School mascots usually represent something strong or powerful, something they can respect and wear with pride. Once chosen, most schools never change it, as the mascot becomes a part of their culture.
However, one high school in Kentucky has decided to change their mascot from “Stallion” because the concept of “adult male horse with intact genitalia” is reportedly offensive to women:
According to WKYT, the new Frederick Douglass High School in Lexington, Kentucky has quashed its Stallion mascot … due to complaints it is sexist.
Indeed, a Change.org petition was started calling for the Stallion to be replaced:
This is inappropriate and sexist when you consider the definition from “YourDictionary” … “The definition of a stallion is a male horse that has not been castrated, used for breeding or is slang for a powerful and virile man who has a lot of lovers” …
What message does this send to our daughters and granddaughters? Our sons and grandsons?
School officials say they’ve received other community input about the Stallion, negative and positive, but ultimately decided to let incoming students decide on the mascot, albeit keeping with a “horse theme.”
Interesting how the slang term carried more weight than the literal definition. It’s not the first time this has happened, either: a few years back, parents threw a fit because students chose “cougars” as their mascot. The term — slang for an older woman attracted to younger men — was also thought to be derogatory toward women.
An opponent of the “Stallion” name invoked Title IX:
Petition creator Diane Cahill said “I’m very grateful to Superintendent Caulk for listening to our concerns [and] for reassessing this choice by getting input from students [and] parents.
“Hopefully a more appropriate, inclusive, gender neutral name can be found.”
[…]
“How did they come up with this? The connotation of stallions pertaining to a girls’ softball team or basketball team just seemed really, really strange to me — a male breeding horse,” she said.
Anita Courtney invoked Title IX, noting that the Stallion “leaves out 50 percent of the student population” and is “not in keeping with the spirit of […] gender equity in sports.”
Well, a Google search for “Stallions softball” returns 319,000 hits, indicating it’s probably not as big of an issue as Courtney insists it is.
Additionally, it’s not much of an issue for other mascots that are clearly male, such as “Spartans,” “Trojans” –both clearly about the male warriors of those cultures — as well as “Cowboys,” “Knights,” and countless other popular school mascots. Some schools often place the word “Lady” in front, and all is well.
But no, students now require “appropriate, inclusive, gender neutral names.” Remember that for the social justice warriors, no issue is too minuscule to make a stink over … even if they have to all but manufacture the outrage from scratch.
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