the whipped cream got into my eye. At school, when teachers would decide to form mixed gender teams to play volleyball (I used to play as a hobbie, I almost went competitive and that time), there was always one guy who would target me in the attack, and by target, I mean he wasn't aiming for the ground to get the point, he was aiming on ME while using the maximum amount of force he could, to the point where my arms would be red, sore and swollen by the end of the matches. Their message was clear to me: " So you want to compete with the guys? Then take pain like the guys!"

When they say we're not as good as them, and when we try to prove our worth, they won't treat us like they treat the guys, they'll get overly aggressive and do anything to destroy our spirits.

[MrJGSW]

I’m glad you mentioned the part about queer women. People often forget that even within marginalized groups there’s also bigotry. It infuriated me how WOMEN commentators in my country were like “why can’t they do that in private” when a female player kissed or showed affection towards their partner after games during the World Cup.

[literalangel]

Honestly, I find it so hard not to feel detachment from all sports, female or male. I’ve always been trash at them and in PE class when we played team sports (which was most of the time) I did terribly. The boys would get super competitive and start making me feel bad about no being able to hit the ball or whatever when I was in their team. I get that I was horrible, but still, it’s not like I was choosing to be there, the class was mandatory. Once they even made me cry, and after my teacher saw it he made them apologize, which only made me feel embarrassed for crying, but anyway. After all my years of PE I’ve tried avoiding team sports as much I can, even when I’m with my family/cousins.

[vesper_bb]

thank you for sharing this, it is my favorite video of yours i've seen, easily. as a woman who has spent a great deal of time in competitive video gaming, i've been sharing far less eloquent versions of this sentiment for years and i love hearing it from anyone else.

[coenraadsnyman]

As a guy, the only time I actually thought about it was when there was a stark difference in how boys and girl were graded differently. Naturally, all of us boys were actually disappointed, because we would have longer distances we had to run/swim/throw.
I was able to get full marks with running, and I didn't think much of the difference. Having a lot of girl friends, I often hear about how they were annoyed by PE teachers. Again, I never thought much about it, but I think it is good to learn more about their experiences, which were almost the polar opposite of mine.

[northernway]

Thanks for another great video! When you mentioned that women are used to "not using too much space", it reminded me of my old karate club in the early 90s. It was a relaxed club, equal proportions of women and men, mostly students, and good mixed instructors. Every new beginner course they had one lecture to teach people (mostly new women) to not be afraid to put power into strikes. You were expected to do the blows with full force, but have enough control to stop them just before the impact. It was evident that many women struggled to aim a blow at full force against a friend. When they saw they actually could do it they almost always said it felt very empowering. Young men usually had more problem with perfecting the control, but that took longer to remedy.