Sports

A recent PR scuffle proved that ice-skating champ Johnny Weir is the bigger man when it comes to commentary...not that he gives a sh** what a man should or shouldn't be.

In response to two Quebecois commentators who spoke derogatorily of Weir and said he should take a gender test, Weir responded by issuing an awesome statement that touched on identity, free speech, life in the public eye, and the changing acceptance of gender, saying "I think masculinity and femininity is something that’s very old fashioned."Transcript after jump

If Lindsey Vonn and Julia Mancuso's performances in the Women's Downhill weren't to make your feminist heart swell with Olympic pride (what are you, a robot?), Tanith Belbin might do the trick. In an interview with The New York Times' Juliet Macur earlier this week Belbin discussed the pressures that female athletes in her field, Ice Dancing, face to stay thin and how her Olympic chances have improved since she decided to listen to her body and stop worrying about how her thighs look those tiny little dancing get ups.

If you are among the record numbers of people who tuned in to yesterday's Super Bowl, then you had the chance to see the controversial Focus on the Family ad starring Tim Tebow and his mother, Pam. And if the ad shocked you at all, it was probably due to how tame it turned out to be.

At this point, we probably don't need a refresher on Tiger Woods and his scandal-making behavior. We've all got the 411 on his many mistresses, his alleged sex addiction, his lost endorsement deals, and his overall douche-y behavior. But what do we do with that knowledge? Where do we direct our feelings of disappointment?

Well, if we were Michael Caldwell, the ideas man behind Tail of the Tiger, we'd create a set of 12 golf balls with the alleged mistresses' faces painted on them so that our fellow golfers could literally hit the women in the face with a club. Yep, that's right.

CBS's decision to air a Focus on the Family ad during this year's Super Bowl, while frustrating for pro-choice advocates, has a silver lining: It has inspired some pretty, well, inspiring, responses.

This is it. The #1, above-all reason why this feminist is a sports fan is ...

Only two left in the Top Ten! The #2 reason why I'm a sports fan and a feminist (both! at once! at the same time!) is ...

 

The sad news came down just a few weeks ago: It Takes a Team, the pioneering project of the Women's Sports Foundation dedicated to challenging homophobia in sports, has been canceled due to budget cuts. An educational program founded in 1996, It Takes a Team was based on four powerful facts ...

Here's something I learned today: Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female physician in the U.S., gave a series of lectures in 1859 that emphasized the importance of physical activity in the lives of girls-going so far as to define the first law of life as the law of exercise. Blackwell argued that a society that neglects that activity of girls-or, as the case may be, provides obstacles to it-denies girls "both happiness and life well lived."

It's 150 years later, and still, the freedom of American girls and women to live active, strong, healthy lives is still not on par with their male counterparts. Luckily, we have another strong voice that is taking on Blackwell's legacy by taking the physicality of females seriously -- and without body-size hate.

No surprise here: the internets can be a hostile space women. Women who are sports fans and athletes find their fair share of, by turns, erasure and hostility.

As Salon's Broadsheet points out, you can't even Google "female athlete of the decade" or even "best female athlete of the decade" without be bombarded by "hottest female athlete" paraphernalia that is enough to depress the most passionate fan. Likewise, paging through the daily coverage of ESPN and Sports Illustrated, you'd be forgiven if you started to wonder if you'd entered some kind of time warp in which such a thing as a "female athlete" or "female sports fan" or, hell, even a "female sportwriter" had not been invented yet.

But I assure you, they -- we -- are out there. And not finding the the digital world an especially hospitable space for women who dig sports, gals are creating their own online news networks and communities, filling the void with bright, intelligent, and passionate commentary that is grounded in a belief that women matter.

It might be hard to find them if you dare to brave Google to track them down, so here's your handy primer on the best of women and sports on the internet. I hope you'll join me there!