Chick fight! Why female sports violence is a big deal
The New York Times takes on a topic that is sure to guarantee plenty of web visits by disappointed fetishists: girls fighting.
In particular, the Times’ Jere Longman is wondering, what’s all the hubbub, bub, about breathless coverage of athletic girlfights such as Baylor’s Brittney Griner punching an opponent in a women’s college basketball game, girls’ teams going at it in their Rhode Island high school soccer championship, and, the drama queen of them all, Elizabeth Lambert’s hair-pulling performance for the New Mexico women’s soccer team.
Yeah, you’ve seen Elizabeth Lambert pull hair, but have you seen her do it to the Mortal Kombat remix?
Longman talks with coaches and experts who surmise that perhaps girls’ and women’s sports have gotten more violent as women’s sports have gotten more competitive and, in some cases, more financially lucrative. Or that the coverage of fights is out of proportion to the usual mass coverage of women’s sports, which is to say not much coverage at all. Then there’s the whole idea that people still see women as delicate flowers who would never resort to fisticuffs.
The story doesn’t go into the larger societal debate over whether girls in general are getting more violent, something you might hear in disappointed tones from police breaking up another school fight, or in hopeful tones from the proprietors of Girlfightsdump.com (home of EXPLOSIVE FIGHT VIDEOS).
Actually, the rate of girls fighting appears to be about the same, with about one-quarter of girls ages 12-17 reporting being involved in a violent incident in two separate national surveys between 2002 and 2008. In its version of the story on the survey, the New York Daily News helpfully illustrates it with stock art of two women about to get their fight on in a battle that will inevitably end with their clothes torn off and them locked in naked embrace bow chicka wow wow.
I’ll tell you why their is intense coverage of females fighting during athletic events, and it’s the same reason Maria Sharapova highlights are guaranteed to make an appearance — because they give a lot of men a hard-on. Maybe the fights don’t technically excite them in the same way as Sharapova in a tennis skirt, but it’s better than Viagra all the same.
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Come on now. I know that there is a mass movement out there to say that all men are sexist. All men get hard ons to women fighting and that is why women fighting gets such exposure when women’s sports in general do not. You are a sports reporter. Do better than the cliche bull crap.
FIGHTING ALWAYS GETS TOP BILLING. Don’t beleive me? Watch sportcenter sometime. See if they cover a hockey game. If they do- bet there was a fight involved. If there is a fight in a baseball game, it doesnt matter what else happened, the fight will be covered. If there was a hard foul in a basketball game, it will be covered 100 times before a good move.
Now you may say that I speak the truth, but it says something that womens sports are undercovered, and oftentimes, the ONLY time they get covered is when they fight. Well, how many highlights had you seen of the dominican baseball league before offerman knocked out a ref?
The issue of gratuitous coverage of violence in sports crosses gender lines. But since it is intellectually easier to typecast it into a gender issue, then journalists do.
Yes, fighting gets top billing. But when men fight, even when they jump into the stands at the Palace of Auburn Hills, there’s no undercurrent of “can you believe these crazy chicks fight?” As to your point on Dominican baseball, that’s the point of some experts: that because women’s sports don’t get covered, fights get blown out of proportion.
By the way, I’m not saying ALL men get hard-ons over women fighting. Just a lot of them.
In response to another comment. See in context »May be even not a lot of them. Just you. And may be your partner.
In response to another comment. See in context »Wow. I had no idea that broaching the probability that men would get turned on by two women doing, well, anything, was such a sensitive subject, to the point of gay jokes.
In response to another comment. See in context »Having coached both men and women at the youth, high school and college level I can tell you the growth of women’s sports has and will continue to move closer to many of the mens positives and negatives that are sports. Players and teams play to win and winning is about aggressing toward your opponent. You are at battle and in battle some people will get carried away. The great thing about the women’s side of the sport is that they enter the forum with a much higher level of self control. The down side, as you mention, is that the stakes have and will continue to become more and more intense.
You should keep in mind that in battle there are numerous incidents where players get overly aggressive toward one another in both the mens and women’s game and 99% of those incidents are tempered by athletes that contain themselves with self restraint. Rather than trying to incite you readers with your closing statements on sexual innuendoes, you might want to highlight the positives that sports bring to all of us.
OK, I’ll highlight the positives that breathless coverage of women fighting in sports brings to all of us: with each bit of coverage, the chances we’ll see some male anchor hitting the desk with his boner while excitedly describing the action grows more remote.