Let's saddle up the wayback machine, kids, and travel to the year 1866. It was this very year, when baseball was deemed too difficult and violent a sport for ladies to play, when the Vassar Resolutes hiked up their giant, heavy skirts to run the base paths anyway. I found this photo of the Resolutes (and, OMG—can you believe they were called the Resolutes?) in an advance copy of Jennifer Ring's Stolen Bases: Why American Girls Don't Play Baseball, which will be available from the University of Illinois Press in March 2009...

One of the big reasons so many women make the choice to not participate in sports is because "sports" is defined as a thing that very specifically and consciously denies women a place in. For example, I was discussing Sean Avery with my partner earlier in the week and he expressed the belief that on the whole, hockey is one of the least sexist sports out there.

 NHL player Sean Avery was recently suspended for six games for making disrespectful comments about his former girlfriends while Jon Favreau, the chief speechwriter for the President-elect, goes unscathed after he gropes the breast of a cutout of Hillary Rodham Clinton.  What's the best response to public figures making controversial comments and embarrassing poses?