Surf feminist hero Lucy Small mounts Jan 6-style insurrection against pro event as women storm open division securing all but one position!

“Open divisions are a form of discrimination against women” says Surf Equity.

You’ll certainly know the name Lucy Small, who rocketed to fame a few years ago when she gave organisers of a longboard contest hell from the stage for paying women half the prizemoney as the men.

The effect was seismic and mainstream media went into overdrive, for who, after all, doesn’t love a little patriarchy busting?

Lucy even went head to head with the founder of professional surfing, Mr Ian Cairns, via Instagram DMs after she posted a meme featuring the hanging scene from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. 

Kanga took it as a personal affront, white man being executed; our guest did it to highlight the hypocrisy of an amendment to Texan abortion laws. 

Now, Lucy has mounted a January 6-style insurrection against the organisers of a longboard competition after it was announced there would be one pro division,  open to both men and women, instead of separate divs.

A reasonable decision given the recent evaporation of gender, everyone’s equal and so on, yes?

“The chances of a man winning the money is a lot higher so it’s not really fair,” argues Small who says she asked the organisers of the Kirra Longboard Classic to split the five gees prizemoney into two divs.

After the organisers said no, Small marshalled other female surfers, organised a women’s surf label to cover the $250 entry fee and secured fifteen of the sixteen slots in the open division, one man grabbing the final spot.

“We were, like, an all-girl’s division, what do we do, so we added him the group chat. He hasn’t responded yet, ha ha,” said Small.

As words come back to bite, as they tend to do, let’s go back one year to when Small claimed that men…didn’t…have any advantage over women as she argued the case for the inclusion of T-Girl Sasha Jane Lowerson into the women’s div.

Inspirational Sasha, you’ll remember, transitioned a few years back after a former life as male surf champ Ryan Egan.

“I competed against Sasha a few months ago and we welcomed her to the womens division.…What is just as infuriating is that all the men commenting here and saying this type of thing are operating under the assumption that because someone grew up biologically male they are automatically better than everyone in the womens division. This says less about it being unfair and more about your sexist attitude toward women’s performance level in surfing.”

 

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A post shared by Lucy Small (@saltwaterpilgrim)

As a bit of context to the Kirra contest organiser’s decision to run with one open division, we need to turn to the recent imbroglio over the Noosa Malibu Club who were threatened with losing their Surfing Australia sanction after seeming to give the gals less money than the men.

“It’s pretty straightforward. We have a rule book that says clubs must offer equal prize money to men and women in events affiliated with Surfing Australia. We’ve asked the club to compensate the female winner and rectify the situation,” Surfing Australia’s Chris Mater told the Courier-Mail.

Mater was forced into a swift apology when it was revealed anyone could enter the open division.

“I would like to offer my sincere apology to Noosa Malibu Club, its members and wider community,” he said. “I would also like to retract that I issued a ‘first and final warning’ and threatened to expel the club. The information I had at the time was wrong and I discovered that the club did not breach our rules.”

Some instructive comments below the line on Small’s IG post.

“The man who entered should withdraw in solidarity and voice strong support for a women’s division. Great work!”

“Open divisions are a form of discrimination against women.”

And so on.