You Should Care About This Thing: Transitive Fandom In Women's Soccer

The Women's World Cup (er, sorry, Women's World Cup) is something Americans need to care about even more than the other, bepenised kind, according to Meredith Bennett-Smith in Quartz. She never quite gets around to why anyone should care particularly about this event, though the numbers of late, 5 million viewers, seem to provide plenty of room for optimism on that front.

And yet.

I am tired of having to explain that I’m wearing a women’s national team jersey because, news flash, the World Cup is upon us. Maybe you’ve heard of it? Yes, the women have one too. And by the way, that No. 20 number emblazoned across my back just happens to belong to the greatest goal-scorer in the history of women’s soccer.

This is how you promote your favorite sport and players, by belittling anyone inquiring about it? By shrieking you should already know who this is, you dolt at people who almost certainly don't know the players in what is a niche market of a niche sport? Memo to FIFA and constituent clubs: don't hire this person as a marketing consultant.

I am tired of watching World Cup games in sports bars where the TV screens are split between three other games and bartenders turn the sound off at halftime.

Have you ever tried to be a baseball fan in September? You know, when the postseason races are really heating up — and the tsunami of football drowns out everything else, so that unless it's the local team in hot pursuit, or the Yankees or Red Sox, bars already turn their attentions to the NFL? If it isn't football or basketball, sports bars devote screen space on an as-we-feel-like it basis. It's even worse for hockey. So... I feel your pain, but petulance isn't going to change anybody's mind, or the channel.

But most of all, I am tired of feeling like every four years the very legitimacy of women’s athletics goes on trial, again. With the exception of maybe tennis and a handful of Olympic events, we have not achieved gender parity in professional sports. Not by a long shot. So while Mia Hamm may have once been mentioned in the same breath as Michael Jordan, the US women are tasked with the burden of proving that they—and by extension women athletes in general—deserve to be recognized as second-tier professional athletes, by being the best in the world.

And if that’s not a perfect metaphor for modern-day sexism, I don’t know what is. America’s women and girls (and boys) deserve better. Really.

And this is where the entirety of her argument really runs off the rails. You hear that, sports fans? It's your responsibility to like this thing she likes, because she likes it, and you're sexist if you don't. It's hard to imagine anything more narcissistic. She has a hard road; male interest in team sports remains greater than that of women, despite longstanding efforts to reach parity in that area, and one suspects that translates to spectator sports, as well. The notion that men might find women's soccer interesting in part because of the shape of the participants is met with predictable Victorian horror (Dave Zirin called it "screeching sexism and subtle-as-a-blowtorch homophobia"). Bull Durham's Annie Savoy was so named for a reason, but apparently players-as-eye-candy is strictly verboten when men might be the target audience. If anything, Bennett-Smith makes the case for staying away from women's soccer, if only to steer clear of harangue.

Why I'm Not Celebrating Obergefell

My Facebook timeline is awash with people who have chosen to rainbow-ize their profile pictures in solidarity with yesterday's momentous Supreme Court decision, Obergefell v. Hodges. In truth, I'm very happy for my gay and lesbian friends, who may now enter into marriage in all fifty states. And yet, the truth also is, I don't feel much like celebrating with Andrew Sullivan, who posted his first entry after announcing his retirement from blogging back in February. For all that the profoundly conservative gay marriage movement has succeeded in extending acceptance to homosexuality, I find the manner with which it was accomplished to be deeply troubling, and for reasons that Sullivan orbits but never quite touches on:

I remember one of the first TV debates I had on the then-strange question of civil marriage for gay couples. It was Crossfire, as I recall, and Gary Bauer’s response to my rather earnest argument after my TNR cover-story on the matter was laughter. “This is the loopiest idea ever to come down the pike,” he joked. “Why are we even discussing it?”

Those were isolating  days. A young fellow named Evan Wolfson who had written a dissertation on the subject in 1983 got in touch, and the world immediately felt less lonely. Then a breakthrough in Hawaii, where the state supreme court ruled for marriage equality on gender equality grounds. No gay group had agreed to support the case, which was regarded at best as hopeless and at worst, a recipe for a massive backlash. A local straight attorney from the ACLU, Dan Foley, took it up instead, one of many straight men and women who helped make this happen. And when we won, and got our first fact on the ground, we indeed faced exactly that backlash and all the major gay rights groups refused to spend a dime on protecting the breakthrough … and we lost.

In fact, we lost and lost and lost again. Much of the gay left was deeply suspicious of this conservative-sounding reform; two thirds of the country were opposed; the religious right saw in the issue a unique opportunity for political leverage – and over time, they put state constitutional amendments against marriage equality on the ballot in countless states, and won every time. Our allies deserted us. The Clintons embraced the Defense of Marriage Act, and their Justice Department declared that DOMA was in no way unconstitutional the morning some of us were testifying against it on Capitol Hill. For his part, president George W. Bush subsequently went even further and embraced the Federal Marriage Amendment to permanently ensure second-class citizenship for gay people in America. Those were dark, dark days.

I recall all this now simply to rebut the entire line of being “on the right side of history.” History does not have such straight lines. Movements do not move relentlessly forward; progress comes and, just as swiftly, goes. For many years, it felt like one step forward, two steps back. History is a miasma of contingency, and courage, and conviction, and chance.

Which is to say, what it really took, frankly, was this:

Gay marriage is nearly as accepted as heterosexual marriage, and among millennials, the numbers are an avalanche, approaching 80%. It is popularly accepted as a right, and therefore acceptable to defend. Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion for the majority cited four major reasons for accepting the plaintiff's case: individual autonomy, right to intimate association, safeguarding children and families, and marriage as a foundation of American social order. But ironically, it's Justice John Roberts who chooses deference to politically expressed preference in social order. "It can be tempting for judges to confuse our own preferences with the requirements of the law."

It is ... about whether, in our democratic republic, that decision should rest with the people acting through their elected representatives, or with five lawyers who happen to hold commissions authorizing them to resolve legal disputes according to law.

 Which is to say, we have a Supreme Court Chief Justice who believes that rights are subject to popular review. The same man who, in Obergefell, wrote "this Court is not a legislature" only the day before in King v. Burwell felt it meet to substitute policy aims over the literal text of the Affordable Care Act — i.e. to act exactly in the place of a legislature. And if Obamacare isn't exactly popular, it's apparently not unpopular enough for the Republicans to deliver a viable alternative — or for the Court to overturn it. In both cases, Roberts counsels deference, which is to say, he advocates for a kind of slow-motion, legalistic mob rule. For anyone familiar with the historical treatment of homosexuals, Jews, blacks, gypsies, and any other hated minority, that is a deeply terrifying prospect.

Defending Tim Hunt

Today: remarks from a female former scientist who worked for him:

I have seen discrimination and sexism in science and in wider society. I have seen female colleagues talked about in negative ways when they left the lab to have children. The issue is a genuine one that demands urgent attention. But it is grossly unfair that Tim should be considered, and treated, as an emblem of this sexism or gender discrimination.

Hunt's remarks, in context:

According to The Times, a report of the event by a European Commission official who was at the lunch was suppressed by the commission.

He wrote: 'This is the transcript of Sir Tim Hunt's speech, or rather a toast, as precise as I can recall it: 'It's strange that such a chauvinist monster like me has been asked to speak to women scientists. Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them they cry. Perhaps we should make separate labs for boys and girls?'

According to the official, Sir Tim immediately said after: 'Now seriously, I'm impressed by the economic development of Korea. And women scientists played, without doubt an important role in it. Science needs women and you should do science despite all the obstacles, and despite monsters like me.'

Eight Nobelists decried the "lynch mob" chasing Hunt out of his posts, and complaints about University College London's lack of dedication to free speech. (It comes out rather the worse for wear than Hunt, says the Spectator.)

Dayna Evans' Poison Pen To Her Father

I was somewhat surprised to read the disgust that various parties took in Dayna Evans' "You Don't Have Daddy Issues But Your Piece Of Shit Father Might" at Jezebel (Cathy Young, for instance, or this, or this). Sure, attacking men is kind of a Thing over there; aside from bagging on imbecile advice in knuckle-dragging men's clickbait factories, Evans pauses briefly to show us where she is in her life with men. She enters onto a quest to Scotland to reconcile with her estranged father, which goes drunkenly sour.

I was 27 on this trip. This was a telling age: the age when a lot of female acquaintances of mine were warming up to men, forming long-term relationships, getting married, finding love and happiness in significant others. I, on the other hand, was not only not doing that, I was finding commitment difficult. I was not ready for long-term relationships. I could not find a boyfriend that I liked. I did not want to be with anyone for very long. I did not find men tolerable, interesting, or worthwhile. It took me a long time to trust any man, let alone imagine myself committing to them for a lifetime, and the thought of having a child (a CHILD!) with one of them felt scarier than jumping off a bridge. I had, some might say, the opposite of daddy issues. I thought that perhaps in seeking some closure or stability in my relationship with my dad, I’d be able to solve my problems in relationships. I believed I’d cure my daddy issues by making up with my daddy.

Which is to say, the author has an entirely different set of "daddy issues", nearly the polar opposite of the ones we typically associate with daughters of absent fathers, i.e. earlier menarche and greater sexual risk-taking, and more broadly, dropping out of school at a rate three times greater than the general population, and twice as likely to develop addiction problems. Instead, her absentee father made her recoil from men, and who can blame her?

She concludes that "Daddy issues [are] the issue of men finding it easy to throw away the responsibility of fatherhood, the issue of all of us excusing them." Is this not, more or less, one of the cornerstones of conservative social criticism, that of the absent father causing much strife in society? She clanks elsewhere when she describes herself as "actually quite together. I had a [sic] friendships, goals, a career. I had a full heart, I was eager to give, I was trusting." The "trusting" part is in direct opposition to her utter revulsion at the male sex, but I find it strange that anyone who believes in personal responsibility (and the catastrophe of its absence) could much complain about the wreckage of this woman's life.

Update 6/22/2015: Related, from The Art Of Manliness, a listicle on the virtues of fatherhood.

Mad Man, Mad Libs

Things we can safely predict the form of, but not the content, after a mass shooting tragedy.

1. Someone will blame the killings on their favorite hobby horse.
2. Someone from the NRA will say something stupid.
3. Some politician will say something stupid. 
4. People will try to parse the murderer's views so they can lay the murders at the feet of their political opponents.
5. Gun control proponents will demand a "conversation" to seize the moment while public hysteria is still high ("never let a crisis go to waste") and propose "common sense" legislation that doesn't actively address the particulars of the recent shooting.
6. Such bills will stall in the legislature, fought to ground by vociferous and real opposition.

Ellen Pao Must Pay $275,966 For Kleiner Perkins Legal Fees

Well, that was quick.

The Right's Insane Distortions About Trade Agreement Secrecy

I encountered this horrible piece at Cato on the subject of trade promotion authority (i.e. "fast track") with respect to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. First, it's important to notice that Cato here seems to have gone all-in with the Hollywood copyright maximalists, covering for both their secrecy and prior activity, declaring it a "myth" that "TPP is being negotiated via a dangerous and unprecedented level of secrecy".  As with net neutrality, people who normally would oppose corporatist shenanigans are lining up to misrepresent what's actually going on here. And again, it's Techdirt that provides coverage about the reality on the ground. Cato:

Myth 5: TPP is being negotiated via a dangerous and unprecedented level of secrecy! Totally false. Probably the most-repeated myth right now isn’t even related to TPA but instead to the TPP, which is still being negotiated. According to the anti-TPA script, the TPP is so secret that nobody knows what’s in it, and—much like Obamacare legislation—nobody, not even Congress, will know what’s in it until the agreement is passed into law. Once again, however, nothing could be further from the truth:

• First, Obama’s USTR and Congress have been consulting on the TPP since December 14, 2009, when then-USTR Kirk notified Congress that President Obama intended to enter into TPP negotiations. USTR then held initial consultations with Congress in 2010 and, according to a January 2015 fact-sheet, has since held almost 1,700 congressional briefings on TPP alone. USTR also previewed various TPP proposals with key congressional committees before taking them to our trading partners. (Odd that the TPP talks have been going on for six years, but the vast majority of these “secrecy” complaints have only emerged in the last few months, huh?)

 Meanwhile, the reality is that the American public has no idea what's in the draft treaty, and that's largely because their elected representatives are being kept in the dark as well:

...[E]ven the fact that members of Congress can actually see the document is tremendously misleading. Yes, members of Congress are allowed to walk over to the USTR and see a copy of the latest text. But they're not allowed to take any notes, make any copies or bring any of their staff members. In other words, they can only read the document and keep what they remember in their heads. And they can't have their staff members -- the folks who often really understand the details -- there to explain what's really going on.

As the link in the text above explains, it's telling who can see the drafts — and who can't: "The MPAA, Comcast, PHRMA" and other trade groups all have free run, but a sitting US Senator and his staff cannot? Ron Wyden:

The majority of Congress is being kept in the dark as to the substance of the TPP negotiations, while representatives of U.S. corporations – like Halliburton, Chevron, PHRMA, Comcast, and the Motion Picture Association of America – are being consulted and made privy to details of the agreement.

Yup, that's what the man said. And in fact, drafts are classified, which means leaking the text could result in jail time for the leakers. (Somebody at Wikileaks is in trouble, and ditto the USTR, likely.) Cato disingenuously omits key and ominous details. So when Cato writes that the "USTR has provided “access to the full negotiating texts for any Member of Congress, including for Members to view at their convenience in the Capitol, accompanied by staff members with appropriate security clearance.”", they're being very coy about what "access" might mean, just as they are when they say the "USTR has engaged the public on the TPP via published reports and “stakeholder meetings” with groups like labor unions, consumer groups, and, of course, corporations and trade associations." These are dog and pony shows unless we know the contents of the treaty. And what we do know looks remarkably like a giveaway to large corporate interests.