"There is something about the mix of television, women and professional sports that is almost toxic, and it appears to numb the sensibilities of otherwise civilized men," says Susam Remier for the Baltimore Sun. The thesis of her recent piece is that nothing has changed for women sportswriters in the past 30 years since they were granted equal status by the courts. But it's this line that comes halfway in her article that may contradict that assertation. Pointing out the toxicity of all that adrenaline and testosterone to the civilized male mind is apt of Remier; she has, after all been around professional athletes and their fans since 1979. It was in that year that Orioles manager Earl Weaver called Remier a lesbian and refused to let her into his locker room without a note from her father. But, I would suggest that she and others, like Erin Andrews (we'll get to her in a minute) whom Remier uses to prompt her thesis, are not recipients of sexually offensive behavior because they are women filling "men's jobs" but simply because they are women in a world where it is acceptable for men to revert to a sub-civilized state in almost every way: grunting, slapping, spitting, slamming, hurling, growling. Why not throw a little mimed crotch-thrusting towards an attractive female in the mix.
Remier's use of Erin Andrews' recent victimization by a peeping Tom while she was changing in her hotel room precisely proves my point. Andrews could have been any naked woman in that hotel room and she might still have been taped, because the man taping her had reverted to a sub-civilized state in which he was comfortable objectifying and victimizing women.
I'm not saying all sports fans and all athletes are cavemen. There are plenty of reading, thinking, analyzing athletes and fans out there. If there weren't, who would do the stats? Who would manage fantasy teams. It is my assumption that the reason all the other men (among them hecklers, fairweather fans, people who would interfere in games by catching playable balls) are sports fans precisely because they get to act like neanderthals. That is the draw. Any woman who gets caught in the crosshairs, watch out.
That being said, anyone, period, who wants to spend her or his days in a locker room with big sweaty jocks is more than just a little off. Not to belittle any of Remier's hardships, but, according to my freakishly informed sports fan of a fiance, Earl Weaver was a notorious asshole–to everyone. What happened to Erin Andrews is awful. What Fox News and the rest of the media did with the story was despicable, sub-journalistic if you will. But it happened to her not because she is a woman sportswriter, but because she is a woman who in proximity to men in sub-civilized states.
Remier's assertation that women sportswriters "are still being treated as if they are window-shopping while they work," is weird and is where her argument falls apart. Are female sports reporters seen as the objectifiers or the objectifiees? What about if they are covering women's sports? Are they still treated as anomalies? Remier doesn't address women's sports for one reason: papers cover men's professional sports more often than women's professional sports. So if a woman wants to make a career of sportswriting, she must follow men's sports. Must men's sports change for her? Should any subject change for its reporter?
