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From: sharring@cssun.tamu.EDU (Steven L Harrington)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Sex and Cards
Message-ID: <8424@helios.TAMU.EDU>
Date: 21 Sep 90 15:49:56 GMT
References: <12619962177008@osu-20.ircc.ohio-state.edu> <9009190945.AA00092@uunet.uu.net> <1357@mtxinu.UUCP>
Organization: Sex Studies Division, Texas A&M University
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[Please trim the quoted material in your articles, it does make them
much easier to read.  I have trimmed some of quoted material in this
article.  The summary so far is that it was originally asserted that
ownership of baseball trading cards is symptomatic of "owning people"
-- an assertion that has triggered agreement & disagreement -- CLT]

In article <1357@mtxinu.UUCP> Ed Gould <uunet!mtxinu!ed@ncar.ucar.EDU> writes:
>I'm not so sure it is wrong.  Several men have written in defence
>of (at least) collecting baseball cards.  If this were done in the
>context of true equality between the sexes - including a true power
>balance - then I might agree.  But the world we live in is not, in
>fact, an egalatarian one.
>
>I think the observation of ownership - both of baseball cards and
>girlie magazines - is quite inciteful.  Collecting and trading
>images of people *does* give one a sense of power over them.
>Especially within the context of professional atheletes, whose
>lives are, to a *very* large extent, contractually owned by the
>teams for which they play.  People (not necessarily youngsters)
>make up fantasy baseball and football teams, comprised of players
>from the professional leagues, and win "games" against other fantasy
>team owners, based on the real performance of the players on each
>fantasy team.  There is, to my mind, a definite power relationship
>involved in this practice.  (As well as gambling.  That's the
>usual purpose of these fantasy teams in my experience.)

Although this idea is inciteful and interesting, I think the claim
that some relationship exists between baseball card collectors and
girlie magazine readers is incorrect. Young males often collect
things, this seems to be a common behaviour in many boys. The items
that are collected range from the aforementioned baseball cards to
comic books, coins, toys, bugs, etc.  Many boys grow up to read porno
magazines, some of them may have collected comic books when they were
boys while others may have collected baseball cards. There is no
causal relationship betwixt the baseball cards and the magazines nor
is there one between the comic books.

The crux of the child's activities center on *collecting* not on the
ownership of some person. While this collecting may make some social
statement in its own right (i.e. the materialistic nature of it), it
certainly cannot be directly realated to pornography. The adult males'
fixation with the magazines is much more likely to be interpreted as
symbolizing ownership, but I would even question this.

I would tend to disagree w/ the concept that fantasy sports teams are
in some way related to sexual frustration &/or a generally poor
attitude towards women.  I have been a fantasy sports team owner and
have found that most of the participants are representative of men as
a whole. Some have healthy attitudes towards women; others don't.
Gambling has not been involved in the fantasy leagues that I have
played in, but I am aware that it is occasionally.  I tend to view
sports fantasy team participants as a collection of people who
appreciate the competition involved as it relates to the knowledge of
sports. I don't think they view the games as ownership either
consciously or subconssciously.  The participants merely want to see
how their understanding of the nuances of a sport compares to other
afficianados.

[I haven't quite decided if "inciteful" is a mispelling or a
deliberately used word.  "Incite" == to enrage, "insight" ==
thoughtful observation.  If inciteful is deliberate, it is a cute
pun.  If the other meaning was intended, "insightful" is the word.  --CLT]

Steve Harrington