My Speech at Skateface

The exhibition is at Silo6 until 31 July

Last Friday evening, I had the pleasure of attending the opening of Skateface. An exhibition from the fabulous Philippa O’Brien, showcasing a selection of women from Aotearoa’s Roller Derby scene. Suzanne McFadden did a great interview that really captured the heart of what Skateface was all about but what struck me in looking at this exhibition last week, was how O’Brien managed to capture these women in their own power, however that manifested.

It’s well worth checking out and you have one last chance over this weekend. So if you’re in Auckland, go take a look!

In the meantime though and with Philippa’s permission, I’ll share with you the speech I gave at the opening of this event.

With you,

Alice

SKATEFACE, SILO6, 19-31 JULY

I’m going to blow your minds right now but believe it or not, women have always been in sport. They have not always been welcomed, supported or paid but they have always been there. In my chosen passion, rugby, the first recorded women’s match took place in my hometown of Wellington, all the way back in 1888. That’s 100 years before I was born. 

Various concessions were made to make this game “suitable” for the women that played it. Despite this, women were women and played up to the occasion. My favourite quote from a story written up post match is of course, most unladylike. It features some choice 1880s style trash talk,

“You come down our lane and see if I don’t throw a jug of dirty water over yer.” 

We are constantly defying expectations of us. It is the defining feature of our shared sporting history. 

If you map the ebbs and flows of women’s sport in Aotearoa, they coincide with the waves of feminism that hit our shores. There were the early upstarts of the late 1800s through to the 1920s. At which point, countless column inches were spent debating our participation in sport. (How things have changed.)

Doctors told us playing “would prove deleterious from both a physical and temperamental standpoint.”. That our bones were softer than men’s bones.  That we were fatter and less muscular, and not as stable on our feet as men. Others predicted a downfall, declaring “A falling off in public support would also result from enabling girls to play the game.” Pundits were bald faced in their sexism, stating in regards to my sport “If Rugby is a girls’ game, then the men who play it must be a lot of “sissies”. 

There then, we get to the root of the issue. That as times were changing and women began to occupy more space in the society, sport became the final bastion of a fragile manhood. One they protected fiercely from any unwanted advance. 

Nevertheless, women persisted. The modern era of women’s sports coincided with the women’s liberation movement. As New Zealand Football legend, Dr Barbara Cox tells it.

“It was the 70s and there was a lot of stuff in the paper about equality.”

“There were a lot of women involved in football, either through their husbands or their boyfriends and brothers, and just watching saying ‘Well if men can play it, so can we.’ and that just snowballed.”

But what is progress without a little pushback? 

The 1980s and the Springbok tour were the origin of the phrase “Sport and politics don’t mix.” It was a rallying cry, an attempt to skirt racism but is now repurposed in the comment section of almost anything I write. 

This phrase is the rejoinder of those whose participation has always been assured. Whose identity has never been politicised. I cannot opt out of having been assigned female at birth, I cannot opt out of my Pākehā privilege, I cannot opt out of being a lesbian and I will not opt out of a proud sporting heritage that was built by protest. 

The women of football were self organised up until the enforced merger of 1999. It was their own football association that saw them enter the world stage, winning their debut tournament in 1975 and going on topple USA in 1987. So too were the early rugby teams. My home town’s club scene was self organised during the 1980s and I’m told that the original Black Ferns coach, Laurie O’Reilly, asked forgiveness not permission to put the silver fern on the team that paid their own way to the first World Cup in 1991.  

We build things, we make them successful and then slowly the wider sporting community will get on board. 

This was the story of the sell out stadium at last year’s Rugby World Cup. Much was made of the intervention and influence of certain men in this moment but any victory belongs first and foremost to our women. 

It’s hard to remember due to the chaotic lead up but we were actually there as title defenders. Our team, the most successful in the sport, has won 6 of the 8 tournaments they have attended. They have never lost a World Cup final despite playing one with two players in the bin. 

And yet, we found ourselves underdogs on home soil. 

The Black Ferns have never had it easy. It’s hard to point to a campaign that ran smoothly into the tournament. There was controversial non-selection and then late call up of World Rugby Hall of Famer, Anna Richards back in 2010. This coincided with New Zealand Rugby’s decision to cut the women’s provincial competition that year. 

A lack of investment and player development opportunities saw them knocked out in pool play in 2014. There was a paltry three test lead in to 2017 and then of course last year there was the whistleblowing of Te Kura Ngata-Aerengamate which led to late replacement of their head coach.  

Yet, despite everything, this team delivers. So the time was right time for Aotearoa to deliver for them. 

We have known for a long time that our team was good. But it is one thing to know something, another to feel it. 

We all got to feel the promise of something different at that sell out final at Eden Park. 

We are here tonight to celebrate something that has always been unashamedly different. That, like other women’s codes, was built by those that loved it. That is riding the new wave of intersectional feminism, pushing forward in protest of what we see is possible for the broader gender spectrum of our athletes. 

As the traditional sports yet again struggle with the same gatekeeping that denied cis women their place, they are now recycling those same arguments to ban our trans whānau. 

Roller Derby exists in defiance to those gatekeepers, holding many of the answers we now seek. Women’s sports now are a political football, being kicked about, being used as a stand-in for wider issues. I have never heard so many voices claim to speak out in concern for women’s sport and yet say nothing on instances of abuse, mental health, poor funding and resources. 

In response, we must do what we have always done. Realise our own power and carve our own path. As we ride this wave of feminism, let us ensure our sport and our politics do mix. Understanding the unique platform, a game we once played as children, has on the shape of things to come. Let us inspire those that are watching not just to find their sport, but to find their voice. 

Find your history and you will find your strength. You will find a chorus of voices who have said all along what you needed to hear. 

It was Nita Webbe, the organiser of New Zealand’s first paid women’s rugby team in 1891 who said  

“In this age, is not my sex coming to the front in every line? As doctors, lawyers, scholars, are they not successful? Yet it is only after years of bitter opposition that their right to the professions has been acknowledged. In athletics a similar prejudice used to prevail in even a stronger degree, but is not that rapidly dying out?” 

Phyliss Dawson, the 1921 captain of the Wellington Rugby team who said

“The women of the present day have come to their senses and allowed their bodies the freedom that is natural.” 

It was this freedom that Footballer Barbara Cox teammates experienced when they first began to play in the 1970s. 

“I think as women played it, and realised, “Oh, my goodness, this is just liberating.” 

And a member of this exhibition, Bubble O’Kill, said

“And a lot of people say that once you start derby you think of your body in a different way, like all of a sudden it’s good for something" 

We are all good for something. And we all have a space we can take up, no matter the sport. And if your space isn’t offered? Build it. You will be successful. And the rest of the sports community will follow.