Women and the Masters, here we go again

What's wrong with tweeting while you are waiting for "the solution?"

At the risk of being reasonable.

 

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You should take your tour to the Middle East telling women how swell they've got it, according to The Supreme Court.

 

What? Were you trying to respond to someone else?

 

It might be preferable to:

1. Not make yourself, the journalist, the story.

2. Rise above a bad, regrettable situation by not making it a cause celebre. (And really, shouldn't a sports editor go to the mat for his/her writer here, rather than the writer doing battle while facing print deadlines?)


Oh ... and Susan Slusser ... that idiot at the Cubs' gate could just as easily have been an idiot to a black man. Some people's brains are still back in 1950, unfortunately.

 

I don't understand your point.

It seems like you are saying that since there is a legal distinction between being black and being a woman that woman don't face any types of discrimination or somesuch.

I think it's pretty clear that being a woman and being black are different. Unless you're a black woman.

 

We disagree. The newsgathering business has changed quite a bit recently.

 

So much for No. 1.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/SPORT/golf/04/11/female.reporter.masters/

 

That's exactly what I tried to make clear that I wasn't saying. All I'm saying is that it's not the same thing despite the repeated analogies.

 

Yes, we disagree. No shame in that.

 

But if women don't raise the issue publicly, it quietly keeps happening over and over again. Why is standing up for the right to do your job a bad thing?

 

Well, I gave my answer ... I understand it may not be the popular one, but I think it is a salient point.

 

Exactly. The simile is used often, and it is wrong. We have separate bathrooms and locker rooms for men and women. We don't have separate bathrooms for blacks and whites. You can understand why a security guard who doesn't have experience dealing with sports media could find it peculiar -- or, as Susan pointed out in her anecdote, funny -- that a woman is walking into a men's bathroom (or, in this case, locker room). That doesn't excuse the rent-a-cop's behavior -- hey, we've all dealt with them, and they don't usually discriminate when it comes to exerting their temporary authority -- but it also doesn't mean that this incident should be unexpected. Even in our modern, enlightened era, one of the first things they teach you in elementary school is not to go into the opposite gender's bathroom.

It isn't easy being a female sports writer, and this case is a fine example. But to compare it with the civil rights struggle is to belittle the plight blacks have faced, and continue to face, in this country.