The gender war just got hotter!

Okay, so there’s this issue of women getting equal prizemoney when they aren’t called upon to perform in the same heavy conditions as the men.

Where are the women at Teahupoo, Pipe and so on?

Two weeks after Chas first called on Devon Howard to become a surfing pioneer by allowing women to compete against the men in the same heats, I’d like to note that it has already been done.*

Last year, the 2019 Mike Stewart Pipeline Pro was an open entry event, with no division between genders.

Four women entered, with 2018 world women’s champion Ayika Suzuki’s advancement through her first-round heat offering proof of concept that the women could compete and succeed against the men.

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This year’s competition featured nine female competitors, again including Suzuki, Pipe regular Traci Effinger (who goes by the glorious @clamdragger handle on Instagram) and the muse for this story, Miya Inoue.

In tricky six-to-ten-foot wind-affected Pipe, Inoue progressed through four rounds, reaching the quarter-finals.

Inoue scored the highest single-wave score of that heat after she projected off the lip of the biggest wave that came through in the twenty-five-minute heat, before being unable to find the backup score needed to progress.

I’ll ignore the usual tropes that will be trotted out in rebuttal here (aren’t all bodyboarders girls? It’s so easy, anyone could surf Pipe on a boogie board ** et al) and call on the WSL to offer a wildcard into next year’s Pipe Masters contest to one or more worthy female competitors.

And I’m calling out the female surfers, for one of them to put their hand up and say, “I can charge Pipe, give me a jersey, I’m ready!”

If a fifty kilogram (110 pounds) bodyboarder raised on Japanese beachbreaks is willing to throw herself at the lip of an eight-foot Pipe wave, there’s gotta be a female professional surfer who will have the vertical bonnet to take on Pipeline against the guys.

Paige Alms? Tyler Wright?

Imagine a Mason Ho vs Coco Ho heat at Backdoor?

And if the WSL is serious about equality, let’s see them give the women a chance to compete against the men in other premiere events as well.

Steph Gilmore is oft acknowledged as the most stylish rider regardless of gender at Snapper, why not give her a shot against the men in the opening contest of the year?

Carissa Moore or Lakey Peterson would do more damage laying into the walls of J-Bay than, say, Miguel Pupo?

At the very least it would they would great PR pieces.

So what say you, WSL corporate overlords?

How do you vote surfing world?

Just like aerial moves, heavy waves and the priority system, are you ready to follow in bodyboarding’s shoes again once again?

*The very first Morey Boogie world championships in 1982 was actually a gender-neutral event as well. Mike Stewart’s future wife, then Lisa Miller, competed and advanced through the first day’s competition. Presented with ten-foot Pipeline on the second day, she perhaps wisely withdrew.

** I offer Jamie O’Brien’s recent crabclaw efforts pushing his sponsors’ bodyboard products as rebuttal.

Cancel surf culture.

Welcome to America, where it’s OK to festoon the pages of surf magazines and surf-centric Instagram feeds with high-res images of breasts, but it’s not OK for a mother to nurse her baby while participating in the surf act itself.

The popular account Kook of the Day recently posted a video of an empowered mother breastfeeding on a wave and what should have been a moment celebrating the whole of the female experience quickly devolved into the very worst displays of toxic masculinity.

Comments dripping with less-than-woke misogyny began appearing right away.

bchip19: Call child protective services. So fucking irresponsible. One false move and it’s disaster.

matt_meistrell: Dumb people do dumb shit!

jonnysurfstyle: Jesus!!!! You kidding me??????? She goes down that babies gone!!!!! Stupid stupid women!!!! This annoys the fuck out of me!!!!! Even stupidity knows its limits and I am stupidity!!!!

Etc.

And it’s shameful that we still need to be having this conversation in 2020. Breastfeeding moms are not brash, unrepentant exhibitionists. Few to none of them are trying to show off their breasts to unwilling participants. Yes, some of us have fully evolved beyond the twisted hypocrisy of a culture that says a billboard of a lingerie-clad boob is A-OK while an uncovered nursing infant is offensive.

I can only hope and trust that her child did not its first experience of the life-determining effects of American society’s gender binary, swaddled in either pink or blue. Moments out of the womb and before even receiving its name being wrapped in gender. I can only hope and trust they will not be destroyed by the blitzkrieg of gender-norming as they grow.

In the meantime, may this mother’s brave display of her complete personhood be a beacon for us all.

The man who described the WSL's Instagram account as "pandering bullshit that's exploiting surfing" returns with his dangerously purist blog, marinelayerproductions.

Dane Reynolds is an almost thirty-five-year-old father of three and former world number four surfer from Bakersfield in California known for his “go for broke style of surfing that includes many experimental and aerial maneuvers.”

It’s not a stretch to say that even with cheeks so adipose that his eyes have become mere slits, Reynolds’s bold lines on a wave still quicken the pulse of spectators.

Five years ago, or thereabouts, Dane quit his blog, marinelayerproductions, and shortly afterwards, released a torrential confessional called Chapter 11.

Talking about a panic attack he says, “In my heat, my throat started closing. I got out of the water and into my car. I was on the 405 in my Volvo doing 90 MPH to the hospital. I pulled over and called (wife) Courtney and said, I think I’m dying.”

Over the course of the intervening half decade, Dane notably quit his multi-million dollar with Quiksilver and started his own brand, Former, along with Craig Anderson and co.

Earlier today, Reynolds announced he was back in the blogging game.

“Think I’m gonna start blogging again 🤒 I know blogs are dead but still feels like the right platform to post surf videos and opinion and include my friends I surf with every day. Stay tuned 🤘🏽”

In an interview with Monster Children magazine he described the WSL’s Instagram as “pandering bullshit that’s just exploiting surfing.”

His fussy meticulousness and purism will be welcome.

In the meantime, rewatch Chapter 11.

Chapter 11 from Marine Layer on Vimeo.