This sexist assumption that women are weaker. It’s right, isn’t it

There is something a little dispiriting about the furore over the Olympic women’s beach volleyball competition. Howls of anguish have greeted the suggestion that if our weather does its usual business in August, and rains, the nubile young women will feel inclined to dress in the manner of the Saudi women’s team, i.e. swathe themselves in clothing. Apparently ‘men’ are outraged at this prospect, having looked forward to watching four pairs of breasts bouncing up and down like excited puppies for a few moments. Really? I suppose if they were to stage the event in my back garden I might peer out of the window from time to time. But if it were held in, say, my neighbour’s garden, I don’t think I would drag myself from my desk to watch. I might tell people that I was going to pop round, just so as to appear normal — phwoar, women’s beach volleyball, I’ll certainly be borrowing a lot of cups of sugar in the next few days etc — but the prospect doesn’t excite me very much, in all honesty. 

Where I am more stereotypically normal is that a women’s beach volleyball game contested between copiously clad young women interests me less than it is feasible to express. It holds about the same attraction as, say, a lecture delivered by Will Hutton about the economic causes of social deprivation. It is not registerable as an interest. Although if Will Hutton were dressed in a bikini and jumping up and down with his tits jiggling around then I might go along out of curiosity. My point, though, is that beach volleyball is of interest only because of the female flesh on display. God alone knows how it became an Olympic sport.

This is the flip side of the argument now convulsing the women’s movement and the bien-pensant left — that the Olympics is sexist because women are not treated as equal.