This video shows a fight ensuing during a girls' soccer game at the high school level. Just recently, a similar story became well-known in the media but instead it involved female soccer players at the college level. This previous incident occurred across the course of the game and was mainly one athlete doing extremely violent penalties against the women on the other team. This college level contact then seemed to spread to the high school level. These younger girls became very violent as well. During an extremely intense soccer game, the girls got a little too emotionally involved and ended up starting a fight. The news broadcasters began to comment on the incident and the female claimed it was similar to what happens at most "major league baseball games." The male broadcasters disagreed and claimed that the girls were pulling hair and implied that men do more physical acts such as punching and kicking. In reality, there was just as much intensity and punching in this fight between girls as there would have been between boys.
Sports are typically discussed as stirring up violence in males while creating a more well-balanced environment for girls. In this case, there is definitely a great amount of violence that was directly related to the game and the pressures that come with it. In lecture and in Messner's book, the importance of violence in male athletics has dominated discussion. Also, the female athlete being treated differently or exposing her body has become a topic of analysis. This video clip goes against Messner's ideas somewhat just because it shows that females can have a stronger competition than ever before and can generate a similar intensity to the boys. It is important to think about the impact of sports and the connection between gender behaviors in athletics. In order to blur the lines of gender and segregated sports, the public must recognize the similarities, especially in competition and violence among young women in sports. This will help the two genders be able to merge or at least cut back on the stereotype of the woman's lack of athleticism and competitiveness in sports.
Although there has been so much controversy about how youth sports fester too much violence and competitive spirit, it is important to recognize the positives of these organizations. Youth sports allow children, males and females, to release the energy and emotion involved in every day life. Without it, children would lack on ideas of expressing enthusiasm and intensity. These events also create a space for youth to develop in the social aspect of life and meet a lot of new people in a setting that is fun and exciting. In this case, the positives in youth sports outweigh the negatives and the few incidences of violence cannot diminish the importance of sports in a young child's life.
I greatly support the idea of women being competitive because the mind set on sports does not change regarding if you are a male or a female. It has been seen in many different sport’s events that female athletes are aggressive on the field, even in the water. For example, water polo players drawn each other scratch and even tear each others’ swimsuit. The emotional thinking does not help to focus on the doing sports it just make athletes mind be all over the place, thus it is a problem to concentrate on performing sports. Most of the time, females’ violence in sports has the same tension as males’ violence because competitiveness often times include the negative emotions.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Shannon that the positive impacts of youth sports outweigh the negative, because out of the many games played only a few of them involve violence. The sport itself promotes healthy competition within rules and guidelines; other factors besides the game itself may intensify the negative effects of sports such as violence.
ReplyDeleteThe video is about college soccer, where the level is competitiveness is high. According to ('soft') essentialism as depicted in Messner's book, male are the only ones who would use their bodies as weapon because they are depicted as more aggressive, strong, and competitive, and that they gain respect and self worth based on their physical strength, while women are assumed to be soft, sensitive and weaker than men. Although many women try to fit into these stereotypes, this video shows that not all women do and that they can become as violent as men.