Sport is a whore. And female
By Carrie Dunn | 20 February 2009, 22:03
Remember this little spotlight on the Times’s sports coverage last year?
Well, Simon Barnes - the well-known appreciator of Russian pole vaulter Elena Isinbaeva - has written about the ongoing Allen Stanford saga. Fair enough. Except apparently the whole debacle confirms that “sport is a whore”.
This is because sport is there for the recreational pleasure of men, of course.
“When a billionaire comes a-calling, sport doesn’t waste its precious time by saying, ‘I’m not that kind of girl.’ No, one whiff of the inside of a fat wallet and sport is flat on its back with its legs in the air, shouting: ‘Come and get it.’”
That metaphor might be crass, but Barnes’s penultimate paragraph is nauseating:
“Just because you can make money from a situation, it doesn’t mean you have to. Say you are a man married to an unspeakably beautiful woman. There is a clear commercial opportunity here: you could rent her out by the hour to billionaires. But perhaps you think that she, perhaps you think that your relationship with her, perhaps you think that the whole concept of marriage, is worth more than quite a lot of money.”
Of course! An obvious business opportunity! If a man has married an “unspeakably beautiful woman”, then evidently she is then his property, and only a belief in the concept of marriage would prevent him from acting as her pimp!
Have your say
In order to keep this blog as a feminist and friendly space, comments will be subject to some rules. We do not seek to censor debate: the beauty of the internet is that anyone can set up their own blog or website to express their views.
- This blog is a safe and friendly space for feminists and feminist allies. Debate and critique are welcome where it is constructive and deepens analysis or understanding. Anti-feminist comments will not be approved. We get to decide what's anti-feminist.
- All comments must be approved by one of the bloggers. For this reason, there may be a delay before your comment appears.
- No sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, classist, ablist comments, comments which make personal attacks on any blogger or commenter, or comments that are otherwise deemed offensive by us will be posted.
- Trolls will be banned from commenting. We get to decide who is a troll.
- No anonymous comments - please feel free to use your real name or make one up, though.
- Be nice.
Feeds
JENNIFER DREW said:
No Simon Barnes you are wrong sport is a prostitutor. Why? Because it is men such as Barnes who believe women exist for men to sexually exploit and rape.
Why else would Barnes use such a misogynstic metaphor wherein he reduces women to men's sexual property. Prostitutors are men who buy women for the purpose of rape and/or sexual exploitation. Of course Barnes could have compared this billionaire's approach to one wherein when men see an opportunity for sexual contact with women they immediately drop their trousers and 'assume the position.'
But then such a comparison would cause a lot of men to write in complaining of 'sexism' and hatred of men. Yet publishing sexual misogynistic women-hating diatribes are ignored because our dominant male culture continues to believe they alone are the ones who are not perceived as 'sex.'
Ah the privilege of being born male and never having to be reduced to a sexualised commodity or treated as a dehumanised sexual object. Such is the difference between dominant male-defined society and oppressed female society.
Posted on 20 February 2009 at 11:54 PM
Anna said:
Is anyone else playing anti-feminist bingo and ticking the 'bad, unrelated analogy' box?
Posted on 22 February 2009 at 12:16 PM
David said:
Normally I'd agree about using misogynistic language in print, but I fail to see what's wrong with this. I really don't.
The comparison with prostitutes is not all that unfair, given that both survive by selling themselves to the highest bidder.
Posted on 26 February 2009 at 12:53 PM
Juliet said:
David,
You fail to see what's wrong with a man regarding an 'unspeakably beautiful woman' he's married to as a potential commercial opportunity?
Comparing sport to prostitution is not the big issue here, although it's not an analogy most thinking people would choose to employ. The problem is the writer of the piece saying that a man could 'rent out' a woman as if she was his personal property (like a flat or a car), a commercial opportunity to be exploited or not as he sees fit, and implying that's perfectly normal and okay. THAT is what is wrong with it.
Posted on 26 February 2009 at 2:38 PM
Donna said:
I don't know why the F word insists on keeping posts along the lines of...
'So... ?' Male opinions are great, but i've noticed a general trend with the men who post here?? ..
Posted on 26 February 2009 at 3:05 PM