Here is a question for the lawyers out there.
Do FINA regulations supersede US federal anti-sex discrimination laws?
Granted, I am not sure I know what the latter are. However, if I were to show up at a USMS swimming meet, wearing a perfectly legal women's swimming suit, one of the zipper-free kneeskin type models that also covered my ample boobage, and the officials rightly disqualified me for wearing this get-up because it is against the FINA/USMS agreed upon New Order, could I then turn around and sue under some federal statute prohibiting discrimination because gender?
In my mind, the new FINA rules are going to end up making swimming even more of a dying sport for boys in the US than the unintended consequences of Title IX, etc. Girls, especially in the younger age groups, can often beat boys in swimming, and in fact our own Mr. Qbrain got a top 10 time in the men's 30-34 LCM 1500 this summer. His wife, if I am remembering correctly, beat his time but failed to make the top 10 in the women's category.
If anything, it is we men who are now at a disadvantage. I say make the dystaff gender wear thongs and let us wear body suits fashioned to look like very streamlined tuxedos.
Suits for women now remain pretty much unchanged by the new FINA ruling, with the exception, that is, of getting rid of zippers and getting rid of non textiles. But that means women can continue to swim in what are still arguably very fast suits--FS1's, for example, that are very close to the short john types that helped loads of people get their best times. Men are prohibited from wearing anything but jammers.
Chicks, in other words, get 2004 technology; guys are back to the 60s. Why not let us go back to the 20s instead, when Johnny Weismuller wore a full body suit, albeit of wool?
So, in the spirit of Larry David, who recently concluded an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm with the line, "I'm Larry David, and I am comfortable in women's underwear"--I propose that any men who want to join me in the latest civil rights battle of our time show up at nationals this summer in women's suits and accompanied by our class action lawyer, and join me in echoing in a collective voice that rings out in natatoriums all across the fruited plain:
"I am a male USMS swimmer, and I am comfortable wearing women's suits."
Provided I can find an esquire who will agree to take the case on a contingency basis, I say this to the USMS sexist powers that be:
See you in court! Suckers!
It would be clearer if you didn't muddle the two yourelf, btw.
But no, there would seem to be no legal basis for a claim of discrimination.
First of all, Mr. Sharpsburger, thank you for your very erudite legal explication. I mean this in all sincerity even as I must now ask the court's permission to treat you as a hostile witness.
My god, man! Has the stench of ivy from your former legal institution of higher learning so compacted your sinuses and bamboozled your nostrils and brochial tubes that you can't quite breathe right? What a stodgy, stodgy interpretation of "settled precedent"--of "conventional legal wisdom"--as if the latter phrase weren't rollickingly oxymoronic!
I see clearly now that my case shall depend upon a different breed of lawyer from the Harvard-Yale paper chase pointy heads!
I shall need someone hungrier, perhaps even on the verge of starvation, someone with rich hardwon experience enriching both himself and his dubious clients in settlements from nuisance lawsuits of the type he has filed countless numbers, in the process clogging our dysfunctional courts with the very impragmatism that finer legal minds disdain but secretly envy!
I will need, in short, the legal theories of a graduate from the New Jersey School of Traffic Law and Ambulance Chasing, or similar institution, one that trains real, in the trenches style lawyers, or at the very least, allows them to purchase certificates of training on the Internet at reasonable cost, certificates embossed on fairly real sheep skin!
I have never worn a knee skin in my life, absolutely abhor them ...
How can you absolutely abhor something you have never tried? Sorry, Leslie, but this seems to me the very worst kind of stereotyping imaginable. Expect a letter from my lawyer, a graduate of the NJSTLAC.
Women have to wear tops for public decency standards; men do not.
Lordy! Open your eyes, woman! Granted, sagging boobage may be offensive to some. But sagging hairy boobage is offensive to all. I know. I have these, and they offend even me!
Whiner! :)Core work!
Touche, dear woman. And touche redux!
It would be clearer if you didn't muddle the two yourelf, btw.
But no, there would seem to be no legal basis for a claim of discrimination.
First of all, Mr. Sharpsburger, thank you for your very erudite legal explication. I mean this in all sincerity even as I must now ask the court's permission to treat you as a hostile witness.
My god, man! Has the stench of ivy from your former legal institution of higher learning so compacted your sinuses and bamboozled your nostrils and brochial tubes that you can't quite breathe right? What a stodgy, stodgy interpretation of "settled precedent"--of "conventional legal wisdom"--as if the latter phrase weren't rollickingly oxymoronic!
I see clearly now that my case shall depend upon a different breed of lawyer from the Harvard-Yale paper chase pointy heads!
I shall need someone hungrier, perhaps even on the verge of starvation, someone with rich hardwon experience enriching both himself and his dubious clients in settlements from nuisance lawsuits of the type he has filed countless numbers, in the process clogging our dysfunctional courts with the very impragmatism that finer legal minds disdain but secretly envy!
I will need, in short, the legal theories of a graduate from the New Jersey School of Traffic Law and Ambulance Chasing, or similar institution, one that trains real, in the trenches style lawyers, or at the very least, allows them to purchase certificates of training on the Internet at reasonable cost, certificates embossed on fairly real sheep skin!
I have never worn a knee skin in my life, absolutely abhor them ...
How can you absolutely abhor something you have never tried? Sorry, Leslie, but this seems to me the very worst kind of stereotyping imaginable. Expect a letter from my lawyer, a graduate of the NJSTLAC.
Women have to wear tops for public decency standards; men do not.
Lordy! Open your eyes, woman! Granted, sagging boobage may be offensive to some. But sagging hairy boobage is offensive to all. I know. I have these, and they offend even me!
Whiner! :)Core work!
Touche, dear woman. And touche redux!