In what is possibly the most bizarre Parliamentary motion I have ever seen or heard of, a our parliamentarians voted that Olympic athlete's uniforms should include seal skin.
Regardless of how you feel about seal skin, the problem here is that they are forcing the athletes to wear a political statement. It is quite obvious from the motion that the goal is solely political and the seal skin serves no particular athletic purpose. So to have the athletes wear it would be to force them to walk around implying that they, as individuals, support the seal hunt.
Because it's a divisive issue, I'm sure at least some of them don't. And I'm sure at least some of the people who don't find the idea of wearing seal skin actively repulsive.
Our general societal standards are that Olympic athletes are to be admired and respected and looked up to. Elite athleticism is considered an honourable endeavour. These people spend years and years pushing their body to the very physical limits humanly possible to win glory for their country. Their diet and workout regime and entire lifestyle is taken over for their entire young adult life to serve the purpose of winning medals for Canada. Even if, like me, you aren't so very into sports or nationalism, you can at least see why our political policy and our parliamentarians should be treating our Olympic athletes with respect.
But instead they want to force them to be human billboards for a political statement that they may not agree with - that they may even find repulsive. They might be forcing some of them to choose between their own personal morals and competing in this elite competition that they've spent years training for. This is no way to treat people who have devoted literally their whole lives to what our society considers a laudable and praiseworthy achievement, whose success is considered to reflect well on us all.
If it really is necessary to use the Olympics to promote seal products, they can sell them there among the souvenirs. They can give them away to visitors so people can see how awesome they apparently are. They can hand out literature justifying how being clubbed on the head with a scary pointy thing is really quite a humane way to die. While not everyone would be thrilled with these steps, they are valid ways to achieve that goal.
But using the athletes as human billboards to make a political statement, putting them in a position where they have to imply that they agree with that statement, is completely inappropriate and disrespectful of the athletes as human beings.
1 comment:
Seals are hunted not only on the East Coast but also in Nunavut. I can assure you that seals are not clubbed on the head here. I really wish people would educate themselves and not persist in the fiction that the hunt is carried out in the same way in all locations in Canada.
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