There is a subculture within sports that sees to it women do not prosper gracefully in their careers as reporters. In light of a lot of instances, a few examples being, ESPN’s Jamele Hill and comments made by Cam Newton, the world of women in sports is coming to the surface for all that it entails.
For so long, the type of abuse women have suffered has been worn as a badge of honor in the sports world. Their claim to having a career came with the territory of being dissected about their looks, their weight or anything else superficial instead of their work. They are forced to take the abuse in stride and in silence with it coming mostly from men.
These men are not just idiots with fragile male egos still living in the ’50s and angry about women who dare speak on sports instead of being in a kitchen. It is a much deeper problem that needs to be addressed for the progressive misogyny.
According to the Women’s Media Center’s annual report, the sports ethics institute graded newspapers and website sports desks “F” in gender diversity compared to a “C+” in racial.
Watch a video on YouTube called #MoreThanMean – Women in Sports ‘Face’ Harassment and you’ll find the type of hate that men impose on professional women in the field today. The video has random men reading the tweets of other men who have posted hateful comments to sports reporters Julie Dicaro and Sarah Spain online.
From usual insults like “fat” and “whore” to more derogatory terms that start with C’s and B’s to even death threats and verbalizing wished assaults on these women, you see the uncomfortable face to face interaction of the men reading those tweets.
Julie Dicaro, in particular, wrote an article in 2013 reflecting on a sexual assault she faced in light of an allegation of rape in the sports world. Going beyond the sports to bring up very real issues, Dicaro was bombarded with hateful comments for that article.
People even typed up their wishes that she be raped again. In an interview with HBO Sports, she said that type of harassment caused lacking in her thoroughly researching her team. Instead, time was spent on the internet blocking people who constantly commented hate.
It sounds so simple for people who do not utilize social media on a daily basis to say, “Just get off of Twitter,” but having those platforms is a part of the job. It is hard to do that job when your mentions are blowing up enough for you to miss positive interactions and actual research.
Besides the outside entities that are men who are not even working in sports, it is evident that some working within can prove to be the same. Cam Newton’s “female” comment to a woman reporter questioning him on “routes,” though taken out of context according to him, proves the ignorance, if anything, with the perception of women in sports.
Women always have their credibility questioned instead of just debating respectfully how men are allowed to do. It comes to a shock when women know what they are talking about.
ESPN SportCenter host, Jamele Hill’s politically-charged Twitter comments came with flagged controversy back in October. Starting with her comments on President Trump being a white supremacist to her take on protesting the NFL by attacking advertisers, Hill received intense backlash online. She even garnered a response from President Trump who mocked her suspension from ESPN for her comments.
Something that goes unsaid through the debates though are the colleagues who came to her defense in the backlash. A lot of her male co-worker supported her. They stood up for her. A small scaled solution to the misogyny started with these men taking a stand.
Stand up for women. Not just because you have a daughter, or a mother, or a sister. Do it because even without the women in your life, women around the world are still human. Women are still valuable and women deserve decent respect.