Let’s play a game: I’ll name a sport, and you think of the fans that accompany that sport. We’ll go with my favourite first because this is my blog and I can do what I want. Football! (Mind you, not the ridiculous American variety; in the words of an old but infinitely wise Simple Plan album, no pads, no helmets, just balls.)
Are you thinking of bare-chested beer-bellied males, faces slathered in their team colours, gesticulating wildly at the camera and telling the referee where he can go stuff it as succinctly as possible?
Baseball!
Are you thinking of bare-chested beer-bellied males, faces slathered in their team colours, gesticulating wildly at the camera and telling the umpire where he can go stuff it as succinctly as possible?
Ice Hockey!
Are you thinking of comfortably clothed beer-bellied Canadians, faces slathered in their team colours, gesticulating wildly at the camera and not really saying anything because they have all of two teeth left in their mouth, instead are just sort of screaming incoherently?
You don’t really see a woman in any of these areas, do you? Because women aren’t made for sport; they are made for shopping, they can’t understand the intricacies of the offside rule, and they only watch sports for the hot guys.
Should you really think this way then please do the world a favour: take out your nearest roll of masking tape, seal your mouth for an eternity and poke your own eyes out with something blunt (your brain will do) just for good measure.
If there’s one thing in life that I cannot stand, it’s a chair. (It’s eleven in the morning I am allowed my lame jokes.) If there are two things in life that I cannot stand, they are chairs and people who think that women shouldn’t be allowed to watch sports. Are you sure that there are people who still think this way, you ask sceptically? I am sad to inform you, my intelligent new-age reader, that there are.
Here is a compilation of tweets displaying an attitude which by right should only be found in Neanderthals and/or mind-numbingly stupid Republican politicians (a majority). You will notice that not just men are the culprits here; women too seem to think that all of their gender should stay away because having a vagina means an immediate inability to comprehend life. While these tweets concentrate on football, a similar attitude can be found in sports of any kind. And it is simply ridiculous. And I am going to devote at least 500 words to explaining exactly why, just because I can.
1. Sports are a man thing!
The only thing that having a dick entitles you to is be able to pee while standing up, and that is no basis for better sporting knowledge, unless perhaps your pet sport is a competition to see who can pee the most accurately while standing up. I highly doubt that the sporting gods enter your mother’s womb, determine if you are a boy or girl, and in the case of the former endow you with innate knowledge of the offside rule. Remember those tweets? Most of them highlight the fact that ‘girls who talk about sports don’t actually know what they’re talking about’. Well – after the German squad for the 2014 World Cup was released, multiple guys started asking why Lewandowski hadn’t been called up. This would be a valid question, except for the fact that Lewandowski plays for Poland. Oh, look! Testosterone didn’t save you from making that mistake, did it?
#notamused
Some other gems include “why didn’t Hodgson choose Bale?” and “Disappointed that Liverpool didn’t win the league but I hope they win the world cup!” You could scour the internet for examples where guys don’t have a clue what they’re talking about, turn them into one droplet of water each, and still have enough to fill up the Pacific Ocean multiple times over.
That we have to actively prove our devotion to our team by answering questions like ‘how many trophies did United win from the period 2002-2007?’ ‘who was the captain of United in 1893?’ ‘oh, your favourite player is Paul Scholes – what colour socks was he wearing on his debut?’ is frankly appalling. If you’re a guy, your opinion is readily accepted without having to know any or all of these things. As I was queuing up for three hours (because, you know, I’d queue up for three hours not knowing why) to meet Gary Pallister, I overheard a conversation that some male football fans were having, and it was obvious that none of them knew what they were talking about – yet everyone was nodding sagely because they were guys. If I had countered them I would have had to face derisive ‘what do you know ‘ and ‘are you a real fan’ questions. No one ever questions a man of being a real fan. But having astute sporting knowledge comes from loving the game and studying it and being an absolute nerd about it, and – shock and surprise! – women are capable of doing that too.
2. More men in the world watch sports than women!
Ooh, yes, let’s break out the statistical argument! More men watch sports than women, therefore women don’t know anything about sports! Ryan Giggs has played more games than Paul Scholes, so Scholes must know absolutely nothing about football! There are more people in Asia than anywhere else in the world, so the rest of the world is completely irrelevant!
It is true that more men watch sports than women. It is also true that if you pluck any given man and any given woman from the face of the earth, there is a higher percentage chance that the man will watch more sports than the woman. But how this premise can possibly lead to the conclusion that ‘yeah women don’t know anything about sports / know less than men about sports’ is ridiculous, because we’re not comparing the same groups here. If you picked out any given man and any given woman from a pool of sports fans i.e. level playing ground (excuse the pun)then who’s to say that the man will know more than the woman? Most of the people I follow on my football tumblr are girls (hey, a statistical argument) and all of them can name their team’s squad, whether by number or by name. They can analyse tactics and come up with their own dream teams and get into a well-justified argument with other fan. Numbers don’t mean everything.
And besides, just because more guys watch sports than girls doesn’t mean that no girls watch sports at all. The margin is very slim: 35% is the average and this goes up to 45% in certain sports. And if you insist on this mindset, try telling that to the 41,000 fans who came to watch a Turkish league match.
My god, females in a sports stadium! Quick, take a picture, we might never see this again!
3. Women are no match for men in the sporting arena!
Of course we’re no match for men in the sporting arena. Men are built to be stronger and tougher and physically better. There’s a reason why in Singapore’s version of physical fitness evaluation, guys do pull ups and girls do inclined pull ups. Why women serve so much slower than men in tennis. But again, you’re not comparing things on the same playing field. It’s not about the best woman being slower than the best man; it’s about the best woman being the best. Is a Paralympic gold valued any less than an Olympic one? No; in fact I’d say that it would be the other way around, because Paralympians really stretch themselves to their maximum potential despite their physical disabilities. So just because women are physically disadvantaged doesn’t make them any less of athletes – and doesn’t do anything to undermine the ability of women to watch and enjoy sports.
On a pretty random note, I had a – female – friend who could do ten pull ups and hold a plank position for seven minutes. I don’t know why she bothered, because why hold a plank for seven minutes when you can eat two burgers in the same amount of time, but it just goes to show that the female body is absolutely capable of doing ridiculous things when you want it to.
Case in point: Serena Williams’s arms.
4. Women only watch sports to make guys like them!
Yes: I wake up at 2 a.m. in the morning to peer at the computer screen, thus surrendering myself to eyebags, exceedingly loud weird noises and general incoherence, in order to make myself more attractive to men.
Some girls do this, I know. One of my friends got very excited upon finding out that ‘poor Moyes, I didn’t think it was time for him to go’ was a great conversation starter with boys. Sometimes people spam the Manchester United tag with pictures of themselves wearing jerseys tagged ‘beautiful’ ‘hot’ and so on. These people evidently care more for the opposite sex than the game itself. Unfortunately for patriarchy, this attitude is generally not found amongst proper female sports fans. In a startling new revelation, it has been found that female sports fans watch sports because they like the sport. Amazing!
To believe that I would suffer that weekly amount of pain and emotional trauma to get one of you guys is unbelievably egoistic. (And also, FYI: not every woman wants a man.) No one in their right mind would drown themselves in that much emotion and hurt unless they actually liked the thing itself. Anything else is just collateral.
In fact I would argue that if you want to snag a guy, don’t watch sports. Because this means an additional barrier to finding That Guy. What if he’s charming and handsome and generally perfect, but he supports a team whose name you only chant when you’re booing it? Personally I’d never date a Manchester City or Arsenal fan and would have to think very, very hard about dating a Liverpool one. Imagine derby matches and arguments in which the phrase ‘we knocked you off your [expletive] perch’ is repeated multiple times. It would be a massive slip up.
I cried non-stop for five minutes upon this guy’s retirement so that my red nose and puffy eyes would endear myself to dozens of eligible young men.
5. Women only watch sports because they want to look at cute guys!
At last we come to it: the holy grail of the Male Sporting World. The long-held belief that what attracts women to sports are the ridiculously cute guys involved. This is probably the strongest argument that guys have against female sports fans, and the strength of the argument rests mainly not on the actual feelings of the female fans but on the blatant truth of the hotness of the guys involved.
Nice face, wrong jersey.
I’ll be the first one to admit that my adoration of Xabi Alonso originally stemmed from how good he looked. How ridiculously good he looked. How impossibly good he looked. And similarly my infatuation with the Spanish national team might be because Spanish footballers basically spoil the market for everyone else. But then I started watching games properly and I fell even more in love with Xabi Alonso, not because he took off his shirt after every game (which he should) but because of ridiculous things like this:
If you are not bedazzled by the accuracy of that pinpoint pass then I weep for the lost beauty in your life.
I might have started on football because of the cute guys, but I’ve learnt to treasure the sport in and of itself. I couldn’t care less what the guys look like now. The team I chose to support has a lousy percentage of cute guys, and yet I love them more than anything. Have you seen Franck Ribery? He looks like the product of gangsters stuck in a Siberian prison trying to make their own Frankenstein’s monster, but he’s got millions of female fans around the world because he’s a great player.
Believe it or not, I have better things to do than to squint at pixelated players chase after a ball, praying for a close up of someone’s abs. Look at that gif above; you can’t even tell which player is which. If I was in it for the guys I’d just watch male modeling instead where you can actually see their faces. Just because I think a player is cute should not automatically degrade whatever else I think about him; the cute thing is just an added bonus and the main point is still the sport. I chose to sell my soul to football because I love the emotion that comes with it and I love the feelings and there is nothing else like it in the world.
And besides, I find it stupid that men should use this excuse when they were the ones who invented lingerie football. Do we ask male players to play in their underwear so that female fans can ogle them? No, we ask female players to play in their underwear so that male fans can ogle them. And yet female fans are the ones accused of putting looks over actual talent.
Men can be sports fans. Women can be sports fans too. At the end of it we’re all wearing the same jersey (don’t even get me started on those ridiculous pink jerseys) and we’re supporting the same team. Now sit back, relax, and enjoy watching us knock you off your [expletive] perch.
the grumpy bulldog 