Women in sports
So this Tweet showed up in my timeline this morning, and my first thought was “that’s a reasoned response by Dart Guy, that tweet was a bit ‘attacky’”
I even tweeted that I did support women in sport, followed many of them but I did think this person attacked Dart Guy’s qualifications without knowing them.
That tweet lasted less than a minute. In my defense I was still working on my first coffee and hadn’t really thought it through. The tweet, when you try not to view it from the position of a white middle aged privileged male’s perspective (again in my defense I am a white middle aged privileged male and sometimes my first reaction is from that viewpoint), she’s entirely correct.
The question here isn’t whether Dart Guy has the qualifications to do his job, I don’t know whether he does or not, I’ll trust his assertion that he does. It’s whether a woman would have gotten the same opportunities for the same reason.
Don’t kid yourself, they wouldn’t have.
I’m a big supporter of women’s sports and women in sport in general. To be fair that’s mostly just in hockey, but then I don’t really follow other sports so I don’t follow men in other sports either, so that’s not gender, it’s just my belief that hockey is the best sport in the world.
I read through some of the comments, I saw women stating that they worked in sporting goods stores and were often dismissed for a male’s opinion. I saw men trying to be “nice” but still not getting it. I saw trolls and misogynists too as you’d expect on Twitter.
This woman wasn’t looking for advice on how to further her career, she wasn’t whining. She was pointing out a fact. Dart guy got an opportunity for being in the right place at the right time, but he also got that opportunity because he’s a man.
He probably deserves the opportunity. These companies aren’t stupid, they don’t hire unqualified people because they went viral. Steve Dangle didn’t have his rise to his current position just because he’s a man. He rose from the obscurities of online video bloggers because he’s good, he knows his stuff and he’s a great personality that resonates with fans.
But ask yourself if a teenage girl ranting at her computer over her favourite team after every game would have gotten noticed, hired by a major sports news agency, given a book deal. Do you really think that would have happened? Or maybe, just maybe, being a male gave him part of that opportunity.
@nowyousieme never said that Dart Guy didn’t deserve the job. Not when you really look at it. She said he got the opportunity to prove he deserved the job when she likely wouldn’t have. That’s the difference. That’s what has to change.
That is the definition of white male privilege and if you don’t believe that exists then you’re probably… a white male.
