Why I'll never be a "derby girl"

I never used to be a feminist. At least, I never consciously used to be a feminist. I used to be a lot of things but among them, I was a bit of a female chauvinist pig (and if you haven't read the book of that name by Ariel Levy I highly recommend it). I openly derided "girly" culture. I made a big deal of being "One of the lads". I didn't drink wine (girl drink). I didn't wear skirts (girl clothes). I made a noisy point of not having female mates as "they're shit friends, so petty and catty and all that bullshit. Men make way more sense". I found my own gender slightly confusing, and a bit daunting. I stayed out of it, hiding my discomfort at who I was by deriding my own.

Eventually, I grew up a bit, accepted my body and myself a bit more and started to understand that being female and feminine was not synonymous with being weak. I started to wear clothes I liked, rather than what I felt I should wear. I bought some dresses, the odd bit of make-up. I started to look in the mirror and see a woman looking back, and how I defined being female, not how being female defined me. I started reading a lot about feminist theory (and with it, queer theory, but that's for another time). I got confused. I got mad. I got thoughtful. I got a bit of understanding.

Then derby happened, and a lot of stuff started making WAY more sense.

It's hard to be dismissive of women as weak when Terror Satana just floored you with a shoulder check so hard you could swear your kidneys jiggled. It's hard to think of groups of women being catty and bitchy when you see the leagues, the teams, the family that women have built for themselves around this sport. Yeah, there's cattiness and bitchiness, but not nearly as much as the cynic may suggest.

Which leads me on to the phrase "derby girl". God, it trips off the tongue easy, doesn't it? Extremely pleasing on the palate, a nice mix of hard consonants and a few low notes in the middle. Mmmmm, "der-by gir-l". I hate it. Hate it hate it hate it. I hate being described as such, I hate it when my love of fine syntax overcomes my distaste and I use it myself, it's just...crap, really.

So hey there, angry Scottish person! Why the vitriol? It's that second word that makes me prickle like a hedgehog in headlights. Girl. I really, really don't like that word, especially when used to describe adults. I work with people as young as 12 on a daily basis and never, ever call them "boys and girls". If I feel the need to address them on a gender-by-gender basis, it's "Ladies and gents" "Ladles and jellyspoons" (worth it for the confusion factor) or something like that. Never "you girls" or "you boys". To me, a girl is a female child. It's what my friend's 6 year old is. She's small, likes frogs, draws pictures and wants to be a vet/princess when she grows up. She's a girl. Her mum, who is a kick-ass blocker and take-no-prisoners career woman when she's not bringing up her children alone, is in absolutely no way, shape or form, a girl. If she chooses to call herself such then that's cool with me, but for me to call her a "derby girl"? Yeuch. It sounds so dismissive of all the things she does both on and off-track. To describe ourselves like this, to me, just seems self-deprecating and almost infantilising, like we play the equivalent of pillowfights whilst listening to the High School Musical soundtrack. It just doesn't describe any of the women I know who play derby. None. At all. Ever.

I may be in a massive minority here, and possibly furthering the image of feminists as a bunch of dour, humourless biddies who'll die alone surrounded by cats, but I don't really care. Call me a skater, a player, a team member, a freshie, a second-stringer, whatever when on the track. But I've come a long way from being a girl, derby or otherwise. Chances are that if you play derby and you're reading this, so have you.