Sports, Misogyny and WAGs

People are getting a little too comfortable treating women like shit. This has been the case for decades upon decades, in all walks of life and in all fields of interest. Sports is no exception. 

Maybe because it is considered a activity that is predominantly geared towards men or maybe because like all things hating on women has become a default hobby that society never quite unlearned. 

'Women do not like sports.'

This is obviously a false statement and while it could apply to a category of women, one size does not fit all. However, this notion or opinion or fact if you ask some people, has been so deeply ingrained into our minds that it has become a gender stereotype at this point. Just like women are expected to cook and clean and be delicate, we also have to be clueless and not understand/engage in any 'male-related' activities. Thankfully, this too, like the other ideas have changed and somewhat improved with time. 

Now, instead of being told women cannot like sports, we simply question their actual interest in it. Does she actually like the sport? If so she must put up with the following nonsense to get our seal of approval. 

1) 'Name five players.' (This I find, is a universal favorite)

2) 'It must be because a player is attractive.' 

3) 'Well I bet you didn't know 'insert niche reference from 1938', so you're not a real fan.'

4) 'What does 'insert random term' stand for?'

5) 'You probably support that team because they're winning. You don't actually know about the sport.'

BONUS nonsense 

* 'You just want to be their girlfriend/date them.'

Frame those question using whatever synonyms you like, misogyny is still misogyny and female sports fans, women in sports and women in general have to face such rubbish all the time for no good reason. Other than people's weird insecurity. 

And the sad part is, this kind of behavior and hostility towards fans (new or old) will just cause them to stop engaging with the sport because being interrogated or made assumption about is not remotely fun. Why you would willingly chase someone away from something you enjoy is beyond me. 

If this behavior is so blatant towards women showing an interest in sports, just imagine how much worse it is for women IN sports. Female football teams get very little attention and if they do, they are underappreciated, criticized and made fun of. The bar for women is so much higher because it's a privilege they had to earn, and so they have to fight harder to keep it while simultaneously get funding and sponsors. But they cannot complain about this discrimination because if they do, people will simply say that the male teams face the same problems and do fine. You're damned if you do, damned if you don't. 

Not to mention the casual sexualization, harassment, and sexist treatment of women in these sports. They are underpaid, underfunded and are expected to put up with all kinds of verbal abuse because it's part of the sport. If that means a coach assaulted you, or your uniform are way too short for no good reason, you just have to put up with it because there aren't enough people watching female-dominated sports for you to complain. Which isn't true by the way. There are plenty of female-dominated sports and this years Olympics can be testament to that. Even the sports that are more male-centered are forming female leagues and it has a slow but rapidly rising fanbase. 

We've talked about fans and sports people, now let's talk about the third category of women who bear the brunt of absolutely unnecessary hate from men/male fans. WAGs. 

Hold on folks, I'm not gonna just drop you in blind. I'm aware that some of you might not be aware of what a WAG is, so let's have a little sidebar. 

Welcome to the sidebar, we're very silly and goofy but educational here. WAG simply means wife or girlfriend of an athlete. It's as simple as that. It was a term popularized in the 90s as we started seeing more famous athlete-celebrity couple pairings. One of the most popular ones at the time being Victoria and David Beckham. 

As we've well established already, women and sports = no no. So you can imagine how well people would take it if a women started garnering even the least bit of attention during their precious game. They acted like entitled, disgusting children. So, basically the usual.

These women were harassed, slutshamed, and blamed for if the team lost a match. If she was given a second of screentime, suddenly she was an attention seeker and was taking up too much screentime. Never mind that they were simply supporting their partners. No, everything was their fault and fault in the team was also their fault. It's extremely weird that people were blaming a woman who had nothing to do with a sport, and not the actual players. I wish I could say things were better for these ladies, but they are decidedly not. 

The term WAG itself is quite weird to begin with as even though it is simply to denote their relationship with the player, a lot of people seem to make it that person's whole personality. These people are actually, you know, human beings outside of their interactions with whatever sport they appear in. 

If there's anything to take away from this, it's this. 

Sports are not gendered. And making it so has obviously done more harm than good. The amount of girls who grow up with no interest or like towards sports might have more to do with the idea that 'girls can't like sports' than girls actually not liking sports. Gender roles and stereotypes end up doing more harm than good so practice being more welcoming rather than dismissive and a pompous asshole. 

A few bad apples do not represent the whole lot and while there are some actually crazy apples out there, the community can be quite nice when you get past the superficial ones. 

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