Nike Celebrates Title IX by Reminding Us That It Wasn’t Easy For Women Who Just Wanted to “Play Ball” [Video]

Using children to advance an agenda – hmmmm, where have we seen that before? Always creepy.

Do you say the same thing about all advertisements with children in them, Dave? And exactly what “agenda” are you talking about?

From the youtube channel comments:

“75 to 80% of Nike sweatshop workers are women, paid thirteen cents to
twenty cents per hour, working nine to thirteen hours per day, six days a
week, with men over the age of 30 usually in the supervising role,
dishing out intimidation sprinkled with the occasional bit of corporal
punishment and sexual abuse. But hey, maybe if I buy some trainers, I
can become a feminist too!”

“MNCs have a long history of using social movements in order to sell
products made in sweatshop conditions. However admirable the sentiment
is, this is essentially turning feminism into a advert to buy some
trainers, many of them probably made in factories by women earning
rock-bottom wages with no rights – women are used more than men in
export-sector goods. Please don’t be taken in by this rubbish.”

Glad everyone isn’t so gullible as to accept this contrived BS marketing.  

Joan Benoit!  ::swoons::

While i appreciate the original intent of Title 9, these days its actually more of a hinderance to female sports then a help.

Did you know which high school & college sport is the most extreme & has the most injuries regardless of gender, per year? Cheer-leading. Except that thanks to title 9 its actually not considered a sport at all… Because title 9 never made stipulations for women playing any sport not first popularised by men.

But apart from that i’m a little torn over this commercial. While i appreciate what its trying to do i’m also well aware that in any sport where we compete indircetly against men, we have a tendency to be decimated. When we compete directly it becomes a little more obvious that we are outclassed. There are very few sports where world records are held by women & usually they are in sports where agility, and less body mass is more important then raw strength & combativeness.

:) Can’t like or love this enough.

First – not sure how you go from cheerleading not getting the recognition it deserves to Title IX being the problem. Personally, I’d blame the patriarchal notion that anything that women do is less worthy than what men do (y’know, like the opinion expressed in your factually incorrect third paragraph, to which I’ll get in a sec), but that’s just me. 

Second – you’re factually wrong. One of the reasons that a lot of sports where there’s no reason for men and women to compete separately (archery, anyone?) they do, because when women first started competing lo these many years ago… they beat the men. Which is not to say that every woman beat every man… but that the best woman was not worse than the worse man. and men wouldn’t stand for it.

Also, in the (very few) sports where women and men are allowed to compete neck-and-neck (all sorts of ultra running and swimming competitions), they actually DO compete neck-and-neck, with women beating men regularly (and vice versa, of course), and even coming out as top of the field.

Also also…. why are you dismissing “sports where agility and less body mass is more important than raw strength and combativeness”? why are they “less good” or “less worthy” than sports where men beat each other to a pulp? again, you are showing our society’s instinctive bias against anything that women can do – especially if they have a potential to be better at it than men.

TL;DR – you are surprisingly sexist and ignorant of actual facts for someone commenting on the Mary Sue.

not sure how you go from cheerleading not getting the recognition it deserves to Title IX being the problem. Personally, I’d blame the patriarchal notion that anything that women do is less worthy than what men do

Um, no & no. Title IX actually stopped Cheerleading being recognised as a sport because there was no mens cheerleading team & title IX existed to legally alllow women a chance to compete in sports in which men also competed. These days title IX is just a legal hold over, that benefits no one.

“Second – you’re factually wrong. One of the reasons that a lot of sports where there’s no reason for men and women to compete separately (archery, anyone?) they do, because when women first started competing lo these many years ago”

Um, im not sure where you got that idea from. The fact is after checking the olympics results boards for the summer olympics, its clear that both mens & womens teams are pretty close… Unlike there original position when they were first allowed to compete.

“Also, in the (very few) sports where women and men are allowed to compete neck-and-neck (all sorts of ultra running and swimming competitions), they actually DO compete neck-and-neck, with women beating men regularly”

No they don’t. For instance, the world record held by women for the 100 metre sprint is actually the minimum requirement for men in sprint clubs, that aren’t for the olympics. In fact a man has to beat our olympic world record score just to be allowed a chance to compete at the olympics.

“Also also…. why are you dismissing “sports where agility and less body mass is more important than raw strength and combativeness”?”

I didn’t dismiss them. I said those are the ones we excel at. Of course Archery would be on that list, something we do quite well at.

“why are they “less good” or “less worthy” than sports where men beat each other to a pulp? again”

who said anything about beating each other into a pulp? Basketball for instance is a combative sport, as it literally puts one teams skills up against anothers, directly.

“again, you are showing our society’s instinctive bias against anything that women can do – especially if they have a potential to be better at it than men.”

I’m sorry but no. The fact is that we do get decimated by men in most sports: This has nothing to do with idealogue & everything to do with 100 years worth of collected data.

Maybe one day we will be capable of competing on the same level as men, but at this point in time pretty much any sport where raw strength over finesse is the name of the game, we are getting creamed.