Of course no matter who wins, it will be a blue state victory, and an East Coast one, to boot.

I’m glad that it gives some people joy & camaraderie. The Packers, for instance, are actually owned by the people of Wisconsin, which I think is a damned cool thing. There is something to be said for a sport that helps people bond. There’s a lot of to be said for the lessons of winning and losing graciously, and learning how to put ego aside for the sake of a group effort.

But I am still a Gender Studies professor, and it’s nearly impossible for me to shut my critical eye. It’s not that I don’t have guilty pleasures – porn is certainly one of them – that I have conscientious qualms about enjoying. But I can’t say I partake in anything so mainstream, so culturally-validated, so intensely insisted upon. And I certainly don’t insist that anyone else who might have objections to porn like the stuff in order to hang out with me.

People might assume – because of who I am, because of what I do – that I’m somehow immune to feeling left out. I’m not. Since I think a lot too about bullying, and about how queer kids are often made to feel like they don’t fit in, I’ve been paying close attention to the things that make me feel both lonely and isolated here. I’ve considered doing an “It Gets Better” video, but this past year was not one that made me feel like it does. No, in new, acute ways, even as an adult, even if you’re known as a bit of a firebrand, a crank, or eccentric in whatever way, standing down peer pressure is still difficult. Sometimes it taxes me in ways that sadden me; I would have expected, by now, not to feel that kind of sting. But I do. I wish I didn’t.

What I’ve been thinking about recently is how much my queerness has always been about being an outsider, an outcast if you will. The epitaph on Oscar Wilde’s headstone is taken from his Ballad of Reading Gaol, and reads:

And alien tears will fill for him
Pity’s long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.

And so I start a new football season in mourning, ironic as the case may be, for a man who really loved football, but who, in his turn, loved his outcast daughter. But when it comes down to it, I realize that I’ve put my reflexive “I prefer not to” to good use in my life, whether that’s as a political person, or as a writer, even if and when it has also caused me some pain. I would like to think that those who have been outsiders at some point in their own lives understand how hard it can be for those of us who are not fitting in for one reason or another, and I hope – I aspire – to be more like my father, whose favorite expression was “That’s why they make red cars & blue cars.” Indeed. Except in Wisconsin, where during football season, all the cars are yellow & green.

But with that, here’s hoping Packers fans get to see their team win again, and that their victories bring them all a great deal of joy. My dislike of football isn’t a judgment, or a criticism. I just… prefer not to. Feel free to join me, no matter where you live, in flexing that stubborn muscle, but please don’t tell me that you don’t like football because you’re a woman now, or because only the unwashed masses like sports. I don’t like football because it’s too violent – not because I’m female – and plenty of intelligent, conscientious & interesting people like sports.

What an amazing story

Here, we pretend this is all about Kobe Bryant – as if no one else in sports uses these kinds of slurs! Please.: the whole “I didn’t mean gay people when I used ‘fag’ as an insult” is so 1994. There is absolutely no excuse for anyone to use words that have been used to oppress, intimidate and threaten people of whatever minority group anymore.

(h/to to SS!)

Surprisingly sympathetic, no?

“We’ve yet to send out a formal press release regarding this, but we are very proud of the diversity represented by our league and we’re glad that our league can be one of the leagues to formally create a policy allowing transwomen skaters . . . For The Chicago Outfit, I think that having this policy is another step for our league to show how open and accepting of women from all walks of life we are. This policy also hopefully will help to continue the legitimization of transwomen athletes in this sport in other leagues throughout the country.”

Although “allows” really chafes, even if the person who said it is trans herself.

I came across this sentence the other day. at change.org:

The trafficking of children for sale at the Super Bowl is well documented.

And I was honestly flabbergasted: not surprised, because where men with money gather, children are sold for sexual pleasure. Still, it’s sickening. So many people watch and play football because it’s fun — shoot, even I go to Super Bowl parties! What a way to mess up an otherwise (mostly) harmless sports event.

I’m impressed with the “I’m Not Buying It” campaign, especially the one by Jay Ratliff, which is spare and direct and forceful. Then, too, there’s Troy Dooly:

(and he even pointed out that trans, gay, & lesbian kids get it worse than their straight peers! I am now a fan of Troy Dooly’s.)

It’s sad that sports – which otherwise teaches people cool things, like how to lose graciously, and more importantly, how to win graciously – should be used in such fucked up ways.

(Okay, I admit it: for the sake of the mood here in Appleton, I actually am hoping the Packers win. It’s good for the local economy, & I really don’t want everyone I know to be in a shite mood on Monday.)

I’m not sure I can even count how wrong that is or in how many ways. How incredibly Christian of them, to fire the partner of an expectant mom.

But Monday was anything but ordinary because it was the day the world would learn about the decision Allums had embarked on one year earlier: to come out as a transgender man playing on a women’s basketball team.

He noted that he was biologically identical to any other female, but said, “I just would prefer for people to call me a he.”

“I decided to do it because I was uncomfortable not being able to be myself,” Allums, 21, said in a telephone interview Monday, hours after an article about his experience was published on the Web site Outsports.com. “Just having to hear the words ‘she’ and ‘her,’ it was really starting to bother me.”

NCLR (National Center for Lesbian Rights) has a piece about the Trans Student Athlete Guide, as does the NCAA (National College Athletic Association).

The Guide itself can be found in .pdf format on the NCLR’s site.

For those of you who know anything about sports, and/or are trans yourselves, I’d love to hear your take on this report.

She added: “Even if she is a female, she’s on the very fringe of the normal athlete female biological composition from what I understand of hormone testing. So, from that perspective, most of us just feel that we are literally running against a man.”

To which I might say: isn’t the whole point of athletic competition pushing the envleope / finding the fringe of “normal”?