Allison Stokke and the Feminist
June 5th, 2007
Allison Stokke became an overnight Internet ’sexbomb’ thanks mostly to a sports blog called WithLeather.com, an opinionated and comedic offering by Matt Ufford who received Stokke’s picture via email and wrote a short paragraph to accompany the picture: “Meet pole vaulter Allison Stokke. . . . Hubba hubba and other grunting sounds.”
Unfortunately for Ms Stokke’s, the blog is a busy one with around a million visitors every month and inevitably the entry was picked up by social bookmarking sites such as Reddit and Digg, both sites with massive amounts of Internet traffic, resulting in her image being reposted over and over as she was blogged and written about exponentially, including a website quickly created by a webmaster (and domain squatter) entitled, “Unofficial Allison Stokke Fan Page,” with the url, www.allisonstokke.com.
A Washington Post article on May 29th described how “California High Schooler Allison Stokke, 18, Becomes a Victim Of Unwanted Attention After Photo Is Posted on a Sports Blog”. The result was slightly suprising in that the “Unofficial Allison Stokke Fan Page” removed all of the images of Ms Stokke and posted an apology: “Sorry for having contributed to the unwanted attention, Allison. We think you’re a phenomenal athlete and wish you the best of luck in your academic and athletic endeavors.”
Excellent news for Allison Stokke - not only has that site removed its content but it seemed that at least some of the attention would wane a little and she could get back to a more normal life.
Then a feminist site, called, Feministing.com, decided to bring Allison Stokke’s father, Al Stokke, a Defence Lawyer, into the fray citing his record of defending people in Court and writing an article entitled, “It’s OK when it’s someone else’s daughter“:
“To be perfectly clear, this is NOT to say that Alison Stokke has been in ANY WAY deserving of the harassment that has been heaped upon her for simply participating in a high-school track meet. But it’s noteworthy that her father, who is understandably deeply concerned for his daughter’s safety, has defended several men who have done things far more reprehensible than link to or post photos on the internet without permission.“
Feministing Mission
Young women are rarely given the opportunity to speak on their own behalf on issues that affect their lives and futures. Feministing provides a platform for us to comment, analyze and influence.
Unbelievable that a site written by a staff of seemingly intelligent women, purportedly on behalf of other young women, would stoop so low as to try to link Ms Stokke to the criminals defended by her father in a Court of Law and to deride him for doing his job.
They should be ashamed of themselves!
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed