General

Now that the long political season is over, and the flock—or the gang, depending on how you choose to view it—has its new leaders, we can instead focus on what happens when someone goes about doing good in the world without waiting for direction or worrying about what others are doing or not doing. What follows is a promotional spot for HALO (Helping Art Liberate Orphans), the foundation started by former taekwondo champion and Rigged star Rebecca Neuenswander:



I hope you didn't give all your money away to politicians and can join me in making a donation to HALO.

This Columbus Day (Monday, October 13) Jennie Finch, Jessica Mendoza, and the rest of the USA Softball Team will be at the Sports Museum of America in New York City. Former WNBA star Kym Hampton of the New York Liberty will be there as well. More details can be found here.

uBid.com is hosting a charity auction that gives you the opportunity to win a hitting session with Martina Navratilova. Proceeds benefit the Elton John AIDS Foundation and the Atlanta AIDS Partnership Fund.

I heard someone was selling a Sarah Palin superhero action figure; this sounded like a cool idea to me (not because I've picked a side in the presidential race, either). I should have known better—shoddy is one word that comes to mind; moreover, schoolgirl Sarah Palin has to be the silliest "action" figure I've ever seen.

The purpose of my post today is to introduce you to Fitness Dating Online. (Think of this as a commercial break—gotta pay the bills somehow.) This new dating service fills a genuine niche and should be a valuable resource to muscle and fitness enthusiasts; that is, a safe spot where athletic and fitness-minded singles can meet online. The member database is already considerable, and we expect it to grow fast.

There is also a partner program that allows webmasters to generate income from traffic that they refer to the website. This is ideal for websites and blogs dedicated to sports, fitness, bodybuilding, and physical feminism; and it would probably perform well on websites devoted to other topics, too. (No banner yet, but we're working with a designer now and should have one in a few days.)

If you are single, please check out Fitness Dating Online. The site is free to join, and we think you will find it useful.

Amazon.com has a new MP3 widget that I couldn't help trying out. (You'll find it somewhere over on your left.) If you have a blog, this, along with a few other widgets Amazon has added recently, is a good way to liven things up a little; and it may even help pay a few expenses, though don't expect to get rich.

My widget of course reflects my own eclectic taste in music—which, yes, includes country music believe it or not. Besides, Elizabeth Cook's "Sometimes It Takes Balls to Be a Woman," well, that one just seemed too fitting to pass up.

This blog generally steers clear of politics (there isn't even a category for it), and I prefer it that way. (To my mind, the time, attention, and money devoted to politics and politicians would be better spent dealing directly with the problems at hand.) This, then, is merely an observation and not an endorsement. But should Barack Obama get elected president, the United States will have its most athletic first lady ever. Michelle Obama, who stands nearly six feet tall, works out regularly, and it shows.

First, I'd like to call your attention to this review of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles posted over at Heroine Content. Grace seems to share the same generally favorable impression that I have after watching the first two episodes, along with my reservation about Lena Headey's Sarah not being physical enough (though she blames it on writing, not casting).

Now on to technical matters. You'll notice that the list of links on the left has changed a little. Women's Sports Today hasn't been updated in a while, so that link has been removed and replaced with a link to Women's Tennis Blog, which is a great place to keep up with athletes and tournament results if you like women's tennis.

Please contact me if you know of another blog covering women's sports that we should add to the list.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia has an article on Amazon feminism. It starts out so:

Amazon feminism is dedicated to the image of the female hero in fiction and in fact, as it is expressed in art and literature in the physiques and feats of female athletes, martial artists, and other powerfully built women, and in gender-related and sexual orientations.

Later it says:

Amazon feminism is concerned about physical equality and is opposed to gender role stereotypes and discrimination against women based on assumptions that women are supposed to be, look or behave as if they are passive, weak, and physically helpless.

(Accessed June 28, 2007; see also: Amazon Connection)

I think that explains it well enough. And it makes perfect sense, too. Indeed, gender is a much more nebulous concept than many people realize, and feminine comprises a spectrum, not a lone, distorted ideal.

Are there differences between men and women? You bet. But society often works to exaggerate and harden those differences. So what is, at best, a statistic in nature (the average woman not being as strong as the average man) gets perverted into a misguided absolute (physically powerful women are considered aberrant and frowned upon).

The pressure on women to conform to this artificial standard has been immense, and it has been going on for a long, long time now. We really don't know the extent to which women have been and still are held back by it, but no doubt it's considerable.

However, now with the relaxing—though there is still a ways to go—of superficial, outdated social mores and standards in liberal societies over the last thirty years, we're starting to see what women can accomplish in the athletic arena and just how physically powerful they can be. In virtually every sport, including strength and combat sports, women are competing and performing at higher levels and in greater numbers every year, already surpassing what could only have been imagined thirty years ago.

That's not to say that women haven't demonstrated their athletic prowess in the past; it's just been downplayed or ignored altogether.

For example, there were female athletes in ancient Greece, and Spartan women in particular were prized for their athleticism and strong physiques. We know from ancient sources that freeborn women in Sparta were expected to exercise just as strenuously as the men, and they competed often in athletic events and tests of strength (Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus 14.1-4; Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians 1.3-4).

And even at a time when it would seem social mores were solidly against them, strongwomen like Vulcana thrived, wowing audiences and performing feats of strength that were astounding at the time (and are still worth noting today).

So yes, the female athlete is as natural as the male, and just as worthy of our respect—perhaps even more so. That is Amazon feminism in a nutshell, and what this blog is here to call attention to.

Welcome to the Athletic Women Blog!