BBC took the opportunity to throw shit on girls/women's football on the final day of Women's Football World Cup 2019.
Read how climate change made human evolution possible in SE Asian volatile archipelago - not on a continent like Africa.
Read how
two craniopagus twins born 2006 solved the "greatest mystery in
science" - and proved Peter Klevius theory from 1992-94 100% correct.
BBC used most of their main news hour today to propagate for more
cricket for young girls. This is in line with a long lasting history of
resistance against girls/women playing the most popular sport ever.
The tea drinking puppet empire banned women from playing football on FA grounds 1921-1971.
Peter Klevius has made the most extensive research on the background to
the ban and how it was connected to the introduction of Swedish
gymnastics for English girls.
Here just a small aperitife:
Extracted from Peter Klevius research:
The
pioneering role of club gymnastics (Swedish ’föreningsgymnastik’) was an
all-European phenomenon - except for in the British Islands. In Sweden
this was especially natural because of the Ling gymnastics tradition
(Lindroth 1988:40). Since the end of the 19th century there has been a
continuous differentiation of competitive sport. I doubt, says Hjelm,
that a ‘league IV’ heavyweight boxer would consider himself a better
boxer than the Swedish lightweight champion only because he would win a
match between them. This is why weight classes as a form of
differentiation were introduced in boxing. The official introduction of
girls and women football in the 1970s hence represents a common way of
organizing sport in Sweden (Hjelm 2004: 284). Similarly, it is hard to
imagine that the many male sprinters who run faster than the world's
best female sprinters but not as fast as the best male sprinters, would
consider their wins in some local competition equally worthy as a female
Olympic gold medal. Yet the same logic seems often to be missing when
comparing male and female football.
Gender and ‘class-neutral’ football
Andersson
(2002) has written an account of Swedish football's cultural history
from the end of the 19th century to 1950. Furthermore, Andersson has
surveyed the manner in which football could attain such a strong
cultural position, and a class neutral character, to the extent that it
could be automatically classified as the national sport of Sweden.
Andersson concludes that the middle class dominated power elite in
Sweden tried to control the development of sport through the
federations, at both national and regional levels: the management of
elite clubs; sports journalism; the referee corps; and, often, even the
running of sports grounds. All of this was aimed at the realisation of
football as a manly, class nonspecific, and successful Swedish project
(Andersson 2002: 624).
However, this bourgeois middle-class
sport power elite that was initially dominated by younger or middle aged
males, aged and changed to a group of somewhat older middle class men,
with the values of the male working class and of social democracy. So,
although there originally existed two English cultures in Sweden -
amateur and professional football - while the Swedish bourgeoisie went
for the gentleman amateur values with the main objective to use the game
as an element in nurturing masculinity for the good of the nation, this
was later transformed to better correspond to the popular ‘mixed’
football culture (Andersson 2002: 628-629). In this context it may be
worth mentioning the extraordinary long lasting and strong position the
social democratic party came to have in Sweden.
Ideology bearing
thoughts and convictions regarding ‘wholesome masculinity’, the
nurturing of a gentlemanly identity, as well as amateurism and class
crossing nationalism was transformed from a sound and ‘healthy
manliness’ based on military character to approximate the popular
movement’s ideals of duty and conscientiousness, albeit without
compulsory temperance. Furthermore, in accordance with a rather freer
male ideal, all boys were welcomed to participate, and gentlemanliness
was transmuted towards proletarian comradeship, and a class related
amateurism developed closer to professional football. A professional and
scientific attitude, in which the will to win was central, emerged in
Sweden (Andersson 2002: 629).
According to Andersson, football
was masculinized through the ideals of the working-class because it was
well suited to a Swedish working class culture that not only paid
tribute to collective ideals, but also contained a tradition anchored
rivalry between different groups, not least young men in neighbouring
communities. ‘In this way, the game's masculine character was
established’, despite what representatives of Ling gymnastics opined
about football's danger to physical wellbeing (Andersson, 2002: 624).
That football during the inter-war period was a definitively masculine
sport was, according to Andersson, demonstrated when a more
‘entertainment orientated’ ladies' football was established in Sweden
around 1920. Andersson traces the origins of female participation in
football to women’s generally strengthened societal position. However,
according to Andersson, the main reason for their entry onto the pitch
was economic. Although women’s football in Sweden in this period was
ridiculed and never developed beyond a humorous spectacle into a sport
based on serious matches between contending women’s team, in this way
women’s football contributed, albeit in a small way, to the sport's
comprehensive commercialisation (Andersson 2002: 624).
In
Sweden, the development of competitive sport was simultaneous with the
continued expansion of gymnastics for women, to such an extent that it
became a female domain (E. Olofsson 1989:203). Female competitive sport
played a rather diminutive role in Sweden (and Finland – two major
players in male sport). This may be due to the early democratisation of
the sport, i.e. that many working class males were drawn to sport so
that the emphasis was altered towards more male/manly (’manlig’) sports
like football, hence making access to the middle class sporting culture
- which hitherto had been at least partially open for women - more
difficult (Andersson 2002: 80). All in all, this background seems to
support the view that Swedish social-democracy did not benefit female
footballers.
Equal or particular participation?
Olofsson
(1989:201) uses the concepts of equality and peculiarity to describe
women’s situation in Sweden, and claims that it is,
‘Based on a
comparison between women and men, where the man is the norm, whom the
woman is like equality, or unlike - peculiarity. An attitude to women
that can be ranged under the concept of equality can be regarded as the
opposite of an attitude to women ranged under the concept of
peculiarity.’
Olofsson continues by asking: ‘Is there a
universal likeness between people or are there basic
differences?’Women's participation in competitive sport, according to
Olofsson, is based on a preconceived idea of how a particular sport is
performed by men. As a consequence, women's participation in competitive
sport can be said to be based on equality between the sexes. This is
the root of the opposition to women's participation in sport, because
the form and rules of sport are based on the idea that it should be
performed by men. Within the sports movement, Olofsson (1989: 200-1)
continues, as in the rest of society: ‘the opinion that women are
different from men has been, and still is to some extent, prevalent’.
The idea of women's physical inferiority is the most conspicuous one
among men in leading positions within the sports movement. However, this
reasoning may miss the fact that even within the sexes (e.g. weight
classes) the same holds true. Moreover, there is also a tendency, albeit
perhaps still rather subtle, to see the advantages of women in
typically male dominated sports. In racing, for example, a smaller and
lighter body is clearly advantageous if only the skills are there.
Danica Patrick is in this respect a good example. Her driving skills
paved the way for what can only be considered full equality as a driver
in the eyes of the male drivers.
Although women's participation
in sport, according to Olofsson, presupposes equality that does not
exist, the doors to male sport have gradually been opened for women.
According to Olofsson there is no such thing as women's sports, only
female participants in male sport. On the other hand, gymnastics for
women has existed for a long time, based on the assumption of women's
peculiarity an activity which, officially, is gradually disappearing
(Olofsson 1989: 200-201). Olofsson has shown particularly that many
doors to competitive sports were opened for women in Sweden in the
1970s. The motives for this, Olofsson clarifies by examining women's
conditions in football. Even if sport had lagged behind the official
work for equality, the sports movement was pressed to open the doors for
women in the 1970s (Olofsson 1989: 205).
The development of
women's football indicates another dimension compared with men's
football. Interviews with female leaders show that women have a somewhat
different attitude to their sports activities. The work for equality
carried out by the Sport Confederation in Sweden has also, in the last
few years, been based on the conviction that women can bring new ideas
into sport. This springs from an attitude to women based on social
peculiarity. Paradoxically, says Olofsson (1989: 205), the social
peculiarity of women is perhaps more difficult to eliminate in sport
than the biological. And at the same time, it is not possible or
desirable that it should be preserved. This is probably an insoluble
conflict between the conditions of competitive sport on one hand and
women's conditions on the other. The concepts of equality and
peculiarity illuminate the counterstrategies used by women in their
efforts to be integrated into the sports movement (Olofsson 1989:
205-206). However, Olofsson's description 'that women have a somewhat
different attitude to their sports activities' seems to assume a
general female attitude despite the fact that women can not be seen as a
homogeneous group other than biologically, and that the interviews may
be the result of the time being and the segregation experienced, or even
just the lack of quality of a young and less established sport.
Contrary
to gymnastics it seems that female football became sexed when
introduced. Olofsson notes that the female PE teachers in the beginning
of the 20th century motivated females for gymnastics and their entry
into the sports movement in line with the ideology of the times, i.e.
female peculiarity. This was in opposition to the beginning of
gymnastics for women which was, in many respects, identical with that of
men. Olofsson has not been able to trace any opposition to this, but
concludes that one explanation may be that the idea of equality between
the sexes facilitated women's encroachment on the new field of
gymnastics. Olofsson then assumes that the women involved gradually
discovered that in this way gymnastics did not become an activity for
women. Women's counter-strategy became to emphasize female peculiarity.
This attitude to women was also prevalent in other social sectors at
this time.
However, when (around 1970) women entered the world
of football in Sweden and elsewhere they, according to Olofsson, chose
another counter-strategy. Now they emphasized equality, which was in
line with the prevalent attitude to women. This strategy, Olofsson
continues, can be explained in the same way, i.e. the motive of equality
is the ‘natural’ motive for women's encroachment into a new field.
Then, in the 1970s and the 1980s, the ideology of peculiarity gained new
ground, both within the sports movement as well as in the rest of
society (Olofsson 1989: 206).
However, an examination of one of
Sweden’s foremost feminist organizations in the late 1960s and 1970s,
the left wing communism inspired Grupp Åtta (Group 81), reveals that
sport was seldom debated in positive terms among its members.
Furthermore, football was seen as an ‘unacceptable and uninteresting
“masculine” form of culture’ (Hjelm 2004: 277). This is the more
contradictory because, according to Hjelm, the same feminists also
proposed that women, at an individual as well as at a collective level,
should try and learn new activities – such as, for example, amateur
painting, and performing political music and theater – things they had
not dared to try before (Hjelm 2004: 177). Under the feminist Group 8,
Swedish females would most probably not have been encouraged to play
football.
For feminists and the political left in Sweden
competitive sports in general, and especially football, were ‘hopelessly
characterized by masculinity’, and, according to one informant from the
original Group 8, sport supervisors and teachers of gymnastics were
among the worst ‘indoctrinators of our rigid sex role patterns’ (Hjelm
2004: 276). Another aspect of the female resistance against female
football seems related and very consistent over time. Whereas in the
1920s the concern about dangers facing sporting females targeted the
reproductive organs, in the 1960s the focus was laid on ‘dangling’
breasts, and more recently on the disturbed menstruation cycle. In
England, the concern about female fragility has led to the situation
that girls and boys aged 12 are not allowed to play against each other
(Kosonen 1991, Seiro 2002 in Paavola 2003: 33). All of these can be seen
as different aspects of the same underlying resistance, especially
targeting football and seemingly paradoxically including many female
critics.
It has been noted that sporting females have not
internalized role conflicts (Laitinen 1983, 34). However, asks Paavola
(2003: 43), herself a footballer, if sporting females do not experience
role conflicts, would it be possible that those women for whom sport
does cause such conflicts, do not participate in sport because of this?
This conclusion may be adapted not only to the case of the Swedish
feminist Group 8 above but also, and similarly, to all the girls that
have avoided football precisely because it poses role conflicts. In this
light, the Swedish feminists from the 1970s described above seem to
have been basically separatist and hence ‘real feminists’ as it is
understood here, and consequently for a continuing sex segregation.
Furthermore, a logical consequence of this reasoning would be that much
of the so called ‘equal-feminist’ movement was not feminist after all,
but rather a social twin to the early women’s movement for the vote and
other equal rights.
Hjelm (2004: 278) records some self-criticism
among Swedish feminists in the late 1970s. Although the fact that many
girls were interested in sports had surprised feminists, the next
reaction seems to have been that these girls were unfairly treated.
Hjelm asserts that female football teams did not evolve only because
women wanted to challenge the existing masculine hegemony, through
experience such as paid work, as students, or through the sex role
debate. It was at least equally important that the preconditions for
football and competitive sport in general had changed because women had
left their homes and had now parted into women communities (Hjelm 2004:
259-272). However, according to Pfister et al the myths of masculinity
and femininity which are associated with different body or sport
practices are dependent on the prevailing social and gender orders. So,
for example, from the very beginning, the participation of men and women
in certain forms of physical exercise or sport was tied to rules and
norms pertaining to gender. ‘It was, above all, women who in compliance
with existing gender roles were barred from sporting activities’
(Pfister et al 1999: 66-67).
In conclusion Hjelm’s position
asserts that women who had left their homes wanted to challenge existing
masculine hegemony, while Phister et al (1999) emphasise the myths of
masculinity and femininity which are dependent on prevailing sex
segregation. In this light, Hjelm’s view seems more focused on women
alone, whereas Pfister et al’s position seems more open for a broader
interpretation.
‘Female football was an embarrassing, shameful and disgracing activity, especially unsuitable for women’
The
pioneers of women's football seem to have emphasized the aspect of
equality. This idea agreed with the prevalent attitude to sport that
existed within the Swedish Football Association. However, some
representatives of women's football emphasize that women have a lower
physical capacity than men, and that by using a smaller ball, women
would be able to play ‘real’ football (Olofsson 1989: 205). Translated
to 100 m runners it would mean that women should run some 8 meter
shorter distance.
A motive for the favourable disposition of the
Football Association to women's participation in football can be traced
back to the general development of society, i.e. that the official work
for equality between men and women was mainly based on the ideology of
equality between the sexes. It would therefore have been difficult for
the Swedish Football
Association to point out the ‘improper’ aspects of football for women (Olofsson 1989: 205).
Based
on interviews and press research, Hjelm (2004:276) concludes that
‘nothing before the end of the 1970s’ implies that the Swedish women’s
movement was interested in the struggle of early female footballers, or
even that struggle was worth of their support. According to one of
Hjelm’s feminist informants – one of the leaders in the feminist Group
8 who had actually watched a game in 1968 - female football was an
embarrassing, shameful and disgracing activity, and one especially
unsuitable for women (Hjelm 2004: 276). Feminists in other countries
shared this view (Hargreaves 1994: 25). An examination of one of
Sweden’s foremost feminist organizations in the late 1960s and 1970s,
Grupp Åtta (Group 82), reveals that sport was seldom debated in positive
terms. Furthermore, football was seen as an ‘unacceptable and
uninteresting ‘masculine’ form of culture’ (Hjelm 2004: 277). This seems
perfectly in line with the view that women actively and with power
contributed to the 1921 ban in England.
Extracted from Peter Klevius yet to be published book
Born to Play a Sport of Nature.
UPDATE
Peter Klevius wrote:
Peter Klevius obituary over the best ever: RIP, the worlds best football player, Lily Parr - and the next best, Pele.
Although both scored more than 1,000 goals, Lily Parr did so in headwind!
Lily Parr's grave and Pele's cemetery
No
one can be more vulnerable for female sexual beauty (i.e. heterosexual
attraction - ask women who know him) than Peter Klevius - and no one
male can be more ignorant about sexual beauty when seeing a woman
playing football and on the arena becoming human instead of woman. Just
like the early Christian St. Perpetua who said before she faced death on
the gladiator arena 203 AD: 'And I was stripped (for death), and I
became a (hu)man*', i.e. no longer fettered by womanhood/femininity.
* A time when a man was considered the only fully human.
A sport of nature - or a fact of nature?
Social
convention based on a commonsense reaction to the ‘palpable menace of
sexual desire among all human beings, and, most especially, to the known
seductiveness of women’ (i.e. heterosexual attraction) was, at
Tertullian’s* time, i.e. the latter part of the Second Century, shared
by pagans and Christians alike. According to Tertullian, it was a fact
of nature that women were seductive, and Christian baptism did nothing
to change this fact (Brown 1988: 68, 81). However, we are not informed
why the fact that women are seductive, necessarily should imply
restrictions on her. We might guess that a number of Tertullians
transferred to a modern Western secular city might have diverged in a
similar pattern of opinion as would contemporary people. If women were
defined by marriage, by its sexual and procreative roles and by the
sex-based labor assigned to married women, then their refusal of
marriage might move them into a category that transcended womanhood.
Only in the arena of martyrdom can we view these transcendent women
unfiltered by the lenses of male observers (McNamara 1985:104).
Perpetua, a Roman matron, faced the lions in Carthage on March 7, 203.
She recorded her experience in prison which led her to a new vision in
which all her mortal persona was burned away. An unknown spectator'
possibly (most probably) Tertullian , rescued these documents and
appended an eyewitness account of her death, resulting in an authentic
female voice recording the emergence of her 'autonomous spiritual being
from the cocoon of her womanhood' (McNamara 1985:105). Perpetua
renounced everything that made her a Woman. She stripped away the
emotions and the constraints of the feminine role she had once fully
played. On the night before her execution, she dreamed that she had
entered into the arena to fight the beasts. There she was confronted by a
certain “ill-favored -Egyptian" who challenged her to fight with him.
Also, there came to me comely young men, my helpers and aiders. 'And I
was stripped, and I became a man' (McNamara 1985:105).
At the
foot of the ladder lay a dragon of enormous size, and it would attack
those who tried to climb up and try to terrify them from doing so.
* Tertullian has been called "the father of Latin Christianity" as well as "the founder of Western theology".
Not "women's football" but human's football - or just football*!
*
You don't say about a child that s/he plays "children's football", do
you. If it's a girl you say 'she plays football' and if it's a Finnish
girl you say 'hän pelaa jalkapalloa', where 'hän' is a sexless personal
pronoun (as in most other language families except IE and semitic) and
therefore not translatable to the indoeuropean sex segregated s/he. And
when divided by biological sex then it should also say 'men's football',
right.
As Peter Klevius for long has stated,
evolutionary (i.e. biological) heterosexual attraction (the only
analytically relevant distinction between the sexes, according to Peter
Klevius - and islam) has to be "civilized" in our daily encounters - but
without islamic sex segregation*. And the tool for this was given 1948
with Art. 2 of the Universal Human Rights declaration (the world's most
translated document), which main purpose is to stand as the bedrock not
only for legislation but also as a bulwark against sexism hiding in
culture. In other words, we need to get rid of sex segregation. No
matter of biological sex one should be free to lead once life as one
wishes - which also means that you have the right to appear
"feminine"/"masculine" (whatever that means) without being in any way
criticized by e.g. Peter Klevius - as long as it's not part of
sexism/racism against others.
Lily Parr, the world's by far best* football player ever - no matter of sex!
*
If Marta (six times chosen as the world's best football player) when
she was at her best, had time travelled and played against Lily Parr she
would probably have outperformed her in dribbling although perhaps not
in kicking. However, that's not a fair comparison - just think if Lily
had stopped smoking and got the same training etc. possibilities as
modern top players! And compared to Lionel Messi, who as a teenager was
taken care of by the world's then best football club Barcelona FC, Lily
Parr got just the very opposite - a ban on her putting her feet on any
English football ground for the rest of her career!
Lily Parr was
born in St Helens in 1905 where she as a child learned to play football
in games with her brothers. At 5ft 10ins tall, Lily was said to have a
'fearless streak' and 'robust frame'. As a teenager, her first games
were with her local side, St Helens Ladies.
There was a growth in
interest in women's football in the late 19th century and early 20th
because of the huge popularity of men's football combined with the fact
that so many young women met football playing men in factories etc.
Dick, Kerr & Co was such a factory where women worked making munitions.
When
in 1917 office worker Alfred Frankland saw the girls beating their male
factory co-workers in an informal lunch-time match, he decided to be
their manager, hence unleashing them on the general public, resulting in
a game-changing and instantaneous success.
This really shows how sex segregation had kept girls/women back.
Dick,
Kerr Ladies F.C. was one of the earliest known women's football teams,
and remained in existence for some 50 years, from 1917 to 1965, playing
833 games, winning 759, drawing 46, and losing 28. Nettie Honeyball's
team in 1895 was possibly the first.
The matches attracted
anywhere from 4,000 to over 50,000 spectators per match. In 1920, Dick,
Kerr Ladies defeated a French side 2–0 in front of 25,000 people that
went down in history as the first international football game played by
women. On the request of female physicians and others the English
Football Association (FA) banned women from using fields and stadiums
controlled by FA-affiliated clubs for 50 years (the rule was only
repealed in 1971). There were 150 women's football clubs in 1921 when on
5 December same year the FA ban was announced.
Dick, Kerr’s Ladies was also the first female team to play wearing shorts.
'Big,
fast and powerful', Lily Parr was said to 'take corner kicks better
than most men' and she scored 'many goals with a left foot cross drive
which nearly breaks the net', according to her profile in a programme of
1923.
A team-mate described her as 'having a kick like a mule'.
There
were 150 women's football clubs by 1921 when on 5 December the FA
decided to ban females from playing on its members' grounds. As a
consequence the women's game declined but Lily Parr and other female
players continued to play on non-FA pitches.
Dick,
Kerr’s Ladies became Preston Ladies in 1926. Parr became a psychiatric
nurse at Whittington Hospital but continued to play for Preston, finally
ending her long playing career in 1951.
Why the "beautiful game" is also the hardest to master well
Although
Lily Parr was taller than the average woman, most of the best players
have been below average height, like Pele, Maradona, Marta, Messi,
Modric etc.. However, Ronaldo is 187 cm and a former top player like
Crouch is 203 cm. This just emphasizes the greatness of "the beautiful
game" - a sport that fits everyone, yet is the hardest of all sports to
master because it eliminates tools and hands while keeping the feet busy
with multitasking with running and manoeuvring while also controlling
the ball with the same feet.
The page below in this book made Peter Klevius wipe tears several times
How
Sweden was an accomplish to the death of English football for women -
and how Lily Parr & Co's heritage created the world's best football
team in the 1970s in a forgotten rural setting in Sweden.
Peter
Klevius has written a book with an in depth analysis about the history
of England's hostility against women playing football. Although Sweden
played an important role behind the scene, this has never before been
scientifically scrutinized. It's hoped that Amazon will publish it so to
make its existence more visible. Peter Klevius was about to go for self
publishing but it seemed impossible to reach out in a meaningful way.
After all, it's all about supporting girös and women who want not only
to play football but also lo tead their lives as they wish without
sexism.
Drawing
(1979) by Peter Klevius. For those Humanrightsophobes with really
limited understanding or blinded with prejudice, do note that the DNA
"ladder" has steel rivets (i.e. strong both for trapping as well as for
escaping), and that the female curvature shadows transgress from below
over painful flames into a crown of liberty.
Perpetua (203 AD):
'I saw a ladder of tremendous height made of bronze, reaching all the
way to the heavens, but it was so narrow that only one person could
climb up at a time. To the sides of the ladder were attached all sorts
of metal weapons: there were swords, spears, hooks, daggers, and spikes;
so that if anyone tried to climb up carelessly or without paying
attention, he would be mangled and his flesh would adhere to the
weapons.' Perpetua realized she would have to do battle not merely with
wild beasts, but with the Devil himself. Perpetua writes: They stripped
me, and I became a man'.
Peter Klevius: They stripped Perpetua of her femininity and she became a human!
The
whole LGBTQ+ carousel is completely insane when considering that the
1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) art. 2 gives everyone,
no matter of sex, the right to live as they want without having to
"change their sex". So the only reason for the madness is the stupidly
stubborn cultural sex segregation which, like religious dictatorship,
stipulates what behavior and appearance are "right" for a biological
sex. And in the West, it is very much about licking islam, which refuses
to conform to the basic (negative) rights in the UDHR, and instead
created its own sharia declaration (CDHRI) in 1990 ("reformed" 2020 with
blurring wording - but with the same basic Human Rights violating
sharia issues still remaining). The UDHR allows women to voluntarily
live according to sharia but sharia does not allow muslim women to live
freely according to the UDHR. And culturally ending sex segregation does
not mean that biological sex needs to be "changed." Learn more under
'Peter Klevius sex tutorials' which should be compulsory sex education
for everyone - incl. people with ambiguous biological sex! The LGBTQ+
movement is a desperate effort to uphold outdated sex segregation. And
while some old-fashioned trans people use it for this purpose, many
youngsters (especially girls) follow it because they feel trapped in
limiting sex segregation.
.
