“Tiger Woods, Nike spokesman and unmarried father of none…”
Ooh, this is such a good rant. The author takes on sportswriters who always include a woman’s marital or family status when writing about female competitors, as if they can hardly believe that a mother could also be a first-class athlete. In a roundabout way, it also reminds me of something that happened in London a year or two ago, where a woman was killed outside a train station. Every headline blared “MOTHER OF THREE GUNNED DOWN” or something similar. As if crimes are somehow more senseless when perpetuated against a breeder. Why should the fact that she had children have anything to do with it? Somebody died, that’s horrible. Somebody won a race, that’s great. This need to single out women (whether for additional pity or congratulations) on the basis of their “domestic achievements” is patronising and unnecessary.
Important Note
This site features content going all the way back to 2000. The posts you’ll read reflect my views and writing style at the time. While I have gone back to clean up a few of them, I think it’s important not to sanitise too much. This site is a record of who I am and how I’ve grown. Any blog post written years ago may not reflect who I am today, nor how I would write about the same topic today.