The demand for misogyny in American sports far exceeds the available supply.
That’s a problem for USA Today columnist Nancy Armour.
Armour has built much of her professional brand around finding sexism and misogyny everywhere she looks in sports. So, what happens when women reach a better position in the sports world than ever before?
Armour has to look harder.
Much harder.
In a column published Tuesday, Armour argued that American sports are happy to take women’s money, but don’t want women in their space or to treat them with “even the slightest shred of decency.”
Strong claim.
What evidence did Armour use to support the idea that American sports, as a whole, don’t want women around?
A sports-betting ad featuring a nearly nude Sydney Sweeney, Arch Manning laughing at a stupid AI video, and an architectural rendering that included almost no women.
That’s it. That’s her entire case.
The arena rendering barely warrants a response. An architectural rendering of Philadelphias future arena showed almost no women, the image was replaced within two days, and the building will be home to the citys WNBA team. If that is evidence that women arent welcome in sports, the definition of evidence has lost all meaning.
There’s another problem, though. Armour has no trouble finding misogyny in an advertisement, a joke or a computer-generated crowd. But when males take opportunities in women’s sports, she .
That’s not an oversight. It’s the clearest evidence that this isn’t really about protecting women.
Armour starts with perhaps the most absurd characterization of the three.
“A betting company tells women their only place in sports is as a sexualized object,” Armour wrote.
Wait, when did Novig say that?
It didn’t.
Novig produced one advertisement featuring one woman, Sydney Sweeney, using sex appeal to promote a sports prediction market. Somehow, Armour took that to mean the company declared that every woman’s “only place in sports” is as a sexualized object.
That’s quite a leap.
The ad didn’t say anything about female athletes, female fans, female broadcasters or women’s sports. Plus, Novig isn’t selling “sports.” Sports are the subject matter. The product is gambling.
And the ad is clearly designed primarily to appeal to men, who make up the core audience for sports betting.
So what?
Not every product or advertisement has to appeal equally to men and women. Womens clothing companies and cosmetics companies run ads aimed at women. Entire television networks and publishing genres cater primarily to women. No one treats that as evidence that those companies hate men.
THE CRAIG CARTON SHOWâUNFILTERED, UNAPOLOGETIC AND UNMISSABLE. DOWNLOAD HIS DAILY PODCAST NOW!
But when a betting company creates an ad tailored to its overwhelmingly male audience, Armour treats the existence of a male audience as the offense.
In Armour’s world, products aimed at wo
