Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Dumb People Do Dumb Stuff. Film at 11

And now this from the great and apparently dopey state of Nebraska, where a bunch of youth soccer ninnies just proved that, if it's true there are lies and also damn lies, there is stupidity and also damn stupidity.

The latter applying here most liberally, of course.

Bad enough that an 8-year-old girl would be banned from a girls soccer tournament because officials claimed she "looked like a boy". That's a decision none of the perpetrators could possibly explain without sounding like drunks on a bender, or perhaps Glorious Leader at his 3 a.m. looniest. It's an injustice that defies any explanation, rational or otherwise -- especially when the father of the girl in question, Milli Hernandez, presented her insurance card as proof.

But in a world where young girls' images of themselves are under constant attack from any number of angles, punishing her because she "looked like a boy" is as scarring as it gets. Like she's not going to be subjected to body shaming already by the fashion world's bizarre notion of what the ideal woman should look like, or subjected to other indignities down the road by those who have a certain concept of a woman's role in society. Now some grownups who should know better question her very gender?

Especially when, as it turns out, the kid was one of the best players on her team?

Not much of a stretch to think "looked like a boy" in this case was code for "played too much like a boy." Because, you know, they're just girls.

Yeesh. What is this, the 1950s?

Because, listen, telling an 8-year-old girl who wears her hair short she looks like a boy is the kind of juvenile thing 8-year-old boys say on the playground. It's not what alleged grownups say -- especially not in 2017, and especially when the alleged grownups have been put in charge of overseeing girls sports.

Saying shame on them seems tame. But it's the best the Blob can do and still remain a PG Blob.

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