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!
Chris Stevenson has just validated my long held theory that there are actually three genders in the human race.
Ubermenchen alpha males like Chris. (1-3 percent of men)
All females. (100 percent of women)
Loser guys like me. (97-99 percent of men).
The Chris-like males can say anything they want, and all females will find it charming. Stevensonian fellows can, as Chris just showed, take the sensitive Alan Alda approach and be lionized by all women for their compassionate understanding of the heavy burden women have long had to shoulder.
Or they can adopt a bad-ass mofo kind of vibe, and all women will shrug girlishly, melt, and think to themselves, oh how I love the bad boys!
It makes no difference what the Chris Stevenson's of the world say: the ears have been prepared by evolution to find it irresistible.
Loser guys like me, on the other hand, can't say anything without provoking the rolling of eyes and sneers of distaste. If we are compassionate, it is dismissed as wimpishness.
If we are bad-ass mofos, it is dismissed as bad-ass mofodom.
If I were, in point of fact, to go through a standard day as me, but reading from a script of a standard day of Chris Stevenson-like sayings, not varying by so much as a syllable from the words he would have said, it is quite likely that I will end up in a jail for some kind of violation.
Chris, on the other hand, could go through his day saying the vilest most repugnant sorts of things I typically do say in my day, again not diverging in anyway from the Jim script, and he would almost certainly end his day with dozens of new applications to join his harem.
Alas, it is guys like me who need to wear women's suits; and guys like Chris who women invariably would prefer to wear nothing at all.
Such is life.
I soldier on.
Chris Stevenson has just validated my long held theory that there are actually three genders in the human race.
Ubermenchen alpha males like Chris. (1-3 percent of men)
All females. (100 percent of women)
Loser guys like me. (97-99 percent of men).
The Chris-like males can say anything they want, and all females will find it charming. Stevensonian fellows can, as Chris just showed, take the sensitive Alan Alda approach and be lionized by all women for their compassionate understanding of the heavy burden women have long had to shoulder.
Or they can adopt a bad-ass mofo kind of vibe, and all women will shrug girlishly, melt, and think to themselves, oh how I love the bad boys!
It makes no difference what the Chris Stevenson's of the world say: the ears have been prepared by evolution to find it irresistible.
Loser guys like me, on the other hand, can't say anything without provoking the rolling of eyes and sneers of distaste. If we are compassionate, it is dismissed as wimpishness.
If we are bad-ass mofos, it is dismissed as bad-ass mofodom.
If I were, in point of fact, to go through a standard day as me, but reading from a script of a standard day of Chris Stevenson-like sayings, not varying by so much as a syllable from the words he would have said, it is quite likely that I will end up in a jail for some kind of violation.
Chris, on the other hand, could go through his day saying the vilest most repugnant sorts of things I typically do say in my day, again not diverging in anyway from the Jim script, and he would almost certainly end his day with dozens of new applications to join his harem.
Alas, it is guys like me who need to wear women's suits; and guys like Chris who women invariably would prefer to wear nothing at all.
Such is life.
I soldier on.
