DC McAllister at PJ Media wrote a post arguing that Special K’s marketing campaign encouraging girls to play football is hurting women. Her first argument is that men, and young men especially, need their own spaces:
While I don’t want to take away from the athletic ability, hard work, and beauty of these young women, I simply cannot celebrate girls playing football. Not only do I refuse to celebrate it, I outright condemn it.
First of all, why in the name of “equality” do women insist on invading man spaces? There is a camaraderie among boys that is necessary for their development as men, and this is fostered in all-boy sports. It’s a kind of initiation into manhood — something that must be done by men in a male-only environment. Injecting females into the mix dilutes the experience, robbing boys of training in masculinity and male bonding that they desperately need.
Instead of tearing down the walls between boys and girls, we need to encourage boys to build more tree houses with signs like “No Girls Allowed” on the door. They need it to develop, grow, and discover what it means to be a man, but as a society we’re taking this from them. It’s not fair to them, and the girls don’t need to take over their space. They have their own tree houses (and their own sports).
Her objection to the invasion of all men’s spaces is extremely uncommon, as both conservatives and liberals as groups view this as merely progress. Besides, noticing the pettiness of women who insist on invading all men’s spaces is considered petty. We expect women to be petty, but for men to mind this pettiness is unacceptable, because we expect more from men. If men would be petty to mind the invasion, who is McAllister to bring such a petty thing up?
Stephen Green at Instapundit linked to McAllister’s piece, and as expected conservative readers objected to McAllister pointing out women’s pettiness:
Lighten up and quit looking for things to be offended by. Some people on the right are starting to sound like the panty waist losers on the left (sounding like that stupid inane daily Vox alert in my cell phone that I am 100% sure I never signed up for and cannot seem to shut off).
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My daughter and her friends enjoyed the “Powder Puff” flag football game they played the day before Thanksgiving. This faux outrage is a case of “Lighten up, Francis.”
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Who cares? Stop ramping back up the culture wars with this nonsense. If a school district wants to let girls play football, bfd. Don’t we have enough real problems?
McAllister’s second argument is that as a result of women’s invasion of all men’s spaces, she fears this will lead to young men not learning to protect women:
Sports can have a positive impact on personal development, but this is only when the sport isn’t being perverted into something it’s not meant to be. When you put a girl on a football field, you are training boys to go against their natural (and good) instincts not to hit girls. Part of growing as a man is to learn how to properly treat women, to protect, respect, honor, and cherish them. Not to beat the crap out of them in sports or anywhere else.
This second argument is better tuned to the conservative sensibility. However, it has the problem of blaming women, or at least potentially leading to the terrifying possibility of telling a woman no. Had she framed the problem as one of football playing boys lacking chivalry when tackling kickass gals, she would have been right on target. If she were really good, McCallaster could have gone the extra mile and accused weak young men of insisting that these valiant young women play a dangerous game so the young men could remain safe. But that would be Grand Master level conservative denial, and very few can compete on that level. McCallaster also seems sincere in her objection to women invading men’s spaces.
As it was, conservative Instapundit readers were forced to manually rework the argument themselves.
I’m not offended. But I am deeply concerned that anybody thinks it’s OK for boys to tackle girls.
See Also: It would be petty to point out how petty it is.
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