-- Mick, Sacramento
SG: That sounds like a strange euphemism: "Things were going great, and then I got abruptly thrown to Ernie Johnson." But you're right -- every time that happens, I always think of some 50-year-old housewife who spent the last 150 minutes getting sucked into "Titanic" for the 300th time, and suddenly, there's Ernie Johnson staring at her right as Leo was trying to fit on that little raft with Kate Winslet's big butt. I was trying to think of a Bizarro Situation for this and here it is: If you were watching "Hoosiers" on ESPN Classic, Flatch just got thrown into the trophy case and Ollie was coming in … and right at that moment, Pam Ward was staring at you and saying, "Sorry to interrupt, we're throwing it to Detroit for bonus coverage of the WNBA semifinals."
*****
This is the Sports Guy's first mailbag answer from this week and for me, it hits the trifecta of his hatred for women (yes, I'm calling it hatred, but mostly because I hate it). He makes fun of 50-year-old housewives (rolls eyes -- whatever THAT'S supposed to mean), actresses that aren't fat but are called fat because they don't weigh 80 pounds, and of course his favorite, female athletes.
I used to love to read this feature from him. Yes, I used to love Bill Simmons. I thought he was funny and I really looked forward to his next piece, especially these mailbags.
Then things like this started cropping up ... and it started to wear on me. It's clear Bill Simmons wants nothing to do with the female sports fan. It's not surprising he married a woman who has no interest in sports because he despises women who do.
If there is a female presence in his mailbags at all, it's to be either made fun of, be hot or be made a sexual object. I used to send questions to him all the time (yes, another admission) about the Celtics, the Red Sox, the Patriots. Yet the only questions he ever uses from women are things about how they should approach hooking up with a guy. Clever.
There used to be some legitimate questions from females in there, once upon a time, but those have disappeared. Invariably, Bill wouldn't actually answer the question but just say something along the lines of "I have (insert girl's name here) email address," as if asking an intelligent sports question required intellect above and beyond what a feeble female brain could produce.
I learned a long time ago that there is no trick to understanding sports and you sure as hell don't need to be a man to understand it. It's a subject, like math or history.... if you read about it, watch it and experience it, you will understand it. If it's confusing to a woman at the start, it's the same confusion a man or woman might have experienced the first time they tried to divide. But you got OVER it, you learned it, and maybe or maybe not, you enjoyed it.
It's that simple.
My sports knowledge hasn't been that long in the making. Most people know I really only caught on when I came to college. Since that I've tried to soak up as much as possible, and in relative male terms (I recognize most boys were subject to sports at a younger age, however I know many females who were sports fans at an early age) I am probably at the sports intelligence level of a 14 year old boy.
It's not a contest. It's about respect. It's about being in a group of guys (my life for the most part) and getting them to look at YOU when they discuss sports. This is one of the strangest occurrences of my life. I can be sitting at a table, full of men (this has happened many times before) and a sports convo starts. Ten out of 10 times, they will engage Jeff in the conversation, and never me.
Sometimes, I view this as a challenge and look forward to jumping in and offering my opinion. Sometimes, this is easy and I'm enveloped right in. Sometimes, I'm ignored.
It's fine. Throughout my career in sports journalism, more than five years now, I have NEVER come upon a male I respect who has treated me any different than they would a man. (Case in point is obviously Jeff, who loves that I watch sports with him.)
Clearly I have met some fantastic males in the sports industry or I never would have gotten this far. That's what I cling too. That the people who are really worth something look past their seething testosterone to see that, hey, she knows what she's talking about -- or at least that I'm working hard at it.
Sports Guy, well, he's not in that club. Or rather, he doesn't want women in what he sees as a strictly male pastime to be shared only with males. It's fun to treat women as outsiders, and I'm not sure why.
This is SO offensive to me now. I'm sorry if you think I'm hypersensitive but as an editor for this same web site, I would NEVER let one of the bloggers get away with this. Why does get to be an exception? Can we please take a step FORWARD into a world where men and women can share the same interests?
Or is it too hard for him to understand?
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8 comments:
I think you meant to refer to me as an exception to the rule not "case in point" which infers that I'm the perfect example of this sexist bastard you're describing. Right?
Have you noticed that Food (2), Movies (8), Music (4), Politics (4) and TV (9) have all been tagged more times on your blog then Jeff (1)?
=(
First of all, I thought you were on a muy important conference call ;) Secondly I said I've never met a man I respected who treated me like an outsider when it came to sports. Case in point being you, love, who instead appreciates it as a fine quality.
This is a great post. Seriously. I used to love Bill Simmons, too. I quickly lost interest in the past couple of years due to similar reasons, though I still love those old Red Sox articles he used to write during the playoffs and eventual championships.
Good job, Emily.
Allow me to make a partial apology for Mr. Simmons. First off, I don't think he was really making fun of 50-year-old housewives or the WNBA here. He did deploy the stereotype of a 50-year-old housewife who likes Titanic, but this does not seem to me to be particularly egregious or harmful. Surely 50-year-old housewives, as a group, generally do appreciate Titanic more than the average person. Since he was not using this stereotype to make assumptions about the behavior of any particular person, I don't see how it's a very big deal. And I really can't detect any condemnation of or even condescension toward this type of person either.
As for the WNBA, certainly he mocks it frequently, but here he just uses it as an example of something that the typical male sports fan has no interest in watching whatsoever. I don't think there can be much doubt that the typical male sports fan has no interest in watching the WNBA. We can argue about whether he should or shouldn't have such an interest, but the fact remains that he doesn't. At worst, it might be said that Mr. Simmons here adds just a tiny bit of implied legitimacy to the practice of ignoring the WNBA. (Full disclosure: I have no interest in the WNBA, just I have no interest in men's college basketball or men's college football unless it involves my alma mater, because I'm really only interested in watching those sports be played at the highest level possible, which I generally think requires having the greatest athletes available play them).
As for his habit of treating women as sex objects, I can't deny that. But I will offer that his repeated "Wow, a chick who likes sports!" reaction is not born of surprise that women can process sports but of surprise that he has come across the rare woman who is interested in sports. Perhaps he underestimates the prevalence of such women in the general population, but it is certainly true that by and large women don't care nearly as much about sports as men do. Furthermore, I get the impression that, like me, he comes from a family in which every single woman not only is disinterested in sports, but in fact can barely tolerate having the men sit around watching them all weekend. If you are consistently persecuted for watching sports by the women in your life, it is perhaps understandable if you express excitement when you encounter a woman who would enjoy watching and discussing it with you.
I don't think you can argue that Simmons actually despises women who like sports when, later in the same mailbag, he presents this email and response:
Q: Hi, my name is Kristy, and I am a Reader Mailbag Virgin. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, will the glory days of the "one star running back system" ever return? I miss the days of a healthy LT, the pre-prison Jamal Lewis era and Priest Holmes.
-- Kristy, Scottsdale, Ariz.
SG: Ladies and gentleman, I'd like to introduce you to my second wife … Kristy from Scottsdale!
I grant that this is just a variation on the "I have her email address, guys!" joke, but I don't think that it's possible to read "I hate women who like sports" into this without some truly tortured pop psychology. I would also point to his repeated declarations of affection for Jemele Hill and ESPN's female ombudsman, Le Anne Schreiber, as evidence that he not only tolerates but enjoys the opinions of female sports fans. The fact that, like me, he married a woman who can't stand sports probably speaks less to a hatred of sports-loving women and more to the fact that there are lots and lots of other, more important factors that go into choosing a spouse. I have no doubt that, all things being equal, he would prefer to have his wife like sports, too.
As for Kate Winslett, I admit that the dig was gratuitous. On the other hand, I think it's the kind of playful joke that's not meant seriously and would be perfectly fine if told in the living room among friends. I can still see the argument that maybe such jokes should stay in the living room, though, as there's no need to legitimize the sentiment by putting it out in public.
@ Jeff -- If I put you as a real tag, you'd be tagged on everything :)
@ Jess -- I'm glad you enjoyed it! I got a lil' fired up there...
Holy Crap Paul, that's a lot to respond to. I won't waste too much of your time as I can say you are unlikely to change my mind, considering some inside knowledge I have on Simmons from his Boston Herald days and first hand reporting which heard him say, about Celtics beat reporter Shira Springer, "A woman should never be allowed to cover the Celtics." I can almost surely say he thinks Jamele and LeAnn are exceptions and not the rule
I can say that it has taken me a long time to get here, because, like I said before, I used to be a huge fan.
A few things though... His first implication is that 50-year-old "houswives" would be destroyed if a sports game came on. While that may be true in many cases, I know MANY MANY women in their fifties who enjoy sports, including my mom, who when she moved to S.C. signed up for MLB.tv so she could watch Sox games even though she moved.
Now my mom is a great example. I am pretty sure my mom wasn't much of a sports fan at all before I became one. I firmly believe that my interest in it created an interest for her and perhaps, even maybe subconciously, I showed her how accessable sports can be for women.
The analogy was meant to show switching from one thing someone might enjoy to another than they most certainly would not which implies 1. 50-year-old housewives would certainly not enjoy a game of playoff baseball and 2. men would most certainly not enjoy women's basketball.
Now, I don't watch women's basketball and I have made this point many times. My issue with Bill is that he treats the WNBA as a personal nuisance to him. My point is this: why shouldn't women be able to play professional basketball if it's something they enjoy and are good at? If you don't like it, DON'T WATCH IT! I fear for his daughter. What if she grows up and is a successful athlete. She stars in high school, ends up in college on a scholarship and then, well, hold it right there. That's the end of the line. There's no opportunities left for you to play and make money. She should have that opportunity on whatever level she can get it. And you or I don't have to watch.
I agree the typical male sports fan would not watch the WNBA, so no argument there.
As for the "my second wife!" thing ... here's the rub. It's not that hard to find a female sports fan in Boston. Hard-core ones, who know lineups and play calls and defensive schemes. Lo, I am not the only one. I can't help but feel that he chose a woman who specifically DIDN'T enjoy those things, but that's conjecture.
I think Paul, if you had a daughter to go along with your beautiful son, and you treated them the same way, took them to baseball and basketball games... they would likely both grow up sports fans.
My point is this, it's not ingrained in a woman to not be a sports fan, it's just what we're introduced to. It's likely no one in your family, at a young age, made an attempt to get a girl into sports, by throwing a baseball with them, or taking them to the Y to shoot hoops. I know you have a sister who is a gymnast, does she not enjoy sports -- even if not the mainstream ones?
It's about sports being accessable to women. If the flip were true, and for instance, all the women of your family were into sports and Melanie, not being into them, came into that situation... I can almost guarentee she'd develop an affinity for it.
I dunno, just some thoughts... and some bad spelling along the way I'm sure..
Thanks for the response, Emily. I agree with much of what you say, and I'll get to that. First, though, while I agree that he is implying that there are SOME 50-year-old housewives who would be destroyed by having Titanic cut short in favor of baseball, I don't think he is any way denying the existence of other 50-year-old housewives who would welcome the programming switch. He's just, for the sake of comedy, invoking the type of middle-aged women, a type of woman whom we have surely all met an approximate version of in real life, who loves romantic movies, gets very involved in them, and hates sports. Noting that there is some comedy in this woman's experience of this minor tragedy is not to denigrate her preferences or the preferences of other women her age. In fact, if he is not making fun of the stereotypical male sports fan whom he presents immediately afterward, I don't see how he could be making fun of this stereotypical woman.
As for his repeated mocking of the WNBA, he has said explicitly on more than one occasion that he's happy it exists. His annoyance, which you identify and which he admits is real, stems not from its presence but from ESPN's and the NBA's ongoing attempts to advertise it heavily and, in David Stern's case, subtly shame us for not watching it. He holds that the promotion is far out of line with its actual relevance to the sports scene, and he resents what he sees as the implied accusation there is something wrong with you as a person if you don't appreciate it. Maybe he's over-sensitive, maybe he could be more generous, maybe that's a shaky rationalization for an attitude actually prompted by sexism (a thought I have had myself), but I don't think we can automatically assume that he is being disingenuous when he says this. The argument does cohere, and, if the networks and league stopped promoting the WNBA like a major sport, he might actually shut up about it. He might not, too, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
I agree with you absolutely on the source of the male-female disparity in sports interest, and I assure you that I have every intention of programming my daughter to like sports :). I'm sure that there are plenty of hardcore female Boston sports fans, and I'm sure he's met plenty of them, but I still don't begrudge him his (surely only half-serious) gleeful surprise each time he encounters one. I really don't think he means to demean women by it, and I don't think that it necessarily does demean women. Maybe though I would feel like you do if I too had to put up with the constant presupposition that I didn't know much about sports because of my gender (a presupposition that I reiterate comes not from the idea that women can't understand sports but from the fact that for the most part they haven't been brought up to).
Now, my arguments about this particular email response notwithstanding, I'm open to the idea that Bill Simmons is nonetheless a sexist. The quote that you mention certainly doesn't sound good as presented, and even my most charitable imagined context for it suggests an unwillingness to believe that a woman could experience the Celtics in a way that would be meaningful to a man. So I don't mean to excuse him altogether; I just thought I'd present what seems to me a more fair (possibly too fair!) interpretation of his writing here.
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