Fucking Tennis ...

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“If I could, I would take this fucking ball and shove it down your fucking throat”
~ Serena Williams

I don't know, I thought it was quite creative and offered a great visual. Seems the tennis snobs think differently. Why is that?

Certainly the famous outbursts of Jimmy Connors, Andre Agassi, Ilie Nastase and John McEnroe were at least as bad as Serena's one-liner. They may have been great tennis players, but all four of them were known for verbally abusing officials, destroying rackets, and throwing temper tantrums ... and the fans cheered! Yet in this instance, sports commentators and fans are calling for a suspension in addition to the $10,500 fine already imposed.

Let's look at the facts ...

1. There wasn't a foot fault. Replays of the "infraction" that triggered the call, the eventual double fault, then Serena's outburst, show that her foot was not over the line on the serve. For those of you not familiar with tennis, the line judge called a foot fault on Williams when her foot supposedly went over the line during her serve. This would be similar to an umpire in a baseball game negating an out at second base during an otherwise successful, game deciding, double play because the second baseman's foot didn't quite touch the bag.

2. The line judge overreacted. If it wasn't enough that the line judge made a very bad call, she escalated the situation by throwing her own tantrum and "tattling." The head judge then penalized Serena another point - match point.

3. Serena didn't have a meltdown, she was pissed off. Sure, she dropped a few "f"-bombs and pointed a few times with her racket, but it lasted all of 10 seconds. Serena, in the heat of a massively important match, lost her cool and said some things she admittedly regrets.

4. The role of a referee/umpire/judge is to be invisible - to let the players decide the match themselves. The line judge put herself at the middle of the action and let her own inability to handle an angry player, and her reaction to that player, decide who won the semifinal at the U.S. Open.

I have to wonder, in a sport that still retains a faint whiff of the men-only country club atmosphere, and in which women are still "required" to uphold a feminine image when performing (short skirts and makeup are standard equipment), if the call for a heftier fine and suspension doesn't have more to do with the "discomfort" of seeing a woman be aggressive, competitive and vocal. In other words, acting like a man.

For the record, Kim Clijsters (Serena's opponent in the fatal match) ended up winning the U.S. Open women's singles. No one will remember that, though.

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The "F" Word

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Feminism. It came up, although indirectly, in the comments to my post on Monday. I do believe that women strive to "act like men" at times, and especially in the workplace. Now, before all of you men get your boxers in a bunch, I realize just how sexist that comment is to both genders, but I'm not eloquent enough this morning to put the concept into less sexist words.

My dear friend Librarian Lee (who I've *known* for over 10 years now) said it best:

I think I sort of fell off the feminist bandwagon when I got the impression that all that won freedom was so that we could be more like men. That camp, to me, is buying into the notion that men ARE better, men are the rule and women the exception. And, I absolutely disagree. I had hoped that the goal was to say, something like, we are women, we birth and nurture babies and we cry and we make homes, yet we are valued, and so are our tears, and we are strong and capable and 50%, not the exception. We've accepted that the workplace should be "male" and I have to wonder what it would look like if it were male and female.

Feminism first got its big push when Title IX was passed in 1972. For those of you too young to remember who might not be familiar with the wording in Title IX, it reads:

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, or denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.

In a nutshell, Title IX gave girls "equal" opportunity in many areas, but specifically in education and school sanctioned sports. It was needed as this country was still a bit resistant to the idea that women deserved the same opportunities as men.

The problem? Somewhere along the line, womens' equality morphed into "women must act like men." I don't blame men for this. In fact, I really don't blame anyone for this. I think it likely happened because women looked at the behaviors of successful men, and emulated those behaviors as they strived for their own success. What we ended up with was a feminist movement that moved women to act like men.

Men and women are different. We are physically different (don't get all d'uh on me here - you know what I mean). We are emotionally different. Women are not better, nor worse than men, but we are different. "Acting like men" minimizes our importance and contribution as women.

Gender equality isn't about sameness, it's about equal opportunities, and more importantly, equal value in society - for both women and men.

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