Description
Gear up for the third instalment of Cherchez la Femme: Feminism and Sport. Is the Australian obsession with sport an intractable problem for the feminist project? Is it just institutionalised aggression, bloodlust and body fascism? Or can it be a space in which women take power, channel their own aggression, and feel part of a community? The panel will be made up of athletes, fanatical consumers of sporting coverage, critics of the elite codes, sporting enthusiasts, game-goers and all manner of other feminists for a full and frank appraisal of how women fit in to a discussion about sport and our society.
Speakers: Lisa Gye, boxer Mischa Merz, roller girl Genevieve ‘danger’ Berrick and Seb Prowse
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
7:00pm – 9:00pm
The Fox Hotel
351 Wellington St (cnr Alexandra Pde)
Collingwood, Melbourne, Australia
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The Bike Polo crew have been playing in Melbourne for just over 2 years, in vacant car parks and on disused basketball courts, even under freeways. The crew play every Tuesday evening and Sunday afternoon, basically anywhere they can find an enclosed space that’s large and flat enough.
You could say they’re at the same place skate boarders were before there were skate parks, and when people were making equipment themselves.
The Bike Polo crew make their mallets out of old ski poles and plumbing pipe and use street hockey ball and traffic cones for goals.
They ride whatever bikes that they used to get around town, but the more we play, the more we realise we’re spending more time on the court, than on the street, hours and hours at a time, and late into the night, (if we can find a place with lights). We lower our gear ratios and seats, put protective discs on our wheels and even cut our handlebars short on one side.
Groups like the one in Melbourne have started up in Perth, Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide, and more recently, Castlemaine and Frankston have started up too. Sometimes we play against each other.
“In our hysterics over the evils of rugby league we forget that the sport is merely the sum of its parts. Bob Dumpling has a close look at the ingredients in this poo sandwich.
Rugby league has always thrived on controversy.
But if controversy is league’s oxygen, there’s been a bit of methane added in recent weeks as a dirty secret, buried in 2002, has made its way to the surface. Perhaps finally the stink of the modern game will have sickened and disturbed enough people that we’ll have reached a tipping point. But I doubt it.
It’s been observed before that league players are not paid to think, but the randomness and idiocy surrounding the game extend much further.
The clearest message from this appalling incident and every other sexual assault, act of aggravated violence and other “misbehaviour” before then and ever since is this: a significant number of people involved in the NRL are incapable of making good decisions.”
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