What’s fem for munter?

Hadyn Green at Public Address beautifully laments the difficulties with loving sport and not being a “munter”.

This must be a boy thing.  Loving sport for me has been harder to make ok with feminism than with nerd/jock discomfort. 

I vividly remember lies of omission when leaving women’s group events early at Victoria University in the 1980s – to go to men’s rugby league games.  My friend Lizzie and I would just slope away, hoping no one would ask us where we were going.

It is still one of my tests of potential new male friends – what happens when they hear I played very serious cricket, including for money, for quite a long time.

Failures:  tell me, vividly and at length, about the time they scored 11 not out in their only college game when they were 15 without any sense of irony at all.  Oh, and actually never ask me what it was like playing in different countries.

Successes: offer the same level of interest you would to anyone when you find out inadvertently (because I have to say, it’s not my first conversational gambit at parties) that someone is good at something you’re interested in.  Ie – ask me about it.

All of my close male friends have passed this test – and of course, I am spoilt rotten by having a brother and father who obsessively remember my sports records and love competing in the backyard.

Funnily enough, most of my friends are completely uninterested in sport.  I guess I’m a nerd-loving feminist geek munter.  Or something.

Cricket anyone?