Serena dives in sexist swamp
In the continuing series of the best sports reads of 2018, we go back to September when columnist Mark Reason weighed in with one of his most read and commented on columns – about Serena Williams.
OK, so this one is not going away. The latest episode of the Williams soap opera includes a bland guest appearance by Roger Federer and the return of Serena, warrior princess, fighting for women’s rights on an Aussie show called The Project.
This has now reached the point of absurdity. Serena is like a toddler caught in a lie who keeps repeating the lie in the childish belief that it will become true. The hollow joke at the centre of this farrago is that it was not umpire Carlos Ramos who was guilty of sexism.
It was Serena.
When Williams said to Ramos: ‘‘Cos I’m a woman you’re going to take this away from me,’’ she was accusing a top umpire of gender bias and professional incompetence because he was a man. Serena owes Carlos an apology. This is not fair, this is not fair.
Williams was spouting sexist claptrap. Ramos’ integrity was publicly undermined because he was a man. I won’t say that this could only have taken place at the US Open, but there seemed to be no better setting for it.
North America is the country where some women have gone on a long feminist march to misandry and it is poisoning the culture. American newspapers now routinely give women a platform to publish the most vile man-hating stuff in the name of feminism.
Suzanna Danuta Walters, a sociology professor and editor of the ‘‘gender studies journal’’ Sign, wrote in the Washington Post: ‘‘It seems logical to hate men . . . When they have gone low for all of human history, maybe it’s time for us to go all Thelma and Louise and Foxy Brown on their collective butts.’’
Walters is far from a lone voice in America. The creeping culture of western society is male denigration. Men spoof themselves. Homer Simpson is perhaps the supreme creation of a hapless ‘‘everyman’’ quite unable to recognise his own depravity in the society of mass consumption.
But Homer is just the figurehead of a new range of male laughing stocks being bought into by many women.
A Bon Marche ad portrays empowered women casually and ‘‘accidentally’’ whacking idiot men about the head. An insurance ad shows a group of lads mucking around and driving a car over a cliff, followed by the message ‘‘why we insure only women’’.
And Serena, more Billie Jean King than Martin Luther King, has fallen headlong into this sexist swamp. On Sunday she will appear on The Project to again portray herself as activist mom rather than spoiled sportswoman ruining one of the elite tournaments of her sport.
Williams says on The Project: ‘‘I just don’t understand . . . if you’re a female you should be able to do even half of what a guy can do.’’
At a fashion show in Vegas Williams said: ‘‘I feel it’s really important to stand up for what you believe in. Especially if it can affect the future and affect a lot of people in the future. That’s what it’s all about.’’
At the press conference after the US Open final Williams said: ‘‘I’m here fighting for women’s rights and for women’s equality and for all kinds of stuff. For me to say ‘thief’ and for him to take a game, it made me feel like it was a sexist remark . . . He’s never taken a game from a man because they said ‘thief.’ For me it blows my mind. But I’m going to continue to fight for women.’’
Ramos did not take a game away from Williams because she called him a thief. He took a game away for being coached (code violation one), for smashing a racket (code violation two) and for a sustained verbal battering, that came in three parts, lasted nearly two minutes in total and culminated in Williams calling him a thief (violation three).
This was an example of a very powerful woman trying to use her status to bully a far less powerful man. It was predictable, and despicable, that the WTA came out in support of Williams. But when you have governing bodies effectively run and controlled by the players (it is the same in golf) then everyone else is expendable.
We then heard from players like Victoria Azarenka who said: ‘‘If it was a men’s match, this wouldn’t happen like this. It just wouldn’t.’’
The trouble is that these sort of claims turned out to be nonsense. Statistically men get three times as many code violations as women. Nor is Ramos a sexist umpire. At the 2016 Olympics he gave Andy Murray a code violation for accusing him of ‘‘stupid umpiring’’.
Indeed, if I were an umpire I would prefer to be accused of stupid umpiring than called a thief. One questions my decisionmaking at a particular moment, the other questions my integrity, something Williams magnified by her accusations of sexism.
Ramos was not responsible for Williams’ defeat. There is no doubt Williams received coaching. She looks at her coach at the moment Patrick Mouratoglou is giving very obvious signals. Mouratoglou admitted he was coaching.
The coaching row inspired Williams. She subsequently played her best tennis of the match. She moved out to a 3-1 lead in the second set. She then played an awful service game that included two double faults. Williams reacted by smashing her racket.
The catalyst for everything that happened was that awful service. If Williams had served out the game with an array of aces, as her Japanese opponent did to clinch the match, no more would have been said. Instead Williams lost her temper. That is why she kept demanding an apology like some fixated toddler. You half expected her to say: ‘‘Is it cos I is a womb-man.’’
Germaine Greer said: ‘‘The game was gone already because she dropped the first set and she was looking for a way out . . . I found the way she behaved really repellent, especially when she put her arm around the poor young woman who actually won the bloody thing to say, ‘I am the grand dame and you have done quite well, deary’. When what she had really done is thrown the match.’’
I am not sure I fully agree with that, but it is a more sustainable view than the nonsense about sexism. But that is the culture we live in. It is at its nadir in the United States, but New Zealand is heading the same way.
Serena owes Carlos an apology. This is not fair, this is not fair.