Can sports just be about sports? Not a chance in today's political and ideological climate. The latest in the sports news of the bizarre involves the WNBA. There has been a strange and downright funny trend of throwing a green or purple dildo onto the basketball court, in the middle of the game.
So far, there have been four throws and two arrests. One throw hit a player, another hit members of the audience, and two reached the court. Everyone seems to be following this closely—there is an actual market in which people are betting on the color of the next thrown dildo.
The dildo event began after the WNBA players complained (again!) about the pay gap between women players and men players in the NBA. The women proudly wore t-shirts with the slogan "Pay Us What You Owe Us."
The issue is that the WNBA is significantly less popular than the NBA, which means it is not generating the substantial profits it should to justify the demands for increased pay. The WNBA is also inextricably linked to the NBA, especially financially.
Its lack of popularity is not surprising. Watching women in team sports is not as compelling as watching men. In sports like tennis, where it is a matter of highly individual, singular prowess, spectators can easily root for either men or women. Still, one has to show authentic individuality, and for women, this often means transcending their womanhood and giving it all to the sport. WNBA players are doing the opposite.
At a press conference, Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve commented on the dildo event with gravity and seriousness: "This has been going on for centuries—the sexualization of women. This is the latest version of that. And it is not funny, and it should not be the butt of jokes on any radio shows, or in print, or any comments. The sexualization of women is what is used to hold women down. And this is no different. Those responsible for this should be held accountable. We're not the butt of the joke. They are the problem, and we need to take action."
Apart from financial and ideological issues that plague the WNBA, there are cultural subtexts that relate to both the green and purple rubber objects in question and the reactions to the toss. Sex and humor are two of the most fundamental human experiences, and it is not surprising that both are coming into the foreground in this case.
It seems highly unlikely that the choice of the object to be thrown during the basketball game was accidental. It can imply that women players have no balls (basketballs or otherwise), or it could be a commentary on the players' sexual orientation since many of them are lesbians.
Reeve's commentary didn't help, and it only revealed the humorlessness with which she and the entire WNBA are imbued. Much like her, our society is repressed and suppressed, especially in terms of humor (some deem it dead, although there are many comedians—men!—who are reviving this ancient art).
By its very nature, humor is sexual (women can find even the ugliest of men attractive if they are funny), and the joke is a release. To find something funny, one must become vulnerable and be able to let go. In his seminal work, "The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious," Sigmund Freud writes that "The joke…is the most social of all the psyche's functions that aim to obtain pleasure." Pleasure is something that is beyond the grasp of humorless scolds.
Here, once again, feminism rears its ugly pussy hat. Women players are, in a sense, picketing, engaging in a Marxist activity, while experiencing freedom in a capitalist system. As Camille Paglia writes in "Sexual Personae" (1990), "One of feminism's irritating reflexes is its fashionable disdain for 'patriarchal society,' to which nothing good is ever attributed."
Sure, there are plenty of individual misogynistic jerks out there, which most women have experienced. But the WNBA is attacking the capitalist system, not some random guy who made a dumb comment.
Paglia notes that "Capitalism is an art form, an Apollonian fabrication to rival nature. It is hypocritical for feminists and intellectuals to enjoy the pleasures and conveniences of capitalism while sneering at it." We cannot escape specific fundamental facts and the difference between men and women. Most of our society's issues now stem from the refusal to acknowledge that difference; not merely acknowledge but accept it, and most of all, find pleasure in it.
