The
extraordinary success of American women in this year’s Olympics is being
credited on TV and in the media in large part to Title IX, the law passed in June of
1972. This law, in effect, ensured that
women would be granted equal educational (and athletic) opportunities to men.
It took several years for the law to completely take effect and for its
ramifications to be felt, and clearly, women like me (high
school class of 1973) never fully benefitted. Basically what commentators are saying is that the London and Rio
Olympics are the first Games where four decades of legal, educational and
social momentum finally bore fruit. Evidently, in 1972, only 90 of America’s 428 Olympic athletes were
women. This year, 292 are women and 263 are men (August 16 article in the LA Times, “American Women are Dominating the
Games…”) I’ve watched these powerful young women win event after event,
almost as if I am watching an entirely new species. I’m not sure my generation could even have
imagined such a level of accomplishment, confidence, visibility and strength.
It makes the
exercise I have continued to play with – the one where I consider what it would
be like to be powerful in my own right – seem rather pathetic. And yet I must press on. There was a sea
change in the 1970’s, and those of us who came to adulthood before it have been
playing inner catch-up ever since. I’ve been looking again at the list I wrote
the other day of things (both silly and serious) that I could do to express my power. Virtually every single
one of them involves making my gifts visible, audible, or grounded – and in a
context where I operate lovingly and independently. That is, I’m not fighting
or dominating others, just simply saying, singing, creating, writing, loving or
living in the way that would be best for me. Period. What is so interesting is
that in the day or two since writing this long list, huge inner resistance has
risen up. If I did that, this person would be upset. If I did this, that person
would hate or make fun of me. If I did that, this institution would oppose me. If I did this,
that institution would fight back. In
other words, I can feel the energy of millennia of opposition to women’s
self-expression, and even now use it to sabotage my own personal forward
progress. I use it to continue to imagine
whether other people would approve. I use it to continue to do things I don’t
want to do, so that I’ll remain invisible and powerless.
I am so
proud of these young women. They don’t seem to stand at the starting line
thinking, “If I win this race, people will hate me.” They don’t seem to pick up
their bow and arrow or their oar or their pole or their tennis racquet and hear an inner
chorus of criticism or contradiction. They know that they have trained. They
pick up their equipment. They know they can win. And they play their sport. Period.
Wow. Wow.
Wow.
