Women get into a scuffle! In a college soccer match! And get two red cards for it! And make headlines! I am so sick of this shit. If it were the WPS, yes, that's news - if the fight were truly spectacular, which this is not. But hey, why cover the WPS?
(The actual event is so singularly uninteresting that it boggles the mind. This is, to my mind, even worse than the Lambert incident, because not only was the confrontation totally ordinary, it was also properly refereed! Where is the news here??? My god - how many men 's teams finish with 10 players on the pitch because of stuff like this? It's utterly banal.)
Scuffles, fights, shoving matches - none of this should ever be news because the players involved are women. That is the only reason this is considered newsworthy here - the only reason.
If we accept that as newsworthy - well, what else should we make headlines out of?
Women are competitive! Women get pissed off! Sometimes, they lose their temper! STOP THE PRESSES!!
Actually, I mean that last bit.
Stop this sexist press, or I am coming over there with my soccer-playing harpie warrior bitches, we are going to foul the living daylights out of you. And we aren't going to be pulling no ponytails.
Oh, sorry, was that too aggressive? Did I lose my ladylike composure?
I'm so fed up with stories about women losing it on the field - this is full-on media collaboration with the worst aspects of sexism: Make women out to be monsters, all the while burying the story of the very real links between violence against women, homophobia, and the mainstream sports culture that media produces.
I suppose there is still, unfortunately, an aspect of the circus about it all for many people. A case of, oh look at these women playing the man's game. Will that change soon? I really don't know.
ReplyDeleteI just have to applaud your comments, honestly. The way sport news treat women - and women treated in general - should be completely modified (and I tell you, in Spain is much, much worst). But this story...
ReplyDeletesorry but i have to disagree with you on the bent of the article being sexist. just scrolling casually through the sport page of the Huffington Post i can see a number of articles regarding inane matters such as on field fights between male baseball players, drunk mascots, athletes sex tape scandal, etc..
ReplyDeletethe fact that this article got to the front page perhaps indicates a certain degree of sexism, as it's most probably the fact that the athletes are women that got it there, but posting this as news (even though it isn't) can't be seen as particularly sexist in light of their other sport "news" articles..
Yes, HP features a lot of stupid stories that don't matter - and they are featuring a baseball fight - a full-on brawl, mind you, involving lots of players - not an ordinary scrape on the pitch - that baseball brawl was fought by teams playing at the top level of the sport, by players earning millions. THAT is why that story is newsworthy.
ReplyDeleteThis video is of women college players, who are amateurs, in an ordinary game. It is not news, unless you accept the fact that women fight for the ball, and that sometimes they really lose their tempers is itself newsworthy.
It is not even a good stupid story.
This happens at every freakin level of the men's game, and it isn't news. This would be, well, like, if in a totally ordinary men's college soccer game, if, well, two guys got red cards for violent conduct. That happens all the time. Not every game, perhaps, but nearly team has a moment like this, every season. Some more than once.
These are particularly nasty exchanges, by the way, because it isn't the highest level of the game - what you are seeing, in part, is a lack of professionalism. Which is, well, all over the sport - that's why there are these people on the field called referees.
So, again, that this has been treated as a story at all is pure sexism.
Now - when I see videos like this about women soccer players who are earning millions playing in pro leagues, and who we can watch on television - well, then it won't be sexism, it'll just be women being as lame as men are, and the media calling them out on their lameness. THAT, I can get behind.