June 30, 2013

"12-Year-Old Girl Banned From School Football Team for 'Inciting Lust.'"

Another questionable WaPo headline. Why is "inciting lust" in quotes? First, we get something the mother of girl said:
"In the meeting with the CEO of the school, I was told that the reasons behind it were... that the boys were going to start lusting after her, and have impure thoughts about her," [Paige’s mother, Cassy Blythe] said. "And that locker room talk was not appropriate for a female to hear, even though she had a separate locker room from the boys."
So even in the mother's statement there's only a reference to what the boys "were going to" do — "start lusting" — not any accusation that the girl was "inciting." But the mother is paraphrasing what the CEO said, and we don't know how diplomatically he put his references to sex. Did he say "lust" — that 7 Deadly Sins word? The school is Strong Rock Christian, so readers are invited — incited! — to think that this is old-fashioned religion.

Then, the WaPo "social reader" writer Dan Carson opines:
I’m no philosopher, but when you ban preteen girls from being around boys while wearing shoulder pads, “inciting lust” sounds like a flimsy reason. After all, the rest of the girls on school grounds are wearing skirts and polos and aren’t covered in reeking hand-me-down padding.
If it sounds like a flimsy reason, consider that the mother — who wants her daughter on the team — had a motive to state the reason in terms that would sound flimsy. Carson ought to know about the meaning slippage that occurs in restatement, because — as you see there — he's the one that came up with "inciting." Carson's use of the quotes is defensible, but really confusing. It's not a quote of what anyone else said, but quotes used to indicate paraphrasing.

66 comments:

Fernandinande said...

"...but quotes used to indicate paraphrasing."

You're too generous; the quotes were used to get more page views.

edutcher said...

Bet they don't say it when it's a madrassah.

BTW, does sound more Islamic than Christian, but you wonder what was happening in the huddle.

In any case, 12 is a little old for a girl to be playing tackle football with guys. I know, Title IX and all, but letting that happen is asking for some girl to get badly racked up.

rhhardin said...

Armstrong and Getty were speculating on what position Zimmerman witness Rachel Jeantel could play in the NFL.

Anonymous said...

the boys were going to start lusting after her, and have impure thoughts about her

Next thing you know, they'll be engaging in acts of self-pollution.

Peter

rhhardin said...

I don't know if football is like mathematics, but mathematicians love women in math.

Ann Althouse said...

It's like the way we use air quotes.

I'm not saying Carson's use of quotes is just fine. I'm just saying this is the argument that they're not totally a lie.

Gahrie said...

"inciting" in this case can, and appears to be, entirely a passive action on the part of the girl. Inciting describes the effect she has on the boys, not neccessarily a description of her behavior.

And having a girl in the locker room would have incitied unpure thoughts in me.

virgil xenophon said...

IIRC there was a case in State of VA a few years back in which a young girl was allowed on the boys football team via court order (can't remember if HS or Jr High) as a running back and a middle line-backer gave her a full body crush that put her in the ICU. Don't remember the disposition of the outcome, either, except to say:

"Karma is a Bitch"

LOL!

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

I feel sorry for the girl, washed up at age 12, but there's always CrossFit.

Brian Brown said...

the boys were going to start lusting after her, and have impure thoughts about her

This sounds like one of the reasons women wear burka's.

Wait until the Muzzie's take over. You ain't seen nothing yet!

virgil xenophon said...

PS: Oh yeah, my memory further reveals that the girls parents, after agitating thru the courts to force the school system to allow their daughter on the team, subsequently had the unmitigated gall to complain to the school that they "had not been warned" of the dangers of full-contact football.

Alex said...

Sounds like Islamic reasoning to me. Girls don't belong on football teams for more common sense reasons, like it's not chivalrous to pummel a girl.

lemondog said...

Maybe she has the impure thoughts?

Scott said...

Those are also called "sneer quotes."

Anonymous said...

Lust Should Only Be Incited on the Football Field from Seventeen-year-old Cheerleaders. Naughty, Naughty Cheerleaders.

lemondog said...

Based on his readers comments Dan Carson Bleacher Report seems to be an idiot.

BTW while at 12 a girl may physically be able to compete and hold her own, but how will she fare as 12 year old boys begin to pack on the muscle?

Anonymous said...

Give me a "C"!
Give me a "U"!
Give me a "R"!
Give me a "S"!
Give me a "I"!
Give me a "V"!
Give me a "E"!

What's That Spell?

Don't Know - Can't Read It!

Bender said...

Whatever is really going on here, when you have ever-increasing sexualization of children, then you are ushering in a whole bunch of new and worse problems than the tyranny of children abstaining from sex.

But if this school is going to oppress this 12-year-old girl, at least the Obama Administration is coming to the rescue to ensure that she can get the Pill and mandate have her parents' employer-provided health plan pay for it. Now she can be fully contracepted, with or without her parents knowledge, and now that there is no longer one more reason to say "no," to the boys, there is even more social pressure placed upon her to be sexually active.

edutcher said...

lemondog said...

Maybe she has the impure thoughts?

It's the impure parts that cause all the trouble.

Nomennovum said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Wince said...

Those aren't football pads, they're "dirty pillows".

Real American said...

she shouldn't be on the team because she's never going to play college or pro football. she's taking a spot and playing time or at least coaching time from a boy who has a higher than zero chance to play at the higher levels. too bad her dreams were smashed, but she will never play college or pro. that's reality. that's science. she lost. get over it, losers.

kentuckyliz said...

I watched "The Rag Nymph" on Netflix last night. The girl went to convent school, and was forced to put on a dressing/bathing cover garment (imagine a bedsheet wrapped around you and gathered at the neck) to change clothes under it and to bathe under it. The stated theory was that seeing your own body leads you to impure thoughts and it's a sin. (However, I can see how it would protect the modesty of girls in an open dorm type setting without any privacy.)

I think the boys need to dress out, wash up, and get dressed under these locker room burqa garments. Seeing their own bodies is giving them impure thoughts.

How almost-homo is it to lust after a girl dressed up as a boy football player? The latent homosexuality is almost bubbling to the surface.

Is the Powder Puff game cancelled? It might cause an outbreak of lust of almost-gay teen boys!

lemondog said...

Video interview

Mom says CEO reason includes that boys will start lusting...

kentuckyliz said...

You all know that students in private religious institutions don't have constitutional civil rights, right? They have whatever rights the student handbook gives them.

jr565 said...

Banning women from football teams because of lust is probably not the best reason (unless she's walking around in garter belts and making lewd comments to to the players), but banning her from football because girls shouldn't play football on a team level with guys is a better reason.
Guys end up with brain injuries in this sport. It's a full contact sport. And you need to be extremely built to be able to compete with other players who are similarly built.
I'm not saying that its' physically impossible for women to play on that level, but its very unlikely.
All it will take is for her to get hit really hard once and experience a grotesque injury to realize that the social experiment might end up hurting people.

jr565 said...

Gahrie wrote:
"inciting" in this case can, and appears to be, entirely a passive action on the part of the girl. Inciting describes the effect she has on the boys, not neccessarily a description of her behavior.

I wouldn't be worried about iciting lust,I'd be worried about her inciting violence against women from the opposing team. They are going to see her as the weakest link on the team and are going to slam her HARD. She may prove to not be the weakest link, but she's going to have to prove it. It's like, in baseball, when you realize the guy in left field can't catch you tell everyone hit it to the left field.

And it wont be sexism that will drive the punishment she receives, it would be sexism to not give her that punishment. i.e. to not go after her because she's a woman.

Can she handle that? Most women can't. in sports that aren't full contact, maybe.

William said...

What are the chances that a twelve year old boy would use the occasion of a pile up to cop a cheap feel?

Iconochasm said...

kentuckyliz said...
You all know that students in private religious institutions don't have constitutional civil rights, right? They have whatever rights the student handbook gives them.


Students in public schools barely have constitutional rights.

jr565 said...

She better not think that the slap on the butt from her teamates is some kind of come on. Since that's what the guys get from the guys. Does she want to be treated special?

SteveR said...

Seems like the CEO of the school is prone to impure thoughts about a 12 year old girl. Otherwise normal for most 12 year old boys in nearly every circumstance.

ricpic said...

I'll bet some of the 12 year old boys on the team are close to 200 lbs. What kind of parent puts his daughter in a situation where she could be hit so hard in an open field tackle that it might be worst case fatal?

Scott M said...

First of all, there simply has to be some places of refuge. Football has long been one of those and I hope it continues to be so. The sport allows for exception athletic achievement and imparts valuable life lessons over and over again along the way.

Second, even at 12, there aren't very many girls than can hang with boys physically. And, even if one out of a thousand can, see above.

Third, the physical differences simply pile on year after year into middle and high school. Why have this girl play competitive football at 12 if she's destined to be eclipsed by even an average male player by sophmore year?

When I was a freshmen in high school, we had a girl come out for the team. She was a tall black girl who had made a name for herself in jr high as a basketball and volleyball player, ie, an accomplished athlete. She was supposedly going out for receiver so her tall, lanky frame seemed more an asset than a liability.

She didn't last two weeks.

Anonymous said...

Re: "What kind of parent puts his daughter in a situation where she could be hit so hard in an open field tackle that it might be worst case fatal?"

A Lawyer?

Unknown said...

I generally roll my eyes when people detect homophobia, but I have to wonder in this case. I googled and found that this school does in fact have cheerleaders. They dress relatively modestly, but still.

If the school administrators truly expressed concern that the male football players are going to lust after a girl in shoulderpads, while allowing for lust-inciting cheerleaders, I have to wonder if they are just creeped out by the realization that these boys might experience atteaction in the midst of blurred gender roles.

Oso Negro said...

As a former boy, I can attest to the fact that we lusted after anything associated with "girl", up to, and including actual girls.

Unknown said...

edutcher, "... but letting that happen is asking for some girl to get badly racked up."

As it were.

Anonymous said...

The girl incites lust like those slutty women who refuse to cover themselves with burkas, like those tight-dressed women who ask to be raped. The male species are incapable of self-control.

They banned the girl because the boys were afraid to lose to the girl. They should treat her as a teammate, no more and no less. If she is a good player, she stays; if she is not, she goes.

Anonymous said...

If I were a Twelve-Year Old Boy I would want to Join the Girls' Full Contact Cheerleading Squad. Sexism is Bad.

Petunia said...

She could always claim she's transgendered, and therefore entitled to use whatever locker room she wants, and play on the boys' team.

LilyBart said...


I know we want people to be equal and have equal opportunity, but nature will always be with us. Always.

Young men and women go off together on Aircraft Carriers in the Navy for months. I understand that on pretty much every cruise, some girl is sent home pregnant. Crazy kids.

Anonymous said...

BTW while at 12 a girl may physically be able to compete and hold her own, but how will she fare as 12 year old boys begin to pack on the muscle?

Twelve is just about the last age at which at girl would be able to compete on a boys' football team. By 13 and definitely 14, the boys would be getting too large and strong for a girl of the same age. About the only exception might be a girl who plays only as a punter or kicker, and even then it's risky.

An interesting thing I've heard is that even though basketball is less physical than football, it would be nearly impossible for a WNBA player to compete on an NBA team or even on most college men's teams. At best, a top WNBA player might be able to play on a men's Division III or low-ranked Division II team, and she probably wouldn't be a starter.

Peter

Astro said...

Yeah, it was 'the boys' lusting after her. As in Dick and the twins, below the CEO's waist.

Paddy O said...

I wrote a short blog post on this issue of incitement a while back.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Well the honorable thing would be for these Christians to just all cut off their weiners, of course.

n.n said...

Lust is a reasonable concern. It motivated Polanski to commit rape-rape. It motivated Jackson to molest dozens of boys. It motivated Sandusky to rape male students.

Women, and men, incapable of self-moderating, responsible behavior are the reason why, among other things, premeditated murder for money, welfare, and convenience was normalized.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

More Christians should cut off their weiners, really.

I mean, it's simply not Christian to burka-up your women.

If their sex appeal is too offensive, consider it like a blow to one of your cheeks. In this case, you don't have another "cheek" to offer, and if loving your enemy (or in this case, merely appreciating her) is a problem, then there is simply no other choice but to remove the offensive, lust-response.

Which means weiner removal.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

After all, that's what their "elder brothers in the faith" do, in a matter of speaking.

But obviously to a much lesser degree.

Quaestor said...

R&B (no balls) wrote:
More Christians should cut off their weiners, really.

Another example of the weiner-less leading the weiners.

Guildofcannonballs said...

Any lust should be lust that was created to distract the opposing team and help the girl's team win.

We need to teach these kids to win at any cost. Think outside the box by getting the other team to be thinking about the box.

Eeyore Rifkin said...

I agree with the term "mendacity quotes" to describe this usage. Typically it introduces a straw man argument by putting it in quotes. It works through paraphrase, and that's what makes the quote marks mendacious, since nobody except the writer is actually saying those words. If you took away the mendacity quotes, the writer's use of a straw man would be more plainly exposed. The purpose of the deception is to conceal a fallacious argument.

Deirdre Mundy said...

ironrailsironweights: It's worse. Check this out: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/225402/olympian-political-correctness/todd-gallagher

OLYMPIC quality women play at the same level in most sports as 14 year old boys. In fact, if you read the whole article (it's 3 pages), Olympic Women's soccer TRAINS by playing high school boys.

Once the testosterone kicks in, the only way a girl can play 'at the level of the boys' is if the boys are going easy on her.

I don't know why parents would want to risk their daughter's heath like this.

Look, it doesn't matter what crud you've told her about 'follow your dreams.' At some point, you need to tell your child that some dreams are out of reach. My daughter who's a total clutz? Never going to be a prima ballerina. Luckily, she's a math and engineering whiz, and her fallback plan is 'robotics engineer.' (Which we encourage. Because she would be good at it, and she would enjoy it.)


You don't help your kids by encouraging them to follow unattainable dreams.

Greg said...

Of course, the bigger question here is the point at which it become inappropriate for males and females to be involved in contact sports. After all, this is not golf or baseball, where contact is nonexistent or incidental -- this is one in which opponents are inflicting physical violence on one another. Do we really want young men to be encouraged to hit, shove, grapple with and manhandle young women?

Steve Koch said...

I'm inclined to let her compete. There must be a separate dressing room. She needs to be aware that she is probably going to get groped a lot (football is a full contact sport, providing lots of opportunities for groping the girl). The family must sign a letter stating that they realize the dangers inherent in playing football. The coaches must watch out for the girl's safety, and are free to remove the girl from the team if they think she is not good enough or is in danger.

Scott M said...

this is one in which opponents are inflicting physical violence on one another

...every single play.

Scott M said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Scott M said...

Safety is the first thing on the mind of any good football coaching staff. Throw a girl in the mix and tell the staff that they have to watch extra special for the girl and you're automatically doing a disservice to the rest of the team.

Chip Ahoy said...

If I were to draw a cartoon, it'd have to be fast, I'd draw the team on the field, the girl twice as large as the boys.

To dispell despell xxxx dispel all of your arguments and rend them to feathers. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

The really little feathers in a pillow that go poof like a dandylion xxx dandelion. That's what your arguments are after the cartoon I draw in my mind.

traditionalguy said...

If she has a cliterectomy and surgically removes her breasts yhen all will be forgiven. Just how much does she love football?

Joe said...

This is most likely about one or more parents worried their son is going to be embarrassed by having the girl around.

As long as they don't lower they standards (like they do in track where they let the women use lower hurdles, at least when I was in High School) I have no problem with letting women compete. It has to go both ways, though. Boys should be allowed on the field hockey team, the girls soccer, basketball, volleyball team.

Anonymous said...

Deirdre Mundy said...You don't help your kids by encouraging them to follow unattainable dreams.

It wasn't an unattainable dream. She qualified. Next year, may be not, but at this point in her life, she's as good as the boys.

"Paige was an active player on Strong Rock’s sixth grade football team... she was a productive member of her team...she held down her role at defensive end."

kentuckyliz said...

Her period started during a game and the red mess stained her football pants. It proved distracting.

Larry J said...

Oso Negro said:
As a former boy, I can attest to the fact that we lusted after anything associated with "girl", up to, and including actual girls.


He'll, when I was 12, I'd get horny seeing the crack of dawn.

Anonymous said...

Re: "Her period started during a game..."

Hockey Uses Periods, Football is Played in Quarters.

Kevin said...

If that picture is any indication, I'd say she's too pixelated to inspire lust.

Nichevo said...

As for your latest attempt to couch your desire to emasculate your interlocutors in a veneer of doctrinal gotcha, Ritmo, google Origen, and learn something.

You and those like you remind me of Edward G. Robinson's Johnny Rico in Key Largo: "Yes, that's what I want, more!" You can never be satisfied. I doubt you want to be.