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Politically Incorrect Soccer Injuries
New York Times ^ | May 13, 2008 | John Tierney

Posted on 05/13/2008 1:02:37 PM PDT by reaganaut1

Suppose you ran a physical education program and discovered that girls were much more likely to suffer serious injuries than boys are. Before recruiting any more girls, would you want to alert them to this fact? Doesn’t seem like a hard question, does it? But the answer is controversial question in some circles, as Michael Sokolove reports in his Times Magazine cover story on girls’ soccer injuries. He notes that female soccer players are 50 percent more likely to be injured than male soccer players, and up to five times more likely to suffer serious knee injuries. (My Science Times colleague Gina Kolata also wrote about these injuries recently.).) Perhaps “the biggest obstacle” to dealing with these injuries, Mr. Sokolove writes, has been a longstanding reluctance to acknowledge any gender disparity: []

(Excerpt) Read more at tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: feminism; sports
Follow up to article discussed at

The Uneven Playing Field


1 posted on 05/13/2008 1:02:37 PM PDT by reaganaut1
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To: reaganaut1

Ban soccer! ;O)


2 posted on 05/13/2008 1:05:36 PM PDT by Man50D (Fair Tax, you earn it, you keep it!)
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To: reaganaut1
This is all obviously Rovian propaganda. Women and men are completely equal.

However, on the off-chance that there is a disparity, we might just need to go out and injure more men.

3 posted on 05/13/2008 1:11:03 PM PDT by wbill
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To: reaganaut1

I wonder why soccer? I would think tennis or basketball would be just as hard on their knees as soccer.


4 posted on 05/13/2008 1:14:03 PM PDT by lesser_satan (Forget about it, McRino. I don't vote for ecofascists.)
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To: Man50D

Maybe they should stay home and learn knitting.


5 posted on 05/13/2008 1:14:03 PM PDT by Radl
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To: Radl
Maybe they should stay home and learn knitting.

Maybe they should go in the kitchen and make me a sammich.

(just kidding, ladies)

6 posted on 05/13/2008 1:16:05 PM PDT by lesser_satan (Forget about it, McRino. I don't vote for ecofascists.)
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To: reaganaut1

Something they won’t have to worry about:

http://ballcrunchers.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/kicked-in-nuts.jpg


7 posted on 05/13/2008 1:20:32 PM PDT by MrB (You can't reason people out of a position that they didn't use reason to get into in the first place)
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To: lesser_satan

Same thing with the military, female bodies aren’t made for it and they have a very high injury rate, but hey we just need to change our attitudes.


8 posted on 05/13/2008 1:29:00 PM PDT by ansel12 (Sometimes government must intervene; "Man Ticketed For Wearing Speedo On Beach ")
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To: reaganaut1
Remember Rush's push to warn people about soccer injuries?

KOOKS -Keep Our Own Kids Safe

Not to be confused with the other KOOKS. Keepers of Odd Knowledge Society

9 posted on 05/13/2008 1:29:10 PM PDT by Phantom Lord (Fall on to your knees for the Phantom Lord)
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To: ansel12

Or the enemy has to be more sensitive to their needs.


10 posted on 05/13/2008 1:30:46 PM PDT by stevio (Crunchy Con - God, guns, guts, and organically grown crunchy nuts.)
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To: ansel12
I like women to be different. I don't want them to be ugly, sweaty, and hairy like men. That's just gross.

I celebrate the difference . . . and let my wife know as often as possible.

Vive la difference!

11 posted on 05/13/2008 1:39:16 PM PDT by DesertSapper (God, Family, Country . . . . . . . . . . and dead terrorists!!!)
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To: ansel12

True, but like I said, I wonder why soccer seems to be such a culprit. Girls have been playing tennis and basketball for years and I’ve never heard about lots of injuries with those sports.


12 posted on 05/13/2008 1:43:37 PM PDT by lesser_satan (Forget about it, McRino. I don't vote for ecofascists.)
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To: Radl

Maybe they ought to be allowed to make up their own minds, once they have been given all the information. Or is this one of those don’t-worry-your-pretty-little-head-honey kind of deals?

When I was battling with a company back in the just-beginning days of womens’ liberation, one of the most frequent explanations as to why I could not be one of the engineers that attended job sites was “you might get hurt.” (That and “there’s nowhere for you to go to the bathroom.” Like port-o-sans discriminate?) That was in 1973. And they STILL don’t think “girls” are capable of making up their own minds about these things?


13 posted on 05/13/2008 1:43:49 PM PDT by Appleby
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To: reaganaut1

Have you noticed that enlistment rates go up in War Time, especially combat arms. I wonder why?


14 posted on 05/13/2008 1:50:00 PM PDT by Little Bill (Welcome to the Newly Socialist State of New Hampshire)
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To: lesser_satan; Radl

Ironing shirts is dangerous too!
Putting a hot iron in their hand is bad enough, now they have cordless and can chase you from room to room with it. :-)


15 posted on 05/13/2008 1:50:33 PM PDT by JoeSixPack1
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To: lesser_satan

“True, but like I said, I wonder why soccer seems to be such a culprit. Girls have been playing tennis and basketball for years and I’ve never heard about lots of injuries with those sports.”


Different range of motions and contact maybe, in the army for instance one of the problems is pelvic fractures from marching.


16 posted on 05/13/2008 1:59:38 PM PDT by ansel12 (Today's New York Times "Print media alive and well", go to nytimes.com for rest of story.)
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To: lesser_satan

Probably because there is a lot less kicking in basketball and tennis.


17 posted on 05/13/2008 2:00:02 PM PDT by spotbust1 (Procrastinators of the world unite . . . . .tomorrow!!!)
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To: wbill

New slogan : CRIPLE MEN FOR EQUAL RIGHTS! CRIPLE MEN FOR EQUAL RIGHTS! CRIPLE MEN FOR EQUAL RIGHTS!


18 posted on 05/13/2008 2:10:25 PM PDT by vpintheak (Like a muddied spring or a polluted well is a righteous man who gives way to the wicked. Prov. 25:26)
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To: lesser_satan
Girls have been playing tennis and basketball for years and I’ve never heard about lots of injuries with those sports.

For a while, every girl I dated happened to be sports-minded (usually basketball), and of color, and every one of them had at least one orthoscopic knee surgery. They play hard. They get hurt.

/johnny

19 posted on 05/13/2008 2:12:28 PM PDT by JRandomFreeper (Bless us all, each, and every one.)
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To: lesser_satan
I am paraphrasing a sports medicine article I read several years ago and it said girls suffer more ACL tears than males due to the relationship of the pelvis to the knee and relative weakness of the female quadriceps. Someone correct me if I am wrong.
20 posted on 05/13/2008 2:12:57 PM PDT by Apercu ("A man's character is his fate" - Heraclitus)
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To: reaganaut1

I don’t know about the ‘serious knee injuries’ but in my experience women are about twice as likely to say something about minor injuries.

Men just ‘walk it off’.

Also I’ve got to wounder what age group they are talking about.


21 posted on 05/13/2008 2:14:54 PM PDT by Dinsdale
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To: reaganaut1

Whoa, I had no idea soccer was so dangerous for girls.

My daughter’s staying in gymnastics, where it’s safe!


22 posted on 05/13/2008 2:17:36 PM PDT by keats5 (tolerance of intolerant people is cultural suicide)
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To: ansel12

“in the army for instance one of the problems is pelvic fractures from marching.”

I know that back in the day, when a member of the Big Green Machine, marching sure made my arse hurt. Btw, isn’t the pelvis down around there somewhere...


23 posted on 05/13/2008 2:21:28 PM PDT by snoringbear ('Just so to get the terminology correct; it goes like this; the federal government is the Pimp, the)
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To: Dinsdale

Having met and delt with many young women i have observed that they have been trained since birth to fear everything.

When on their own they become near paranoid and can’t function for fear of some injury. From an insect, from drinking water not in a bottle, from almost any named chamical except those that hydrate skin. The list goes on and on

Oh yes.....global warming and enviromental doom


24 posted on 05/13/2008 2:21:37 PM PDT by bert (K.E. N.P. +12 . The Bitcons will elect a Democrat by default)
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To: reaganaut1

When women were allowed into the Navy’s flight program the women were immediately given less difficult physical fitness tests. Old news.


25 posted on 05/13/2008 2:25:01 PM PDT by pabianice
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To: bert

Don’t know if I believe this. I’ve had two wives, and each could throw like a major league pitcher (ashtrays, vases), albeit with very poor control, which is why I still have both eyes and my stunning good looks.

One of them could also kick more than adequately — which made her preference for close-quarter scratching quite a surprise.

Then again, maybe it’s only Italian women who are physically equipped for heavy contact sports like marriage.


26 posted on 05/13/2008 2:58:40 PM PDT by Kiss Me Hardy
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To: lesser_satan

Basketball certainly is. Few women who play more than 10 years or so escape an ACL injury.


27 posted on 05/13/2008 3:09:44 PM PDT by Straight Vermonter (Posting from deep behind the Maple Curtain)
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To: reaganaut1
>Perhaps “the biggest obstacle” to dealing with these injuries, Mr. Sokolove writes, has been a longstanding reluctance to acknowledge any gender disparity<<

But yet, every county I have lived in has a coed soccer league, while at the same time they have a girls-only league, but NO boys only league.

Madness. . .

28 posted on 05/13/2008 4:51:29 PM PDT by Hulka
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To: ansel12
What started out as an understandable desire to give girls equal opportunities turned into a campaign to legally mandate equal outcomes.

That's the result of MANY left-wing programs. Civil rights turned into Affirmative Action turned into lawsuits when blacks didn't apply for jobs.

Schools are forced to give away grades to groups that cannot compete.

Or they are forced to change the structure in such a way as to discourage boys from participating.

Money is confiscated from the productive to give to the non-productive.

Fire departments were forced to change the minimum requirements for firemen.

Florida and Michigan have to vote again because the girl is losing.

The list goes on.

29 posted on 05/13/2008 5:01:56 PM PDT by gitmo (From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.)
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To: Dinsdale
Men just ‘walk it off’

You can't "walk off" an ACL that's torn in half. Male or female, you lie on the ground crying and cursing.

30 posted on 05/13/2008 5:43:04 PM PDT by ottbmare
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To: bert
Having met and delt with many young women i have observed that they have been trained since birth to fear everything.

I have no idea what you're talking about. You have "met" and "delt with" [sic] many young women? Do you have any daughters or granddaughters? The young women I know, including my daughter, her friends, the myriad girls she teaches as a riding instructor, and our neighbors and classmates, are fiercely competitive athletes as well as lovely young ladies. My daughter and I are hunters who think nothing of galloping our horses at 35 miles an hour toward a four-foot fence made of telephone poles. We ski steep, deep powder in dense trees, and we love shooting, too. It was only a health problem that kept my daughter out of the Army, but her college roommate went to Iraq.

I don't know where you're finding these faint hearts. Most of our friends love horses, guns, and trucks (and lace dresses).

31 posted on 05/13/2008 5:51:12 PM PDT by ottbmare
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To: Apercu
I am paraphrasing a sports medicine article I read several years ago and it said girls suffer more ACL tears than males due to the relationship of the pelvis to the knee and relative weakness of the female quadriceps. Someone correct me if I am wrong.

That's what my orthopedist told me after I racked up my knees skiing moguls. He said that women with wide hips (like me) had to take particular care to stabilize their knees by strengthening all the muscles that can help hold those fragile joints together, particularly if we are tall and thus put additional stress on the knee in a fall.

Women are engineered for walking a thousand miles, not for a lot of the stuff we do. Me, I'm concentrating on horseback riding. No stress to the knees there.

32 posted on 05/13/2008 5:56:09 PM PDT by ottbmare
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To: ottbmare
Me, I'm concentrating on horseback riding. No stress to the knees there.

Though I guess you're not talking about jockeying because there's a LOT of stress to the knees in racing.
33 posted on 05/13/2008 6:00:29 PM PDT by aruanan
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To: ottbmare
Sure anything that involves a hospital visit will count, but this study includes 'minor injuries', which could mean anything depending on who is reading it.

What percentage of bloody noses wind up counting as minor injuries in this study by gender and age?

There is no way to know.

34 posted on 05/13/2008 6:07:08 PM PDT by Dinsdale
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To: Dinsdale

Well, if they’re talking about girls getting more serious injuries than boys, that’s probably not a bloody nose. Soccer is infamous for causing knee injuries.


35 posted on 05/13/2008 7:08:21 PM PDT by ottbmare
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To: aruanan
I guess you're not talking about jockeying because there's a LOT of stress to the knees in racing.

Heavens, no. Riding racehorses was done long ago, back when I was 19 and still had knees. I'm waaaay too tall for that anyway. Today I prefer my Thoroughbreds off the track (hence the screen name). Hunting and dressage, mostly.

Interestingly, equitation is one of the few sports (if indeed it is a sport) in which men and women can compete on a perfectly equal basis, because it is the horse who has all the muscle. There are equal numbers of fine horsemen and horsewomen, though we ride very differently.

36 posted on 05/13/2008 7:54:29 PM PDT by ottbmare
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