Football for Feminists
Novak, Michael
FOOTBALL FOR FEMINISTS MICHAEL NOVAK As many men had to do in childhood and adolescence, some continue to strive with every energy to become morally acceptable to women. "Liberated" women...
...While the Superbowl turns out to be a dud, the playoff games are (usually) almost perfect enactments of comradeship, team unity, split-second execution, and most intense physical confrontation-- they are as lovely a communal art as humans have ever invented...
...Indeed, maleness, masculinity, and (of course) machismo have become shorthand for "evil...
...3031...
...For information write: Brother WalterK...
...It is the superbowl mentality, Eugene Bianchi writes in a recent Christian Century, that typifies the evil in the world...
...J. 8. Rodrigues, St...
...few systems have so rationalized daily transactions to non-physical terms...
...Much can be done to improve their lot...
...That is why record-keeping is so important an element in sports--one is ultimately competing against one's own performances...
...JOHN O'BRIEN, 1828 Garvln PI., Louisville, Ky...
...10016...
...MARK TAYLOR e e e e e e e e o Michael Novak ( C o n t . ) tinguish between the physical combat of football and the verbal violence the educated practice--the destruction of repuations, personal dignity, and good will...
...They think that they are "humanizing" the male, whereas they tend to further his dehumanization by teaching him pretense...
...I n d i a IN APPEALING for the poor old people he has to "feed and clothe" Msgr...
...For many men love football very much...
...When they murdered 400,000 suspected Communists in a single season, were the Indonesians mesmerized by tootball...
...For all its faults, it has won the gratitude of millions...
...STAMP SERVICES Box 84, Camillus, N.Y...
...It does not help women to encourage them to tell the boys to be good little boys--and to imagine women as good little girls...
...To be male and aggressive is to be responsible for evil...
...COMMONWEAL, 232 Madison Ave., New York, N,Y...
...Indeed, one could argue that football is one of the most humanizing institutions our society provides...
...To blame corporations, whose bureaucracies smother every direct impulse of the male, is absurd...
...It is not their "oppression" they seem actually to be protesting...
...almost every obscene word (as a brilliant writer, Barbara Lawrence, has pointed out) is sadistic and cruel with respect to women: "screw" is an example...
...Strange...
...Their language indicates their rage...
...They do not dis(Conitnued on page 119) 1 November 1974:104 victim of moral paralysis...
...Has evil come so recently...
...After all, football itself was only recently invented...
...Oberster, S.M., Reverend PatrickL.Tonry, S.M., Director of Vocations, 4301 Roland Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland 21210 C l a s s i f i e d RATES: 60c a word, one time...
...For box numbers add S0c per insertion...
...James Corlden, Department of The- ~ , CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY, Washington, D.C...
...40283...
...Whereas, football as a game is primitive, authentic, honest--skill pitted against skill...
...Address: Msgr...
...It becomes plainer with every feminist book that the male animal is different from the female, in his aggressions and his lusts...
...Such a good little boy," they used to say...
...Sic, thirteen times...
...Football left to itself is faceto-face confrontation, highly personal, open, direct...
...Football was invented to provide some correctives for these deficiencies among men...
...It is not like Attica, where the chief executive never pulls the trigger himself, but does his bloody work through others...
...Twelve words minimum...
...magazine, for exampie--are in fact high up in the top onepercent among the Earth's most affluent, highly educated, leisured and privileged class...
...Let women invent their own equivalent to football, suited to their natures and their aspirations...
...men tend to be superior in others...
...Should Hitler have favored football rather than gymnastics...
...But "equal" is a tricky ideal...
...The young may who accepts this offer and becomes a Marianist brother or priest will find a rewarding life in a religious community...
...there, at least, they are not inferior to women...
...It is a game of "matchups...
...They think they are helping women by attacking football...
...precise, difficult to achieve, thrilling both to exercise and to observe...
...To diagnose the cause as "the superbowl" or even "football" is quite inadequate...
...They resist immaturity, an absence of heroic models, and a low self-esteem...
...24 Australian Xmas stamps 1957 thru 1972 plus Rwandehe Popes Plus Xl, XII, John, Paul for 30r with approvals...
...To blame capitalism for male aggression is ridiculous...
...Religious, Xmas, Vatican City stamps...
...Philomena's Institutions, Marikunnu Post, 673012, India (Airmail, 2Lc...
...muscle against muscle...
...Letters o] not more than 250 or 300 words naturally have a better chance o~ being published...
...Contact: Fr...
...It is football, he says, that symbolizes masculine aggressiveness...
...Besides, there is a basic difference between a competition which is ultimately a competition against oneself--as most sports provide--and a competition whose point is merely coming out ahead of others, as capitalism provides...
...Where the manner of operation is "modern...
...Enough damaging rhetoric is already current...
...1-74S, AreJkas Pass, Texas 78336, Theology Godfrey Dlekmann, O.S.B., Louis Bower end Dr...
...Under all sorts of economic orders, in all regimes, and in a huge variety of cultural forms physical exuberance and aggression, lust and rape and dominance--yes, and also tenderness and love--have been known among men...
...Rodrlguas also seeks funds for _9 $1,S00 t er available In his country "to plough and cultivate our little land...
...What is corrupt about football is not the game itself, but the huge, impersonal, insulated, "civilized" corporate structure added on to it--where decisionmakers never deal in immediate personal relations, but govern by remote control...
...R e l i g i o u s Stamps COLLECT RELIGIOUS STAMPS...
...Did Indira Gandhi get her inspiration for India's atomic bomb, ano Golda Meir her military power, from some superbowl we know not of...
...There have not yet been ten annual superbowls...
...And too bad we were not able to communicate to you the sense of commitment and hope that is ours...
...Women are not treated in America as the equals of men...
...Give Commonweal for Christmas 1 $ubJcription, 815 2 $ub,eriptions, 827 Each additional, 812 Commonweal: 119...
...that it is precisely those non-athletes of the intellectual class (scientists, engineers, experts) who have produced most of the destructive instruments, strategies and remote-control acts of violence in our time...
...Virtually all the boys I ever knew, both in schooling and in teaching, were early reconciled to seeing girls pull down higher marks than they...
...Woman so often symbolizes civilization, tyrant over instinct...
...The women in America at present most concerned about their own expression-subscribers to Ms...
...Paul Minear are three of the visiting professors for the Spring Term, 197S, Department of Theology, Catholic Universih/, Washington, D.C...
...Did male aggressiveness begin in September, 18747 Are the Russians, who play chess, not aggressive...
...Yet most American schools are dominated by women teachers 1 through 12...
...Prostitution and pornography depend upon that virtually universal phenomenon...
...To be "humanized," we are told, is to be sensitive, peaceable and good...
...Why is it that 1hen have much rage against women...
...Fortunately, one needs neither French nor a plot outline to get fairly close to Maldoror, for there are at least two good editions available in English (published by New Directions and Crowell)--a fact oddly not noted in Mr...
...STc, three times...
...BIOGRAPHY PRESS, Rt...
...Perhaps that is one reason men tend to like physically violent and demanding games...
...that male sexuality is, in an important respect, even more excited by an impersonal than by a personal relation...
...May not one reason be that emotionally, for so many of their formative years, women dominate their lives, moralize to them, ask them to deny their own natures...
...Class;fled payable with order...
...Football is not the whole truth about human life...
...Documents DOCUMENTS OF VATICAN II, 7811 pages...
...4c, seven times...
...The use of physical tests tends to exclude women...
...the verbal exaggeration of self-pity, poverty of soul, and narrowness so common among our writers and professors...
...Nietzsche blamed Christianity for having "womanized" the male hero, for having made "effeminate" the ancient male psyche...
...Books P r i n t e d BOOKS PRINTED from well-typed manuscripts...
...We're number one...
...What scandalizes them are the exhilarations and struggles of the body...
...S. MAGGIE FISHER, RSCJ National Assembly of Women Religious Commonweal welcomes letters on subjects treated in its pages...
...Football, in 1974, is exactly one hundred years old...
...But as a corrective to the emotional falsity of bureaucracies and women-dominated institutions, to false ideals that deny the physicality of human nature, and to lassitude of body and will, football is a humble saving grace, a joy to millions...
...Too bad you missed those hours of hammering out specific plans (much more important than resolutions...
...In football, each player has responsibility for his every move--is subject to the strict accountability of post-game, slow-motion movies of his acts...
...Those who oppose football exhibit fear and hatred of the human body...
...as a football chant may have been an alternative to being number two in school...
...Rather, they seek further burdens, extended responsibilities, higher risks, greater possibilities of pain and failure...
...monthly in advance for more than three times...
...Liberated" women still scold men, still pretend to superior moral wisdom...
...Male aggressiveness, lust, and rape were not unknown to Genghis Khan, or Attila, or the Turks, or the Crusaders, or the Greeks or Armenians, the Cossacks, the Germans, the British, the Indians, the Africans, the Latinos...
...But women could well use some of the experiences football yields...
...Was $2.2S, now $1.2S, 2/$2...
...Billie Jean King and other women athletes are no less "humanized" because they love the challenge of competition and the struggle against themselves their sports entail...
...In football, excellence cannot be bluffed...
...He tells us that men cannot bear to fail in school but must, for ego's sake, be number one...
...Is Christianity now to be blamed for machismo...
...e e e e o e e o e CORRESPONDENCE (Continued /rom page 99) life...
...A majority of the brightest students in most American classrooms 1 through 12 have been girls and, in college, women...
...speed and brains against speed and brains...
...Fowlie's bibliography...
...An Offer You Can Refuse "Give away what you h a v e . . . and come follow me," Jesus said...
...Women tend in many ways to be superior to men...
...Can it be solely culturally determined that male instincts are generic and object-minded long before they become specific and person-oriented...
...To attack football--or even the principle of excellence--is not to help the cause of women...
Vol. 101 • November 1974 • No. 5
