"No heart?! No heart?! I'm all heart Motherfucker!"

So there's this part in the movie Jerry Maguire (this is my request to put aside all current feelings on Tom Cruise because the movie holds a special place in my heart, it came out and I bought it before he went nutso and I just can't give it up, nor will I feel shame for continuing to love it and the place it holds in my heart and my memories around it) where Jerry accuses Rod of living all of his life with heart, but playing football with only his head. "When you get on the field, it's all about what you didn't get, who's to blame, who underthrew the pass, who's got the contracts you don't, who's not giving you love. That is not what inspires people. That is not what inspires people! Shut up, play the game... play it from the heart." To which Rod responds that he doesn't want to be friends anymore and they yell at each other and it's intense and then as Rod walks away he gets more and more angry and as he loads the bus he has to take as a player getting carted all over the country he screams, mostly to himself, "No heart?!! No heart?!! I'm all heart Motherfucker!" Because he's pisssssssed.

I get this. I played competitive sports. Yes, Rod Tidwell (ignore that he's fictional and stay with me, not only am I getting to my point, but I'm bringing in feminist issues and even feministing.com) is a selfish asshole at times who just wants the fame and money associated with being a professional athlete, but damn. damn. As an athlete, there are few insults worse than saying you don't have heart. For real. And to be in the fucking NFL? If I met any NFL players, I would probably hate every single one of them, but dude, they have heart. You cannot be a professional athlete without heart. You can't. And don't argue with me unless you've played at the same level of sport as me, or higher, because you don't know what it's like. You don't. (And even if you have, bring me your best arguments and I'll still win.)

People, and many people I know and love, don't get that part of the movie. They don't know why Rod gets so mad. They just don't get it.

So I don't talk about sports. I talk to Autumn about sports. I sometimes talk to Marla about sports. I will talk to very few people about my true ideas surrounding sports and the sports culture and competitive sports. Sorry, but the rest of the world isn't in that world and just doesn't get it. It is a different world and only people in that world can really get it.

Today, reading feministing.com, I came across a piece about pregnancy in college athletes and whether or not the women athletes getting pregnant should get a medical redshirt. (The answer is yes, they should, but that's not even what I'm writing about.) There were so many comments after the piece all about people's different takes on the issue, and I could have killed one of the commenters. It's a good thing she/he didn't leave her/his real name. This one (for some reason I assume dude, but maybe that's sexist of me) person kept commenting about what it's like in the sports world and what the athletes do and how they act. Actually, no, moron, athletes don't act anything like that.

I'm totally upset over this. I don't even know how to make my point.

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At this point in my post, I got really pissed off and emotional over it, so I went to feminsiting.com and just posted a comment. Here's what I wrote:
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"As an athlete and a feminist I have a lot of opinions on this matter, but I just need to comment on some of the points made above. To try to keep it short, I'll bullet point my ideas and responses.

Why my experience and context matters to this argument:
- I received a college athletic scholarship
- A scholarship-receiving woman on my team got pregnant
- She got pregnant with a scholarship-receiving player from the mens team
- She stopped playing and had the baby (off the team, no scholarship), he continued to play (with his scholarship)
- A different scholarship-receiving player from the mens team got drunk (as per usual, I might add), fell off a fence, broke his arm, and got a medical redshirt (stayed on the team, kept his scholarship)

My opinion:
- No question, pregnant athletes should receive a redshirt

One of my responses to the idea that women can't recover and be athletes again after pregnancy/childbirth:
- The US Women's Soccer team of the late 90s and early 2000s had an unprecedented winning record (in any sport across the board) and had numerous mothers on the team (ie pregnancy does not mean a) the end of your life and/or b) the end of your athletic career)

Just because 'the truth' pissed me off with her/his inaccuracies:
- All we (my teammates, the mens team, and the larger culture of all the athletes on my campus) did was play pick-up games, have little skill contests, scrimmage, run extra miles, weight train, play other sports, etc; and that was the healthy stuff, there was also intense amounts of drug use/abuse (both recreational and performance enhancing), alcohol use/abuse, and all other sorts of "anything that can even be construed as dangerous outside of practices/training for their sport"

And finally, just in case the argument is made that my example is the exception (it's not, but I won't go into lots of other specific examples), I also took a Sociology of Sport class in my ungergrad years that furthered all of these, and many more, points.

Seriously, there's no question that it should be a redshirt, but we live in a patriarchal world--and the sports world perhaps even more so--so I'm not betting on it."

The point of my comment was to mainly prove the commenter 'the truth' wrong because it shouldn't even be an argument and she/he was using grossly incorrect assumptions about college athletes (and not just athletes at one of my two schools, I did take the class, I do have these friends, I know this shit) to make the case of blaming the woman for getting pregnant. Why is it always Blame The Woman? I HATE Blame The Woman.

I mean, as an athlete--and in that particular case, teammate--that was really stupid of her to get pregnant. It did hurt the team and had she kept her scholarship we would have been down one hopefully good player who could have received it, but that's what being a fucking team is. Whatever. That was the point of the comment.

The point of this post was to express my anguish at trying to talk about sports with people who aren't in the sports world. How can one talk about a culture she knows nothing about? I'm reminded of similar anger when a man in one of my classes tried to make the argument that his fear of getting mugged while walking down a dark alley is the same as a woman's fear of getting raped while walking down a dark alley. Why do people think they can talk about things they know nothing about?

I'm not saying all different colors of people (is that racist?) can't talk about racism, or all genders can't talk about sexism, or rich people can't talk about classism, or skinny people can't talk about sizism, or straight people can't talk about homophobia, or any privileged anything can't talk about any oppressed anything, etc etc etc, I'm just saying that if someone is going to go through the effort of arguing about something, at least fucking learn something about the issue before weighing in.

Thank god I only have 20 more minutes and then I get to go be around feminists eating local and yummy food. I need rejuvenation, because--whether it's about sports, feminism, or whatever--I, too, am all heart Motherfucker!