I received an excellent email from my friend Ujamaa in response to this blog. She is currently overseas, teaching and writing excellent emails. Patriarchy goes international! Since I have never much liked soccer (basketball’s where it’s at), I’ll leave it to her:

“So  I was meeting my “friend” (more like closest thing to a friend but not really a friend) Ozzie who was going to teach me how to ride a motorcycle. And this was right after the netherlands vs. argentina game. And another guy that also lives in the same dorm came up to me while I was waiting in the lobby, and we were chatting. And Ozzie comes out and, you know, says hi to me and then turns to this other guy and goes “oh man did you see the match last night? blah blah blah” And he and this other guy have a little 3 minute chat about soccer, and not once does he even think that I might be interested, and is basically completely ignoring me. And then the other guy leaves and Ozzie turns to me and starts talking about motorcycles etc., but it never once occurred to him that I might watch soccer. Which… well really pissed me off. And also confused me, because I wanted to join in the  conversation about it, and I was willing to overlook his obvious sexism (maybe he just assumed I was like every other American who doesn’t like soccer?) . But at the same time any way of bringing myself into the conversation would have felt forced since he hadn’t opened it up for me. So that kind of sucked to feel guilty about loving I sport that I played for about 9 years growing up.

And on another somewhat related note about soccer: did you ever play soccer growing up? I don’t know if you noticed this, but I did since my brother also played. They are WAY harsher about giving out cards and fouls in girl’s soccer. One explanation is “girls have to be dainty and play by the rules”, but my personal opinion is that the policy is enforcing the subconscious belief that “overt displays of aggression by girls should be punished”. And every time I watch men’s soccer part of me gets really sad that a) women would never be able to get away with some of the things that men do and b) that no one likes women’s soccer as much because its “not as exciting” whatever that means.

So, yeah, anyways, I’m a feminist. And I love that you are too. Feel free to share any unfiltered/unedited frustrations you have with me, and I will get suitably riled up for you!”

There you go, folks - if you have anything you would like Ujamaa to get riled up over on your account, feel free to leave it in the comments.