powerful = ho ???
Maybe you don't follow women's basketball, or listen to "shock jock" radio. If so, you might have been spared hearing about Don Imus's racist, misogynistic comments about the Rutgers' women's basketball team.
Imus, a foul radio "personality" called the Rutgers team "nappy-headed hos" after they lost the NCAA final to Tennessee.
Here's a bit of the transcript:
IMUS: That's some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos and --
BERNARD McGUIRK: Some hard-core hos.
IMUS: That's some nappy-headed hos there. I'm gonna tell you that now, man, that's some -- woo. And the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know, so, like -- kinda like -- I don't know.
McGUIRK: A Spike Lee thing.
IMUS: Yeah.
McGUIRK: The Jigaboos vs. the Wannabes -- that movie that he had.
IMUS: Yeah, it was a tough --
CHARLES McCORD: Do The Right Thing.
McGUIRK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
IMUS: I don't know if I'd have wanted to beat Rutgers or not, but they did, right?
ROSENBERG: It was a tough watch. The more I look at Rutgers, they look exactly like the Toronto Raptors.
WHAT THE F**K??!???!!?
Imus has been suspended for 2 weeks. That's it. And, with few exceptions, everyone is riveted on the racism, and just letting the misogyny go. Granted, the blatant racism in him comments is like a slap in the face.
Phrasing such criticisms in racial terms is a known taboo (rightly so). But discussing them in the context of powerful women (versus "cute" less-threatening women) is standard operating procedure. The equation seems to look a bit like this: strong, aggressive athlete = unacceptable woman.
Why is this OK?!?!?!?
It makes me furious.
Granted, it's a sore topic for me, because I'm almost 6'2", and used to be a competitive athlete, and DAMN, I am so tired of people who have never met me making comments about how I could beat them up, or how scary I am.
Seriously? Dude, I've never raised a hand to anyone in my life, and (outside of competitive sports) I'm about as conciliatory and non-scary as it gets.
I still get comments like this occasionally, and I try not to be hurt by them. But they do hurt.
And, to be honest, they piss me off. But, God forbid I get too worked up about them - I might come across as too scary to be cute.
5 comments:
Oh how absolutely terrible. Racism, sadly, is alive and well. There was a lot of racism on Big Brother here this summer, and yet people excused it, people were 'told off' but nothing happened. It was terrible.....
I sometimes wonder how we have evolved and are technologically advanced enough to send someone to the moon....and yet, people can't even see everyone as equal....
I totally agree on the woman being athletic and powerful makes them unattractive and lesser.. it's totally BULL__IT I hear you big time... my sister just sent me an e-mail and one of the lines was "wow honey you must be as strong as an ox"...it made me smile I loved it she meant it as a total compliment and I LOVED her for it... being a strong capable athletic woman is the best thing ever and it's important that we let strong be "uber sexy"... I'll just say thank GOD for gabrielle... and womans basketball is my FAVORITE sport to watch period (cc you may not have known that : ) .. maybe we should just remember this next season and be sure we attend at least one game!!! hey CC wanna go together to celebrate tall awesome women??? xx
Speechless.
Even worse is seeing Don Imus's face on every damn channel trying to smooth it all over. Bleah.
This whole thing is so disgusting. Not only were his comments incredibly ugly and inexcusable, but I hate that he totally overshadowed any joy the Rutger women had in their accomplishment. They had every right to feel proud and celebrate how far they went in the championships, and with one nasty comment, he took that away.
I hope he winds up with more than just a 2 week suspension for this.
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