Time to end lazy thinking

Iwatched my first game on Saturday. (I’m still savouring the weird thrill of now being someone who talks about ‘the game’.) Up until then, it would have been hard to underestimate my enthusiasm for sport. It was up there on the list of things I never, ever want to talk about. Right next to crypto, paleo and accidentally meeting a former boss at a swingers’ party.

But this Saturday I was at work, sweating, ducking and diving beneath the roaring scrum at my burlesque show, and running backstage every minute to check my phone.

I get it now. The giddy euphoria. The vicarious pride. The exhaustion and elation. The victory dancing with strangers while waving your yellow feather boa. And, of course, the sweet satisfaction of proving everyone wrong. Which, if I’m honest, was a large part of why I watched. I tuned in to test a theory. (And stayed watching because I hadn’t realised how high-octane the thrills are.)

See, one of the things you always hear as justification for why women’s sports stars are paid so much less, get far less coverage, get-ignored-bythe-All-Blacks-Twitter-on-International-Women’sDay-in-favour-of-a-shoutout-to-their-wives-andgirlfriends, is that no-one cares about women’s sport. To be specific, other women don’t care. Neat, isn’t it? It’s all our fault. Forget the male sport dollar, we chicks don’t support our teams enough, go to enough games, buy enough merch . . . So female athletes get less money, sponsorship etc.

‘‘It’s not sexism, darl, it’s capitalism,’’ says the bloke in the pub waving away accusations of pay gaps and male indifference with an airy pint. ‘‘It’s your fault for not going to games!’’

Ok, I thought, true. I have never cared about any sport. So I’ll tune in, support them, see for myself if this air of supposed mass general indifference exists. And what I saw on Saturday was absolutely breathtaking. It felt like a ringside seat to the French Revolution: the screaming, the stamping, the shouting, the tween girls with freckles shaking Ruby Tui’s book, the mums levitating with excitement, the besties screaming in anticipation . . .

Here were the people who supposedly didn’t exist. They’d sold out Eden Park, another supposed impossibility. Saturday proved that women do care about women’s sport. Sure, some girls like me never really thought about it much. (But look how easily we’re converted when we do.) But more importantly, we weren’t the ones packing out that stadium, screaming, stamping, and spilling into the streets buying drinks, merch, and celebratory kebabs.

That was the thousands and thousands of women who went because they want to spend their capitalist dosh on women’s sport. They just clearly haven’t had many chances to do this before Saturday. They’re forestalled by all this flimsy thinking about ‘what women supposedly want to spend on’.

But now, as Ruby Tui herself said, we’ve done it. They proved women ‘do’ want to celebrate our mesmerisingly talented female athletes. So if this is just about spending power, we’ve won the debate. Women’s rugby sells, and it deserves time, money, attention and coverage. But I also know any problem justified by ‘‘well, women don’t want . . . ’’ is never really about facts. Or logic. It’s about lazy, flimsy thinking about women – and a disinterest in finding out the truth.

So are we finally going to give women’s sport the spotlight it has earned? Or keep going around in circles because ‘this is an exception’? The Black Ferns have proved their point. The ball’s in our court now.

Trump well knows that [DeSantis] is his biggest nemesis, already branding him ‘Ron DeSanctimonious’.