Women and Surfing: An Essay, By a Man

Just because a handful of women in a niche sport are prepared to weaponise their gender in the interests of getting what they want, it doesn’t mean it’s good for all women.

Recently, in the New York Times Magazine, Daniel Duane wrote a piece called “The Fight for Gender Equality in One of the Most Dangerous Sports on Earth”.

In the piece Duane referenced an old post I had written for The Inertia called “Women’s Big Wave Surfing has a Parity Paradox Worth Re-thinking”. The gist of the piece – which I stand by – is that the women’s Pe’ahi event was objectively poor. And despite the fact that it was spun across all media outlets as a giant leap for womenkind, the reality was that it was a step backwards.

As a spectacle the competition was a failure.

Only four of the 12 women caught waves, and two of those were hospitalised. In my view, the competition served as a stark reminder that there is physiological barrier precluding some people –regardless of gender – from big-wave paddle surfing. It’s equivalent to the UFC throwing Amanda Nunes into the ring with TJ Dillashaw in the name of gender equality.

I mean, Nunes is a great fighter, I’m sure she’d hold her own against lots of men, but – to employ the vernacular of the UFC fan – TJ Dillashaw would fuck her up. Pitting men directly against women is not parity.

It’s just biologically unfair.

The reference used by Duane had none of this context, of course:

‘The Inertia, a popular adventure-sports website, ran an opinion piece by a male surf journalist named J.P. Currie, who called the contest an “abject failure” and wrote: “I don’t see women achieving equality. I see women striving for masculinity.”’

I believe the quote, which lit my maleness like a flare, was used to exemplify an atypical attitude of men. Silly women, thinking they can do what we men do. Stop trying to be like us.

But I think my argument is more nuanced than that.

I grew up in a male dominated household. I’m one of four boys and my dad spent most weeks at sea. My mum is one of the toughest people I know. She held it all together. She did everything for the fishing boat bar hauling in the nets. She made sure the bills were paid, the house and boat were stocked with food every week, and she cooked and cleaned and gardened and busied everywhere. All while caring for us full time and clearing up after our mistakes, and our fights, and our tantrums, and our boisterousness.

She shouldered the embarrassment when my twin brothers got drunk on shoplifted booze and set a local field on fire. She remained calm when my older brother went missing and left only a neat pile of clothes at the end of the pier.

She spoke to me with quiet serenity when my teenage rage sent me through a plate glass window at school. And she responded with shocked but silent decorum when, late one evening, intending to confront my younger brother about some hash she discovered, found him having a standing wank in the living room, with the Masters golf on the telly.

At which point he uttered the now immortal words, “Fuck off, mum!”

She even dealt with the ignominy of driving home from church one Christmas Eve, after taking gran to the midnight service, and realising that a commotion outside the pub was caused by her two youngest sons, battering fuck out of each other while every punter in the pub watched and cheered, and I refereed. That was a tense Christmas dinner.

For this and so much more, my mum’s a straight hero. Most of all for her strength, her ability to endure.

My mum’s world is a microcosm of society. Women are often expected to fit in with, or tolerate, maleness. We live in a world that has been shaped by one gender. Yet we’re different, men and women.

I know I’m not supposed to say that publicly, but it’s true.

I teach kids, I see the differences. Boys are allowed time to fail, to find their feet, to fuck about. Girls need to be serious a lot sooner. They’re terrified of failure. They are more harshly judged. Women, young girls, are pressured into being something. It’s a world of extremes, there’s little middle ground. They’re either airhead YouTubers and Instagram models or they’re tough bitches, sticking it to the patriarchy.

The way I see it, in a women’s world, they’re seldom left to just be.

So in surfing, should we be pushing for women to compete alongside the men? I wonder how many women among the entrants for the Pe’ahi comp actually wanted to paddle out at Jaws for the first time, in front of the world.

Duane’s piece gave a brief history of the Committee for Equity in Women’s Surfing, an activist group headed by big wave surfer Bianca Valenti. It strongly inferred that the WSL decision to close the gender pay gap was a direct result of the activities of this group.

There’s an argument to say that women don’t deserve equal pay in surfing. An argument allegedly backed by Sophie Goldschmidt when she called the pressures from Valenti’s group “abuse of the #metoo movement”. (A statement she later denied.)

Just because a handful of women in a niche sport are prepared to weaponise their gender in the interests of getting what they want, it doesn’t mean it’s good for all women.

Surfing is backwards. It’s discriminatory. It is not egalitarian.

Most line-ups in the world are presided over by aggressive, macho cultures. We are guilty of the over-sexualisation of women. There is absolutely a balance that needs to be redressed.

But pretending women’s surfing is on the same level as men’s is not only disingenuous, it just serves to put even more pressure on all women to be more like men. Think of the language we use, why should we revere only the women who “charge”? Isn’t that just another form of discrimination based on physicality?

Equality is not the admiration of a small handful of women willing to pit themselves against men. We’re flying in the face of physiological fact, and that’s not progress.

I’d guess this viewpoint will be received as something akin to Hitler’s Mutterkreuz. But it’s not meant to sound like a pat on the head. And I’m sure it’s completely outrageous to accept my views on the subject of women’s liberty, or those of any other man.

But when we preclude certain people from talking about certain things conversation becomes stunted. Gender politics affect everyone.

And it should be perfectly fine to state that there are clear differences between men and women, and neither should feel the need to deny or fight that, in surfing or otherwise.