“How many sandwiches made?” “1k dishes cleaned.” “One thing she ain’t do yet is make me my sandwich.” “We don’t care.”
These were the most liked comments on a recent post by ESPN, recognizing the insane accomplishment of Oregon basketball player Sabrina Ionescu; she was the first D-1 basketball player ever — man or woman — to get 2000 points, 1000 assists and 1000 rebounds in a career. Not only are these jokes unoriginal and tasteless, but they also attempt to discredit the accomplishments of Ionescu.
Ionescu is not alone either. Every time a female athlete achieves something great, men attempt to diminish it simply because they don’t share the same gender.
The common defense of people who make these jokes is they simply are that: jokes. However, when those overtly sexist jokes are made, it takes away from whomever is being celebrated. The focus shifts from how great of success someone has to something other than that.
The most ironic part of these comments is that the men behind them are almost never athletes at a level anywhere close to the women they are trying to admonish. Most of the time these accounts don’t even have a name or a face in their profile, often because they know they would be embarrassed if someone in real life knew they made these comments.
At PV, the school has done an adequate job of recognizing female athletes equally in many facets. Senior Lauren Buechel commented about her experience. “I don’t think my accomplishments have been diminished,” Buechel said. “Our school has done a great job recognizing our accomplishments in running as much as the boys.”
PV has not remained free of criticism, however. An article in the Spartan Shield posted recently addressed double-headers within basketball games at PV, and perceived bias in which team gets to play second.
Buechel also talked about what she has seen outside of the spectrum of PV. “I have seen the lack of respect we have towards female athletes, with issues such as equal pay,” Buechel said. “We need to talk more about the health of female athletes and give them the same care as other athletes.”
When Katie Ledecky broke records upon records during the 2016 Olympics, the headline in a paper was about Michael Phelps tying for second. There was only a small mention of Ledecky winning gold medals and setting records in multiple events.
The US Women’s national team for soccer won two straight World Cups. From 2015-18, the women played 19 more games than the men. However, the female players still received significantly less money than the male players.
At both an “idiot on Instagram” level or a “national media outlet” level, it seems many females are not recognized properly. So, if nothing is taken away from this article but one thing, let it be this.
The golden rule: respect others. So before “just” making a joke, remember the golden rule — and don’t break it just because a woman did it first.
