MONA LISA’S MIQQIT

Who knew Ms. Mona Lisa had eyebrows? Or, miqqit for circumpolar speakers. Not me. French engineer Mr. Pascal Cotte found them by scanning with hefty, multi-mega-pixel camera. Huh, never noticed she was braless browless. There are such days I think I should return to feminist school as I try to keep abreast with current issues. [1]

 

Reveal of Mona’s eyebrows pushed to backburner. I live in YVR, abode du snowballing olympic legal skirmish involving IOC and  Women Ski Jumpers, who utilized the Canadian Human Rights Commission and B.C. Provincial Court of Appeal to challenge outdated civics of exclusion. The issue? Sexism. Just when you think it’s O.K. to be a women, someone points out obvious attributes of femaleness and says, ‘Well, no, you’re a girl so you can’t ski jump in two-thousand-and-zero-zero-ten.’ [2.a] [2.b]

WHAT IF WOMEN SKI JUMP? 

The IOC position is that exclusion is not based on womanly attributes but technical merit. The International Olympic Committee stresses that the decision taken in 2006 remains as firm as packed snow in the interior of the world’s fifth largest island (Baffin, Nunavut, Canada) because women in this sport have not yet competed in minimum of two international competitions. The first women’s international ski jumping event will not be held until 2010 in Libercz, Czech Republic. The ICO Charter also states that new sports events are not to be added within four years of staging an Olympic event.

 

Fair enough when one does the math (VI+IV = X), but:

Bad timing to be woman. Er, person?

 

But not so bad if male and pro-hockey player and like to play at global sports for amateurs, wearing skates. O!Crossed!Skis!At!Ramp!Liftoff! detour like frostbitten lemmings snow shoe trekking the fractal geography of southern Baffin Island, which the Inuit identify as  Qikiqtaaluk.

TECHNICAL MERIT 

Surely in the year two thousand-zero-zero-nine, the technical merit of ski jumping as applicable to males, however masculinity is defined in 2-0-0-9, can be respectfully and equally applied to the 135 known female ski jumpers who represent about 30 countries? This is, on balance, amateur sport; not pro-sport so an amateur sports organization might be forgiven if it adds a sport with less emphasis of the perceived technicality of optics of gender discrimination distinction? We are talkin’ amateur ski jumping here not a pie contest in the Middle East with easy bake ovens. 

NOT TWO PIECES OF THE SAME PIE

BUT TWO ENTIRELY DIFFERENT BLUEBERRY PIES 

The female Ski Jumpers and the IOC are in argument about two distinctly completely different positions of contrast. It is not the case of pronunciation of potato/potatoe/patotootie. [2.c.] Women challenge on the basis of sexism and IOC respond on the basis of the technical requirements of admission of a sport. However, nonethelesstherefouly, when female ski jumping is admitted officially the technical requirements better be awe-inspiringly dissimilar or I might lug a heartfelt throw of the remote at the television screen. [3]

 

Technical criteria become a bit sketchy (for me) as the debate whirrs like a snow blower digesting outdated telephone books. Male ski jumping and jumpers were included at 1924 first Winter Olympics, without any qualifying time requirements other than evidence of ski jumping contests as early as the 1870s in Norway.

 

Did no women ever jump in or about the area of Oslo at the same time thereby setting precedent of equal potential of athleticism?

 

Rules and rigor of sportification increase, with each micro-nano tick  stop-watched, photographed, videoed, blogged to record faster, higher, further. Yet structural attitudes remain frozen in time?

HOW (IM-)POSSIBLE TO ROLE-MODEL COMPROMISE?  

However, surely there Is middle ice if not a common snow bank to terminate a really old-fashioned stand-off of power&control? Humankind no longer inhabits a gender-dominant socio-historical landscape like say olden times when knights rode flash horses to jostle and joust before quaffing back home brewed ale and eating blackbirds baked into pies. In that time women were relegated to handing out scarves and pie-baking (Huh. Another post, perhaps). Yet, humankind evolves.

 

Perhaps, female ski jumpers and ICO persons could snowball out an agreement to demonstrate a leap of faith into the future of amateur spots. As act of good will and good sportspersonship ― two staples of amateur sports ― the IOC might enact a special demo-sport event and inspire global acclaim of women, who hold up half the sky, with some brave enough to leap through their half. There is somewhere somehow a peaceable method and means to moderate and honour without making women beg. Let not the quality of mercy be strained, let it gentle like snowflakes from Heaven. With women ski jumpers, amateur sports will be twice blessed.

 

And if mercy is not possible, then I say bring in Ms. Sarah Connor to aid negotiations.

© Sharilyn Calliou. 14 November 2009. All Rights Reserved.

From Blue Dog Studio

Graphic From ubertinypics

ENDNOTES? Suukiaq

[1] Mona had eyebrows? Please click, eyebrowsdiscovered.

[2.a.] This is totally fictitious quotation used as cheap inexpensive rhetorical device. What IOC PR Rep, Mr.  E. Moreau, actually stated is: ‘The ICO would like to underline [my ul] that it understands the heartfelt emotion with which the Canadian women’s ski jumpers are so keen to compete at their home Games in Vancouver in 2010.’ Email quotation cited in Canadian Press article, closed to comments, posted 9 January, 2008, at the CBC Sports Page. For article, IOC Defends Exclusion of Womens’ Ski Jumping, please click, cbcamateursports.

 

How easily language habits repeat and culturally reproduce habits of mind. If this quotation related to men, then the chosen words of ‘heartfelt emotion’ would be annihilated by a high-sticking amateur hockey player. For example, this revamped statement: ‘The ICO would like to underline [my ul] that it understands the heartfelt emotion [my italicization] with which the Canadian men’s ski jumpers are so keen to compete at their home Games in Vancouver in 2010.’ Can you imagine a group of guy ski jumpers being assessed on the emotional quality of their heart organs to plead to ski, to jump, to score? I think not.

 

Background reading? Try?: VancouverSunSkistory, calgarynews, lawuniveralberta, and sportsespngogogo. Would like to know how being reported internationally. Please leave a link.

[2.b.] At Friday, 13-Nov-092009, the case took only 1800 seconds in British Columbia’s Court of Appeal, with judgement for VANOC/IOC. Reasons for decision are expected to be released about 20-Nov-2009. The decision dismissed appeal of a lower-court ruling, which found that while the IOC had discriminated against the female ski jumpers, VANOC was not obligated to add them to amateur sports competition.

[2.c.] Nunavut Living Dictionary is easy to use visual but not talking dictionary, with search from English, French or  Inuktitut (Roman or Syllabic). Total kudos to all who produced living language preservation project. Interested in learning a new language today? Please click livingheritage.

[3] Might have television as a media in a decade or two? Will the ubiquitous one-eye survive even with 3,594,024,001.034 channel universe? Some younger seem less inclined to consume televised product and desire more to create/share. Redundant programming seems at saturation for serial killer hunting bipeds or survivor-style show leading to top dancer, model train modeller, enzymologist, flautist, pile driver, lace maker or sheep herder. Advert-saturation is such that the marriage of T.V. with cajoling commercial dollars will doubtfully survive as there is less and less moola to purchase armpit enhancement and footwear advancement. There’s just something about T.V. starting to smell pre-corpselike to moi. To complete this brief disquisition about tarnish of image, voi see le television mysterieux, a science vid from www.metacafe.com

  TTFN