Why Do All These Men Hate Women’s Sports?

How a history of misogynistic behavior led to low wages and little respect for the woman athlete.

“Best trio in cooking history?”

“I’m trying to find all the people that asked…”

“There gonna COOK together”

These are just a few of the comments Bleacher Report received on a February 12, 2020, post regarding 4x WNBA All-Star, Skylar Diggins, signing with the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury and joining forces with Diana Taurasi and Brittney Griner.

Within two hours of that post, those three comments alone garnered almost 6,000 likes from people who seemingly enjoyed their response.

Bleacher Report has over 12 million Instagram followers. While I don’t have their analytics I would assume most of their followers are males who engage with other males regarding sports and other topics sports adjacent. A post about the WNBA is going to draw a bunch of idiots who think they’re funny, all trying to outwit each other to garner engagement from fellow idiots while attempting to make women athletes the butt of their jokes.

Now let’s hop over to the WNBA Instagram page. A page with 829K followers and while again I don’t have their analytics one could at least assume the people engaging with their page not only enjoy basketball but women’s basketball specifically, right? For the most part, that’s correct, but unfortunately, they still receive comments like;

“No wonder why the dishes are still dirty.”

“This fake sh*t dont even got 1mil followers”

“Get to the kitchen!!”

And one last time, let’s head back to the Bleacher Report page to review their post from January 14, 2020, announcing the WNBA’s new Collective Bargaining Agreement which gives players higher wages (top players to earn over $500K per season), their own hotel rooms on road trips and full salary on maternity leave.

Over 12,000 comments. Let’s check out a few:

“This just in…. WNBA set to close its doors in 2021, they had a good run with literally 10s of fans”

“Midget wrestling > WNBA”

“WNBA lay up contests go hard tho”

“Explain this to me in house chores terms”

Now going into the comments section of almost any post, thread, news article, etc. is almost never a good idea unless you stumble into Ken M or /u/shittymorph. But unfortunately, these unoriginal, sexist comments permeate in the way women athletes are actually treated around the globe.

Regarding the WNBA new CBA, yes, you read that correctly. A big win for the WNBA players was players getting their own hotel room on the road.

You might remember the USWNT fight for equal pay. Since 1991 the Women’s team has accumulated four World Cup titles and four Olympic Gold Medals and as of 2017 USWNT players would receive a maximum of $99,000 per 20 tournament games whereas the Men’s team, who have accumulated zero World Cup titles and zero Olympic Gold Medals during that same time period have earned up to $263,320 per 20 tournament games. And if you think that men generate more revenue than the women explaining the disparity in salaries, in this case, they don’t.

So why do some men feel the need to not only dismiss women athletes but resort to comments about them getting back in the kitchen, making sandwiches, doing house chores, etc.?

In December 2019 The Atlantic featured a story written by Peggy Orenstein titled The Miseducation of the American Boy. Peggy dives into how masculinity is defined by young men.

Yet when asked to describe the attributes of “the ideal guy,” those same boys appeared to be harking back to 1955. Dominance. Aggression. Rugged good looks (with an emphasis on height). Sexual prowess. Stoicism. Athleticism. Wealth (at least some day).

In another survey, which compared young men from the U.S., the U.K., and Mexico, Americans reported more social pressure to be ever-ready for sex and to get with as many women as possible; they also acknowledged more stigma against homosexuality, and they received more messages that they should control their female partners, as in: Men “deserve to know” the whereabouts of their girlfriends or wives at all times.

Peggy’s piece is eye-opening in the sense that someone spent years studying a problem and provided data and research to show how American boys have been miseducated for generations. The fact that too many men have horrifically archaic ideas of what a woman should be is not eye-opening at all. We’ve seen it.

From The Honeymooners catchphrase “One of these days, Alice. Pow! Right in the kisser!” to this year’s Oscars where not a single women director was nominated for the category Best Director, women are viewed as less than. Institutions like the Oscar’s are dominated by men who have all the say. In 2018 69% of Oscar voters were men, a number that has gone down over the last five years thanks to a huge push from women. 93.4% of Fortune 500 CEO’s are men. 76.4% of the 116th US Congress is male. 30 years ago the US Congress was 94% male.

From Oscars to pop culture, politics and back to sports, society has been unable to give women the respect and equality they deserve.

But why?

Simply put; misogyny.

For hundreds (if not thousands) of years, men have felt the need to assert themselves as dominant using anything from biblical context to science. Over time these views get passed down from generation to generation, one CEO to the next, all of which culminates in unbelievably naive men thinking they could beat WNBA players in a game of one-on-one.

The disrespect for women is real. On one hand, men will do anything to be with a woman. They’ll text “u up?” at random times in the middle of the night, all in the hopes of getting a response that says “come on over” so they can have sex. They’ll send unoriginal messages after unoriginal messages to women who are less than interested hoping to get a text that includes at least two words. When it comes to women some men can be unbearably embarrassing.

So if men stake so much of their manliness on being with women, spending our lives with women, you would think we’d do a better job of respecting women, right?

Unfortunately, misogyny is so heavily baked into who we are as a culture that some men are unable to separate their love of women from their expectations of being reciprocated for their love in a manner that suits the man best. Historically men expected themselves to provide shelter and demanded a cooked meal in return. Men would leave home to provide an income and in return, men expected their wives to take care of the kids. Men provided physical strength and security and expected women to provide sex and respect.

Discussions of family roles were rarely part of the equation. Whatever the men said was the final word and that unfortunate backstory is why we still fight for women’s equality today. Now here are some women who simply couldn’t care less what you think, ballin’ out every day, and millions of men around the world are saying “wait a minute. Who gave you permission to play our sports?”

Let’s keep it real; nobody needs the permission of some weak ass man.

Knocking women for not being able to dunk after your showstopping 137 showing at the bowling alley? Weak.

Mocking women for demanding fair pay in the workplace while you’re surfing the internet at work? So weak.

Telling Diana Taurasi, Brittany Griner, and Skylar Diggins to get back in the kitchen with empty whopper wrappers crumpled up in your back seat? Embarrassing and weak.

Somebody gave these boys an internet connection and all of a sudden they felt the need to discredit decades of tireless work that women have dedicated to their craft. The hours of film, studying and work that goes into being elite. Somebody gave these boys an internet connection and all of a sudden they craved the validation in the form of some likes from idiots who can’t be bothered to look up why every other word they type has a red squiggly line underneath it. This entire premise is laughable because while these mediocre men spend their days mocking women athletes because they’re “not as talented” as their favorite male athletes, you know who is celebrating women athletes? Elite male athletes.

LeBron James looks to Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi and Elena Dolle Donne for inspiration. Draymond Green says he learns more from the WNBA than the NBA about the fundamentals of the game. Bradley Beal took to the Players Tribune to write an article about his love and respect for the WNBA, specifically the reigning champs of the WNBA, Washington Mystics.

Then there’s Kobe, maybe the biggest men’s advocate of the WNBA and women’s sports there ever was, and if Kobe can say the WNBA is a beautiful game to watch then please forgive me for not validating the opinion of a man who wants to disrespect millions of women athletes while spending all of their free time making cruel, sexist comments on meme accounts.

I can no further explain why some men feel the need to denigrate women's sports than I could explain why some people take advice from Dr. Phil. I’m sure they have their reasons but as frustrating as their trite commentary can be, I want to work to absorb their voices into the abyss of hot takes.

We do this by lifting up and supporting women athletes from our daughters in youth sporting events to every athlete in the WNBA, USWNT, etc. We do this by acknowledging that their dedication, hard work, and sacrifice is powerful and inspiring, not just for girls but for all of us because when you become one of the best in the world at what you do that’s worthy of celebration.

We do this by attending events, turning on games, engaging positively with their content online. This mindset will do wonders for everyone around us from our friends who witness our online activity to our kids who witness our day to day conversations. And don’t think this is solely about our daughters. Our sons need to see men who positively engage with women sports, too. The language we use to talk about women athletes matters and we have the choice to lift up millions of dedicated, hardworking women or go for the unoriginal cheap shot to get a laugh out of a few feeble men.

Feeble men are forgettable so let’s acknowledge that misogynistic comments about women athletes are small-minded and unacceptable. That said, let’s keep it moving because we are approaching a phenomenal time for women athletes and I want to dedicate every ounce of that energy towards supporting the women’s game. These men have spent their lives being left in the dust; let’s keep them there.