At this point, you’d think the fact that women like sports would be pretty well-known. The presence of female sportswriters in every sports league, as well as the number of female sports fans that any random person is likely to encounter should prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that yes, women care about sports.
Well, try telling that to the folks at Men’s Health.
Earlier this evening, the Men’s Health twitter account sent a link to an article entitled “The Secret To Talking Sports With Any Woman,” which exists under the false premise that sports are strictly Boy Stuff, and that women can hardly comprehend them without a big manly man around to explain it to them. The response on Twitter was not kind, to say the least.
lol this is pathetic #clickbaitfail RT @MensHealthMag:She sees the game differently than you. http://t.co/4zJiDjEgIj http://t.co/iU3I0GSDBS
— Virginia Pham (@veephambam) October 7, 2014
https://twitter.com/rgay/status/519285111226118144
But what if it was just a dumb headline, and the article is actually fine? Umm, no:
Not all women share your passion for sports, in case you hadn’t noticed. The reason? They need story lines.
“Most women don’t care about stats,” says Andrei Markovits, Ph.D., coauthor of Sportista: Female Fandom in the United States. So while you’re enthusing about Dominic Moore’s scoring record, she’d rather hear about how he supported his wife’s battle with cancer—and even took a season off from the NHL at the height of his career. Treat your heroes as people and not just players on a field, and you’ll suck her in.
Yup, apparently the reason why the ladies don’t go for sports is because it isn’t similar enough to a soap opera for them. Can we stop all this nonsense? If there’s a woman in your life who doesn’t know much about a given sport, and would like to know more, and enlists your help in getting to know more, explain it to them the same way you would explain anything else to any human being of any gender. Don’t condescend to them by trying to make the details of an NHL game more like the latest episode of General Hospital.
If you do, not only will you not turn her into a sports fan, she’ll probably think you’re a condescending jerk, and won’t want to hang out with you anymore.