Women as Jerks

Women as Jerks
September 7, 2001

One thing that women have gained from the feminist movement is the right to be jerks. Sort of gender free jerkdom. Tanya Harding took advantage of it, as did Linda Tripp and a number of others. Before that, if a woman behaved badly, we all got blamed for it: "of course, it's because she is a woman." Now it is an individual thing, the same as it is for a guy. I am especially aware of this right now because my two least favorite female athletes were on the cover of Time magazine last week and I found myself wanting to rip the cover off. Unless you have been living in a cave this past year, you know that Venus and Serena Williams are two superb tennis players with an attitude -- oh what an attitude.

Women's sports have had a long struggle for recognition. Tennis great, Martina Navratilova, a Czech, wrote that, "people in the States used to think that if girls were good at sports their sexuality would be affected. The image of women is changing now. You don't have to be pretty for people to come and see you play. At the same time, if you're a good athlete, it doesn't mean you're not a woman."

Finally American women can sweat with approval. Women in sports today came up together and share a bond of sorts, top athletes like Lisa Leslie and Sheryl Swopes in basketball, Mia Hamm and Brandy Chastain in hockey, Marion Jones and her five Olympic gold medals and all the others. Nobody would ever suggest that they all like each other or that they don't thrive on competition and intense, often bitter rivalry. But because the whole thing is so new, there has been a general feeling of mutual support and respect among the women athletes in various sports.

But not the Williams sisters. In their rudeness and arrogance, they obviously feel that they owe nothing to anyone, not to those who went before nor to their fellow sports-women today. I rather hesitate to admit my first reaction to Venus because It probably dates me. It is her clothes. I first saw her, on TV of course, at Wimbledon a couple of years ago. Now Wimbledon is a place with over a hundred years of tennis tradition, and the royal family still shows up. The first women to play there undoubtedly wore bloomers and middy blouses and hit the ball very gently. Modern players have graduated to shorts and T shirts and hit the ball as hard as the men. But there was Venus in a bare minimum of spandex to give visible evidence that she is both an athlete and a woman - something which we would know if she were wearing a gunny sack. Other tennis players accuse them of playing the race card. They also play the sex card. Some men have been arrogant jerks on the tennis court for years. The Williams sisters are out to top them.

The Time article says that when Venus won the U. S. Open last year and President Clinton made his congratulatory call, "she asked for a tax cut, complained that his motorcade had held up New York City traffic for her and scolded him for leaving before her match. Imagine what the sisters will do to Bush."

Fortunately, thanks to gender free jerkdom, their antics do not hurt other women athletes. Women's athletic programs are growing fast. The WNBA just ended a highly successful season with the Los Angeles Sparks winning their first championship, and the Women's United Soccer Association is having a great first season.

The word "sportsmanship" had become almost archaic, but the women athletes are bringing it back. The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as "Conduct and attitude considered as befitting participants in sports, especially fair play, courtesy, striving spirit, and grace in losing." I watched the entire U. S. women's soccer team which had just lost the gold in Sydney arrive at the final U. S. women's basketball game to be their number one cheering section.

The Williams sisters have proved my point. Thanks to gender free jerkdom I can dislike a pair of fine women athletes without feeling guilty, because they are a couple of spoiled kids who behave like jerks.