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***sköldpaddor*** · 04-04-2023, 01:26 PM

Good Girls
(or, reflections on a decade of existing as a woman in sports)

Next week, there’s a date that marks nine years that I’ve been working in hockey. Nine years since I jumped headfirst into a career in something that I'd been growing increasingly interested in over the past two or three years, something that I didn’t know would end up being a career, a change that I was terrified of but knew I desperately needed (I’d been working retail until then, was struggling mightily with as-of-then undiagnosed depression and anxiety, and something had to give).

I didn’t really know what I was getting into at the time. I’m glad I didn’t, because I might have just stayed in retail hell if I’d known everything that was waiting for me, but at this point I wouldn’t trade the friends I’ve made and the experiences I’ve had for the world. But there are things you learn really quickly when you’re a woman working in a field that is not just heavily male-dominated but also not especially welcoming to people who are different in other ways. I found the SHL about five years after I got involved in real hockey, and branched out to sim leagues surrounding other sports a little later, and I realized that a lot of the lessons you learn as a woman in sports spaces are pretty universal.

You learn that for as much as many men claim that they “like a woman who takes charge,” that rarely extends beyond the confines of flirtation that fades as soon as they realize you aren’t faking the confidence, that you actually have a solid sense of self-worth and standards to match.

You learn that a lot of men aren’t crazy about it when you know who you are, because if you’re already opinionated and set in your own identity, they can’t mold you into what they want you to be.

You learn that if you want to ally with other women in these spaces, you have to fight for that, because the entire system teaches us that there’s a limited number of spaces for us and tells us we have to fight each other to secure our own. You learn that there are women who’ve been so thoroughly indoctrinated into that that they will choose a man over you every single time because they’ve been taught that the only way to get ahead is to be “not like other girls.”

You learn to never, ever read the comments under the announcements of any woman who gets hired for a prominent sports job. Never reading the comments is a pretty good rule of thumb anyway, but especially in this context. The same twelve old white men can get passed around between coaching jobs in the league, and a lot of them have some pretty unremarkable track records, but the second a woman gets a front office job, suddenly everyone is full of concern over whether she’s “actually the best person for the job.”

You learn that it’s pretty much impossible for one person to have enough energy to push back every single time some new bullshit happens, and as much as you hate it, you learn to choose your battles.

And the worst thing you learn, in my mind, is how to fight the instinct to second guess yourself every step of the way. How to live with that constant uncertainty of “are my ideas and thoughts actually bad, or are they being dismissed because I’m not a man?” Taking that moment every single time someone pushes back against something you say to ask yourself “am I wrong here? Would they be reacting to this the same way if I were a man? Is this a battle I need to fight, or is this feedback I need to take to heart?” Sometimes it’s one, and sometimes it’s the other. But it’s a question men never have to ask themselves in these spaces.

You also learn that the more you push back, the less you lie low and take the “just be passive and nice to everybody so everyone will love you” approach, the more shit you’re going to get. You learn that the more confidence you develop and the higher standards you start to have for yourself and the way you’re treated, the more you shed “friends” who really only liked you in the first place because you never called them out on their bullshit. You learn the reverse of that too, the good stuff, like which friends will still be there for you and have your back even if you are willing to tell them that they’re wrong, you find the real friends along the way, the ones who stick with you and who also know how to give you feedback in ways that don’t make you question their motivation). (Also, you learn that even if you’re still in your “being nice to everyone so nobody calls me a bitch” phase you’re still going to get accused of having a “cult” because you have friends who will stand up for you).

I think the big incidents, the really glaring ones that are so bad people can’t help noticing them, those are pretty universally condemned. When a guy who’s either aggressively bigoted or so committed to trolling that he prefers to be seen that way comes right out and says he hates that women are “invading sports” or tells a woman to “know her role,” pretty much everybody comes out of the woodwork to condemn that, because that’s the ludicrous over-the-top level of misogyny that most people, even the politically clueless, recognize as unacceptable. That’s great, of course! It’s great that we recognize really horrible stuff that women would have just been expected to accept or even obey fifty years ago, but the bar is still incredibly low, and I think a lot of the microaggressions still fly under the radar, both in our online spaces and in real world environments.

But they do happen, pretty much every day, whether it’s something tangible or just the way you’re inherently treated a little differently because people know you’re a woman, and the way you’re surrounded by it even when it isn’t directed at you.

Like finding out after the fact, after she’d already given her two weeks’ notice, that the reason one of my few female coworkers quit was due to blatantly sexist bullying from the two men she worked a shift with every night - making shitty jokes about her being stressed or not cheerful that day because she was “on her period” (and then accidentally or intentionally sending that to her via company instant message instead of sending it to each other), and having to continue working with those guys for the next five years.

Like listening to a coworker say that he thought the violent actions of a pro hockey player were “just a really funny way to assault a woman.” Backing my female coworker up when she took her concerns regarding that incident to HR, then getting pulled into a later meeting with HR to inform me and that same female coworker that if we didn’t start “being nice” to our coworker (we had stopped inviting him to our occasional lunch outings) that would be considered “retaliation” because he had also gone to HR. Not even knowing how the fuck to argue with that because I was so desperate to keep this job that at the time I still felt like I had entirely lucked into and the dream bubble was going to pop at any moment.

Getting called a "puck bunny" because you expressed the unpopular opinion that a fan favorite goalie had a bad game. Telling a man it's offensive to call players "girls" as an insult, just to have him follow you around in your mutual online spaces and tag you in to make fun of you any time anybody calls a player anything ("don't tell jess you called that player a baby, she'll accuse you of being prejudiced against babies").

Relating a lot of this information on this very site, mentioning things that would have been helpful for me as a young woman getting started in a male-dominated field, just to have the man I was talking to brush me off to talk about the issue at length with another man instead.

Watching a fairly well-known user call another woman a “bitch” behind her back completely out of nowhere because she’s known for having strong opinions (and then delete said messages to cover his tracks later).

Being told by another fairly prominent user that it wouldn’t really bother him if a hockey player put his wife’s face through a television set as long as he liked the way the player plays hockey (and having him double down on that even when explaining how alarming that is to hear as a woman).

The fact that there’s still a team who seem to think objectifying women is just how you say good morning. Knowing that there’s still men in this league who think it’s okay to openly say they want to have sex with a female user’s fake hockey player, or openly talk about her as if she’s some kind of “fuckable” object.

Sitting there awkwardly in a general league discord space and watching while somebody describes the boobs of a drawing they’re doing for about ten minutes and feeling like if you say anything, you’re going to be perceived as an uptight bitch.

Watching people portray female characters in some of the most objectifying, offensively unrealistic ways, offering feedback just to get shot down because it’s “all imaginary anyway.”

Getting blamed repeatedly for men running into the consequences of their own actions, because they refuse to acknowledge their own shortcomings and it’s much easier to blame the “bitch” who must have done something heinous to sabotage you. Watching other women get punished for pushing back when a man tells them to "smile more."

Watching men repeatedly confuse you and other women in these spaces because you know, there’s only like fifteen of us, so it’s easy to get us confused when you think of us as kind of all the same.

Having men just act…weird at you. Asking you on dates, asking you if you find certain sexual things “hot” and when you push back and say you’re married/spoken for (and even if you weren’t, you don’t just ask a woman that out of the blue if you aren’t sure that’s the nature of your relationship), they laugh it off and say “I warned you it was an NSFW question!” (Never mind the fact that they “warned” you and then never gave you a chance to say no, just plowed right ahead).

I don’t list all of this to make anybody feel sorry for me (or the women who contributed some of these stories, because they aren’t all mine). I’ve developed pretty tough skin over the past decade, and I’m pretty jaded at this point, pretty numb to a lot of it. I save my energy for the big battles, for the most part. I list all of this to show that for every “major” incident we do raise a stink about, for every time we ever escalate the issue (successfully or not), there are ten other minor things that we quietly file away because we know how we’ll be perceived if we call out every single one of them.

I list all of this to stress that as much progress as I genuinely believe we’ve made in these spaces in the four years I’ve been participating, I am also absolutely certain that the work isn’t done yet. Much of this isn’t intentional. Much of this is behavior that the people perpetrating it may not even realize is wrong. And it’s something we have to work on together, this can’t be something that the couple dozen (and I think that’s a high estimate) women in these spaces have to fight for on our own. Because if me, a pretty basic cis white woman, has these experiences, how much worse do you think things still are for trans women, or women of color, or women who are both? We still have so far to go.

So anyway, this is a reminder as I get closer to the decade mark of living and working in this field, that if you want to call yourself an ally of any sort, we still need you to put the work in, and we need you to try to be better. We need you to hold your friends accountable for their behavior. It’s really, really not enough to just “agree to disagree” with your friend’s raging misogyny because it’s not something that impacts you directly, we need you to be willing to have those difficult conversations.

We need you to stop making excuses for people, and we need you to understand that when you give “second chances” to people who haven’t asked for them and who haven’t even remotely apologized or tried to alter their behavior, you are creating a space that is at best passively unsafe for us, and at worst openly hostile. (As I’ve said before, this is not in any way meant to indicate that I don’t think people should get second chances. I’ve needed a lot of them in my life, and I’ve been lucky enough to have people who were willing to hold me accountable for my actions and help me become a better person. But giving a pass to people for their misogynistic behavior without explaining to them why what they did or said was wrong in the first place, that’s not a second chance, that’s just complicity.)

And that’s kind of the entire point I’m getting to with all of this - I’m not asking anybody to ditch their friends the second they say anything problematic, deliberately or not. I’m asking people to be willing to actually confront their friends when they do these things, to have those hard conversations instead of just handwaving it or laughing it off like “oh, that rascal, at it again!” And if they don’t take that feedback well, if they don’t listen, if they aren’t willing to improve, I am asking that you take a good look in the mirror and ask yourself if that’s the kind of person you want to maintain a friendship with.

I'm asking you to look at the spaces you have a hand in creating and tailoring, like your locker room, and ask yourself, if a woman came here, would she feel welcome? Would she feel safe? And if that answer isn't 100% "yes," I challenge you to put in the work until it is. Because none of this gets better unless we work for it.

Please work for it with us, and help me make a better world for my daughter than the one I’ve been living in for the past nine years.

***boom*** · 04-04-2023, 01:28 PM

thank you for being outspoken in creating safer spaces!

spidey · 04-04-2023, 01:30 PM

I hope for the same changes in this world for my daughter as well as we continue to push forward creating a better place for all women.

***boom*** · 04-04-2023, 01:34 PM

also sending so much love to the women on the site who have had to put up with this bullshit. you are so so much stronger than you know and you’re not alone.

***BadWolf*** · 04-04-2023, 01:37 PM

Very good read Jess, I really hope many take the time to read this and hopefully open some eyes.

***39alaska39*** · 04-04-2023, 01:53 PM

10/10 article. It continues to be disappointing to see the way that some behave and act towards women in sport and women in general. I feel like this is something that shouldn't be controversial, and I hope that this post makes the people of the SHL look at their behavior and attitudes, both here and in their day to day, and improve where needed.

Alex Winters (retired)
Matej Winters (retired)
Dominik Winters
S45 Jesster Trophy Winner
Challenge Cup Winning Goal Club: S52

***Seany148*** · 04-04-2023, 02:07 PM

A needed read. And a great read.

*CptSquall* · 04-04-2023, 02:20 PM

A great read, but also a hard read.

If this article doesn’t give one pause to reflect. To ask questions, even for a half decent man like me. I don’t know what to tell you.

As a father to an 8 year old daughter that wants to grow up to play for the Detroit Red Wings. Your story hits close. Like you for yours, I want to do my best not just to raise my daughter well but also to make the world a better place for her.

Especially since I am a man. I know I’ll have to work extra hard to understand all sorts of challenges I just simply don’t face.

*Carpy48* · 04-04-2023, 02:31 PM

Thank you for writing this! It's something like a must-read for everyone on the site.

***Sburbine*** · 04-04-2023, 02:54 PM

I've noticed a lot of these same problems unfortunately happen in a lot of fields. Both my wife and I work in STEM and I hear first hand how no one takes her opinions seriously and as a woman you can't be assertive or fight for your opinions because then people will just label you as a "bitch". The solution is to frankly not tolerate this behavior in any situation, let people be heard be it man, woman, gay, straight, trans, or cis and call out people who say otherwise. Being a good ally is more than not participating in the bad behavior, it includes telling bigots to fuck off.

***NYR73*** · 04-04-2023, 03:15 PM

Thanks for sharing this. As far as we’ve come as a society, there’s still so much to do. We need to keep having those uncomfortable conversations with the people we know.

***Patty*** · 04-04-2023, 03:16 PM

We continue to be blessed by your presence. Calling out and not allowing bad behavior is just as important as not doing it yourself. Many of us run micro communities within the SHL and it doesn't take much to make someone feel unwelcome. If you wouldn't want your mother to read it you shouldn't allow it in your community.

***boom*** · 04-04-2023, 03:24 PM

04-04-2023, 03:16 PMPatty Wrote: We continue to be blessed by your presence. Calling out and not allowing bad behavior is just as important as not doing it yourself. Many of us run micro communities within the SHL and it doesn't take much to make someone feel unwelcome. If you wouldn't want your mother to read it you shouldn't allow it in your community.

gonna shout out PTs/mPTs in particular where I’ve noticed a kind of “no one’s going to read this anyway so I can say what I want” pattern in the past. That battle of the blades/celebrity crush task was rough.

***SchwarzNarr*** · 04-04-2023, 05:12 PM

I have nothing but support for you about this. It is HARD putting these feelings into words. There are so many emotions and struggles that women are constantly battling. And it gets harder as you try to write it in a way that hits home to everyone without being "too emotional" since apparently we're not always allowed that.

Thank you for being you. Thank you for being my friend, and I'm glad (and sad) we have one another for these moments and to support each other.

ACapitalChicago · 04-04-2023, 06:36 PM

Well said. Thank you for sharing this, Jess. This is a hard read but an absolutely necessary one that should open people up to introspective questions

S66 Damian Littleton

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