Sex and Sexism at the Olympics

Oh, those wacky Olympics. No free speech, but plenty of free condoms. Evidently the Olympic Village is always a hotbed of hot beds. Thousands of the healthiest, hunkiest bodies in the world, lots of spare time... what do you expect?

Matthew Syed's report on sex at the Olympics identifies another manifestation of the double standard successful women everywhere face:

Before we get to that, however, it is worth noting an intriguing dichotomy between the sexes in respect of all this coupling. The chaps who win gold medals—even those as geeky as Michael Phelps—are the principal objects of desire for many female athletes. There is something about sporting success that makes a certain type of woman go crazy—smiling, flirting and sometimes even grabbing at the chaps who have done the business in the pool or on the track. An Olympic gold medal is not merely a route to fame and fortune; it is also a surefire ticket to writhe.

But—and this is the thing—success does not work both ways. Gold-medal winning female athletes are not looked upon by male athletes with any more desire than those who flunked out in the first round. It is sometimes even considered a defect, as if there is something downright unfeminine about all that striving, fist pumping and incontinent sweating. Sport, in this respect, is a reflection of wider society, where male success is a universal desirable whereas female success is sexually ambiguous [Matthew Syed, "Sex and the Olympic City," TimesOnline UK, 2008.08.22].

No, I'm not saying it's a darn shame that the strongest, most successful women may have a harder time obtaining partners for promiscuous sex than non-medalists. But this Olympic Village attitude against successful women is a manifestation of the same sexism that allows a South Dakota woman to say with a straight face that Stephanie Herseth Sandlin should knock off all her unwomanly striving and go home to raise her child.