Now that Ghostbusters has all but exited theaters, and Suicide Squad is successful despite legions of whiny op-eds, feminists are forced to turn their ire on the only other thing Americans are enjoying at the moment: the Olympics.
In an article for Salon, Mary Elizabeth Williams complains that the media is absolutely “ruining” the Olympics for female athletes.
This pain and humiliation caused by social media headlines and off-the-cuff commentary from sports journalists isn’t immediately evident when you listen to the women athletes, who are now the majority of the American Olympic team, or women viewers, who make up more than half of the TV audience for the Games.
But, according to Williams, feminists on Twitter and a couple of niche comedians, it’s there.
She cites a few examples of transgressions against women, which have gone viral across social justice social media over the weekend. First, there’s the bronze medal female trap shooter, Corey Cogdell-Unrein, who got headlines in Chicago, where she lives, because she happens to be the wife of a player on the Chicago Bears.
Clearly, this was signaling to the larger world that women were only as important as their husbands, even though the Bears made it their mission to support Cogdell-Unrein with a series of fundraisers, watch parties and even a team photo.
The fact that she was married to a Bears player was a subject of keen interest here in the Windy City. And while the local news stations played endless mini-documentaries on local athletes—male and female—Cogdell Unrein made additional headlines, because the Bears, which have a huge, dedicated following, were so invested in her success.
But for Williams, it was merely an example of oppressive Patriarchal sexism. In her Salon post, she quoted a performance artist who had tweeted: “Wow she trained so her whole life for that marriage congratulations unnamed woman.”
Fortunately for Cogdell Unrein, her husband’s feminist critics were so busy railing against the male gaze and its associated sins that they may have failed to notice that she won her medal for trap shooting—an event similar to the one feminists absolutely ravaged American teenager Ginny Thrasher for winning just days ago.
Then, of course, the media attacked again, this time “giving credit” for Hungarian swimmer Katina Hosszu’s Olympic success to her husband, who is also her coach. Williams, beside herself, decried NBC commentator Dan Hicks’ enforcement of gender-normative stereotypes that say a woman is nothing without the support of her spouse.
What Williams and others failed to note about Hick’s comments—Hicks made the point that the swimmer’s husband was instrumental in her remarkable turnaround—was that Hosszu largely agrees with Hick’s sentiment, and that Hicks was trying to give an accurate picture of Hosszu’s relationship with her husband/coach. Shane Tusup is considered revolutionary in his approach to his wife’s training, so much so that his success could mean that coaching systems change across the sport.
Their work together has changed her Olympic experience. But Williams thinks Hicks is just ascribing a woman’s success to a man—as though there was no other possible, logical explanation that could be derived from both the context of swimming as a team sport, or the individual relationship between a woman and her husband.
Oh, and then there’s poor Kerri Walsh Jennings, who was ravaged by feminists on Twitter for daring to say she enjoyed being a mother almost as much as she enjoyed kicking the snot out of beach volleyball competitors.
Heaven forbid a woman make choices in her life based on what she wants—that’s simply too much to bear! Jennings should quit her family and her passions immediately and sign up for Gender Studies classes at her local community college, declare herself a feminist, and begin the world-altering process of complaining about major motion pictures and social media headline writers.
Frankly, Jennings should have ended her quote by saying “and I’m all out of children.” That might have sent feminist social media straight over the edge.
At least Jennings managed to escape the wrath of Williams, who targeted Olympic moms in general instead of just Jennings specifically. She’s particularly fatigued by the line that “[b]alancing family with demanding careers is a constant struggle for many women, but you need look no further than the U.S. Olympic team for proof that you can excel at both.”
The nerve.
Feminism is supposed to be about women making their own decisions, dictating the course of their own lives, and pursuing their own hopes, goals and dreams, whether they work toward Olympic gold or a home and family (or both). By failing to look deeper into these women’s stories, failing to honor their partnerships, their achievements and their accomplishments, it seems that feminists—not the media— are the ones really failing to understand how these women are contributing to their country and to society.
There are still two more weeks of the Olympics, so thankfully, there’s plenty of time for feminists to come up with better examples of rampant sexism. And they’ll probably be just as astute as Williams. Hopefully.