on friday the olympics, b.c, and the justice system proved what pieces of shit they all are.three judges at the b.c court of appeal ruled against 14 female ski jumpers who have been fighting for years to compete in the olympics. the decision was unanimous.
the 14 female athletes argued that by allowing men and not women to participate in the ski jump event the vancouver organizing committee(vanoc) is violating the charter of rights freedoms. they were asking the court to declare that unless women were allowed to compete, the men's competition should be cancelled.
in the ruling, justice fenlon said that that it is discriminatory to exclude the women's event, however, vanoc can't be held responsible.
why?
vanoc says that the international olympics committee decides what events are held and that vanoc itself has no power to decide who competes.
the ioc says that there aren't enough women to warrant a women's ski jump event, but apparently men's ski jump doesn't fulfill ioc requirements either.
so what the shit?
apparently vanoc is really sad about this. john furlong, the chief executive of vanoc said that they are "first and foremost, men and women of sport and [they] believe in athletics" but that they just don't have any jurisdiction.
he laments: "these girls have tried very hard, they have put up a good fight."
first of all, mr. furlong, even if you have no jurisdiction you can take a stronger stance against this discriminatory practice.
and secondly, if you're "men and women" who first and foremost you believe in athletics then you don't call talented athletes "girls."
gender discrimination is not cool!!
where are the male athletes in all of this?? they should be in solidarity with their female counterparts.
3 comments:
Here's my question why hasn't anyone commented on the idiocy of having the Hudson Bay Compay and Zeller's exclusively selling Cdn Winter Olympics gear - the stores are not even Canadian!!! I'm so sick of endless commercials demonstrating our Canadian heritage which is inspired in our winter clothing (hello we have 3 other season too?!?!) sold by Americans to Canadians. So how does Olympic gear support Canadian athletes - is it when I purchase a $50 t-shirt that gets paid to the NRDC Equity Partners of New York or when I wear the sweater to watch the olympics on t.v. because all the politicians have bought the seats?
I thought that in order for an olympic event to occur it had to have certain number of participatory countries per event. Meaning that if most countries have men's ski jumping but not women's ski jumping, according to the rules of the IOC, it rules out the women's event. Is this not the case? If it is the case, would it not be the responsibility of the individual countries to foster and encourage their women to compete, not up to the IOC to make exceptions because we want to play too? If this is NOT the case, however, and the IOC is allowing men's ski jumping to occur without the mandatory participatory numbers, well then, that's another story all together.
it's true that there are specific requirements that need to be met in order to allow an event. apparently, though, the men's event doesn't fulfill the requirement either.
also, the IOC voted in 1996 to keep female ski jumping out of the 2010 olympics. there's actually no reason why the men and women shouldn't compete together, either, because they are both capable of jumping over 100m.
another loophole that led to the exclusion is that any olympic event added after 1991 has to included men's and women's categories. since ski jumping has been an olympic event since 1924 it is excluded from this gender-equality policy.
it seems to me that if the men don't fulfill the requirement then they should combine the event since there is no real reason not to do so, besides gender, which is silly.
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