Reading last week’s opinions about the reactions to the LFL, I believe the argument is whether the LFL is primarily a women’s sport or mere male entertainment.
My thoughts were brought to the most well-known female existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir’s argument of how “men and women both define women in terms of their relation to men.” (Existentialist believe people are able to choose who they want to be).
In our male-dominated society and media’s discourse of sexuality, anyone who watches any type of media nowadays should have noticed the continuation and even escalation of what de Beauvoir suggested in her day “that men have primarily taken the lead to define women wholly in terms of his own nature: A woman is simply the other, the non-male one who relates to the male.
Moreover, de Beauvoir states, “women have been socially conditioned to accept this role and thereby forego their freedom to define and make themselves: in essence they become mere things for men.”
I would like to ask the women who play for the LFL if they had their choice between this league and a regular woman’s football league which would they choose to play for?
If this is a real sport, at what age should parents begin to encourage their daughters and granddaughter towards the goal of playing for the LFL?
From what I have read in this paper it said this league was the young women’s only hope to continue playing the sport, so I assume they have looked elsewhere and found no other choice than to dress up in lingerie in order to play the game they trained in regular attire to play.
While money and desire makes this world go round, I would only hope one day women develop enough power to reject the male myths that define what they are; and as de Beauvoir states, “overcome the social and economic institutions through which men keep women effectively enslaved.”
Jodi Redlich