I’ve consumed a lot of the work of Dr. Stacy Sims, and expert on women’s exercise and physiology, and she says it’s imperative for female athletes to strengthen their cores, and in particular, glutes, to prevent knee injuries. With homework and busy lives, it’s often too much to expect female high school and collegiate athletes to devote time outside of practice for core avid glute exercises as well as stretches. I know because I was one, and that dad is having the same experience with his daughter. Instead, coaches of female sports teams should recognize their athletes are not small men and devote practice time for core and glute work and knee stretches. If coaches want their athletes to perform well as women and girls, they need to train them as women and girls.
Ok that's very interesting about the sexed distribution of ACL injuries. I'd be curious to put that idea in conversation with this one, about broader movement patterns and societal factors also affecting youth ACL injuries. https://substack.com/@guenbradbury/p-148399359
> Where do you find it hardest to accept that frailty is not a passing interruption of a natural state of strength?
Where support is not immediately available--a widespread problem w/o a singular clear solution. It's all very well to say and believe that I personally have physical limits or needs--but what about the effects on people who also depend on me? Like, if I need to stay in bed all day, my young children are going to be negatively affected, b/c my husband's job is not set up for flexibility and, while we do have supportive friends, we don't currently have grownups who could drop everything to help on a moment's notice. It sometimes feels more "realistic" to just try to muscle through, even though that's ultimately less truthful (not to mention more harmful)!
I was very honored by the mention, and I also suspect that there is far less disagreement between us than might initially appear. Our starting point seems to be the same: the inescapable reality of the body and the knowledge of its suffering.
The female body confronts us with asymmetry, limitation, vulnerability, and, as you put it way better than me, dependence. For women in particular, these realities are difficult to ignore, because they are inscribed so visibly in fertility, pregnancy, and in the long history of expectations that have surrounded them.
My argument has never been that every response to this suffering constitutes feminism, nor that every revolt against suffering is misguided or gnostic in nature. Revolt itself can even be necessary, and at times redemptive. In my book Autópsia do Feminismo https://amzn.to/3OOL4qG, I trace this possibility back to the figure of the Mater Dolorosa: suffering can be sublimated, transfigured, and ultimately ordered toward the truth revealed at Calvary. The uterus has long been associated with suffering —already in the Greek hystera — yet redeemed through Christ it becomes, symbolically, closer to the ancient Hebrew word רֶחֶם, mercy or maternal compassion.
My claim (and I recognize that this was not entirely clear in that article) is simply that the modern feminist movement represents one historically specific way in which this encounter with bodily suffering has been interpreted and politicized. I argue that this particular political form depends upon a specific theological genealogy — one that emerges within the context of Protestant reinterpretations of original sin, of a reconfigured Eve, and of the gradual symbolic displacement of the Virgin Mary as Theotokos and maternal mediator within the Christian imagination. I am fully aware that this is a strong thesis, which is precisely why it required an entire book to develop the argument with the care it demands.
But at the level of first principles, the reality of the body really is both gift and cross, and human beings are always tempted to respond to this reality in different ways. In that sense, I greatly appreciated your framing, because it keeps the conversation grounded where it properly belongs— not in abstract ideological labels (whether one chooses to speak of feminism, feminisms, or other terms), but in the deeper question of how we come to understand, interpret, and ultimately live with the frailty of our embodied lives.
I’ve consumed a lot of the work of Dr. Stacy Sims, and expert on women’s exercise and physiology, and she says it’s imperative for female athletes to strengthen their cores, and in particular, glutes, to prevent knee injuries. With homework and busy lives, it’s often too much to expect female high school and collegiate athletes to devote time outside of practice for core avid glute exercises as well as stretches. I know because I was one, and that dad is having the same experience with his daughter. Instead, coaches of female sports teams should recognize their athletes are not small men and devote practice time for core and glute work and knee stretches. If coaches want their athletes to perform well as women and girls, they need to train them as women and girls.
I'm about to go do my deadlifts (new for me!) in the basement of my work building because I really want sustainable strength.
Ok that's very interesting about the sexed distribution of ACL injuries. I'd be curious to put that idea in conversation with this one, about broader movement patterns and societal factors also affecting youth ACL injuries. https://substack.com/@guenbradbury/p-148399359
> Where do you find it hardest to accept that frailty is not a passing interruption of a natural state of strength?
Where support is not immediately available--a widespread problem w/o a singular clear solution. It's all very well to say and believe that I personally have physical limits or needs--but what about the effects on people who also depend on me? Like, if I need to stay in bed all day, my young children are going to be negatively affected, b/c my husband's job is not set up for flexibility and, while we do have supportive friends, we don't currently have grownups who could drop everything to help on a moment's notice. It sometimes feels more "realistic" to just try to muscle through, even though that's ultimately less truthful (not to mention more harmful)!
I was very honored by the mention, and I also suspect that there is far less disagreement between us than might initially appear. Our starting point seems to be the same: the inescapable reality of the body and the knowledge of its suffering.
The female body confronts us with asymmetry, limitation, vulnerability, and, as you put it way better than me, dependence. For women in particular, these realities are difficult to ignore, because they are inscribed so visibly in fertility, pregnancy, and in the long history of expectations that have surrounded them.
My argument has never been that every response to this suffering constitutes feminism, nor that every revolt against suffering is misguided or gnostic in nature. Revolt itself can even be necessary, and at times redemptive. In my book Autópsia do Feminismo https://amzn.to/3OOL4qG, I trace this possibility back to the figure of the Mater Dolorosa: suffering can be sublimated, transfigured, and ultimately ordered toward the truth revealed at Calvary. The uterus has long been associated with suffering —already in the Greek hystera — yet redeemed through Christ it becomes, symbolically, closer to the ancient Hebrew word רֶחֶם, mercy or maternal compassion.
My claim (and I recognize that this was not entirely clear in that article) is simply that the modern feminist movement represents one historically specific way in which this encounter with bodily suffering has been interpreted and politicized. I argue that this particular political form depends upon a specific theological genealogy — one that emerges within the context of Protestant reinterpretations of original sin, of a reconfigured Eve, and of the gradual symbolic displacement of the Virgin Mary as Theotokos and maternal mediator within the Christian imagination. I am fully aware that this is a strong thesis, which is precisely why it required an entire book to develop the argument with the care it demands.
But at the level of first principles, the reality of the body really is both gift and cross, and human beings are always tempted to respond to this reality in different ways. In that sense, I greatly appreciated your framing, because it keeps the conversation grounded where it properly belongs— not in abstract ideological labels (whether one chooses to speak of feminism, feminisms, or other terms), but in the deeper question of how we come to understand, interpret, and ultimately live with the frailty of our embodied lives.