A feminist professor named Dr. Cynthia Enloe warned her readers this week about the perils of patriotism in major league baseball. Yes, we’re serious. At a time when many football fans are irate about Colin Kaepernick and his fellow NFL players refusing to stand for the national anthem, Enloe wants to expand these misguided protests to include the fans – particularly female fans. Because Enloe’s problem with these patriotic displays has nothing to do with police brutality and everything to do with that old, hoary boogeyman: The PATRIARCHY!
(Scream. Gasp.)
Enloe related her recent trip to Fenway, lamenting her initial weakness in standing up for the national anthem. She “cringed” when the American flag was unfurled, but, she assured us, kept her cringes hidden. Alas, she could not keep hidden her distaste as the patriotic displays continued throughout the game. After all, how many times in one afternoon is a woman of such learned pedigree supposed to feign love for her country?
When, in the 6th inning, the announcer asked the crowd to applaud a military vet in attendance, Enloe couldn’t even. “Invited to give him a hero’s welcome,” she wrote, “a wave a grateful applause erupted. I sat stingily on my hands, saying nothing.”
How brave.
In the 8th inning, she again indulged in silent protest. As the crowd sang along to “America the Beautiful,” Enloe “sat quietly” as her friends “smiled down at me sympathetically.”
What Enloe reads as “sympathy” might also be pained embarrassment, but we don’t know her friends.
“Patriotism, especially militarized, masculinity-heroicizing patriotism, is escalating at American sporting events,” she wrote. “It may be most prominent at NFL games and NASCAR races, but it is in full bloom at most major league baseball games—not just the national anthem, but also the ubiquitous lauding of military personnel, and additional patriotic songs in the middle of the game.”
Why is this a problem? Enloe explains.
“Gratitude is so often feminized,” she wrote. “It becomes an extension of dependency. Women, therefore, are popularly expected to be grateful to men and to the masculinized state for offering them militarized protection. In a militarized society, a woman who refuses to express that gratitude (staying seated when the male veteran is being cheered) risks being deemed unfeminine.”
Ultimately, she concludes, gratitude by women towards the military means the “patriarchy will be perpetuated.”
Wow, all that just to avoid clapping for a military vet?
The lengths liberals will go just to stand out in a crowd.
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