Cancel Culture and Sexism in Sports: The March Madness Fiasco

 Introduction

Sexism in the sports world has always been pertinent and unspoken. It doesn’t matter if you’re the athlete, the ref, the announcer, or a journalist. The sports world has always been male dominant and difficult to maneuver as a woman. Women report various forms of discrimination, including sexual harassment, lack of advancement opportunities, pay inequalities, and isolation. Online harassment has not yet been sufficiently addressed by researchers, but women still have to find ways to deal with the issue of trolls.

On March 18th, 2021, Ali Kershner (@kershner.ali), a Duke soccer alumni and current Director of Creative Strategy for Art of Coaching, posted a peculiar picture on her Instagram compared to her normal stream. She normally posts inspirational posts from her coaching career, but this post had some seriousness behind it. She posted a picture showing the differences between the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament vs. Women’s Basketball tournament bubble set up. The men’s set up includes well over 25 different weight room stations and free weight stations, whereas the women received around 20 or more yoga mats and one dumbbell rack with weights ranging from .5-25 lbs.

It would be expected that Ali’s post would be filled to the brim with passive aggressive comments or trolling spam about how women’s basketball doesn’t need the same equipment, or how they shouldn’t be playing at all because of their sex, yet we don’t see as large of a disparity as one would think.

Cancel culture over the past year has become a more popular construct over social media due to the pandemic limiting our face-to-face interactions. Cancel culture spreads like wildfire and has become a way of policing individuals who stray away of what has been deemed the social norms of social acceptability. I intend to find out if cancel culture has become a deterrent for people to voice their opinions on social media. In this circumstance I want to know if men, specifically, fear backlash to a degree to where they feel like they can’t have an opinion about this post at all unless its in support of the post.

Literature review

Sexism and trolling in the sports world toward women has recently become more openly talked about. Before, it was never a conversation that was “appropriate” because it makes others uncomfortable or because others disagreed with some of the arguments being made against sexism in sports. A large number of academic articles and research examines how sexism in sports has evolved into something that can be spoken about openly, and that is due to social media.

Research into the importance of understanding sexism in sports has reached multiple categories including sexism in sports journalist, for example Jourdan Rodrigue’s interview of Cam Newton and the backlash both of them faced, how they handled it, and the later repercussions and the differences of those repercussions (Hull, Romney, Pergoraro, Harrison, 2019). Sexism in sports has also been called out through social media campaigns, like Just Not Sport’s campaign of #MoreThanMean (Antunovic, 2018). In 2016, sports manager Brad Burke who helped direct the #MoreThanMean campaign, noticed the ubiquity of online harassment directed at women. He said, “the women were being harassed in a way that was not consistent with playful banter” and the harassment “absolutely did not compare to what the men get.” Since 2016, social media has since been identified as a way for men and women to finally speak out against the dichotomy of either pretty or powerful in sports. Because of Just Not Sport’s four-minute Facebook video with the description: “Women in sports get harassed online constantly. So, we asked REAL guys to read REAL comments made about women sports reporters Sarah Spain+Julie DiCaro—TO THEIR FACE, the guys learn some tweets are #MoreThanMean … they’re harassment”. This is where they coined the saying, “We wouldn’t say it to their faces. So, let’s not type it.”.

In the past year of social reform and protest, this post by Ali drew importance to the idea of equality and justice. It is also openly voiced by Kershner in her post, “In a year defined by a fight for equality this is a chance to have a conversation and get better.” But also, within the past year cancel culture has been a term more commonly used in everyday conversation. In 2019, Neil Alperstein was able to trace the cultural shifts that occurred as social media became more persuasive (Velasco, 2020). In other words, he was able to identify that people with similar mindsets only listen to what they want to hear. And a majority of what the world wants to hear can be generated and created by influencers, public figures, and in some cases celebrities. In the special case of celebrities, however, they are constantly being blasted on different social medias for the sustained interest of the public. “Celebrities, influencers, public figures, as individuals who wield influence on their respective networks, are strictly held against the loose standard of current social acceptability.” (Velasco, 2020). 

To cancel or be canceled is defined by the parameters of being erased from public discourse- either through public shaming, deplatforming, or demanding the individual or group be fired. With such unclear parameters to the level or degree of cancelation, that means equal uncertainty as to how the individual can redeem themselves, so avoiding cancelation all together is preferable to many individuals in the public eye. In the case of Cam Newton and Jourdan Rodrigue’s interview, only after Cam newton came out with an apology for Jourdan after his sexist comment did, he received minimal backlash from fans on twitter. But Rodrigue was told to “take time off” for a period of time before she was allowed to return. And even after she posted an apology video similar to Newton’s she received more backlash than he did.

Research question & Data analysis

I want to know if people feel like they can't voice their opinion on social media in fear of being "canceled" by Cancel Culture, specifically men. And is there any evidence of that from the post by Ali Kershner? This post currently has 3,641 comments, so I will sample at least 100 of them with a variety of comments from early, middle, and late comments. I will look for correlation with gender and type of comment: Angry, surprised, thankful, or in disagreement of the original post. I will also look for evidence of canceling amongst those negative comments.

    After collecting data from 100 random comments, 20 men and 24 women were angry about the situation, 11 men and 6 women were surprised, 1 man and 12 women were thankful for the post and Ali speaking up, and 22 men and 4 women either made fun of Women’s basketball, made the claim that they don’t generate enough money to have the same equipment as men, or just disagreed with the lack of context behind the image.

There were some trends that I noticed with commenting, however. Men who commented that they were angry, surprised, or thankful were usually verified or used the post to boost and promote their own business whether it be a pod cast or their gym. Women who were verified never mentioned anything aside from the main point of the post which is that the NCAA was in the wrong. With the disagreeing/troll comments over half of the men who commented were high school age, Caucasian, and played a sport. Seven of these comments were made by men in high school basketball, three were in football, and one was in track. That’s half of the data for that section. Each of those who commented negatively received at least 2 comments in rebuttal of their claim/argument. One individual claimed that women were a part of the problem by not supporting women sports. He never responded after being bombarded with backlash and multiple comments from women sports fans who disagreed with his statement. The same pattern followed for other comments as well.

Conclusion

The obvious question was answered about who would make the most comments that disagreed with the overall point of the post, but because of the analysis of cancel culture a new pattern came to light. All of the individuals who were verified Instagram accounts made sure their stance was in support of the post’s intentions. Some men went as far as to promote their own opinion about the topic on their own platforms, making another point that unfortunately in a popular media sector dominated by men, women sports journalists and changemakers are still viewed as less credible than men in the same industry.

The reason that we don’t see many verified accounts disagreeing with the post is due to cancel culture, or the avoidance of it. Celebrities, influencers, public figures, as individuals who wield influence on their respective networks, are strictly held against the loose standard of current social acceptability. With the pandemic, our society, especially on social media, has begun to police each other with more fervor than before, and therefore has made people more cautious of what they post. I believe that the reason these individuals posted in opposition/despite the original goal of Ali’s post is because they have a feeling of anonymity. They aren’t verified, and with these thousands of comments, who is going to see their comment/who will care to cancel them? They hold no influential power in what society deems acceptable and therefore their argument has no worth. If given the chance to have more time, I would have looked into more comments and looked at the posts popularity across different social media platforms. I would have asked the same question and analyzed the different between verified users and normal users

Cancel culture, no matter how complex will affect everyone, regardless of sex and opinion. J.K Rowling was recently canceled due to her open opinion about keeping sex relevant to identity. James Gun, director of Guardians of the Galaxy, was nearly canceled for claims against him on pedophilia. Cam Newton and Jourdan Rodrigue have both fallen from their graces due to both of their individual scandals as well. Since all of us have been on social media more often, everyone has had to be careful about what they say or do on social media. Entertainment for us has changed from keeping up with celebrities to discovering new details about the people we follow on social media. And unfortunately, cancel culture is a dichotomy, you are either “right or wrong”, or “a good person or a bad person” there is no in between. Once the society makes a decision its almost impossible to recover in more serious cases.

References

 

Antunovic, D. (2018). “We wouldn’t say it to their faces”: online harassment, women sports journalists, and feminism. Feminist Media Studies, 19(3), 428–442. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1446454

Hull, K., Romney, M., Pergoraro, A., & Harrison, G. (2019). “It’s Funny to Hear a Female Talk About Routes”: Social Media Reaction to Cam Newton’s Comments About a Woman Reporter. The Journal of Social Media in Society, 8.

Reimer, A. (2016, April 27). #MoreThanMean Campaign Poignantly Exposes Harassment Women In Sports Face Online. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexreimer/2016/04/27/morethanmean-campaign-poignantly-exposes-harassment-women-in-sports-face-online/?sh=262a70622a5e.

Velasco, J. C. (2020). You are Cancelled: Virtual Collective Consciousness and the Emergence of Cancel Culture as Ideological Purging. Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 12(5). https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s21n2

Literature Review: March Madness Fiasco

    Sexism in sports has recently become more openly talked about in recent years. Before it was never a conversation that was “appropriate” because it makes others uncomfortable or because others disagreed with some of the arguments being made against sexism in sports. A large number of academic articles and research examines how sexism in sports has evolved into something that can be spoken about openly, and that is due to social media.

    Research into the importance of understanding sexism in sports has reached multiple categories including sexism in sports journalist, for example Jourdan Rodrigue’s interview of Cam Newton. Sexism inn sports has also been called out through social media campaigns, like Just Not Sport’s campaign of #MoreThanMean. And social media has since been identified as a way for women to finally speak out against the dichotomy of either pretty or powerful in sports.

    On March 18^th, 2021, Ali Kershner, the Stanford Sports Performance Coach posted a controversial image of the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament vs. Women’s Basketball tournament bubble set up. The men received a fully equipped lifting facility for a mass number of people, whereas the women received a few floor mats and one set of dumbbells ranging from 5-25 pounds.

    In the past year of social reform and protest, this post draws importance to the idea of equality and justice that’s also voiced by Kershner, “In a year defined by a fight for equality this is a chance to have a conversation and get better.” Much of the previous articles covered information regarding reactions from the general public via social media but none include numerical data about what kind of reactions people where having and who was speaking up and using their voice, and that is what my research is interested in finding.

March Madness Fiasco: Initial Data

For my first day of data collecting, I looked at the first 30 original comments and looked specifically at what reactions both men and women had to the post. I found that most people were either angry, surprised, thankful or in the complete opposition of the post. I have organized this data in the graph below.

I wasn't surprised by the number of people who were angry, that was an obvious response, and it wasn't a surprise that more women commented than men, but I was surprised to see that the only people who were in the opposition were women! I wonder if this trend will continue or if there will be more men in the opposition as well. I also found it ironic that more men commented more posts of surprise, like they didn't realize it was this bad of an issue.

March Madness Fail: How Fans View the Weight Room Fiasco

Hey all! Its been a while, but with my semester coming to an end, were about to nose dive into a lot of blogs! To start, I wanted to give some background to what I'm going to be doing.  I am going to take a look at a post on social media and break it down based off a question I want to answer about it. 

Now that you have the broad idea, you may be wondering, "What post will she look at?", What question will she ask?", "how is she going to draw out data?", and if you weren't wondering that its no worries, I'm sure you've already stopped reading at this point 😉. 

To start, I wanted to look at the NCAA Women's March Madness Fiasco. If you haven't heard about it let me show you the original post by @kershner.ali on Instagram. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CMkRJ2LswFp/

Above is an image of first the Men's weight room compared to the Women's weight room at the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament vs. Women’s Basketball tournament. Needless to say there are some HUGE differences!! I personally don't have any connection to basketball, but I have been a volleyball player since I was 6 years old, and this is definitely a slap to the face in terms of equal opportunity in sports.

So what question am I asking? I want to know if people feel like they can't voice their opinion on social media in fear of being "canceled" by Cancel Culture, specifically men. And, is there any evidence of that from this post?

Now to my methods. This post currently has 3,641 comments, so I want to sample at least 100 of them with a variety of comments from early, middle, and late comments. I want to see if the narrative changed as the original comments added up. 

In conclusion, I will be analyzing this trending social media post to see how fans reacted to the weight room discrepancies at the March Madness Tournaments through random selection of 100 comments from throughout the post in an effort to find any correlation between sex and number of comments.

Bored in the House and In the House Bored: Is Boredom Healthy?

 Boredom.

The sometimes-overwhelming feeling that took over our nation when COVID hit. We couldn’t go out to see friends or family, couldn’t go to museums or movie theatres, no more concerts or live music, no more physical social interaction.

When the nation was put under lockdown during the beginning of the pandemic, the cabin fever was real. But how bored were we really? We had our phones, TV’s, and other at home activities to keep us busy, so were we really bored, or just having a hard time paying attention?

In her book, Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self, Manoush Zomorodi talks about boredom and how it may unlock a part of your brain that generates ideas.

She also offers up some challenges for her readers to try, including CHALLENGE ONE: Observe Yourself. You essentially look at your phone screen usage over a 24-hour period and take note about how often, what time, and where you use your phone.

Let’s take a step back and talk about what our brain does when we begin to fill the void of boredom we feel. We start trying to find small tasks to keep us preoccupied, and in Zomordi’s Ted Talk that you’ll find below, she explains to us that our brains enter a Default Mode.

When we go into default mode, we do something called autobiographical planning. We look at our daily challenges, make goals to accomplish them, and then start making lists to accomplish those goals! Sounds like what our brain should be doing on a regular basis, right? It’s actually becoming less common since the popularization of the handheld technology.

What we think of as “multi-tasking” is actually just switching our attention from one project to another, it’s not a constant stream of productivity so its never our best work. We get burnt out faster and have a harder time focusing on tasks, but that’s why we need boredom!

How to we reclaim our boredom?! It’s a challenge, but one easily lined up for in her book. Back to Challenge One.

I personally analyzed my own phone usage and was shocked that in a 12-hour time span, I used my phone for social media for roughly 5 hours. Not email or messaging, but Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook.

They say the first step to breaking an addiction is identifying that you have an addiction… so hi everyone, my name is Cailey, and I am a phone addict. And there is nothing wrong with identifying this issue in my life, it just gives me the opportunity to make some healthy changes.

During COVID-19, there was a huge change in the way we dealt with boredom, and it showed in our electronic usage.

Jory MacKay

In this study done by Jory MacKay, he found that our daily usage of our devices jumped 16% overall, or almost one full hour in a day. That’s one more hour of distraction.

Long story short, boredom is something many of us try to avoid, its always had a negative connotation to it. Many of us try to fill this time by distracting ourselves with our electronics by either trying to multitask or by mindlessly scrolling through different media streams.

How can we overcome this? The first step is to analyze your usage and accept the reality of where you are in terms of your usage. You also should be open to the idea of boredom being ok! It’s a gateway into mind-wandering and creativity which turns into productivity.

Virality during COVID

Everyone seems to be on their phones. Even though we don't get to see each other in person anymore we can all still see how active we are on social media. And with COVID, virality seems to be the theme of popular media.

From TikTok to Facebook, there have been a multitude of viral trends popping up during the pandemic. Things from the Trick Shot challenge to the Flip the Switch challenge, social media has become a way for individuals to partake in similar activities to stay connected and entertained. 

But why do we choose to partake in these activities, and why do they seem to be appealing to such a wide variety of people? Jenkins, Ford & Green who wrote Spreadable Media would say that its due to "spreadable practices and stickiness". 

Spreadable Practices include "technical resources that make it easier to circulate some kinds of content." and our use of this resource created the concept of "stickiness" which measures the success of the content.

But could this all be a rouse? Could it be that we are just entertaining ourselves to distract ourselves from the dreariness of current events? 

In review of Childish Gambino's popular music video of This Is America, this may just be the case. Check out this YouTube Video from  the REACT channel. https://youtu.be/LtpqdJkoKm8

One of the kids in the video actually participated in the music video and was able to give a description as to what the music video was about.

So the question is, do you think we get involved with popular trends because its fun and brings us together or is it all just something we use to cope with the situation were in?

Could be one or the other, or it could simply be both. The choice is yours.

Memes and Mead

 

What's in a Meme?

What is a meme? 

heather15blog

For most college students its a language were are fluent in, but still learning due to its Gen X edition being released in the past few years.

For others like Millennials and Baby Boomers, it can be hit or miss in terms of whether or not you can get the joke or follow along with the main idea of the singular image.

In short, memes are a means of communication and connection between people, but is it really for everyone?

Everyone would like to think so, but how many times have you judged a person for using a meme "wrong"? How many times have you told your parents/teachers "that's not how you use that meme.."? More often than you thought, huh?

Memes can be an amazing way to joke with others, but memes are also subject to policing by younger generations, which makes it less fun for everyone to be a part of.

Mead and me (and don't for get about I)

George Herbert Mead created the social philosophy of "I and Me", closely related to Freuds "ego and censor". 

To make this a quick lesson, I is the active self that is less responsive to social pressures. Me is passive and a reflection of social pressures.

So here is an example of how the two interact, or how you would think they interact: you're working a cash register at a busy department store when an angry customer begins to scream at you. Your "I" would want to give her a piece of your mind, but the "Me" stops you from doing that in order to maintain what society makes you perceive is the right thing to do, which would be to be nice and help the customer anyways.

Mead meets Meme

So, how do memes tie into Mead?

If you think about it, every comment or like that you make on a post is your "me" trying to please the society you wish to make happy. You may think it is your I, but there will always be a group of people you are trying to please, whether you think you're a rebel or not.

Kostas GR

This also begs the question about if we, in our society, still have an I at all? I chose this image because it gives a god visual to what I'm trying to portray. Are we really showing out "I" or are we giving a distorted picture of who we think we are, or "Me"?

Does "I" still exist?

This is still a major debate between philosophers. But, in my own opinion, I do believe we still have an "I". I myself have viewed my "I" in action. When politics were heated I chose to disengage from social media. 

I chose to do that despite the social pressures around me to be involved and get angry on social media.

I made the decision to not please anyone, except myself.

"I" still exists.