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dragonlady7Rather than cross-posting it again, I will just link to the entry I put up on e:strip just now. Handles.
I am in a great deal of discomfort; there was a workout session yesterday morning, and I tweaked my knee just a little. Then I was on my feet all last night at the roller derby bout; on shoes, but running around and about. Then there was a double team practice this morning, as league practice was cancelled due to the bout last night leaving 2/3 of the league too sore to move. (It's a standing tradition not to have practice the next day.) Our team practice is normally just after league practice, so we just expanded the session to incorporate the precious unused rink time left vacant.
My stupid fucking knee meant I couldn't quite keep up with most of the drills, and didn't dare participate in any of the contact drills. (I missed two really cool-looking ones, one of which was brand-new and looked like a ludicrous amount of fun, if a bit brutal.) It drove me nuts, and I sulked sadly in the corner, watching and cheering, until the team captain came over and pointed out that I would be more useful in the middle.
It was maddening. There was another drill where we were working on a strategy, and I could see with perfect clarity what my group was meant to figure out and do, but I simply couldn't catch up to execute it-- I could only do half a crossover, with my inside leg's knee so weakened and sore, which meant I simply didn't have the speed to match Supernova and Sweets skating flat-out. (My group was meant to figure out that they had to get in front of the other group and slow them down, but I wasn't fast enough, and the other group members hadn't figured out how to do it.)
So it was kind of a rough day. I got home exhausted and just went to bed. I didn't really sleep, I was using my computer, but I just was too sore to be able to sit in a chair. Which is pretty sore, I must say.
I did have a lot of fun. I am really, really happy to be on the team I'm on; we had some bad energy last year, I can see now, because while we were generally a pretty open-hearted group, we were low on the in-the-face-of-adversity positive outlook necessary to keep spirits up in hard times. And we had some pretty fucking hard times last season; it was a new and scary thing and things were just difficult. This season we've had an influx of new talent, and every one of these skaters is a positive personality. Several of them are just ridiculously high-energy, needing little if any reward to keep them struggling toward a distant goal, no matter how impossible it seems, with a middle finger extended to the ones that tell them they'll never make it. And others are just sweet girls, and all are very strong. So it's turned into a very positive group, and last year's open-hearted but sensitive souls now have the constant influx of positive energy that's necessary for their spirits to stay up and their strength to be focused on the positive goal.
I had some ruminations brewing on some of the unspoken, unanalyzed appeal of roller derby. I had plenty of time to think about it, as I bitterly limped along around the outside of the track, almost keeping up with the paceline of the girls doing the exercises, but unable to do the drill.
Sports are somewhat sensual in nature. There is something very viscerally pleasing about doing something physical and difficult, and succeeding at it. Anything that requires your physical concentration, and rewards it with some kind of tangible result-- whether it be the clock, a ball, a precise manuever.
Women have begun to be accepted in more sports, and it has become more of a commonplace matter for a young girl to be instilled in these sensual pleasures, and not to be considered unusual in any way for being pleased by them.
Team sports are another matter: there is great pleasure, both mentally and physically, in appreciating your teammates' physical abilities and rapport with you.
This is a very sensual, physical thing, very much a pleasure of the flesh, but it is not sexual. They are closely related, the sensual and the sexual; the stimulation of exercise is akin to sexual arousal because it involves a heightened awareness of, and something of glorying in, the body. You don't have to be Adonis to feel that your body is a wonderful thing and it does this wonderful fun thing that you enjoy and it feels really good.
It is unusual for a woman to get to experience that, though. Well, at least the crowd roller derby attracts: most of us never did sports before. (Though, that is changing, as the sport becomes more widespread, more accepted, and more competitive; Windy City had a news story written about them, which pointed out that their first season's skaters were mostly bartenders and socially-marginalized sorts, whereas their second season recruits were largely athletes, including a former semi-pro hockey player.)
The sport is also feminine, even though brutal, because it appeals very viscerally (to reuse the word) to that part of a woman's mind and body that is socialized to protect its own against outsiders no matter what. The phenomenon of male loyalty and brotherhood is well-established and documented and rhapsodized about, but the similar analogous phenomenon in women is much less often assessed on the same level. A mother's furious defense of her young is certainly written about, but it is romanticized in a different way. And women do not have these relationships with their peers, only with their families.
But I admit that my primary motivating force in this sport, from the beginning, been based on that very strong instinct of protecting mine. One of my most memorable moments of feeling like I was really good at this sport was in Hamilton, where their skaters were committing blatant fouls on our skaters and the refs were not calling fouls. During one jam I got so angry that I delivered the biggest hit of my life on this little Canadian shitkicker who was repeatedly fouling my jammer: I descended upon her from the inside, blindsiding her and sending her tumbling, and bellowed, "KEEP YOUR FUCKING HANDS OFF MY JAMMER."
I've never been so effectively angry in my life.
These are my girls. But it's not like the normal sense of a group of women with shifting loyalties etc. It's true, there are girls on my team I'm not wild about; none I really dislike, but some who irritate me, and I wouldn't seek out their company outside of practice. But on the track, the girls in blue are mine, and I am utterly loyal to them. Even if the opponent is a girl I am particularly close to, who I may even like better than my teammate, I will plow her over and do whatever it takes to protect my own teammate, because of this loyalty instinct.
It's unusual, and not something I'd experienced so directly before in my life. Individual sports don't have this. Non-contact sports don't have it as vividly-- it's one thing to let a hard serve go by that your doubles partner can't return, and quite another thing to miss a block and watch your teammate receive a bone-crushing hit that sends her into the chairs and maybe she doesn't get up again and the EMT runs over.
Roller derby doesn't have the instant feedback of the scoreboard. You wait until the end of the jam to hear the points totals. The instant feedback is pain, or success. Protecting your teammates, or letting them down.
And my point is that this is something that motivates me more than scoring a basket and slapping one another on the back. My argument is that this is a particularly feminine thing, or rather that it is the kind of thing that appeals strongly to women but they seldom get to experience.
Which is why, my thesis goes, women's amateur roller derby in particular as a phenomenon, despite having started out as a fairly faddish and exploitative phenomenon, has become so wildly successful in the US, rather independently of any other fads.
Discuss, though I'd prefer you discuss the thesis rather than whether I'm a bad feminist. Though I suppose if you think I am I'd like to know why, so, I guess, have at it.
I might change my derby name to Great-Aunt Matilda.
I am in a great deal of discomfort; there was a workout session yesterday morning, and I tweaked my knee just a little. Then I was on my feet all last night at the roller derby bout; on shoes, but running around and about. Then there was a double team practice this morning, as league practice was cancelled due to the bout last night leaving 2/3 of the league too sore to move. (It's a standing tradition not to have practice the next day.) Our team practice is normally just after league practice, so we just expanded the session to incorporate the precious unused rink time left vacant.
My stupid fucking knee meant I couldn't quite keep up with most of the drills, and didn't dare participate in any of the contact drills. (I missed two really cool-looking ones, one of which was brand-new and looked like a ludicrous amount of fun, if a bit brutal.) It drove me nuts, and I sulked sadly in the corner, watching and cheering, until the team captain came over and pointed out that I would be more useful in the middle.
It was maddening. There was another drill where we were working on a strategy, and I could see with perfect clarity what my group was meant to figure out and do, but I simply couldn't catch up to execute it-- I could only do half a crossover, with my inside leg's knee so weakened and sore, which meant I simply didn't have the speed to match Supernova and Sweets skating flat-out. (My group was meant to figure out that they had to get in front of the other group and slow them down, but I wasn't fast enough, and the other group members hadn't figured out how to do it.)
So it was kind of a rough day. I got home exhausted and just went to bed. I didn't really sleep, I was using my computer, but I just was too sore to be able to sit in a chair. Which is pretty sore, I must say.
I did have a lot of fun. I am really, really happy to be on the team I'm on; we had some bad energy last year, I can see now, because while we were generally a pretty open-hearted group, we were low on the in-the-face-of-adversity positive outlook necessary to keep spirits up in hard times. And we had some pretty fucking hard times last season; it was a new and scary thing and things were just difficult. This season we've had an influx of new talent, and every one of these skaters is a positive personality. Several of them are just ridiculously high-energy, needing little if any reward to keep them struggling toward a distant goal, no matter how impossible it seems, with a middle finger extended to the ones that tell them they'll never make it. And others are just sweet girls, and all are very strong. So it's turned into a very positive group, and last year's open-hearted but sensitive souls now have the constant influx of positive energy that's necessary for their spirits to stay up and their strength to be focused on the positive goal.
I had some ruminations brewing on some of the unspoken, unanalyzed appeal of roller derby. I had plenty of time to think about it, as I bitterly limped along around the outside of the track, almost keeping up with the paceline of the girls doing the exercises, but unable to do the drill.
Sports are somewhat sensual in nature. There is something very viscerally pleasing about doing something physical and difficult, and succeeding at it. Anything that requires your physical concentration, and rewards it with some kind of tangible result-- whether it be the clock, a ball, a precise manuever.
Women have begun to be accepted in more sports, and it has become more of a commonplace matter for a young girl to be instilled in these sensual pleasures, and not to be considered unusual in any way for being pleased by them.
Team sports are another matter: there is great pleasure, both mentally and physically, in appreciating your teammates' physical abilities and rapport with you.
This is a very sensual, physical thing, very much a pleasure of the flesh, but it is not sexual. They are closely related, the sensual and the sexual; the stimulation of exercise is akin to sexual arousal because it involves a heightened awareness of, and something of glorying in, the body. You don't have to be Adonis to feel that your body is a wonderful thing and it does this wonderful fun thing that you enjoy and it feels really good.
It is unusual for a woman to get to experience that, though. Well, at least the crowd roller derby attracts: most of us never did sports before. (Though, that is changing, as the sport becomes more widespread, more accepted, and more competitive; Windy City had a news story written about them, which pointed out that their first season's skaters were mostly bartenders and socially-marginalized sorts, whereas their second season recruits were largely athletes, including a former semi-pro hockey player.)
The sport is also feminine, even though brutal, because it appeals very viscerally (to reuse the word) to that part of a woman's mind and body that is socialized to protect its own against outsiders no matter what. The phenomenon of male loyalty and brotherhood is well-established and documented and rhapsodized about, but the similar analogous phenomenon in women is much less often assessed on the same level. A mother's furious defense of her young is certainly written about, but it is romanticized in a different way. And women do not have these relationships with their peers, only with their families.
But I admit that my primary motivating force in this sport, from the beginning, been based on that very strong instinct of protecting mine. One of my most memorable moments of feeling like I was really good at this sport was in Hamilton, where their skaters were committing blatant fouls on our skaters and the refs were not calling fouls. During one jam I got so angry that I delivered the biggest hit of my life on this little Canadian shitkicker who was repeatedly fouling my jammer: I descended upon her from the inside, blindsiding her and sending her tumbling, and bellowed, "KEEP YOUR FUCKING HANDS OFF MY JAMMER."
I've never been so effectively angry in my life.
These are my girls. But it's not like the normal sense of a group of women with shifting loyalties etc. It's true, there are girls on my team I'm not wild about; none I really dislike, but some who irritate me, and I wouldn't seek out their company outside of practice. But on the track, the girls in blue are mine, and I am utterly loyal to them. Even if the opponent is a girl I am particularly close to, who I may even like better than my teammate, I will plow her over and do whatever it takes to protect my own teammate, because of this loyalty instinct.
It's unusual, and not something I'd experienced so directly before in my life. Individual sports don't have this. Non-contact sports don't have it as vividly-- it's one thing to let a hard serve go by that your doubles partner can't return, and quite another thing to miss a block and watch your teammate receive a bone-crushing hit that sends her into the chairs and maybe she doesn't get up again and the EMT runs over.
Roller derby doesn't have the instant feedback of the scoreboard. You wait until the end of the jam to hear the points totals. The instant feedback is pain, or success. Protecting your teammates, or letting them down.
And my point is that this is something that motivates me more than scoring a basket and slapping one another on the back. My argument is that this is a particularly feminine thing, or rather that it is the kind of thing that appeals strongly to women but they seldom get to experience.
Which is why, my thesis goes, women's amateur roller derby in particular as a phenomenon, despite having started out as a fairly faddish and exploitative phenomenon, has become so wildly successful in the US, rather independently of any other fads.
Discuss, though I'd prefer you discuss the thesis rather than whether I'm a bad feminist. Though I suppose if you think I am I'd like to know why, so, I guess, have at it.
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-04 04:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-04 04:28 am (UTC)A bunch of us took it, and were like... "Um, so do I."
We're still unable to determine if the test is outdated or ineffective, or whether we're just particularly masculine women.
Most of us are conventionally "weird" and have never had female friends before.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-04 11:41 am (UTC)2. I love to hear about the positive energy on your team - it really was your biggest downfall last year, that you had so much bad energy. I don't think it's so much that you "lost" the bad egg. It seems more that the whole general feeling of your team (and really, the league) just got revitalized. Or maybe we're all growing up a bit...
3. I kinda rolled my eyes at first about your "thesis", but then found myself nodding in agreement at every sentence. Since I also coach girls' field hockey and tennis, and boys' lacrosse, I see a lot of the same behaviors/attitudes come out in field hockey (a little), lacrosse (a lot) and tennis (almost not at all). I think you should post that to the yahoo group, simply for peoples' perusal, or send it to Blood & Thunder for printing. Definitely, Stormie should see it!
Also, I think your description is exactly what a lot of people had in mind when Title IX was being written, and definitely when it was beginning to be enforced. You should talk to one or two of the female coaches at my school to get a nice little earful about why women should be playing more team sports in school! I know I would have been a very different person (don't know if it would be better or worse...) if I had gone to a school that stressed sprots participation as much as the school I teach at does (we have sports every day for over an hour, and everyone plays on a team).
That's just my two cents. Thanks, B!
no subject
Date: 2008-02-04 01:55 pm (UTC)I don't think I would blame any of the people who are no longer Knockouts for the negative energy-- the negative energy very much came from outside forces and our inability to overcome them. (I'm not even sure of specifics-- there was just very much a feeling of being overwhelmed by the accumulation of things that kept going wrong last season, from injuries to high stress levels and poor communication, mostly between the team and the league. It was a hard, brutal season, made the worse because we hadn't done it before and didn't know what to expect, and so we could hardly appreciate the good things for fear of unforeseen bad things.) I miss every one of the no-longer-Knockouts, except maybe one, and even she wasn't a source of negative energy so much as just another distracting, unfocusing circumstance. I still maintain that she was never a bad person, just unbalanc(-ed, -ing, however you want to see it).
But we definitely have taken on a lot of positive energy, which is the source of the change. And it's not just the team, you're right, but the league-- it's the best possible outcome of a recruitment drive, is to attract excited and positive people who can remind you how much fun it all is. Last season was just so hard.
Title IX-- yes, I think you're right about that. But one thing about it is that most sports are the women's version of things that started out as boys' sports, sometimes a stripped-down or "easy"-ified version; as a fencer in college I knew that one of the unintended consequences of Title IX is that a lot of colleges dropped their men's fencing programs, so that there would be a women's sport to make up for their football program. US Men's fencing has suffered internationally as a result, but an American woman recently won the first gold medal for the women's sabre event, and the first American gold fencing medal in history.
Flat-track roller derby isn't a women's version of anything, it's a new sport, and rather than having been watered down for women's consumption so as not to shock the parents of the little girls playing it, it's an amped-up real-life grown-up version of something that used to be, quite frankly, a bit hokey and a lot fake.
I haven't got my thoughts all hammered out on this yet, but I'm thinking maybe I'll polish up some kind of essay one of these days. Thanks for the feedback!
no subject
Date: 2008-02-04 01:58 pm (UTC)And the fact that the men's games attract huge crowds and talent scouts who hire good players to play professionally for millions of dollars, while there are like, five professional women's athletes in the world and nobody watches adult women play sports ever except maybe individual ones. If she's hot. (*cough*Kournikova*cough*)
no subject
Date: 2008-02-04 05:43 pm (UTC)Yeah - my comment was more to agree with this - I didn't want you thinking *I* thought there were any bad eggs! haha!
no subject
Date: 2008-02-04 05:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-04 12:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-04 02:03 pm (UTC)So it was a chickenshit attempt at preventing people picking up on things I didn't mean to focus on, that I left in there because I've got a faulty self-editor.
I suppose I could attempt to address the concept of women who play roller derby because they like the male attention. There must be some. I know I feel sexy in my uniform, sometimes, and I make more of an effort for my personal appearance for roller derby than I ever did before-- though, complicating that is the fact that I get the strongest response from my leaguemates, so really it's my fellow women I'm dressing for, for the most part. But attention-- it's got to be a component, but, I'm not up to addressing that whole concept, except to say you're right, not like that.