Bothered
I was riding home listening to the radio between 5 and 6 today and found what I thought to be the news on channel 106.7 FM CBS Sports discussing a favored teen wrestler at Iowa state championships who refused to wrestle a female competitor and defaulting on his match. Looking it up later, on the station's web page...
http://www.cbssports.com/general/story/14702847/wrestler-defaults-at-iowa-tournament-rather-than-face-girl/rss
this decision was due to religious beliefs. The radio broadcast however decided to make it a soap box for male and female athletes not to compete with one another, especially in violent contact sports. There was a retired NFL athlete on the show who said they he would be very uncomfortable sacking a female tail end, especially when he was bench pressing 500+ pounds (bringing this back to the story, the wrestling match was in the 112 pound class; I doubt any of them is bench pressing 500+ pounds) in high school and how he was raised to be a gentleman and not to be violent towards women and is honestly not sure how he would handle the situation as a young man playing a contact sport. Fine. If that's your frame of reference, part of freedom of speech is diversity of opinion.
The handling of the news byte bothered me a little. The handling of the female callers however, thoroughly pissed me off. The first one objected to being called a chick, calling it derogatory, and they called her angry, and baby-face and sweetie and any number of diminutives, and was told to calm down and yes they know about title nine but it doesn't matter to their point and the caller was then hit on by one of the sportscasters to go to cocktails after the show was done (lounge chairs and Mai Thai's). They then proceeded to take her off the air (get her a t-shirt) conjecture about how hot she was (or not actually), and how maybe she was cranky because she was working over a hot stove all day or perhaps she needed to pick the kids up. Hyuk hyuk hyuk... [my poor attempt at onomatopoeia]
My jaw just about hit the floor. I did not realize, truly, that guys like this actually existed. I thought they were the fabricated bugbears of early woman's lib to keep people vigilant. How can they exist? They haven't been selected out of existence yet? Who is mating with these overgrown frat boys (apologies to frat boys- these sportscasters make you look bad; the frat representatives I have met are better then this). I wish I could put names to the drivel that I heard and call the chauvinists out. It scares the heck out of me that men like this still exist.
Then I looked at the comments under the article on the sports web page above, and realized once again just how sage the advice a friend of mine gave me once, "Never read the comments," regardless of the topic, they will never cease to make you angry, and if you engage in a comments war, you've already lost because they've found a way to hurt you by sapping hours out of your life and feeding anger in.
Unfortunately, it's taken a few attempts at finding an exception to determine just how universal the wisdom is, and not just in electronic media, though there are certainly easy to find on-line. Another great case for avoiding comments sections recently was the music video for Hurt as covered by Johnny Cash on You-tube. I was the first couple of comments underneath were sweet memorials to the departed signer and decided it might be a good source of warm fuzzies for the evening to scroll down... big mistake. Less then 5 comments in was a 13 year old saying how Nine Inch Nails needed to leave Johnny Cash's music alone and not cover it. A quick trip to even Wikipedia could have told this girl that Trent Reznor wrote Hurt, and Johnny Cash was covering *him* and Nine Inch Nails.
http://www.cbssports.com/general/story/14702847/wrestler-defaults-at-iowa-tournament-rather-than-face-girl/rss
this decision was due to religious beliefs. The radio broadcast however decided to make it a soap box for male and female athletes not to compete with one another, especially in violent contact sports. There was a retired NFL athlete on the show who said they he would be very uncomfortable sacking a female tail end, especially when he was bench pressing 500+ pounds (bringing this back to the story, the wrestling match was in the 112 pound class; I doubt any of them is bench pressing 500+ pounds) in high school and how he was raised to be a gentleman and not to be violent towards women and is honestly not sure how he would handle the situation as a young man playing a contact sport. Fine. If that's your frame of reference, part of freedom of speech is diversity of opinion.
The handling of the news byte bothered me a little. The handling of the female callers however, thoroughly pissed me off. The first one objected to being called a chick, calling it derogatory, and they called her angry, and baby-face and sweetie and any number of diminutives, and was told to calm down and yes they know about title nine but it doesn't matter to their point and the caller was then hit on by one of the sportscasters to go to cocktails after the show was done (lounge chairs and Mai Thai's). They then proceeded to take her off the air (get her a t-shirt) conjecture about how hot she was (or not actually), and how maybe she was cranky because she was working over a hot stove all day or perhaps she needed to pick the kids up. Hyuk hyuk hyuk... [my poor attempt at onomatopoeia]
My jaw just about hit the floor. I did not realize, truly, that guys like this actually existed. I thought they were the fabricated bugbears of early woman's lib to keep people vigilant. How can they exist? They haven't been selected out of existence yet? Who is mating with these overgrown frat boys (apologies to frat boys- these sportscasters make you look bad; the frat representatives I have met are better then this). I wish I could put names to the drivel that I heard and call the chauvinists out. It scares the heck out of me that men like this still exist.
Then I looked at the comments under the article on the sports web page above, and realized once again just how sage the advice a friend of mine gave me once, "Never read the comments," regardless of the topic, they will never cease to make you angry, and if you engage in a comments war, you've already lost because they've found a way to hurt you by sapping hours out of your life and feeding anger in.
Unfortunately, it's taken a few attempts at finding an exception to determine just how universal the wisdom is, and not just in electronic media, though there are certainly easy to find on-line. Another great case for avoiding comments sections recently was the music video for Hurt as covered by Johnny Cash on You-tube. I was the first couple of comments underneath were sweet memorials to the departed signer and decided it might be a good source of warm fuzzies for the evening to scroll down... big mistake. Less then 5 comments in was a 13 year old saying how Nine Inch Nails needed to leave Johnny Cash's music alone and not cover it. A quick trip to even Wikipedia could have told this girl that Trent Reznor wrote Hurt, and Johnny Cash was covering *him* and Nine Inch Nails.