- Why I flipped off the “Kiss Cam” – Cricket tries to make itself more sexy and fun, but alienates its women viewers. From Andrew.
- Vaccination advocacy takes to the skies – During a debate between Meryl Dorey of the AVN and an immunologist, there will be a plane flying a banner that says “Vaccination Saves Lives”. The plane was hired by the Stop the AVN Facebook group.
- NASA book on the women of Goddard Space Flight Center – And there’s also an exhibit at the Maryland Women’s Heritage Center.
- Catholic adoption agencies whine because Illinois isn’t giving them money to discriminate – “In Illinois, Catholic adoption agencies used to be given taxpayer money to run their businesses. In the process, they wouldn’t allow gay couples to adopt because it went against their faith. But now that civil unions are legal in the state, they’re no longer allowed to discriminate like that.”
- And I got to be on the Read it and Weep podcast again, this time talking about the most boring witch book ever, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane. Go check it out (and every other episode, really, because they are hilarious).
So if women don’t like the negative attention they are automatically going to get at cricket matches, they should just go to some safe place, like the Internet. I don’t see what the big deal is.
For the sarcasm-impaired, I probably should have linked the word “Internet” to the recent Reddit post all the wonderful, awful comments there.
I read the blog post about the Kiss Cam, and I don’t understand how the author comes to the conclusion that it singles out women. It singles out couples.
Feeling left out? Like You don’t matter? Like a lot of women feel every day when they encounter men who think 50% of humans don’t matter? Or worse?
No, I don’t feel left out. I’m just not convinced by that blog post.
Most of the people at the cricket are men (I say as a cricket watching Australian male). The cricket has a long and stupid history of having their camera crews search out the crowd for attractive women for people to gawk at, this is just the latest incarnation of this. They don’t so much look for couples as young women sitting next to and talking to a man.
There’s also a bunch of other crap that goes on at the cricket, for example it is a regular occurrence to see bays of 100+ people on their feet yelling in unison at a poor embarrassed woman to take her top off not to mention the normal behaviour you get from groups of intoxicated man-children egging each other on. It’s not like there isn’t a significant police presence there too (there are always a lot of arrests at the cricket) it’d be nice if they’d do something about those idiots.
Something more important that you really need to understand, things can discriminate against certain groups even if they do not directly target them. For example there used to be a height requirement in some Australian states for police officers above a certain rank. You might say that sounds like discrimination against short people (and it is) but it is also discrimination against women, the rule was in fact designed to keep women out of the higher ranks because women are generally shorter than men. The police were trying to avoid conforming to laws prohibiting discrimination against women. Most discrimination these days is done like this and if you dismiss it all then you are helping people to discriminate.
So how is this kiss cam discriminating at women? Well women are a small percentage of people at the cricket. Each woman at the ground is much more likely to be picked on than each man. That comes in addition to what I said above. If there is nothing else you take away from this I hope you understand that something can be discriminatory in practice even if the text of the rule/practice does not contain any discrimination.
Haydenmuhl, the camera was not just singling out couples, it was also finding pairs of women and egging them on. It was not doing the same to pairs of men.
I, for one, have never understood how the camera operators figure out which pairs of humans are romantic couples. Well, obviously they don’t, because they linger uncomfortably long on people clearly unwilling to kiss.
The strange thing is, two lesbians were kicked out of Target Field here in Minneapolis after kissing on the Kiss Cam.
Also, every time I read about cricket, the terminology leaves me more convinced that the whole sport is a hoax. “Drinks Break?”
Drinks breaks are mandated after Australian Batsmen Dean Jones nearly died of dehydration while batting during a match in India. It’s a bit of a silly point but quite a few cricket terms are a bit long on. I would say I know them all, I rarely get the wrong’un, though if I do I can always ask a third man. (Sorry)
Ha!
I spent two weeks in Australia during The Ashes. I was there as a part of an academic conference and so we also had a roommate.. a native Aussie.
Every day my hubby would sit and watch the matches on TV without knowing anything about the sport. When my roommate and I got home in the evening she would quiz him about what happened and the rules of the game and then inevitably correct all his assumptions and terms.
All he learned during that period is that it’s impossible to figure out cricket.
I actually think I have a fairly decent grasp on the basics of cricket, though some of the details escape me. I picked up a book a couple years ago called “Cricket for Americans”, that was DREADFULLY boring (really? A detailed history of Cricket in America, going year by year from 1900? We needed this?), but pretty informative as to the basics.
The cricket thread is still open if anybody wants to have some fun shooting fish in a barrel.
For instance, Commenter Al is concerned at the attention to “first world problems”. Maybe he could do with some gentle persuasion by the Marilove/SallyStrange/Will (TM) technique.