This morning, as I was sitting here thinking about what I wanted to write about today, I remembered a post I wrote for my original blog back in March 2015. At that point, we had only been in Stuttgart for about nine months. I was a member of way too many local Facebook groups. There was a lot of drama in those groups… drama that I haven’t seen up here in Wiesbaden. In many ways, I enjoy the lack of drama because I don’t end up nearly as annoyed or upset as I regularly did in Stuttgart. On the other hand, I almost never lacked for topics to write about.

Back in March 2015, the American high school for the children of military and government service members, Patch High School, was still located on Patch Barracks. The Stuttgart area high school has since moved to Panzer Kaserne, as a brand new facility was built and opened in the fall of 2015. The new high school’s mascot is the Panther, as it was for Patch High School. However, the community sports team’s mascot was the stallion, as is the mascot for Patch Elementary School.

The choice of a stallion as a mascot was locally significant, since Stuttgart’s coat of arms has a stallion on it. Car buffs might also notice that Porsche, which is a sports car brand made and based in Stuttgart, also has a horse on its logo. Sometime in the past, when it came time to name the local sports team’s mascot, someone decided on the stallion. The teams for the female athletes were known as “Lady Stallions”. Back in March 2015, the local sports team coordinators were looking for people to join the “Lady Stallions” softball team.

I am a lover of words. I’m also a lover of horses. A stallion is, by definition, an uncastrated male horse. Because I was feeling saucy, I mentioned this fact in a snarky Facebook group I used to be part of back in the day. Some brave soul decided to share my thoughts with the sports team coordinator, who wrote this cranky response:

I’m going to take a wild guess here and assume that Ms. ****** has no prior experience or dealings with OCONUS community level sports. We did not name ourselves Stallions. That is the mascot for the Stuttgart community, therefore we don’t have the authority nor the desire to change it simply because a stallion is a male horse. Every community level sport here has a men’s team and a women’s team, both of which are Stallions. Just like any other community… Lady Rams, Sabres, Mustangs, Generals, etc. So, if there is more concern about what we are called than actually playing the sport, that is not someone who we are looking to add to the team. 

Well excuuuuuuseeee ME!!!

I was amused by the bitchy response, which wasn’t directed to me personally, but to the woman who had decided to comment that stallions are, in fact, male horses by definition. But then I started thinking about it some more. I wrote this in my original blog:

Okay, fair enough…  but have they considered what makes a stallion a stallion?  I used to judge horses and I’ve seen quite a few sets of stallion genitalia.  They have balls the size of grapefruits.  They have very impressive penises, too.  I was thinking about including a photo for reference, but given that apparently a lot of people like to use horses for their own twisted fantasies, I decided against it.  

Notice that the person who responded lists examples of other “lady” teams as “proof” that Stuttgart is not the only area where a mascot is obviously male, yet has teams designated for the ladies.  But only one of her examples isn’t gender neutral.  One can be a female mustang or general, for instance, though I don’t think sabres actually have genders.  I do realize, though, that sexist mascots are very common. 

Now, at my high school, our mascot was “The Dukes”.  No, it wasn’t because of the Dukes of Hazzard; it was because of the Duke of Gloucester.  If you grow up near Yorktown, Virginia, you quickly become acquainted with the names of people who were important in the American Revolution.  And yes, we did have “Lady Dukes” instead of Duchesses.

After I graduated from Gloucester High School, I went to Longwood College– now known as Longwood University. Our mascot was, and still is, the Lancers. Back when I was a student, we didn’t have an actual mascot. Now, there’s Elwood, who is a horse. Longwood was an all women’s school until 1976. Still, we have a rather phallic looking symbol on our mascot…

It wasn’t lost on me that my college had a rather phallic mascot. I mean, the horse isn’t so much… except that I think Elwood is male, and if he’s a stallion, he’s got impressive genitalia. Trust me, I’ve seen a lot of equine genitalia.

So then I went to the University of South Carolina, where the mascot is the Gamecock. Gamecocks are fighting roosters. Roosters are males. I remember that the female athletes at my graduate school were not known as Hens, but Lady Gamecocks. And, in fact, they were all collectively referred to as “Cocks”. I have a Facebook friend who went to the University of South Carolina as an undergraduate. I like to tease him by writing “Go Cocks” on his posts.

I used to wear a garnet colored t-shirt that read, “You can’t lick our Cocks.” It looked just like today’s featured photo looks. Unfortunately, back at that time, it was just before Lou Holtz took over coaching the football team and, in fact, a whole lot of other teams “licked our Cocks” quite soundly. Like Lou Holtz, I started my time at USC in 1999, and Mr. Holtz was indeed able to turn the football team around. They became a very formidable force that year. Lou Holtz left USC in 2004, having vastly improved their stats.

I don’t actually follow football or any other sports. I just think it’s interesting that so many sports teams are named after male animals, and a lot of those names end up being shortened to references to genitalia. Especially when you consider what happens when when a male gets hit in that part of the body…

Given this obvious weakness in a male’s anatomy, I wonder why we glorify a male’s genitals in sports contests and in naming sports teams.  What’s wrong with having a team called the Stuttgart Mares? Mares are pretty tough. And when they get hit in the genitals, it probably doesn’t hurt as much.

Anyway… I’m glad that Stuttgart’s high school has adopted a gender neutral mascot in their Panthers. Here in Wiesbaden, the mascot is a nice, somewhat gender neutral Warrior. I guess there are female warriors out there, right? When I went looking to find the featured photo for today’s post, I found a picture of the t-shirt I used to own. I also found a lot of x-rated photos of the slang use of the word “cock”. It’s not just for male chickens, that’s for damned sure.

Actually, I’m reminded of something funny from my glory days in high school. Back then, Gloucester County still played in the AA league, which meant our school was considered “smaller”. It has since moved to the AAA league– I think that happened the year after my graduation. Teams were playing bigger schools in Hampton and Newport News and, unfortunately, getting soundly beaten a lot. But my senior year, we were still AA, and for Homecoming that year, we played the Bruton Panthers. Bruton is a small community in York County, near Williamsburg. Anyway… I distinctly remember my friends trying to come up with fight slogans for the floats in the Homecoming parade– you know, things like “Pierce the Panthers” or “Pop the Panthers”. One of my grosser male friends suggested “Panther Pap Smear”. Knowing my friends, I’m surprised no one suggested “Pork the Panthers”.