socaltownie said:
01Bear said:
bearister said:
bipolarbear said:
The SC Song girls are performing in the land of starlets, whom they resemble. The outfits and routines are provacative. They shake more than their pom poms, but so do lots of cheerleaders and 'dance teams' now. They know this when they try out and sign up. Even the less shellacked Stanfurd 'dancers' are called "Dollies" which implies they are playthings (of the team?) yet I bet there is great competition to become a Dolly. Is it all about entertainment on game day? Seem out of date in today's world.
You made my point. We can avoid all the verbose lectures and cut to the chase: They knew, or should have known (like most of mankind does), what they were signing up for. It doesn't mean some of them didn't suffer emotional distress. It doesn't mean the lady running the program isn't a psycho b@itch. What it means is that if it ever gets to an LA jury they will be shaking their heads, not using calculators figuring out the damages they are going to award.
Again, you're conflating separate issues. The ogling by spectators is distinct and separate from the abuse heaped on the song girls by the coordinator. A jury will not have to consider the former to reach a determination about damages for the latter as they are entirely separate.
As for an implication any cheerleaders are playthings for "the team" all I can say is "Holy crap! Talk about enabling rape culture!" @bipolarbear, Let's get this straight once and for all, no woman is a sex object meant to satisfy men. Yes, I know that's hard for those of you who grew up thinking that getting a girl drunk meant you could "have your way with her." But let's be clear, that is nothing short of rape.
Similarly, just because you feel entitled to ogle young women who are participating in a school-sponsored extracurricular activity doesn't mean that their purpose. Times have changed; society is coming to recognize that women are fully human, too. They deserve not to be treated as objects, especially sex objects.
Yeah, I know some of you will dismiss this as so much "PC police BS." But you know what PC really means? It means treating someone else with the dignity and respect due that person on account of his/her humanity. That's it. When the reactionaries complain about PC culture, what they're really complaining about is not being able to discriminate against others, not being able to be racist, not being able to be sexist, etc. with impunity. Basically, they're upset that these "lesser thans" are being treated as their equals and it galls them.
You have a choice to make. You can be an angry old man clinging to your sexism and male chauvinism or you can come to respect women. For the sakes of your daughters, granddaughters, etc., I hope you choose the latter. Keep in mind, they're the ones who will pay the price for your continued enabling of misogyny and rape culture.
That is such a false dichotomy you are setting up. NO ONE is embracing rape culture and by conflating and expanding the conversation you do a disservice to dialogue and debate.
As others have pointed out, for "dancing and cheering" there is NO REASON the song girls need to be in sweaters 3 sizes too small with an exposed midriff. Indeed, it isn't clear at all that would facilitate dancing and cheering since wardrobe failures would be more likely than, for example, polo shirts and a sports bra. One might also suggest that the "dancing" being done by many of the dance teams isn't at all high value chorography or technical difficult but is extremely sexualized. The "cheering" that is often done is not coordinated but rather waving pom poms as if this is needed while the game is served up on a big screen and football itself is a game of intense action punctuated by a committee meeting.
Just for your frame of reference here is a "non sexualized" cheering squad I see a lot of.
https://www.mlb.com/padres/fans/pad-squad/galleries
So once (as reasonable people will agree) that the USC "song team" is overly sexualized and has been for decades we can then move onto agency and consent.
That subject, I would agree, is a challenging one. Women (and men but in our culture mostly women) have, I think, a right to do what they will without being oggled and objectified. But the lines become challenging when the very activity they are engaged in is largely about being oggled and objectified. There is really no great analogy here that helps except to ask whether the woman has a reasonable choice to refrain from the activity (going to work? No so much. Being a USC song girl? Probably) and thus if she does that she knows what she is signing up for.
And that, I think, brings us to the psycho coach. And while clearly over the top I wonder if by that much. The expectation is that these song girls WILL be barbies. So she is demanding that they be, come hell or high water or eating disorder. Again, note "reasonable choice to refrain."
Now I will readily admit that there is plenty of grey area. You can clearly find examples where women are objectified and worse. Society sucks. But I am also a BIG one for personal resonsibility. Yes. I have a right to walk through West Oakland with a flashing stack of Benjamins at 2 a.m. However, should I get robbed and mugged or worse I bear some reasonability for being either naive or tempting fate.
Rape culture enables rape by downplaying the responsibility of men not to objectify women and in fact encourages they do it. The pictures of women (in tight sweaters) posted here by some of the forum members in that very pursuit is evidence of their objectification of women and support of rape culture.
As for what the USC Song Girls (or any women/girls) choose to wear, that's really not a suggestion they want to be ogled and objectified sexually. I'm not sure why i have to keep saying this but women's decisions don't all revolve around men. Here's the thing, often, a woman will dress sexily or beautifully for herself. It has nothing to do with wanting male attention and everything to do with her own sense of self. That some men may take this to mean "she's asking for it" whether the "it" is sexual assault, sexual objectification, or ogling is not significantly different from a philosophical perspective.
As for the tight sweaters, if that's part of the uniform, there's not much the Song Girls can do about that, as that's what the school has decided they must wear. Much the same as beach volleyball players and swimmers must wear swimsuits or football players must wear tights. Speaking of which, it's funny how when football players wore cutoff tops and tights no one sexually objectified them or called them out for being sexually suggestive. Yet, when cheerleaders do something similar, they're automatically "asking for it."
As for the cheering, again, cheering has evolved from the days of waving pom poms. There's now a lot of dancing involved in sideline cheerleading. Whether you or I like the dancing is irrelevant. The fact of the matter remains that dancing is now part of cheerleading. Also, as I mentioned before, just because some of the older folks may find the dancing to be sexually suggestive does not mean (1) the girls doing the dances are "asking for it" or (2) the dances are sexually suggestive to others (let alone to the cheerleaders). As I pointed out earlier, older generations have often found the dances of younger generations to be sexually suggestive. That doesn't mean the younger people found them to be so. James Brown, Elvis Presley, et al. all used to gyrate or shake their hips. Yet, which of you old timers would say those dances were sexually suggestive. For the even older set, which of you would say that swing dancing and the lindy hop were sexually suggestive? Yet, when those dances came out, the older generations castigated them for being sexually depraved.
As for the coach, what exactly do you mean by reasonable choice to refrain? If you mean the coach should've refrained from doing so, I totally agree. However, if you mean the cheerleaders could've refused to go along with her criticisms, could've ignored her, or do you mean they should've just quit the cheer squad, then I would disagree. Should Allen Crabbe just have quit the Cal men's basketball team when Monty shoved him? Should Adam James just have quit the Texas Tech football team when Mike Leach locked him in the closet? Should the Ohio State wrestlers just have ignored it (or quit the team) when they were abused? Didn't they have the same reasonable choice to refrain?
Where are the cries for personal responsibility relative to the abusers in positions of power? Isn't it interesting that the victims of the abuse are the ones who are asked to take personal responsibility? This brings us back to rape culture. The "blame the victim" mentality is very much a part of rape culture.
Like most of the folks in this forum, I grew up in rape culture, too. I unthinkingly adopted it, as well. If a girl wore a skimpy outfit, obviously, she was trolling for sex. If she got raped, she asked for it. She should take personal responsibility for her actions. This was all ingrained in me before I graduated high school. At Cal, it was more of the same, except now if a girl got drunk, she's responsible for whatever happens to her afterward. This was all accepted and part of the culture.
But here's the thing, I've reflected on all that and realized just how morally bankrupt it all was. The "personal responsibility" argument somehow never attached to the ones who took advantage (and sexually assaulted) the girls. The "she was asking for it" arguments are just wrong on their face. No one suggests a guy who gets mugged was asking for it (not even when he gets drunk and passes out). No one then tells the mugging victim he's damaged goods. No one criticizes the mugging victim for going out fir a good time with his friends. No one doubts the mugging victim when he claims he was mugged just because he didn't fight back.
Here, you may point to your hypothetical about walking in West Oakland flashing a stack of Benjamins as evidence to the contrary. Yet, it's inapposite. You use your hypo to suggest personal responsibility applies when a person goes out of his way to do something out of the ordinary. Women get sexually assaulted and sexually objectified all the time as just part of their daily life. They don't have to dress "provocatively" or get drunk. They don't have to "dance suggestively" or "bump and grind." All they have to do is go about their daily lives and they'll still be sexually objectified, ogled, and sexually assaulted.
To borrow from Jesus, "if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee." The person who does the sexual objectifying, ogling, etc. (and not the target of his behavior) is the one who needs to take personal responsibility for his actions.
I wish I'd gone to usc!
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