I am not a Woman in Sports. Or a Female Athlete. I dislike that qualifier: “Female”. As though I can not be considered a real athlete simply because I am a woman. Now I don’t want my message to be misconstrued so let me be quite clear: I am all for women empowerment. I adored my mother texting me, “Happy National Girls and Women in Sports Day!!!” this morning and it reminded me to be grateful for my position; to be talented and dedicated enough to do my sport in college. However, that still does not erase the fact that our culture is so anti-woman appreciation that we must dedicate a day specifically for recognizing the many incredible athletes competing in college.
Notice how I said “athlete” so you might not have realized I was talking about women without context? That is what I despise about being an athlete in our current society. The entire culture is male-coded. ESPN is engineered by men, for men, and exclusively features men. Do you want to see gymnastics, softball, volleyball, or any of the other amazing sports women compete in college? Well you have to go to ESPNW. ESPN but for women; the segregation itself implies one is inferior to the other and it’s clear which they intend as the lesser one.
If men question, as they often do, how one can be deemed ‘inferior’ when they might simply be ‘different’, you need only refer back to the scandal in college basketball during March Madness last year. Quick sidebar – March Madness only referred to the men’s college basketball tournament until the gender equity issues arose at the tournament last year. As of the upcoming 2022 tournament, March Madness branding will now refer to both women’s and men’s tournaments, but notice how it only changed after national outrage? Now to the original point: at the playoff tournaments last year, Sedona Prince, a forward on the Oregon team, posted a video on her Tiktok page highlighting the differences in accommodations for the male teams and the female teams in their Covid bubbles. Her video quickly went viral, pointing out the single set of weights for the women while the men had an entire weight room, discrepancies in meals where the men received extensive buffets and women got pre-packaged microwavable meals, and differences in the quality of the gifts the women received.
The discrimination is not just our impressions, not just us ‘taking comments the wrong way’. The evidence is real, quantifiable, videoed, and known. In my mind, the first step in changing this narrative is acknowledging the differences exist and they are not okay. So I applaud my teammates, my fellow athletes, no matter the school or the sport, but I do not claim the title “Woman in Sports”. We are all athletes, and our feats will never be defined or constrained by our gender.