Perhaps this is where the lamentably not-endangered species known as the Western capon just says “Yes, dear!” and the higher-T crowd doesn’t notice, busy as it is earning and building and being taxed. To wit: A new government report highlights an increase in ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) injuries among female soccer players. It lays blame for them, too — squarely on, you guessed it, men.
No, this isn’t because men worked to provide sporting opportunities for women, thus putting them in situations where they could get hurt.
No, it isn’t because, as with the “trans” boy who injured three female opponents in a basketball game recently, men masquerading as women are intruding into women’s sports (though this would be a legitimate complaint).
Rather, the issue is alleged “inequality.” The Patriarchy™, we’re told — comprising the insensitive brutes it does — are ignoring female athletes’ “needs.”
As the AP reports:
A rise in anterior cruciate ligament injuries in women’s soccer highlights “systemic gender inequality in sports,” a U.K. parliament report said on Tuesday.
The Women and Equalities Committee said there was a “lack of understanding of the health and physiological needs of women and girls across sport.”
In its report “Health barriers for girls and women in sport,” it cited a lack of footwear specifically designed for the needs of female soccer players as an area of concern and called on the government to assemble a task force to address the issue.
“It is symptomatic of gender inequality and sexism in the sports sector that the first football boot in the world designed around female feet came to the market less than four years ago,” committee chair Caroline Nokes said.
ACL injuries to high-profile players has cast a spotlight on that specific issue.
Chelsea and Australia striker Sam Kerr suffered ACL damage in January. Other leading players Alexia Putellas, Beth Mead and Leah Williamson have also sustained ACL injuries.
As an ex-pro athlete (tennis), I can say that an ACL tear is one of the nightmare injuries sportsmen fear. (One of two ligaments at the center of the knee, the ACL connects the thigh bone to the shinbone and thus helps stabilize the knee joint.) Unfortunately, such a rupture is one of the risks one runs when playing a highly physical sport (even golfer Tiger Woods suffered an ACL tear, in 2008). Being in good with the patriarchy won’t save you, either.
The logic in the above AP excerpt is a bit suspect, however. Chairman Nokes complains that the first female-specific soccer sneaker was introduced less than four years ago.
But then are cited a handful of women soccer players who’ve torn their ACLs since that time. That’s not exactly a correlation that supports the case. Anomalies?
In reality, we have a pretty good idea why women, despite generally playing less violent sports than men do, suffer more injuries. As MSN comment Gina Buselli, who identifies herself as an exercise physiologist, writes:
Women experience more ACL (and PCL) injuries across all sports than men do. Why? Men’s hips are narrower by design, therefore giving the knee joints more of a straight angle or line in relation to the hip. This allows men’s knee joints to be more stable. By design, women have broader hips and the angle from hip joint to knee is far wider and is more vulnerable to this specific injury. It’s physics. Different shoes for women may help, but I’m an exercise physiologist, not a shoe designer. Biology, however, is not going to change. [Come now, you could always identify as the opposite sex.]
This accords with what I learned when I took a “Care and Treatment of Athletic Injury” course years ago taught by an exercise physiologist. But there are other sex differences, too, as Harvard Medical School informs:
For example, the typical female athlete, as compared with her male counterpart, has:
- higher estrogen levels, along with less muscle mass and more body fat
- greater flexibility (due to looser ligaments) and less powerful muscles
- a wider pelvis, which alters the alignment of the knee and ankle
- a narrower space within the knee for the ACL to travel through
- a greater likelihood of inadequate calcium and vitamin D intake.
Women also tend to move differently than men. For example, when landing from a jump, women tend to land more upright and with the knees closer together. And when female athletes suddenly change direction, they tend to do so on one foot (perhaps due to their wider pelvis), while men tend to “cut” from both feet.
Note that what women have naturally — “looser ligaments” — is precisely the result when you sprain a joint a number of times. The ligaments stretch out and become “looser”; this means the connection between the bones is no longer as tight, and the joint becomes more unstable and hence more prone to future injury.
Harvard adds, too, that female athletes are more prone to other types of injuries as well.
But the U.K. government report is to be expected. When you’re on something called the “Women and Equalities Committee,” you must find “inequality” to justify your role. And upon discovering it, neither blaming nature nor shaking your fist at God will help your cause. Neither God nor nature needs to win reelection, please donors, or pay mind to political pressure.
Two more things: The committee report also asserted that a “health issue of similar magnitude affecting elite male footballers would have received a faster, more thorough, and better coordinated response.” Really? They may want to ponder why women’s health issues tend to get more attention and funding than men’s do.
The committee additionally complained that “sports and exercise research was ‘overwhelmingly’ conducted by men,” relates the AP. No doubt. This is for the same reason why virtually all the modern-miracle breakthroughs, inventions, and innovations that extend and enhance the lives of both sexes are the handiwork of men.
But the committee report is right: There is sex “inequality in sports,” just as there’s sex inequality in height. But that’s not called discrimination — it’s called nature.
