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.
Again, sorry.
Well, I actually owe you an apology, too, seeing as how I began my long post with a slight. I reckon I got my back up about your comments on Southerners. So how about let's call it even?
Cheers -S
And then there is the guy who got *** implants on a wager that he wouldn't do it for a year. So if some guy gets *** implants, does that mean he would still be restricted to jammers only? Or would the decency clause kick in then and allow him to wear the women's suit? Just wondering on behalf of those of indeterminate sexuality.:)
Now THAT is an interesting legal question.
What do you reckon would be the ruling for a swimmer of ambiguous gender? (Not sexuality, which refers to who you prefer to sleep with.)
Hmmm.... Well, since both sexes are required to cover genitalia and buttocks, oddly enough I reckon the presence/absence of female breasts would have to be the criterion.
Which brings us back to the whole MB question....
The descendants of those that braved Indian attacks, wrote the Constitution, fought off the Brits in New Orleans, and ran the government in its infancy probably don't look too kindly upon being stereotyped as ignorant Crackers.
I'm proud to be a cracker (which I am).
I do get riled up about the stereotypes sometimes, but other times I look around me and think, "Sweet Jesus, I can't stand it here any longer."
Then I go up to the hills, sit on my cousin's porch, drink bourbon and watch the sun set, and I know I'll be buried next to my great-great-grandparents when I die, and I can't imagine leaving.
Besides, what the hell else am I gonna do? Go put up with a bunch of uppity Yankees? :p
Jim's got a point here. As I read Chris's post I thought "oh no...it's an oncoming train" but then, inexplicably, elise526 agreed. I guess there's not much else to do now, but this: :bow:
Be sure you pak the cah out bak! For the North grand opening exhibit, let's be sure to round up a bunch of Archie Bunkers with leather warm-up suits that push everybody over to get in line for the bagels.
NY bagels are worth pushin for.... and this seems like the perfect time to also plug Yonah Shimmel's Knishes on Houston (pronounced "how-stun") st.
just one problem with those delicious kasha hand grenades.... you'll be hungry again in a week!
Hard to say where I'm "from" any more specifically than Florida and Georgia.
Born on the panhandle (before there was anything there), raised in a Georgia textile mill town, educated at Stetson, UF, and UGA, now living outside of a tiny town in N/Central GA. (If you've seen Zombieland, the rural scenes were filmed right down the road from my house, and the yellow Hummer scene in another small town nearby.)
All my family live in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and N. Carolina.
When I was an age-group swimmer I swam for the team they put together for Steve Lundquist. Excellent coaches. That area used to be horse country, but now it's pretty much part of Atlanta.
I truly do apologize for my earlier slight of your zone of the country, Mr. Sharpsburger. My beloved twin brother John is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, where he invented the sport of John Ball that was played in the elevator banks of Granville Towers for about 36 hours by the members of the UNC Tarheels basketball team during the George Karl Mitch Kupchak playing era.
The authorities shut the sport down when too much damage was racked up.
Anyhow, my great grandmother was from Memphis, and we have a portrait of her hanging in our dining room, a prominent bayonet mark where some yankee *** tried to spear the poor woman.
I hate us yankees with a vengeance for what they did to great granny's portrait!
For what it's worth, I should add that I didn't realize you were from the South. I actually thought you were a Harvard trained lawyer with offices in Boston, New York, Paris, and Papua, New Guinea.
We also have one other thing in common. I was a zombie extra in George Romaro's classic film, Dawn of the Dead, which was filmed in the 70s in the Monroeville Mall.
On a somewhat different note, this poll has had more lead changes than a Duke-UNC bball game. I am confident that cross dressing, like a UNC victory, will emerge victorious in the end!
Hey Jim, is Leslie really that hot looking in person, or did you use some sort of CGI app?
BTW if my wife sees this post, she will likely attack my car with a golf club (and then tell the authorities she was simply trying to extract me from the vehicle).
Actually, Leslie is much hotter in person. I had to use a special cooling lens to prevent the camera from melting into a spurt of hot magma.
I can say this, right?
Maybe ignore the phrase "a spurt of" and just keep it at "melting into hot magma."
At least when you tell your wife.
Hard to say where I'm "from" any more specifically than Florida and Georgia.
Born on the panhandle (before there was anything there), raised in a Georgia textile mill town, educated at Stetson, UF, and UGA, now living outside of a tiny town in N/Central GA. (If you've seen Zombieland, the rural scenes were filmed right down the road from my house, and the yellow Hummer scene in another small town nearby.)
All my family live in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and N. Carolina.
When I was an age-group swimmer I swam for the team they put together for Steve Lundquist. Excellent coaches. That area used to be horse country, but now it's pretty much part of Atlanta.
You must not be too far from Griffin, Georgia. This is where my mother is from and where I spent part of my summers when I was very young. Her family has been in Georgia forever. Later generations settled in Henry County/Spalding County, Georgia during the 1820s. Actually, they were the first settlers on the land after the Creek Indians. Probably a marriage to a Creek because by DNA testing, I am 14% Native American. My cousins still live on the land in what is known as the Birdie community (pretty close to Sunny Side and Hampton).
Dad's family came to Jamestown, Virginia in 1638. The ancestor that I am descended from got killed in a Powhatan raid in 1644, but fortunately his infant son was spared. Although my dad was born above the Mason-Dixon Line in Buffalo, New York. He and my mother now live below the Mason-Dixon line and his family is still in Virginia, mainly around the Charlottesville area.
Given my roots, guess you can understand why I feel it necessary to defend the South. Have to also add that my great-great grandfather fought at Antietam and Gettysburg, and was at Appomatox when Lee surrendered.
I was educated at Emory and Georgetown, but am quite the UGA fan! Been kind of a rough year for the Dawgs, hasn't it?
Was the team that you competed for connected to Tallman Pools?
Bet Jim would love to hang out with my cousins in Georgia. It's all about fast cars and guns.
Jim, I think Chris and Fort have the right idea about what to call the suit. You sure don't want to be accused of cross-dressing in Georgia. Of course, we could send you to a couple of night clubs in Atlanta where some people might think it quite cool.
