Male chauvinist pigskin

In my belief system, football is to baseball as lemon bars are to brownies. It’s a perfectly cromulent sport, and in the absence of the clearly superior alternative, it’ll do just fine, but it’s not the stuff of agony and rapture, and it’s not something I expected to be blogging about.

But then Ines Sainz walked into a locker room.

If you’re not up to speed, here’s the short version of what happened:

1) Sainz, a sports reporter for TV Azteca, entered the New York Jets’ locker room to interview quarterback Mark Sanchez.

2) A number of Jets players greeted her with displays ranging from Cro-Magnon courtship to outright harassment.

3) One of them, Clinton Portis, later surmised publicly that a female reporter in a locker room must be motivated chiefly by the desire to see 53 hunky guys’ “packages.”

4) A day later, Portis, presumably under pressure from the Jets or the NFL, apologized.

5) Male football fans nationwide were rounded up and forcibly castrated.

Wait—sorry. Number 5 didn’t actually happen; you’d simply have assumed so if you read virtually any of the online response to the brouhaha. Check out a few of the comments (faithfully reproduced, spelling and all) on the first article I unwittingly clicked:

His only mistake was apologizing. The PC crap makes me sick.

he meant that a female, reporter or not, would love to go into a locker room with 53 strong guys walking around naked. IT’S TRUE. Plus their millionaires. Romantic Stories happen like that. In regards to professionalism, what was she wearing because she’s a hott.

If there must be equity to keep the feminists from squealing, ban all reporters from the locker rooms.

I’ve noticed that Seniorita’s tails stick out high like that too. I wonder if it’s Mexican genes or just Mexican jeans?

If you read into the story about inez-HOT-sainz, she was cool with everything, the OTHER broad with her was offended and demanded she do something about it…..but you don’t see pictures of her, because she doesn’t have a lot of the same qualities of inez…..if you know what i mean….FEMINIST RAGE trying to create a problem where inez had none.

Broads like that kill me. She wouldn’t have a job as a sport reporter if it wasn’t for that body. Stay out all man locker room dressed like a hooker period.

Unless they are a bull dyke, they likely would find at least 1 of 53 attractive and stimulating. In more cases than not, they would find 35-45+ interesting to look at.

Ines Sainz being called a “reporter”. Is like Janet Reno being called centerfold material……

Next thing you know construction workers and pimps will be issuing formal apologies. Or better every man on earth will have to apologize for being well…..a man.

let these men shower in piece.

She’ll be in playboy baring all soon enough.

When another woman and I pointed out the stinking, sweaty pile of misogyny accumulating in the comment thread, the rebuke was swift and terribly creative:

Get your asses back in the kitchen where you belong!

[Goes to kitchen. Gets peanut-butter Oreo. Two, actually. Returns to computer.]

The themes here are as wearyingly predictable as the Cardinals’ late-season swoon: “Hot” women deserve whatever men do to them; non-hot women aren’t worth men’s time to begin with; lesbians aren’t actually women at all; women who don’t want to be harassed should quit being so female when (straight) men are around; and feminists exist to emasculate men.

The overarching message, of course, is that professional sports are men’s province, a “man-cave” of enormous proportions where women are guests at best and invaders at worst. When Clinton Portis apologized for his crudeness, reasonable people appreciated the gesture (or, at least, the fact that whoever scripted it understood the wisdom of not alienating forty-plus percent of your fan base). The dudebros of Amurrica, on the other hand, knew that he had just signed away the deed to one of the last bastions of alpha-masculinity. He had, like, symbolically handed over the remote control and let the nagging, haranguing, can’t-live-with-’em-but-can’t-live-without-’em broads change the channel from ESPN to Oxygen.

Ah, sports. The thrill of victory….the agony of defeat….the tragicomedy of insecure hypermasculinity.

There’s a serious conversation to be had about the double standards that apply to female sports reporters and on-air personalities—the folks decrying Sainz’s “unprofessional” attire neglect to note that that’s probably precisely the apparel she’s expected to wear in order to continue drawing a paycheck—but the dudes (and, sigh, the smattering of patriarchy-soaked women) currently controlling the discussion aren’t remotely ready to have it.

For a mostly enlightened perspective on the Sainz saga, read Jelisa Castrodale’s piece for NBC Sports—and for a reminder of why we still need feminism, read the comments.