On April 6

On this day in ...
.. 1896 (115 years ago today), the 1st Olympics in modern times opened in Athens, Greece. The 9-day, multisport meet would enjoy both the largest-ever participation in a sporting event and the largest-ever audience at same. (image credit) Greeks celebrated the marathon victory by one of their own, while a German wrestler/gymnast won the most events, 4. Despite the fact that the event was named after the goddess Olympia, "[w]omen were not allowed to compete at the 1896 Summer Olympics"; however, one woman ran the marathon the next day in an effort to persuade officials to admit women in subsequent Games.

(Prior April 6 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

On February 19

On this day in ...
... 2002, in Salt Lake City, Utah, Vonetta Flowers (near right) became the "first black athlete (male or female) -- from any country--to ever win an Olympic Winter Games gold medal." She'd been born 37 years earlier in Birmingham, Alabama, Flowers and her U.S. teammate Jill Bakken (far right) finished 1st in the 2-woman bobsled, winning the 1st U.S. medal in that event in 46 years.

(Prior February 19 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

On October 4

On this day in ...
... 1952, Anita deFrantz (right) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She earned her J.D. from Penn Law in 1977. While in law school, deFrantz was a member of the U.S. Women's Rowing Team, serving as captain at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, Canada, where her team won the bronze medal. Her competitive career ended in 1980, when U.S. President Jimmy Carter withdrew the U.S. team from the Olympic Games in Moscow to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Along with other athletes, lawyer DeFrantz sued the U.S. Olympic Committee on the ground that no organization could block an athlete's right to compete. The effort was unsuccessful, and seen as unpatriotic by some at home. But 6 years later she was named a lifetime member of the International Olympic Committee -- the 1st woman and the 1st African American person to be appointed to that body. DeFrantz was the IOC's Vice President -- the 1st woman to hold the position -- from 1997 to 2001.

(Prior October 4 posts are here, here, and here.)

On August 25

On this day in ...
... 1942, Margaret Thompson Murdock was born in Topeka, Kansas. She would become the 1st woman to compete equally with men in an Olympic sport. After graduating from Kansas State University in 1965, she joined the Women’s Army Corps -- and the Army's Marksmanship Training Unit at Fort Benning, Georgia. "[A]ffectionately known as 'The WAC' by her teammates," she soon become the 1st woman to "set an internationally recognized world record above the men’s mark – in any sport" – when she won the gold medal (right) in a smallbore shooting event at the 1967 Pan-American Games in Winnipeg, Canada. (photo credit) At her 1st Olympic Games, 9 years later in Montreal, she and a male athlete initially tied for 1st place, but on further examination of the targets he was awarded gold; even so, Murdock's Olympic silver medal was the 1st for a woman shooter. She earned a nursing degree a year later, and

became a nurse anaesthetist, in addition to being a competitive shooter,
housewife, and mother.

(Prior August 25 posts are here, here, and here.)

Democracy and Antigone

(IntLawGrrls is pleased to welcome back Ruthann Robson, who contributes this guest post regarding an article she's just posted at SSRN)

Antigone (near left) is a popular mythical, literary, and legal figure.
In addition to the Sophocles' play -- the 5th C. standard -- Antigone has inspired a 1943 work by French playwright Jean Anouilh, a 1999 version by Nigerian playwright Femi Osofisan, and a 2003 production by South African playwright Athol Fugard. In each of these plays, there are conflicting claims not only of justice, but also of the very naming of "Antigone." Although Anouilh has written (perhaps archly) that when one's name is Antigone there is only one part one can play, in fact Antigone plays many different parts and has many different names.
Yet can a name be appropriated?
In my new article entitled Democracy and Antigone, I've tried to reimagine Antigone as Sappho might have written her -- or as Sappho might have written Antigone's often neglected sister, Ismene (above, far left). (image credit)
This essay’s legal focus is several cases interpreting the meaning of mythical and Greek words:
► In San Francisco Arts & Athletics, Inc. v. United States Olympic Committee (1987), the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the term "Olympics" cannot be used by the Gay Olympics.
► A court in Athens, Greece, more recently decided that the term "Lesbian" can be used by women who are not residents of the island of Lesbos.
► And then there was the initial refusal of the trademark office to register "Dykes on Bikes" because it found "dykes" to be offensive.
The article further asks:
Are names different in democracy than in ancient aristocracies?
Jacques Derrida's work on democracy as based on brotherhood leaves little room for sisterhood, as he himself notes, and the present litigation practices of naming "brothers at the bar" have rarely extended to naming our "sisters at the bar."
The confluence of these two strands of literature and law invites further explorations of Sappho as a poet and historical figure, of Derrida’s work on democracy and brotherhood, and of the meaning of "sisterhood" in feminist and legal texts.

On February 20

On this day in ...
... 1980 (30 years ago today), The New York Times reported that "the White House reaffirmed today what officials termed a 'final and irrevocable' decision for the United States to boycott the Olympic Games in Moscow" (logo at right) slated for the summer of the same year.
The move -- spurred by President Jimmy Carter's opposition to the presence of Soviet troops in Afghanistan -- is worth recalling even as, now, we watch the ongoing Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada (logo at left).

(Prior February 20 posts are here, here, and here)

On December 31

On this day in ...
... 1964 (45 years ago today), Indonesian President Sukarno, who in 1945 had led his country to independence from Dutch colonialism (prior post), declared that if Malaysia were to assume a seat on the Security Council, Indonesia would leave the United Nations, just as it had boycotted the Tokyo Olympic Games earlier in the year. According to The New York Times, The source of Sukarno's complaint was the 1963 formation of the Malaysian federation (prior post):

The Indonesian leader charged that Malaysia was formed from the former British territories of Malaya, Singapore, and the Borneo states of Sarawak and Sabah (North Borneo) against the will of the people in order to maintain British influence in Southeast Asia.

Months later Sukarno made good on the threat and withdrew his country from the United Nations; Indonesia did not rejoin until 1966.

(Prior December 31 posts are here and here.)

Sugar and Spice in Sports

According to this week's New York Times, the International Association of Athletics Federations, which governs international track and field events, is investigating the eligibility of runner Caster Semenya (left) of South Africa. The IAAF plans to conduct sex-determination testing to confirm her eligibility after concerns were raised during a track and field competition in Berlin. Barry Bearak is the author of the Times piece; he describes Semenya as a "muscular, husky-voiced 18-year-old."
This is a troubling case.
It troubles me that we still expect female athletes to be feminine in their athleticism. Perhaps Semenya would not have been the target of an investigation had she been less muscular, although she might not have handily won the 800-meter race in Berlin with a more petite, more feminine, and less muscular frame. As IntLawGrrls posted during last year's Olympic Games, we are markedly more comfortable with the sport of beach volleyball (right), in which women compete in bikinis, and in which we may easily assess both their sexuality and their athletic skills. (I still remember the collective public angst when American Olympian Kerri Walsh lost her wedding ring in the sand during a 2008 beach volleyball match).
In her NYT article about the IAAF investigation of Semenya, Alice Dreger observes that

sex is so messy that ... science can and will inform [the I.A.A.F.'s] decision, but they are going to have to decide which of the dozens of characteristics of sex matter to them.

Dreger concludes that the IAAF decision will be one based on sport, such as the number of "points awarded for a touchdown," rather than "natural" sex. After all, rigid, naturalized notions of sex and gender do not reflect the experience of many people whose sex and gender are located along a continuum of masculinity and femininity. (One such athlete was Stella Walsh Olsen, on whom IntLawGrrls posted a while back.)
Although many of the early IAAF sex-based eligibility investigations focused on women from the former Soviet Union, Semenya's case involves not only stereotypes of gendered behavior but also implicates issues of race. The sexuality of African women has long been the subject of voyeuristic colonialist study and speculation. Bearak's article notes the comparison to a woman on whom IntLawGrrls has posted: Saartjie Baartman, or Sawtche, the so-called Hottentot Venus, who was

'taken to Europe in the early 19th century and exhibited like a wild beast....'

The colonial fascination with African women's sexuality is well-documented by Anne McClintock in her book Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (1995), in which she describes how the African woman "became the prototype of the Victorian invention of primitive atavism." The international perception of Semenya's femininity, or lack thereof, reflects a similar postcolonial racial bias.
If the IAAF has its way, genetic testing will determine Semenya's precise chromosomal constitution. Unfortunately, the results will not encourage us to question our own assumptions either about gender and race or about the ways such stereotypes affect female athletes all over the world.

On August 1

On this day in ...
... 1936, a New York Times headline reported: "100,000 Hail Hitler; U.S. Athletes Avoid Nazi Salute to Him." The occasion was the opening of the Olympic Games in "the world's newest and biggest stadium," in Berlin, Germany. By 1936 Adolf Hitler had consolidated power in Germany; World War II loomed. These Games remain famous because it was there that, as we've posted, African-American athlete Jesse Owens "would win 4 gold medals, and so give the lie to the master-race theories of" Hitler. The incredible photo at right(credit) -- showing Owens on the winner's stand, in front of a medalist giving the Nazi salute -- says it all.
... 1946, Dr. Fiona Stanley (below left) was born in Sydney, Australia. On account of her father's work as a medical researcher, she met Dr. Jonas Salk, who'd developed a polio vaccine, and stories about scientists' accomplishments were favorites throughout her childhood. She received a degree in medicine from the University of Western Australia in 1970. Her 1st work, with aboriginal children, led to lifelong interests in epidemiology and public health, areas she studied in Britain and the United States before returning home. Since the late 1970s she's been a leader in children's health issues in Australia, serving as founding director of the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, as a professor at the School of Paediatrics and Child Health at University of Western Australia, as chair of Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth, and as UNICEF's Australian Ambassador for Early Childhood Development. Stanley was named Australian of the Year in 2003.

(Prior August 1 posts are here and here.)

On July 31

On this day in ...
… 1936, the International Olympic Committee announced that the 1940 Summer Olympics were to be held in Tokyo. Two years later, however, the Japanese would renounce renounce the games due to the outbreak of the 2d Sino-Japanese War; they expressed hope that the 1944 Olympics might be held in Tokyo. The IOC conseuqently would award the 1940 games to Helsinki, Finland, the runner-up in the original bidding process. The Olympic Games would be suspended indefinitely following the onset of World War II, and would not resume until the London Games of 1948.
… 1913, Alys McKey Bryant (left) became the first woman to fly a plane in Canada. (photo credit) She flew in Minoru Park, Vancouver, as part of the entertainment for the Prince of Wales and his younger brother, the Duke of York, who would become King George VI. Bryant, an American, learned to fly after winning a job to perform in flight demonstrations. She is recognized as an Early Bird of Aviation, given that she piloted a plane before December 17, 1916. View a video clip of her here in front of her plane in 1913.

(Prior July 31 posts are here and here.)

On May 8

On this day in ...
... 1932, Julieta Campos (right) was born in Havana, Cuba. (photo credit) In the 1950s she would move to Mexico after marrying a diplomat from that country, and 2 decades later would win a top literary prize for her novel, Tiene los cabellos rojizos y se llama Sabina (1974), which translates as "Her hair is red and her name is Sabina." Among her works available in English is The Fear of Losing Eurydice (1994). Campos, who led Mexico's chapter of PEN from 1978 to 1982, died from cancer in 2007 in Mexico City.
... 1984 (25 years ago today), the Soviet Union announced that it would boycott the Summer Olympics set to begin on July 28 in Los Angeles, California. The move, which would be joined by more than a dozen member states of the Soviet bloc, came after the United States had boycotted the last summer games, held in Moscow in 1980.

(Prior May 8 posts are here and here.)

On February 26

On this day in ...
... 1957, "one the greatest athletes in American sporting history," Connie Carpenter-Phinney (left), was born in Madison, Wisconsin. The winner of many national and international cycling championships, she won gold in Los Angeles "in the 1984 Olympic road race, the first ever for women." A dozen years earlier, at age 15, she speed-skated for the U.S. team in the Olympics at Sapporo, Japan. She's the 1st woman to have competed in both Summer and Winter Olympic Games. (photo credit)
... 1984 (25 years ago today), approximately 1,000 U.S. Marines left Beirut, Lebanon, thus bringing to an end American military presence in the city. The withdrawal came several months after a bomb blast killed hundreds of U.S.and French servicemembers.

(Prior February 20 posts are here and here.)

On January 24

On this day in ...

... 1924 (85 years ago today), the opening ceremony of the 1st-ever Winter Olympics took place in Chamonix, France. The Games -- featuring 291 athletes, from 16 countries, competing in 16 events in 9 sports -- would run from January 26 to February 4. Of the 291 athletes only 13 were women. (IntLawGrrls' prior posts on women Olympians are here and here.) Among them was the Games' youngest competitor, 11-year-old Sonja Henie (right) of Norway, who placed last that year but "would later become the greatest women’s figure skater ever," not to mention a highly paid Hollywood star. Henie was also an all-time favorite of this IntLawGrrl's mother.

... 1984 (25 years ago today), Apple introduced the Macintosh computer, "starting the second major revolution in the personal computer industry." This was in part because this original Mac (left) in part because it came with a device designed to aid user navigation of cyberspace: the mouse. Nostalgic MacHeads can see video of the rollout here. (photo credit)

On November 9

On this day in ...
... 1923 (85 years ago today), Alice Coachman was born in Albany, Georgia. This site, which includes clips of her oral history, writes of Coachman:

As a child, she was drawn to athletics, but was denied access to public training facilities because of segregation polices. Determined to hone her athletic abilities, Coachman ran barefoot on the back roads of Georgia and devised all sorts of makeshift set-ups to jump over — from strings and ropes to sticks and tied rags.

Her specialty was the high jump, and her victory in that event in the 1948 Summer Games made her the "first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal." She's the founder of a Track & Field Foundation named after her.

... 1918 (90 years ago today), as Germany worked for an armistice ending World War I, the country's Chancellor announced Kaiser Wilhelm II's abdication. In point of fact, the Kaiser (left) had not yet consented to give up his throne; however, "[f]aced with a fait accompli Wilhelm formally abdicated and went into exile in Holland." The latter country would refuse to hand him over notwithstanding that Article 229 of the Versailles Treaty envisioned his trial, as a "[p]erson guilty of criminal acts against the nationals of more than one of the Allied and Associated Powers," who would "be brought before military tribunals composed of members of the military tribunals of the Powers concerned." No such tribunal ever was convened.

On October 17

On this day in ...
... 1968 (40 years ago today), with the U.S. national anthem playing at the Mexico City Olympics, 200-meter gold and bronze medalwinners, both African-Americans, "stood with their heads bowed and a black-gloved hand raised." Tommie Smith and John Carlos were members of the Olympic Project for Human Rights, whose badge the Australian silver medalist later wore to show his support for Smith and Carlos. Nevertheless, after U.S. media called them "'Nazi-like'" and "'storm troopers,'" "the two athletes were suspended from their national team, expelled from the Olympic village and sent home to America." (credit for photo (c) Associated Press)
... 1973 (35 years ago today), with approval from the world's largest producer, Saudi Arabia, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries launched an oil embargo "meant to punish the West for its support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War." The withholding of oil, which lasted nearly 1/2 a year, "led to long lines at U.S. gas pumps" and "represented a major change in the political power of the OPEC nations." Oil-power-politics remains in the fore 3-1/2 decades later, as is evident in IntLawGrrl Christiana Ochoa's post above.

'Nuff said

(Occasional item taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

'Le CIO et les Jeux olympiques ne peuvent imposer des changements à des nations souveraines ou régler tous les maux du monde.'

that is,

'The International Olympic Committee and the Olympic Games can neither force sovereign nations to change nor settle all the world's problems.'

-- IOC President Jacques Rogge, in a LeMonde interview. Rogge, who represented Belgium in the 1968, 1972, and 1976 Olympics, insists that the Olympics' primary purpose is to improve sports, yet added that the just-concluded Beijing Games promoted better understanding between China and the rest of the world.

On women playing well

To Jaya's excellent post yesterday on "Olympian Courage," I'd like to add a bit more recognition for women's plays during this Summer Games season.
Here's to:
► Hamchétou Maïga-Ba (left) and all the women hoopsters who represented Mali. These 2008 Beijing Games marked the 1st time a women's basketball team was sent by the country, which the New York Times described as "a predominantly Muslim country where women are subject to traditional subservience, genital mutilation, inequitable access to education and household violence." But the simple feat of fielding a team may have begun to change things. Maïga-Ba, who plays forward for the Women's National Basketball Association's Houston Comets, said of the land of her birth:

'Everybody is proud of us, even the guys.'

► Mona Eltahawy (right), an Egypt-born, New York-based commentator. She published in the Washington Post a stinging op-ed, which criticized Saudi Arabia for not including any women on its Olympic team. The Post then published its own editorial echoing Eltahawy's complaint.
Caveat:
No country deserves to claim too-high ground on the matter of women in the Olympics. The Times article reminds:

Women were not allowed to participate at the 1896 Summer Games in Athens, the first Olympics of the modern era.
They were expected to contribute applause, not athletic skill. Not until 1984 were women permitted to run the Olympic marathon, in reefer-madness fear that they might grow old too soon with such exertion; or worse, they might grow a mustache.
Or their uterus would fall out, as if it were a transmission.

Nineteen women competed in the 1900 Paris Olympics. The art student who took 1st place in the 9-hole golf tournament (above), Margaret Abbott, "is now recognized as the first female American Olympian winner."
Even today, when many women from many countries compete in many events, there's much room for improvement. More than 1 commentator's wondered if women's beach volleyball would get as much air time if its bikini-clad competitors covered up. (To which should be added this question: Would an activity so singly centered in 1 nation even be included in inter-national competition absent the costumes?) Then comes news, from Nayeli Rodriguez at Slate's XX Factor blog, on "the International Table Tennis Federation’s latest strategy for reversing low attendance to its matches": "draw attention to the sexier side of table tennis" by "urging lady players to adjust their competition outfits to flaunt more 'curves.'" (credit for 2007 photo at right of Chinese champion Wang Nan)
Here's hoping one day for an Olympics where attention's focused on how well women played, and not on how well they looked while playing.

Olympian Courage

The Olympics are here, and despite serious concerns about the human rights record of their host, China (see post), they are, as ever, a source of inspirational stories. Three stories of courage particularly caught my attention, stories of sisters, mothers, and grandmothers whose bravery merits at least a gold medal:

The first, Robina Muqimyar (pictured right; photo credit), is the only woman competing for Afghanistan in this year's Olympics. In an interview with the BBC, she talks about the serious obstacles she faced in training for the games and why she competes in hijab. Provided with only two weeks of training in the stadium in Kabul used by the Taliban to execute dissidents, Muqimyar sees herself as a role model for other Afghan women. In her words, her participation in the games sends "a message to encourage them[;] some day they want to be like me, and I will support and help them." On her decision to wear the scarf while running:

I am a representative of an Islamic country and I am a Muslim; I wear the scarf, I like it and I am honored to wear it. It's also a chance to be different from other athletes. I'm sure my people support me.

The second, Nelly Rico, is the mother of gold medalist Henry Cejudo. For those who missed the write-up in the NY Times, Rico "came to the United States from Mexico as an illegal immigrant, raised seven children by herself and left Los Angeles with them in the middle of the night to escape the career criminal who was the father Cejudo never really knew. . . Cejudo talked of all the hours his mother had worked over the years, as a janitor and a construction worker, anything to put food on the table or to heat the house. He talked about all the times they moved, from Los Angeles to New Mexico to Phoenix to Colorado Springs, each time in search of a better life. 'I wish I could just give her the medal right now,' Cejudo said."

The third story is that of Wu Dianyuan and Wang Xiuying (pictured left; photo credit), two Chinese women in their late 70s. Frustrated with the insufficient compensation provided after their homes were seized for redevelopment six years ago, the women applied "to hold a legal protest in a designated area in Beijing, where officials promised that Chinese could hold demonstrations during the Olympic Games." The result? Beijing police sentenced Ms. Wu and Ms. Wang to an extrajudicial term of “re-education through labor.”

In the face of laws and policies that violated rather than protected their rights, each of these women chose to stand up and fight, and in doing so, became models of courage for all of us. Brava!

On August 18

On this day in ...
... 1848 (160 years ago today), in Argentina, in "a paltry prison town in the northwest of Buenos Aires province," a firing squad shot to death Camila O'Gorman, 20 years old and 8 months pregnant. The 5th of 6 children "in an upper class family of mixed Irish, French, and Spanish descent," as a teenager she began an affair with the family's friend and priest, Ladislao Gutiérrez. When the affair became public O'Gorman shocked all by "claimed that it had been she who had initiated the affair and insisted on their elopement." O'Gorman (left) and her lover were executed as charges of "moral corruption" swirled around the regime in power.
... 1964, having failed to meet an International Olympic Committee demand that it condemn apartheid, South Africa was banned from taking part in the 18th Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo. The country did not renounce apartheid until 1991, and so the ban remained in place until the 1992 Games in Barcelona.

Guest Blogger: Mary Ellen O'Connell

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to feature a guest post today from our colleague Mary Ellen O'Connell (right).
The Robert and Marion Short Professor of Law at Notre Dame University, South Bend, Indiana, Mary Ellen's a noted expert on the use of force, armed conflict, and international law, issues on which her scholarship concentrates. Her most recent book is The Power and Purpose of International Law (Oxford University Press, 2008), which she describes as "a renewed and updated theory of international law for the post-torture era" that responds to Jack L. Goldsmith and Eric A. Posner, The Limits of International Law (2005).
Mary Ellen's guest post below begins by observing that the world's collective attention may have been too closely trained on saber-rattling in Iran (on which she'd written earlier, as IntLawGrrls noted here and here) and, this week, on the Beijing Olympic Games (prior IntLawGrrls posts here). She then redirects attention, to international law issues underlying the struggle between Russia and Georgia for control of the troubled regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Mary Ellen earned a bachelor's degree from Northwestern University, then studied as a Marshall Scholar, earning her master's degree in international relations from the London School of Economics and an LL.B. from Cambridge. Thereafter she earned a J.D. from Columbia University, where she was a Stone Scholar and book review editor for the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law; she practiced at Covington & Burling. Since entering academia, Mary Ellen has taught law at institutions in the United States, Italy, and Germany.
Mary Ellen dedicates her post to Jane Addams (below) whom she describes as a "peace campaigner extraordinaire." Indeed: as IntLawGrrls detailed here, Addams (1860-1935) was renowned as a pacifist, feminist, suffragist, settlement-house founder, and social worker; she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. Today Addams joins IntLawGrrls' other foremothers in the honor list just below the "visiting from ..." map at right. (photo credit)
Heartfelt welcome!