Today is the day we honor the women who nursed us back to health, helped us with our homework after ten hour shifts, and sacrificed to provide lives we can be grateful for. Now while we all take a day out of the year to appreciate these outstanding women, there are many who use every other day of the year to assault, abuse and antagonize women whether they be mothers or not simply for their preferences and occupational choices. Just as any male dominated profession, a woman in the sports world in any role often become recipients of unrelenting vulgarity and antagonistic language. The “back to the kitchen” and “make me a sandwich” jokes are still alive and well folks, and it’s time we stop ignoring those responsible no matter what jersey they wear.
As a rational sports fan, you learn to love the competition because of the level of effort and determination put on display for our entertainment. It’s all we need.
Then we have the special fans, such as the severely underwhelmed ones, who salivate seeing 360 dunks and bicycle kicks, and throw tantrums when there aren’t any on display. Keeping them company are the fans who get extremely defensive and threatened when they sense a female attempting to infiltrate their sports realm and they treat it worse than that time the Empire discovered the Rebel base on Hoth. (We all deserve a good Empire Strikes Back reference every now and again).
The Pat Summitt (All-time leader in career NCAA wins for any Division I coach), Serena Williams (More major championship titles than any other tennis player in its Open Era history) and Abby Wambach’s (One of the most decorated stars in U.S. soccer history) of the world have put the weight of unbearable scrutiny and unsatisfied expectations on their shoulders and proceeded to do squats with those bad boys. The list of women who have proven that their skills and achievements are not just “good for a girl” stretches a lot further than most ignorant fans can probably count. They have become leaders and icons in their respective sports, setting records and accumulating medals and awards on a scale that could fill out a lot of your favorite male athlete’s trophy rooms.
Seeing women succeed and ascend to such high plateaus triggers a defense mechanism for any close-minded individual, who then takes to their keyboards to unleash unbridled, toxic fury upon Twitter and comment sections of sports articles everywhere. Individuals with mother’s, sister’s and aunts have the time to comically debate on Serena William’s gender or attack Abby Wambach ‘s sexual preference, are often the ones who want to defend their own blood with such hypocrisy?
Even within sports media, many women still do not attain even the most decent levels of respect that every person should be entitled to. Attempting to research female sports journalists, as I did, will leave you severely disappointed in our country’s desire to use search engines for anything other than beer, food or porn. Searching “ESPN Female Journalist” will grant you many options to choose from such as “Hottest Female Sports Reporters” or its equally informative counterpart “Top 15 Hottest Women of ESPN”.
ESPN’s Jemele Hill has been of the most targeted on air personalities/journalist on the sports spectrum during her rise through the company’s ranks after joining in 2006. Hill, a graduate of Michigan State University with a BA in Journalism, has won several awards for her work in her field and has held a handful of positions in the journalism world after her graduation in 1998. The unnecessary amount of hate and violence directed toward her daily comes through every form of social media platform. Her success as not only an African American woman in the sports world, but as a WOMAN in general along with her unique and seamless method of infusing pop culture within debates have transformed her in to a lightning rod of terrible pleasantries. The words used to describe her by the online community is truly saddening because it only highlights how little respect a majority of fans have for women like Jemele and her female colleagues. Jemele Hill represents the closing chapters of a very close-minded era of sports. She has continued to press on never taking her foot off the gas.
It’s understandable to think this is just a massive case of machismo entering its final form, but the issue does not end once you hit send. An actual human being is being subjected to your unnecessary hate and discrimination for pursuing their passion. Many of us who are sons to mothers, brothers to sisters, or grandsons to grandmothers should be more morally inclined enough to not attack someone simply because they are of the opposite gender. When I come across a man almost twice my age more concerned with sharing his opinion on the Olympic Women’s Gymnastics team looking like “men” than congratulating their historic achievements, it really has me worried about the direction our fan bases are going in.
Underdog Off The Bench 