Phil Cohen asks whose vision of the future the Olympic legacy will fulfill.
file under “posts I’ll read once they’re printed as a book”
‘Translating the British, 2012’ by Carol Ann Duffy
A summer of rain, then a gap in the clouds
and The Queen jumped from the sky
to the cheering crowds.
We speak Shakespeare here,
a hundred tongues, one-voiced; the moon bronze or silver,
sun gold, from Cardiff to Edinburgh
by way of London Town,
on the Giant’s Causeway;
we say we want to be who we truly are,
now, we roar it. Welcome to us.
We’ve had our pockets picked,
the soft, white hands of bankers,
bold as brass, filching our gold, our silver;
we want it back.
We are Mo Farah lifting the 10,000 metres gold.
We want new running-tracks in his name.
For Jessica Ennis, the same; for the Brownlee brothers,
Rutherford, Ohuruogu, Whitlock, Tweddle,
for every medal earned,
we want school playing-fields returned.
Enough of the soundbite abstract nouns,
austerity, policy, legacy, of tightening metaphorical belts;
we got on our real bikes,
for we are Bradley Wiggins,
side-burned, Mod, god;
we are Sir Chris Hoy,
Laura Trott, Victoria Pendleton, Kenny, Hindes,
Clancy, Burke, Kennaugh and Geraint Thomas,
Olympian names.
We want more cycle lanes.
Or we saddled our steed,
or we paddled our own canoe,
or we rowed in an eight or a four or a two;
our names, Glover and Stanning; Baillie and Stott;
Adlington, Ainslie, Wilson, Murray,
Valegro (Dujardin’s horse).
We saw what we did. We are Nicola Adams and Jade Jones,
bring on the fighting kids.
We sense new weather.
We are on our marks. We are all in this together.
in the words of my friend, “I wonder if they regret making her poet laureate”
(Source: Guardian)
I wanna be an olympic groupie
Like literally travel with the American team to the Olympics and just fuck a bunch of American athletes.
“Awww you were 1/100ths away from a bronze medal? Let m suck your dick to make it better.”
“You won a gold medal? You gettin’ some pussy.”
“You might have broke the olympic record, but can you break my orgasm record?”
OH MY GOD that’s my dream
well they’re a randy bunch
they crashed Grindr when they all arrived and there’s like 10 condoms per athlete being given out
if you ignore the fact that the Olympics probably costs more, and that’s not really a good use of a pie chart, and this is good stuff
What if every Olympic sport was photographed like beach volleyball?
Would be funny if it weren’t awful.
(Source: metro.us)
the-lesbian-guide-to-the-galaxy:
Olympics struggle with ‘policing femininity’:
There are female athletes who will be competing at the Olympic Games this summer after undergoing treatment to make them less masculine.
Still others are being secretly investigated for displaying overly manly characteristics, as sport’s highest medical officials attempt to quantify — and regulate — the hormonal difference between male and female athletes.
Caster Semenya, the South African runner who was so fast and muscular that many suspected she was a man, exploded onto the front pages three years ago. She was considered an outlier, a one-time anomaly.
But similar cases are emerging all over the world, and Semenya, who was banned from competition for 11 months while authorities investigated her sex, is back, vying for gold.
Semenya and other women like her face a complex question: Does a female athlete whose body naturally produces unusually high levels of male hormones, allowing them to put on more muscle mass and recover faster, have an “unfair” advantage?
In a move critics call “policing femininity,” recent rule changes by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the governing body of track and field, state that for a woman to compete, her testosterone must not exceed the male threshold.
If it does, she must have surgery or receive hormone therapy prescribed by an expert IAAF medical panel and submit to regular monitoring. So far, at least a handful of athletes — the figure is confidential — have been prescribed treatment, but their numbers could increase. Last month, the International Olympic Committee began the approval process to adopt similar rules for the Games.
There’s a lot going on here, but here’s what jumped out at us immediately: Women, particularly women athletes, are constantly told they’re not as strong or fast as men—and now that they’re proving otherwise, they’re being forced to undergo hormone treatments. We don’t think it’s a coincidence that women of color are coming under fire for this more than white women. From the article: “Lindsay Perry, another scientist, says sometimes whole teams of African women are dead ringers for men.” This is a clear example of how we’ve constructed a very particular, very narrow ideal of femininity and womanhood that devalues and casts aside black women in particular.
That’s like saying men who are too tall can’t be allowed to play basketball, men whose have naturally more testosterone can’t compete because it’s unfair to other men, and so on, and so on. Anyone with a physically natural advantage must be hindered. That’s not how sports work. What if they told a young man he was too big to play football? You can’t only real women can compete, and real women have to be this size and have this much of a certain hormone, otherwise they’re not women….but they’re not men either.
All of the above comments. When you have to try so hard to maintain femininity and masculinity on YOUR standards…
Then your standards are bullshit for everyone, save a select few who fit the quota effortlessly…
Did we forget the strongest person in the world is female? Cis people stay fucking with shit that they should just leave alone.That’s a neat little trap they’ve got there - women can’t be as strong or as fast as men, therefore, a woman who IS that strong and fast is not a woman. Because logic.
ugh that’s shitty. circular logic reinforcing sexism.
(via lipsredasroses)
"If the cyclists were simply doing what they have always done on Friday night, then so were the police. As the cyclists were being detained, the Olympics opening ceremony was lauding Suffragettes and trade unionists that were also oppressed and demonised for threatening the pageantry and power of the day. It was ever thus: “generations of people must fight the same battles over and over again,” as Tony Benn once said – even if those people are simply cyclists deciding that a militarised sporting event will not change them."
— The Olympic spirit? Cyclists banned from Newham for the duration of the Games.
A group of Newham Monitoring Project Community Legal Observer volunteers were today “banned” from entering Stratford Park, a site open to the general public who wish to watch the free Olympic livescreens, by security on the ground who apparently accused them of “making it easy for criminals and giving them tips” when giving out Stop and Search rights-information cards to members of the public.
Olympics Anti-Freedom Update #4, I guess
"As civil liberties campaigner Shami Chakrabati helped carry the Olympic flag in the closing minutes of the Olympics opening ceremony, police were laying into demonstrating cyclists just a short walk from the Stratford stadium. The Critical Mass protest over the elite games lanes, to be used mainly by VIPs as they move effortlessly between Park Lane hotels and the games venues, was attacked by police, and a number arrested. They were held on a bus without food or drink all night waiting to be processed. We can expect similar heavy policing for any dissent during the games."
—
from Lindsey German’s A Tale of Two Cities
funnily enough, Danny Boyle’s Olympics opening ceremony didn’t cover the attacks on the NHS, our history of imperialism, or the austerity and degradation of civil liberties rife today
this counts as Olympics Anti-Freedom Update #3
