two rants for the weekend because I am a chronic hater

I can't help it, it's just that I am a Virgo moon (also links!)

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And in case you missed it, I had a piece on the new polyamorous dating show, Couple to Throuple, at The Daily Beast this week (read more at my newsletter about it).

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Two rants for you today because I am nothing if not a chronic hater. Let’s start with the sports.

Some dope actors are starting a queer sports podcast and that’s amazing! According to Variety, “Jockular” is “a podcast from three queer best friends Katie Kershaw, Tien Tran and E.R. Fightmaster — who, along with their guests, will discuss all things queer, trans and women-forward in the world of sports.” Kershaw is best known for Killing It and Fargo, Tran is from How I Met Your Father, and Fightmaster was in Grey’s Anatomy and Shrill.

autostraddle

A post shared by @autostraddle

“We’d love to make ‘Jockular’ the home for comedy fans who love sports and sports fans who love hot goss,” the three co-hosts said in a joint statement. Yes, still amazing!

But here’s where it gets slightly less amazing, imo. “Just to be clear,” the trio continued, “we won’t be talking stats and numbers, but we do hope you can help us figure out where Kim Mulkey gets her blazers.”

I hate several things about this. I don’t care that the podcast isn’t going to get into stats and game summaries. If you read this newsletter or follow my work at all, you’ll know that’s not my thing, either. You can enjoy sports without wanting to talk about the fundamentals of the game or the nitty gritty of a stat line. You can enjoy sports culture without even knowing what the hell is going on during the game. Hell, I started watching the WNBA because I liked hot lesbians and I loved learning which players had dated each other. So trust me when I say I’m not a purist when it comes to telling people how they can or should enjoy sports.

What I hate most, though, is this need for women’s sports fans—especially when they are of marginalized gender themselves—to distance themselves from the game part of the sports. You can focus on sports culture without explicitly saying that you’re not going to get into gamers. This “don’t worry, we won’t be too sports-y though” attitude feels like internalized misogyny, this idea that women or other gender minorities don’t really like sports or that they don’t like sports the way men do. It feels almost like playing stupid a bit, like performing ignorance or reassuring the public that even though they’re going to talk about sports they’re not going to threaten anyone’s masculinity while doing so. We don’t need to dumb ourselves down—or dismiss the real work the athletes put into their sport in order to cover the cultural side of the game.

Madeline Hill

at the Substack

Impersonal Foul

does a great job of this.

And don’t even get me started on the idea that it’s Kim Mulkey’s blazers they mentioned as a reference point. Kim Mulkey! The noted homophobic, racist, ableist woman! Why are we going to soften Kim Mulkey by talking about her clothes, letting her distract us from the legitimately harmful and problematic things she does and says to and about her athletes—most of whom are multiply marginalized? (Also, they’re mostly designed by Queen of Sparkles owner and designer Jamie Glas, people have already done this work.)

brittney griner returns to waco

I don’t want to be an asshole and I don’t expect perfection from people, I just think I’m disappointed to see this kind of framing before the podcast has even begun.

AND WITH THAT, let’s get into our sports-related links for the week.

• PABLO TORRE FINDS OUT
  investigates the truth about orgasms in sports.

• Karim Zidan
  examines the systematic destruction of Gaza’s football stadiums over at
  Sports Politika

• Right-wing media’s backlash against a trans-inclusive USA Boxing policy has fueled a proposed federal ban on trans athletics at all levels of sport, including the Olympics and amateur

• Ballet dancers and stage managers from the American Ballet Company have voted to strike

• Sha’Carri Richardson is the face of the new Nike x Jacquemus drop

nike

A post shared by @nike

• Young Matildas player Grace Wilson has come out as non-binary

• At

  Culture Study
  ,
  Anne Helen Petersen
  interviews
  Christine Yu
  , author of the book Up to Speed and the Substack
  Reading Between the Lines
  : “The lack of high quality research on women means there’s a void of evidence-based sports guidelines tailored to women, elite or recreational athletes. The repercussions play out in the higher rates and worse outcomes for injuries like anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears and concussions in women’s bodies to uncomfortable gear and sports bras that don’t fit the proportions of women’s bodies.” The whole thing is worth reading.

• NCAA head Charlie Baker¹ warns that 95% of student athletes face extinction if colleges actually have to pay them as employees. “Universities have created an absurd and unwieldy system predicated largely on the sacrifice and exploitation of college football players for the enrichment of administrators and coaches. If that system is unsustainable, so be it,” Nathan Kalman-Lamb, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of New Bunswick and co-host of the End of Sport podcast², said on Instagram. “The NLRB is, right now, ruling on whether the high-revenue sports are sites of employment and the NCAA is fighting that designation. That struggle is not over low revenue contexts in college sport.”

• Sa'iyda Shabazz
  (whose Substack,
  Words with Sa'iyda
  , you should subscribe to) wrote about a new queer YA book that’s for the sports gays AND the newspaper nerds and if that’s not the exact intersection of this newsletter, I don’t know what is. It’s called We Got the Beat (and if you buy it from Bookshop with this link I get a little commission).

• Boston Celtics player Jrue Holiday is married to USWNT player Lauren Holiday. Jrue wore his wife’s jersey to his game last week and the Celtics social media account mistakenly said he was repping the USMNT and it’s such an embarrassing error that I don’t even know what to say about it.

Here is PWHL Toronto goalie Carly Jackson looking hot (via Instagram)

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For my second rant of the week, I’d like to talk about Nick Offerman’s acceptance speech at the Independent Spirit Awards.