Elizabeth Lambert is now an internet villain, thanks to a video that features her taking down another player with a pony tail pull.
In her defense it can be pointed out that many of the incidents followed a provocation from the other team. For example, she does not do the pony tail take down (PTTD) until after the other player grabs her shorts. Such a response would tend to deter other players from attempting the same sort of thing and, as the saying goes, if you start something you have to expect that the other person might decide to try to finish it right then and there.
Of course, her responses seem to exceed the provocation and hence appear to be unacceptable behavior on the part of an athlete. While a degree of roughness is to be expected in a soccer game, things like a PTTD and kicking the ball into a downed player’s face go beyond this sort of acceptable roughness. There is, after all, the incidental rough contact that goes with playing this sport. But taking down other players or kicking balls into their faces is beyond what is allowed in soccer. This seems to be clear and indisputable.
Not surprisingly, some folks have claimed that people are being exceptionally critical of Lambert because she is a woman and that such behavior by men would be far more tolerated. However, this does not seem to be the case as was shown by the reaction to Zidane’s infamous head butt. Whether an athlete is male or female, he or she is expected to play within the rules and within the limits of good sportsmanship. Of course, people do still find it more surprising when a female athlete acts violently or loses her temper. This is because social expectations for women are still different.
While what Lambert did is just one incident (and hence not by itself evidence for any general claims), there have been other cases of female athletes behaving badly, thus leading some, such as the folks at CBS, to speculate whether this will become the norm. Of course, the folks in the media tend to engage in a bit of hyperbole and a few incidents do not constitute a norm. That said, changing social expectations and changes in how gender roles are seen do seem to be allowing women to act more like men. On the downside, this seems to have resulted in a increase in bad behavior on the part of some women. This is to be expected-after all, the traditional expectations for women included not being rough or violent and these expectations tended to be enforced fairly vigorously. In contrast, it was expected that “boys would be boys.” Now we can expect that “girls will be girls.”
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Lambert is just downright mean.
Elizabeth Lambert is a junior at the University of New Mexico, and plays for their soccer team the Lobos originally from California (too bad for California). So, this loser knows they are going in to a game that they will most likely lose and since they do not have the talent to score they resort to this kind of play, it has very minor thought to it than let’s say passisng the ball through your opponents defense and scoring a goal.
The other issue is the where were the referees, were they all older white men with their tongues out, enamored and unable to call the game objectively (this game had so many penalties that did not get called), I mean what are they getting paid to do. Who has paid these guys off? Do we have to change the game where only women referees can call women games. After watching the video someone was paid off, that is my conclusion.
And Lizzy, watch you back and please stay out of soccer (you real should be banned, the game does not need people like you in it), so many will be gunning for you now. Who knows maybe you were just drumming up business for your “Occupational Therapy practice”, yah good luck with that, I doubt your bed side manner is any different from your sportsmanship.
Being critical of refs is all part of the tradition of sports. I have no idea if they were being paid off or not-I suspect not, since there seems little reason to do so. Money is generally dolled out for events that are the focus of heavy betting and I suspect that a college soccer game is not a big money event in terms of sports betting. But, I could be wrong since I am not an expert in this field.
Refs sometimes do tolerate more roughness than some people might like-perhaps it is tolerated because a sport that allows more roughness seems to attract more attention.
While Lambert was playing rather rough, I don’t think she deserves the level of vilification she is receiving. I am not going to say that other people do the same sort of thing (only less obviously) because that would be a common practice fallacy. Rather, I’ll just say that as her actions exceeded the provocation, so too do some of the attacks on her. But, she really needs to either leave the game or work seriously on some impulse control.
Actually, women commit more domestic violence than men.
http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/42/15/31-a?eaf
“Regarding perpetration of violence, more women than men (25 percent versus 11 percent) were responsible. In fact, 71 percent of the instigators in nonreciprocal partner violence were women. This finding surprised Whitaker and his colleagues, they admitted in their study report.”
Also, lesbian relationships have the highest rate of domestic violence.
Twenty years ago, those results would have surprised me. But, they are consistent with anecdotal evidence that I have “gathered” over the years. I do wonder if this has been the case for a long time and only recently have men been willing to acknowledge this.
Montana said:
“The other issue is the where were the referees, were they all older white men with their tongues out, enamored and unable to call the game objectively (this game had so many penalties that did not get called), I mean what are they getting paid to do. Who has paid these guys off? Do we have to change the game where only women referees can call women games. After watching the video someone was paid off, that is my conclusion.”
At first I didn’t like your statement, but thinking about it, you’re absolutely right. After being in the Army, I’ve come to believe that men cannot objectively be in authority positions over women without treating them better than they treat males. Seems the NCOs in the Army and referees in sports are just looking for some tail.
Very interesting, I just assumed the Army would be more advanced but I guess in the end it just men and women and the stuff we do or hope to do by favors.
I guess there are a lot of angry women out there.
Who knew 🙂
I never would have guessed…
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/11/13/are-women-becoming-more-violent/
An Amazon.com review of Patricia Pearson’s 1998 book, “When She Was Bad,” cites the following data about other forms of female-perpetrated violent crimes: “Women commit the majority of child homicides in the United States; more than 80 percent of neonaticides; an equal or greater share of severe physical child abuse; an equal rate of spousal assault; about a quarter of child sexual molestations; and a large proportion of elder abuse . . . The rate at which infants are murdered by women . . . is higher than the rate at which women are murdered by men.” With carefully researched facts, fascinating case histories, and incisive argument, Patricia Pearson succeeds in demolishing the myth that women are not naturally violent.
A favorite form of hooliganism from drunk women I arrested was kicking out the rear window of the police cruiser. There was just something about it…
Don’t forget to throw in the 1.3 million babies aborted every year.
I might have dated a few of those women Magus.
Don’t be modest. You dated them all, possibly twice. 🙂
michael mokrysz