The Titans of Mavericks organizers in danger of losing their permit!
First, catty infighting came to light, then a day of perfect, heart-stopping Jaws that became an instant classic and now charges of discrimination. Boy howdy, the Titans of Mavericks has had one hell of a go lately!
The California Coastal Commission recently demanded that the contest organizers must have a plan for including women next year or their permit will be revoked. “If they are going to use that public resource, then there ought to be some sort of consideration for equal opportunity or at least transparency for their selection process to ensure there is no discrimination…” commissioner Mark Vargas said.
The news cheered a group of hard-charging women.
“Women have been progressing at big wave surfing for many years, but they always lacked the recognition and trust from the man-dominated sport,” Brazilian Andrea Möller told the San Jose Mercury News. “The organizers not really being inclusive…” added Sarah Gerhardt, the first woman to ever surf Mavs. “They are gesturing but (women surfers) don’t actually make it to the top 24 and (will) never be able to compete with the men. If there are going to be women in the event, they should have their own heat.”
Contest organizers do not have a plan in place though, apparently, have nice intentions. “Our intent is not to put aside a special class just for women but have the women go head to head with the men,” Cassandra Clark, Jeff Clark’s wife, said. “We have women we are starting to see now, and I can’t wait to see them surf at that level.” Jeff Clark added, “At this point we haven’t seen that kind of performance.”
They point to the difficulty of slotting in a women’s heat when they only have one day of competition with shifting tides, winds etc. and 24 men fighting the fight. Maybe, though, everything will work itself out. Catty infighting has already banished legends Pete Mel and Grant “Twiggy” Baker. Maybe by the time the contest actually runs, hurt feelings will have relegated another 15, or so, men to outer darkness. Then there will be no problems aside from Jeff Clark’s bad attitude!
these men are pathetic…..
I’ve thought about this before. I reckon there is no reason there is not a girl version of jjf floating around except that girls don’t compete against boys from early on.
He’s not very strong, not fitter than what surfing everyday can bring.
Maybe surfing should be the one sport where men and women compete together.
Surely it would have an impact especially for the young ones developing skills.
Jesus Christ, The Grit just got the most amazing dissection on sexism in surfing, from DrunkenAngel, pro bono.
So they want to include women at the expense of a male who has at least some kind of rating, reputation , simply because they are women ? Isn’t that why in all world sports there is a womens event and a mens? Maybe we should just do away with mens and womens sports and have just open events?
but then there would hardly be any women in any sport!
that just doesn’t stack up. there are women athletes who do and can and could if given a chance beat top male athletes. you telling me carissa moore couldn’t stitch up some of those on the men’s tour. of course she could.
Billie jean King?
Shannon Szabados?
Danica Patrick?
Annika Sörenstam?
and against what criteria are you measuring people? one that from the outset was determined by a bunch a bros.
women get limited opportunities to build their skill and to get sponsorship to put in the time. it’s not an equal starting point from the get go. they’re already carrying baggage before the heat gun goes off. social factors shrink the available pool of women out of which the best athletes can emerge.
nevertheless you build change and opportunity has to be provided for that. otherwise people don’t even get the platform to demonstrate they can do it and will be able to do it all the while we go on claiming they cannot which effectively bars them getting a shot before they even get started.
It’s worth paying some attention to women’s sport before running with the old myths.
The old myths eh? Your point is well made, but… Women are obviously different than men, and have disadvantages in sports to men. In running across the board their times are 11% slower than mens, in throwing sports they are even more disavantaged. This is all covered in the excellent book The Sports Gene by David Epstein, it’s well work a look – makes a really compelling case against Malcom Gladwells Outliers and the 10,000 hour myth. Sports are inheritly unfair! Billie Jean King in her prime beat a 55 year old man in the 70s and we are still talking about it! This Shannon Szbados seems like a genuine world class athelte, but Danicia Patrick, come on, she proably wouldn’t even be on the grid if she wasn’t a woman, you can’t tell me that she has difficulty getting sponsorship, which is really what half the battle in motorsport is about. This golfer you mentioned, did she beat any professional men (who weren’t OAPs) using the same tee-offs (or whatever they are called)? Maybe she did I don’t know! Maya is a good example of a women who gets a lot more sponsorship than her talent merits. So is Alana and Anastisia, being a woman definity can have its advantages when dealing with sponsors. As for women’s surfing, aside from Carissa and Steph, I’m really not impressed, none of the other women on the tour could trouble the men at all. Steph and Carissa proaly could take a scalp or two from the bottom third of the mens tour on their day
But David Epstein is relying on a generalisation from the outset and fails to adequately reckon with the biomedicine field and sexology.
he should be aware each body is different and begin from the premise of the capacities of each body in a given situation.
to begin with the generalisation about ‘all men’ and ‘all women’ ipso facto we end up ignoring the capabilities of each body on its own merits and how fucking messy the biological social interface really is.
Bodies are not made simply up of the XY or XX chromosomes but a messy concoction of ever-changing chromosomal, anatomical, and endocrinological genetic configurations, which I might add vary considerably moment to moment, across the lifespan, and across populations so they are neither clear-cut nor stable and so are not generalisable, actually. evidence = many bodies actually do not fit within the prototypical biological determinations of sexual dimorphism.
Biology is interactive, functioning with and through a dynamic complex social and ecological environment.
The plasticity of biology reveals binary sexual difference and associated
essentialism is anything but essential or generalisable. Those in biomedicine will tell you this – that the classification of male and female involves a radical simplification of bodies to fit a socially-produced taxonomy.
Given this women’s bodies don’t have disadvantages in sports to all men.
If they generally did then none could surf as good as you and I and obviously they do.
With enough opportunities allowing biology and the social and ecology to shape each other = bodily capacities and motor mechanics reaching whatever standard the arrangement is aimed to achieve.
Someone either surfs like someone who has had ample instruction on how to surf in a particular way and the requisite time in the water , or like someone who has not (in addition to having the social opportunities that enable such and provide an adequate pool of bodies out of which a certain performance can emerge).
For some reason I think you might know more about this than I do. I don’t know if you read that book, I have only taken one snippet out of it and I hope I have not misrepresented the author, he actually goes into how complicated gender and gender tests are. He points out that transgender men who become women and take the hormone repressent drugs have their performances drop off by 11%. It’s all quiet fascinating really, and it really is a great book, but back to Mavericks, is it not okay to have a men’s competition, if it’s not a men’s competition is it not ok to only invite the best surfers? If there is a demand for a women’s competition can they not have one arranged for themselves? There are no women invitees to the Eddie and I don’t think that there were any at the jaws one, and there was no outcry!
yeah, i don’t think it is a matter of an outcry. i’d like to see specific allocation. it’s worked well in regards to other fields and we have seen whole sectors change e.g. quotas in Norwegian boardrooms and people going ‘ women can do this’. funny that. they did of course used to say women were too emotional and lacked reasoning skills in the ‘old days’ as if it were fact, too.
i think it helps to make determined efforts to allow new experiences to come about and thus lead to new possibilities for bodies that have been traditionally ‘held back’ (often not intentionally but that has been an effect) from certain trajectories of performances and ability due to a lack of such opportunity.
this sometimes means what is required is an active intervention and relinquishing of some of the privileges some have from the get go i.e. the blokes and the social system that has long facilitated their development toward their performances ever since they were young boys (they don’t have the same obstacles to participation in surfing as many girls and women have and continue to have – although in some parts of the world this is changing).
in this way you will see other bodies become or prove now to be just a capable as this cohort of invitees in due course.
this is no charity case, either. many of these men have relied on the support of women throughout their careers to enable them to reach the levels of performance they have. in providing this support sacrifices have been made that have maybe even prevented their own pursuit of personal goals.
who know how many women have not been able to reach a level of surfing performance they could have but had to relinquish because of a gendered division of labor – taking on the main child rearing duties, housework duties, etc. (i know, things are changing but it’s still pretty traditional out there). this all gets in the way of time in the water and thus he ability of bodies to perform to certain levels when undertaking certain activities.
time to give something back.
a separate competition is not possible at this point in time because many in the sponsorship/corporate world don’t think it is worth it because they assume that the women aren’t the best and can’t be as good as the men. it’s a vicious cycle.
Do you really think Carissa could compete with the men , no air game , how would she get thru the QS , and then Pipe/Chopes/J Bay , her man turns would not get her thru a heat , and she wouldn’t qualify.
its not about ability but about the differences in physicality , there isn’t one woman that you mentioned that could have beaten the men of their era.
what are ‘man turns’?
i explain above why i disagree with the physical difference argument.
so you are telling me Gerry Lopez, Gabriel Medina and other such physical specimens of men are somehow more physically able than all other women’s bodies?
Serena Williams’s body is super strong.
How about the endless array of gymnast bodies?
Jeez, there are so many differently abled and shaped bodies how do you define them simply into two supposed clear cut types with different capabilities? you can’t.
Drunky, I think I love you…
easy Gab is huge now , do you understand the difference in weight classes in Boxing/ MMA?? How about why people of African origins are more athletic than Anglo Saxon.
Do you think Serena William would even take a game off Federer/Dokovic ??
a man turn is what taylor Knox / Mick fanning does when they gouge off the top , Carissa can do but not close to being in same league
Petitioning to add a transgender-Muslim heat in 2017…
I’m an enlightened modern male, honest, but how many women in the world can paddle big Mavs? Honest question.
Jeff Clark…the Laird of NorCal?
Past his prime, constant self-promoter with a huge ego, sounds about right.
how hard can it be to include women. fucking tides as an excuse. get a grip. hand over a heat and drop a men’s heat. tough shit to the sooks.
The logistics involved to include a woman’s toilet just puts the whole idea into the to hard basket.
No, why should they. People want to watch the best 24 – well the best 24 who haven’t fallen out with Jeff Clarke. Why should they waste a heat on Womens surfing. If the women aren’t good enough to be considered to be in the top 24 then tough, you are not invited, whether you are a man or a woman. Seems pretty fair to me! We all saw how fickle the ocean can be over the course of the Jaws final, can you imagine how great it would look if they held a womens heat in pumping conditions, only to have a massive lull for the final!
That argument only holds water if the Mavericks event is truly full of the world’s best big wave surfers.
But, like they showed when they blackballed Twiggy, inclusion is based on politics as much as ability.
So let some women in. Seed them in the heats with men. Maybe one will push herself, scratch over the ledge on the wave of the day, and surprise the world.
By all means let the competition not state that all competitors are men, and if there is a woman outlier who warrants a place amount the best 24 Mavericks riders then they should be included. Failing that though lesser riders shouldn’t hold up the show for the sake of ‘equality’.
Yeah, but they’re already letting “lesser” riders in. Whoever got Twiggy’s spot counts. Mel’s too. Since it’s not a WSL event any claims of conflict of interest are bullshit.
It’s not a legitimate contest, basically a big wave “exhibition.” You can’t bar the dude who won the last event and claim you’re only allowing top athletes.
Maya Gabeira deserves a spot. Paige Alms too. Keala Kennelly, Andrea Moller, Bianca Valenti. Pick any two of them, put them in with the guys.
Maya Gabeira most certainly does not deserve a spot, The others, maybe… If it is an big wave exhibition rather than a legit competition then they are being a bit foolish not having any women in it, as it will generate press.
Why not Maya? She charges, literally put her life on the line.
Didn’t Kelly tell her that she was way out of her league in 8 foot chopes or cloudbreak about three years ago, that was shortly before she nearly drowned in Portugal, I might be remembering it all wrong but if Slater doesn’t think you are up to surfing 8 foot Chopes, then you are probably not up to surfing Mavs on a hopefully huge day! She is an admittedly attractive woman who seems to be getting pushed into dangerous situations with the help of her sponsors (who probably are sponsoring her because of her looks, not her talent). Maybe I am wrong about her, but that is the impression I have gotten over the past few years…
I am willing to put money on it the women would go and given a chance and with a few heats and opportunities will be more than good enough. build it.
This article wreaks of bad attitude!