The Experience of a Female Sports Fan: Harassment and Disrespect in the Mainstream Sports Community By: Delaney Auth

The Experience of a Female Sports Fan: Harassment and Disrespect in the Mainstream Sports Community

By: Delaney Auth

I’ve been a sports fan for about as long as I can remember. Sports are a way that my family can spend time together and bond and has been for my entire life. My dad’s side of the family is from Pittsburgh so we were all raised to worship former Steelers owner Art Rooney as next to a god. For whatever reason, as we got older it became clear that my step-sister and I were the big sports fans, while my brother generally couldn't care less. We particularly loved hockey and football, and from a pretty young age jumped into learning as much as we could about the teams we rooted for, both past and present. We knew the current players, coaches, and owners as well as most of the ones from past years. We were able to rattle off the statistics of our favorites, to argue about controversial calls by the refs, and understood the rules and strategies of the game.

It didn’t take long for me to understand that a lot of sports fans did not take me seriously because I was a girl. When the Steelers went to the Super Bowl in the 2008-2009 season I was in 7th grade and a fellow classmate heard me talking excitedly about my team, laughed, and told me that he doubted I could name five Steelers players. I responded by naming about ten to fifteen before he rolled his eyes at me and cut me off. It has not stopped since then. Male sports fans have laughed at me, quizzed me on team trivia, called me names like “puckslut”, harassed me at games, and much, much more. My experience is not uncommon, in fact I think you’d be hard pressed to find a single female sports fan who hasn’t experienced some kind of harassment, disrespect or disdain.

One of the main forms that this kind of behavior takes is through assumptions about the “real” reasons that women want to watch sports. The most common that I’ve heard over the years are the idea that women watch sports to impress men, or women only watch sports because they think the players of a particular sport are hot. The latter is particularly common in the hockey fan community, and usually expressed with the term I previously mentioned: “puckslut”. Now there a lot of issues with that word and the attitudes surrounding it. First of all, who cares why a woman wants to watch sports? That is her decision and none of anyone else’s business. Second of all, there is no reason to assume what a person’s reasons are for liking a thing and even less reason to say they’re lying when they correct you. The word “puckslut” and the shaming that comes with it is just another form of slut shaming. And slut shaming is not okay.

There is also an element of sexual harassment that is inevitably faced by women who participate in the mainstream sports communities. I have been jeered at leaving games by drunken men leaning out of bars since I was thirteen. As a Pittsburgh fan living in Central Illinois, most of the games we attend are away games for our teams. We went to a whole lot of Pirates games when they would play the Cubs in Chicago and so there was a lot of well-meaning teasing that you would get, especially if the Pirates lost. Some of it was not so harmless. I remember at one game when I was about thirteen or fourteen, one of the men sitting behind us was taunting and razzing us through the game. He strayed from baseball and began to focus on football. It was around the time that the rape allegations against Ben Roethlisberger had come out, and this man decided to yell, “I’ll bet he’d rape you, too,” at my step-sister and I, laughing. My parents were furious, and something my dad said to him shut him up for the rest of the game, although I’m not sure what it was. It was inappropriate, disgusting, and like all rape jokes, not funny.

This kind of harassment is unfortunately extremely common within mainstream sports. Certain male fans of the New York Jets made a habit of gathering at Gate D of their stadium, shouting obscenities at women as they passed by and demanding that they flash their breasts. At one particular game in 2007, a woman who refused was bombarded with beer bottles and garbage, and even spit on. Female sports announcers and reporters don’t escape this treatment. Sports reporter Erin Andrews, is talked about for her looks more often than for how good she is at her job and she has even been stalked at her hotel. Women with jobs in the industry are often stalked and harassed online for unpopular opinions, or for criticizing male players, officials, or administration. Female commentators like Samantha Ponder and Michelle Beadle were attacked and threatened online for speaking out about the NFL’s handling of the domestic violence allegations and evidence against Ray Rice. The pattern of sexual harassment in the sports fan community is persistent and disgusting. Women should be able to feel comfortable and safe as fans or industry employees.

I’m tired of all of this and more. I’m tired of feeling uncomfortable and sometimes unsafe at games or in sports bars. I’m tired of sports organizations like the NFL not taking domestic violence, rape, and sexual harassment seriously when it is perpetrated by players and other members of their community and organization. I’m exhausted with having to play sports trivia with men every time I mention that I am a sports fan. I’m so done with men thinking it’s okay to ask me if I’m a “real fan” or “just some puckslut”, like it matters. Women cannot be casual sports fans in the way that men can, we have to know everything there is to know or we’re just some silly girl doing it for the attention. This kind of behavior is unacceptable and as long as sports organizations allow it to go on without even acknowledging it, it will persist.

The organizations and the fans who behave this way must be held accountable for their actions. Until they are, being a sports fan will continue to be challenging, and at times dangerous for women. We shouldn’t allow our society to tell us what we can and can’t like and how much we should or shouldn’t like it. Sports are supposed to be fun. It is just a game after all.