Good For You, Young Man

Have you heard of this story?  A young man from Iowa, named Joel Northrup, declined to wrestle a young lady in the Iowa High School State Wrestling Tournament.  He lost by default and the young lady he was supposed to wrestle, who won by default, moved on in the tournament.  This was the first time in the 85 year history  that a female wrestled in the state tournament in Iowa.  This year, not only one girl, Cassy, but two girls made it.  The other young lady was named Megan.

Joel said that he didn’t believe that boys should wrestle girls.  I agree with him.  It’s inappropriate.   He said, “I have a tremendous amount of respect for Cassy and Megan and their accomplishments.”  For Northrup, it doesn’t appear to be a fear thing; he’s not afraid of these girls.  He was 35-4 in matches this year and has already had success in Iowa in previous years.  It’s a matter of principle for him.

“Wrestling is a combat sport and it can get violent at times,” said Northrup. “As a matter of conscience and my faith I do not believe that it is appropriate for a boy to engage a girl in this manner. It is unfortunate that I have been placed in a situation not seen in most other high school sports in Iowa.”

Here’s a bit from his coach…

What does he mean by a “matter of my faith?”  What does being a Christian man have to do with not wrestling a woman?  (Just writing that sentence seems silly to me.)  I’d say that it goes back to our creation as men.  It speaks to the heart of a man.  Deep inside every man is a sense of wildness, a rugged “warrior” drive and our natural inclination towards adventure.  There’s nothing natural inside a man that says “I should my brute strength to pin a woman to the floor to win a tournament.”  In the history of wrestling, dating back to the ancient Greeks, men and women never wrestled one another.  In fact, women never wrestled at all.  Females wrestling is a pretty new invention.

It’s a weird proposition, having to wrestle a girl.  I should know… I wrestled two girls in middle school.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have the courage that Joel had, to say “I default”.  The young ladies that I wrestled in middle school were sweet girls, and pretty feminine, they also happened to like to wrestle.  I’m not really sure why.

Some people would then ask, “Dave, what if your daughters came to you and said, “Daddy, I want to wrestle.”?”  What would I say? I’d say no.  It’ll be a ‘no’ if they come and ask me to be a boxer.  It’ll be a ‘no’ if they come and ask me to be an altar server at Mass.  It would be ‘no’ to a lot of questions.  It’s not authentically feminine for women to do things men are naturally inclined to do.  I’ve written about this a lot – we (men and women) were created with equal dignity, but separate roles.  It’s NOT a bad thing, it’s a GREAT thing!  When men do what they were created for and women do what they were created for IT WORKS!  If that gets all screwed up, everything falls apart.

When I write posts like these, I typically get at least one feminist email spewing hate towards me and this view point (which isn’t solely mine – but that of the Church as well).  I get called all sorts of names and get blamed for being a chauvinist and hateful and harsh and intolerant and so forth.  I welcome those emails because it creates good dialogue.  It’s not about some notion of equality, that a woman should be able to do whatever a man can do.  It’s about the notion of order.  So, if you read this and disagree, let me know.

TrueMan up!