My basketball coach is sexist. When we first got to the all-girl basketball clinic, he pointed to the line that separates the court from the viewing side, and said, “when you’re on THIS side of the line, you can be as girly-girl as you want to be. You can sit under rainbows, and write poetry about unicorns. But when you’re on THIS side of the line, you can’t be a girl. You have to be a basketball player.”


What? It’s like he took every stereotype he find about girls and mashed them into one weird thing: sitting under rainbows, writing poetry about unicorns. That is not what girls do! Also, girls ARE basketball players. We don’t have to stop being girls to be athletic and aggressive.


This coach is also weirdly rough and careless when he touches the girls in my group. When he thinks that I’m doing something wrong, he comes up behind me, grabs me around the waist, and physically pushes and moves me into what he thinks is the right position. Once, he was doing a demonstration of how to do something in basketball, and he grabbed the girl nearest him and used her as a puppet. He positioned her arms and legs and shoved her around like she was a doll, while the girl just looked confused and frightened. ~Coco, 13, CA

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3 Comments

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  1. yo. next time he does that yell at him AND speak to his boss if you know who that is. that is total sexism and misuse of girls.

  2. This is crazy! The coach seems incredibly sexist and what he’s saying and doing isn’t okay. If any of the girls on your team or even you feel uncomfortable with anything he does, I would verbally say to that him. It’s not okay to let someone continue doing something you don’t like.