–– Paul Schlehlein
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Scroll through the BBC’s Africa home page and you’ll find a cesspool of articles promoting violent women’s sports. A cage fighter from Nigeria poses for the camera, her fists up, growling: “I am the queen of the cage.” A video promotes women’s arm wrestling by displaying two ladies with arms the size of #2 pencils—one shrew-sized participant straining for victory while wearing a burka.
Another article promotes a woman named Peace for becoming the first Ugandan national to sign for a women’s super league rugby squad. Is this wholesome? Should Christians encourage their daughters to play lock and flanker on a rugby team? The implications of our answer go far beyond this one sport but to the very nature of men and women.
Violent Women’s Sports
I’m not opposed to women’s sports. My mother and sister excelled at basketball, volleyball, and softball. I’m opposed to men in women’s sports. I’m opposed to women’s sports that exist simply to maintain equality with the men. And, as we’ll see here, I’m opposed to violent women’s sports. Here are three reasons why.
First, God created the body of man—not woman—for violence. The Creator crafted men to take a pounding, to endure colder temperatures, and to rely on less sleep. Every army in Israel was manned, not womanned, by males. Jeremiah 51:30 insults weak soldiers by saying they fight like women. Women should take no offence at this. A silver dessert fork can’t pry open a padlock. It was designed for beauty and taste, not strength.
A man’s limbs are longer, his heart is larger, and his bone structure is thicker. Boys put on muscle as they enter manhood. Women, however, widen at the hips and usually gain fat instead of muscle in order to prepare themselves for pregnancy and nursing their children.
Because a woman bleeds monthly, Christian men should never put her in combat, or on an Arctic exploration team, or on a rugby pitch. The tallest women in Africa come from Senegal, who average 164cm or 5’5”—still quite tiny. A woman’s body—including her bone structure and reproductive organs—is not made for violent sports, no matter what the newest ideological fad promotes. As Anthony Esolen says: “You can have your own politics. But…you cannot have your own biology. You cannot have your own physics.”
Second, God designed a woman to desire activities much different from men. God created women to nurture (Tit. 2:3-5). God created men to fight and defend, so they gravitate to sports like boxing, shotput, and wrestling. Because violent sports model battle, badges of honour on men—like bleeding, blistered hands and scarred faces—are wounds to be pitied on a woman. Rugby is violent, a sport that commonly yields concussions, torn hamstrings, and shattered forearms. What kind of man would want the mother of his child to endure this?
It will not do to say society has trained women to like dolls and men to like swords, because boys in every culture in every era create the games and fight in the armies and—from a negative side—the men always dominate in murder, rape, and robbery.
Girls rarely gather to play ball games. Girls form friendships; men form teams. And men form these teams to impress the girls. The boy does backflips and the lad bear-hugs heavy bags of sooted coal all to win a glance from a special lady.
Imagine taking a helicopter across the continent of Africa. You’d find that every soccer pitch would be filled with boys—whether near Lake Nyasa in Malawi, or the Juba mountains in Sudan, or the inland basins of Ethiopia, or the urban streets in Zimbabwe. This is no coincidence.
Finally, no one will watch an inferior product like women’s rugby. The real world doesn’t run on air, on dreams, on magic. Someone has to pay the bills. Feminist, equality fantasies won’t keep the lights on. In the United States, the NBA—which generates billions annually—is infamous for subsidising the WNBA—which loses $50 million a year. The female players sport shirts that say: “Pay us what we’re worth.” On the professional basketball court, that would be zero, or less. In the home, her worth is invaluable.
I’d sooner watch men scrapbooking over high-noon tea—pinkies extended—than watch women pulverise each other in a rugby match. When fans watch men enter the scrum—their jerseys bloodied, cauliflower ears taped, triceps and biceps and quadriceps bulging below mean mugs of sneers and jeers—they salute. They cheer. They’re proud.
The same is not true with women. Mashed faces and broken limbs disgust masculine men. It prompts him to leap from his seat to protect her. That is his nature.
Conclusion
According to 1 Peter 3:7, for all of a woman’s inestimable worth, she is weaker physically. Strong men, then, should live out their calling to protect them rather than delight in watching them play the man—or an athlete on a rugby pitch.