one of the refs has breasts
I sat down to write about something this afternoon and this is the first thing I thought of - I don't mean for it to read like a school report, but it sorta does. Sorry!
Matt and I were watching the Blazers game on TV last night when Matt said, “One of the refs has breasts.”
“What?”
“Number twelve,” he said. “Look.”
I waited for the next play and, when a foul was called, I saw a woman in an NBA referee uniform do a bounce pass to a player about to take the foul shot. We’ve been watching the Blazers pretty consistently for a couple of years and had never noticed any female referees until that moment.
I used my phone to search “nba ref 12” and found the Wikipedia page for Violet Palmer, the NBA’s only female referee. I learned that she’s been a referee since 1997, the same year that another female referee, Dee Kantner, was hired. Dee was let go in 2002 due to poor performance and currently works as the supervisor of officials for the WNBA.
In 2005, USA Today featured an article about Violet and her career as a referee. The narrative is frustratingly glossy and positive - the players just think of her as “one of the guys”; she’s so down-home and sweet that she has dinner with her mother every Sunday. The article also mentions that she is single, wears men’s shoes, and prefers Marc Jacobs or Michael Kors perfume. It doesn’t say anything about Charles Barkley calling basketball a “man’s game” and saying it should “stay that way.” In 2007, a commentator for the Boston Celtics said Violet should “get back in the kitchen and make me some bacon and eggs.”
In 2007.
This is the part where everyone can laugh at my neo-feminist third wave something-something naiveté, but it really does floor me that anyone would think it’s okay to talk about a woman that way, in any context. I wish women - myself included - paid more attention to these things, because it means that there is always, heartbreakingly, more work to be done.
In 2010, five years after the USA Today fluff piece, Curve Magazine included her as one of the Top 11 Most Powerful Lesbians In Sports. I haven’t seen any other references to her sexuality, which I imagine is something she probably keeps pretty guarded.
I found some strong criticism of Violet on the Philadelphia 76s’ blog, the Sixer Sense, where Sean O’Connor wrote on February 8, 2012:
…Violet Palmer is the biggest joke the NBA has right now.
She likely wasn’t the reason the Sixers lost. Rarely do home teams win/lose a game because of the refs (okay, so Blazers fans might yell at me about this, but for the most part this is true). But it is undeniable that fans notice her officiating more than any other official - she is as much a part of the games she officiates as the players. It is not because of race and gender. I admire her courage. But she’s an awful official who regularly makes terrible calls or completely misses others. She becomes a distraction, a scapegoat for some, because she is awful at her job. If I performed like she does at my job, I’d be fired.
There’s plenty of room in the NBA for female officials. There should probably be more than one. But there’s no room for incompetence.
The mention of the Blazers is apt - fans are still sore about the goal-tending call in the game with the Oklahoma City Thunder on February 6, which was later found to be incorrect and some say triggered a landslide of frustration that lead to heartless play and the firing of Coach McMillan - but those refs involved are still working, as far as I know. And I haven’t heard any big headlines about Violet’s recent calls being redacted.
I feel mixed about statements like these, where someone says, “Hey, it’s not because she’s black, or a woman, or gay, but she’s just terrible at her job.” It could be true, but where’s the criticism of all the other male referees? One of the concerns in the article about Dee Kantner’s firing was that her bosses didn’t know how to evaluate her because they were comparing her to all of her male colleagues, and that her build or voice, which are not masculine, could have been interpreted as inadequacies.
Did everyone else out there already know about Violet? Am I totally behind the times?
Additional reading
NBA says goaltending call was incorrect (2012)
Violet Palmer on the Sixer Sense (2012)
Calling the shots - where's the next Violet Palmer? (2011)
Top 11 Most Powerful Lesbians in Sports (2010)
NBA's only female ref 'doesn't back down' (2005)
Dee’s firing (2002)
A referee draws her line on the court (1997)
Matt and I were watching the Blazers game on TV last night when Matt said, “One of the refs has breasts.”
“What?”
“Number twelve,” he said. “Look.”
I waited for the next play and, when a foul was called, I saw a woman in an NBA referee uniform do a bounce pass to a player about to take the foul shot. We’ve been watching the Blazers pretty consistently for a couple of years and had never noticed any female referees until that moment.
I used my phone to search “nba ref 12” and found the Wikipedia page for Violet Palmer, the NBA’s only female referee. I learned that she’s been a referee since 1997, the same year that another female referee, Dee Kantner, was hired. Dee was let go in 2002 due to poor performance and currently works as the supervisor of officials for the WNBA.
In 2005, USA Today featured an article about Violet and her career as a referee. The narrative is frustratingly glossy and positive - the players just think of her as “one of the guys”; she’s so down-home and sweet that she has dinner with her mother every Sunday. The article also mentions that she is single, wears men’s shoes, and prefers Marc Jacobs or Michael Kors perfume. It doesn’t say anything about Charles Barkley calling basketball a “man’s game” and saying it should “stay that way.” In 2007, a commentator for the Boston Celtics said Violet should “get back in the kitchen and make me some bacon and eggs.”
In 2007.
This is the part where everyone can laugh at my neo-feminist third wave something-something naiveté, but it really does floor me that anyone would think it’s okay to talk about a woman that way, in any context. I wish women - myself included - paid more attention to these things, because it means that there is always, heartbreakingly, more work to be done.
In 2010, five years after the USA Today fluff piece, Curve Magazine included her as one of the Top 11 Most Powerful Lesbians In Sports. I haven’t seen any other references to her sexuality, which I imagine is something she probably keeps pretty guarded.
I found some strong criticism of Violet on the Philadelphia 76s’ blog, the Sixer Sense, where Sean O’Connor wrote on February 8, 2012:
…Violet Palmer is the biggest joke the NBA has right now.
She likely wasn’t the reason the Sixers lost. Rarely do home teams win/lose a game because of the refs (okay, so Blazers fans might yell at me about this, but for the most part this is true). But it is undeniable that fans notice her officiating more than any other official - she is as much a part of the games she officiates as the players. It is not because of race and gender. I admire her courage. But she’s an awful official who regularly makes terrible calls or completely misses others. She becomes a distraction, a scapegoat for some, because she is awful at her job. If I performed like she does at my job, I’d be fired.
There’s plenty of room in the NBA for female officials. There should probably be more than one. But there’s no room for incompetence.
The mention of the Blazers is apt - fans are still sore about the goal-tending call in the game with the Oklahoma City Thunder on February 6, which was later found to be incorrect and some say triggered a landslide of frustration that lead to heartless play and the firing of Coach McMillan - but those refs involved are still working, as far as I know. And I haven’t heard any big headlines about Violet’s recent calls being redacted.
I feel mixed about statements like these, where someone says, “Hey, it’s not because she’s black, or a woman, or gay, but she’s just terrible at her job.” It could be true, but where’s the criticism of all the other male referees? One of the concerns in the article about Dee Kantner’s firing was that her bosses didn’t know how to evaluate her because they were comparing her to all of her male colleagues, and that her build or voice, which are not masculine, could have been interpreted as inadequacies.
Did everyone else out there already know about Violet? Am I totally behind the times?
Additional reading
NBA says goaltending call was incorrect (2012)
Violet Palmer on the Sixer Sense (2012)
Calling the shots - where's the next Violet Palmer? (2011)
Top 11 Most Powerful Lesbians in Sports (2010)
NBA's only female ref 'doesn't back down' (2005)
Dee’s firing (2002)
A referee draws her line on the court (1997)