On being a female sports fan:

As a woman and a sports fan, this is literally one of my biggest pet peeves in life: the misogynistic, paternalistic, arrogant, and dismissive ways that women sports fans are treated by many men. And not just men who are sports fans, but any guy off the street, seeing me in my team’s logo, thinks it’s his right to quiz me on stats and player names, in hoping to tric me into revealing that I’m not a TRUE fan, but a bandwagoner only in it for the attractive athletes.

This above photo is a fantastic example. Not that I expect much from CollegeHumor, but this juxtaposition is gross. For starters, they’re trying to decide on the “Best Kind of FOOTBALL Fan,” and they’ve got Jonah Hill’s character from Moneyball as the “Sports Nerd,” which is okay I guess, except MONEYBALL IS A BASEBALL MOVIE.

I also have to seriously wonder if the woman they so patronizingly label as “Princess Bittercup” agreed to have her photo disseminated in this manner? And as for the pink - who cares? I personally don’t own any pink sports attire, but I might buy some just to piss off assholes like whoever wrote that caption. Nobody knows why that woman chose pink: maybe she’s a breast cancer survivor, or maybe she just fucking likes pink (it’s not like the Dolphins’s colors of orange and turquoise are fucking beautiful). No one ever sees a guy in an alternate jersey color (like camo, or black-on-black) and assumes he’s somehow lesser.

I’m tired of having to prove to men that I’m a “real” sports fan, just because of my gender. I’m tired of reading the BOSTON FUCKING GLOBE and seeing columnists refer derisively to “Pink Hats” as a blanket term for bandwagon fans, and having to pretend that it’s not obvious misogyny, a petulant reaction to women invading their boys’ club. But most of all, I’m tired of men thinking that they have ANY RIGHT to judge whether my fandom is legitimate. WHO CARES if I find some players attractive? Guess what? I don’t spend all day lasciviously describing all the things I want to do to them - unlike half the men with whom I watch sports on TV who spend most of the game objectifying the sideline reporter.

[Reposted from my Tumblr blog of the same name.]