Amid all the
election mayhem and politicized coronavirus hysteria of the past several months,
it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the cultural realm, not the political
arena, is where the deeper threat to our freedoms and civilization lies,
because the culture is where hearts and minds are won or lost. The Left has
always known this, but the Right tends to obsess over the political and scorn
the cultural as trivial and unserious. If we never grasp how critical it is to
engage the Left on that front, we will lose the Long Game. Let’s look at a
couple of recent examples of one aspect of the Marxist assault on our culture in
which the Left is gaining ground – their agenda to subvert our traditional norms
of masculinity.
After what was widely
touted in the media as a “history-making” appearance, Vanderbilt University female
soccer player-turned-football kicker Sarah Fuller was recently named Special Teams
Player of the Week by the Southeastern college football conference (SEC), along
with Florida University player Kadarius Toney.
What did Fuller do
to earn this honor? She “[t]ook the opening kickoff of the second half against
the Tigers, as her perfectly-executed kick sailed 30 yards and was downed at
the Missouri 35-yard line,” the SEC crowed in explanation.
That’s it. She was
on the field for one play – not for a high-pressure, game-clinching
field goal, but for a low, line drive of a kickoff that “sailed” a mere 30 yards.
In all fairness, this kick was intended to be short in order to prevent a
runback, but apparently, as a soccer goalie, longer kicks aren’t her strong
suit: “[The short kickoff] was designed for her because that’s what
she’s used to striking,” the head coach later tried
to explain to reporters. And “perfectly-executed”? Perfectly-executed is the standard, not the
exception, with kickoffs. One perfectly-executed kickoff is not an
award-winning achievement – unless the kicker is a woman.
What would have
happened if Vanderbilt’s opponents had returned the kick? “Football is not a contact
sport,” the late Michigan State coach Duffy Daugherty is credited with
quipping. “It is a collision sport.” At 6’2”, Fuller isn’t petite (it’s
unclear what her weight is; she is the only player on the Vanderbilt roster whose weight is
not listed), but it’s a fair bet that if one of the male Missouri blockers
hurtling downfield at full speed after Fuller’s kickoff had targeted her, or if
she had tried to tackle the ball carrier, the question of whether women can
compete on a truly equal footing with men in a collision sport would have been
settled in one single collision. To avoid that very possibility, Fuller jogged
to the sidelines immediately after her kick.
